an action so confused by reason of the heavily wooded character of the country, that it would be impossible for you to follow the details without the aid of a map, so I must content myself with stating simply that the attempt failed; not forgetting the caution to you, however, that so far as concerns the conduct of affairs, and the numbers engaged, on the
Confederate side,
Mr. Swinton's narrative is a very fallacious guide.
Once more,
Mr. Stanton, who had long preserved silence, appeared to chronicle victory, and gold, which ever sympathizes with success, rose from 2.18 1/2 to 2.41--within ten days to 2.57.
Nor shall we judge
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him harshly in this instance, for his bulletin was based upon the following dispatch:
I have just returned from the crossing of the
Boydton Plank Road with
Hatcher's creek.
At every point the enemy was found entrenched and his works manned.
No attack was made during the day further than to drive the pickets and cavalry inside the main works.
Our casualties have been light — probably less than 200.
The same is probably true of the enemy.
[Later]--The attack on
Hancock proves to be a decided success.
We lost no prisoners except the usual stragglers, who are always picked up.
General Lee's dispatch is as follows:
headquarters Army of Northern Virginia, October 28, 1864.
Honorable Secretary of War:
General Hill reports that the attack of
General Heth upon the enemy on the
Boydton Plank Road, mentioned in my dispatch last evening, was made by three brigades under
General Mahone in front, and by
General Hampton in rear.
Mahone captured 400
prisoners, 3
stands of colors, and 6 pieces of artillery. The latter could not be brought off, the enemy having possession of the bridge.
In the attack subsequently made by the enemy,
General Mahone broke three lines of battle, and during the night the enemy retreated, leaving his wounded and
more than 250
dead on the field.
[Later]--“The total number of prisoners, according to
General Hill's report, is 700.”
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,
1 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