Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 02.djvu/308

298 him harshly in this instance, for his bulletin was based upon the following dispatch:

General Lee's dispatch is as follows:

A discrepancy of statement which I leave to be reconciled by those better equipped for the task than I am, simply remarking that a perusal of the war dispatches of General Grant and General Sheridan often recalls to one that witty saying of Sidney Smith: "Nothing is so deceptive as figures, except facts."

On the same day, General Fields, north of the James, captured seven stands of colors and above 400 prisoners, and when it leaked out in the New York papers, as it gradually did, that this was no mere "advance for the purpose of reconnoissance," as stated by Mr. Stanton in his bulletin, but a grand blow for the capture of Petersburg, which had been promptly parried with a loss to the Federals of above 3,000 men, who shall wonder that for the time the "bulls," and not the bulletins, had the best of it in Wall street? From