The Daily Dispatch: June 17, 1864., [Electronic resource]

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Unutterable Meanness.

It will be recollected that after the terrible slaughter of Grant's men on the 3d, he allowed his wounded to remain on the ground outside of our works for several days, unable to take the ground, and preferring to let them perish for want of assistance to sending a flag of truce asking permission to bury the dead. The flag would have been an admission of defeat, and his humanity was not strong enough to overcome his vanity. At last he sent a flag, with a proposition, not for a truce to bury his dead, but that firing should cease on both sides until the dead of both sides could be buried.--Gen. Lee at once perceived the trick, and answered that he had no dead or wounded outside of his lines. After equivocating and prevaricating for several days longer, Grant was obliged, at last, to ask for a truce, and it was granted him. Here was an unmistakable confession of defeat. A correspondent, however, of the New York Times, writes a long letter, describing the mingling of both parties on the field of the dead, each removing its own men. According to this man's account, it was an arrangement mutually agreed on, and not a simple permission on the part of General Lee, and thus it will be represented in every paper in Yankeedom. Can anybody imagine anything more unutterably base?