The Daily Dispatch: September 27, 1864., [Electronic resource]

General Grant tells Stanton, and Stanton tells Yankeedom, that we have nothing to resist him but old men and children — that we have robbed the cradle and the grave to make up an army. All this is very witty, and very severe, no doubt; but wit and sarcasm are not useful in the capture of cities; and that is what is required of General Grant just at this moment. His friend and admirer, Sawney Bennett, said, when General Johnston retreated from Manassas, that his whole force did not amount

to one thousand men. And yet that same force hunted his sometime favorite, McClellan, like a deer, all around this city, and left him panting and shivering behind his breastworks, and under the projection of his gunboats, twenty-five miles below the city.

We cannot understand why Grant chooses to draw such a despicable picture of our army, seeing that it is the same which flogged him so often and so severely last summer. If he should plead that the men are not the same, and that he killed off all our last summer's heroes, then he ought to see that, according to his own account, he is held at bay at this moment by this very army of children and cripples, and that it is not at all either to his own credit or that of his army. Nay! when he calls for one hundred thousand men more to fight these cripples, children and old men, stolen from the cradle, dragged from the hospitals, or snatched from the grave, he ought to consider how bitterly he is reflecting upon the valor of his Yankee troops. One hundred thousand fresh troops to fight a handful of cripples and boys! What a splendid compliment to our troops? What must be the flower of that people whose infants and old men can hold at bay for three months the flower of the Yankee army, commanded by the most renowned of Yankee generals!

It is unwise in General Grant to make such a statement with regard to our troops for another reason. He is just about to open a new campaign against them. If he should beat them, after such a description as he gives of them, he can claim no great credit for his success. On the other hand, if they should beat him, (and whatever he may think, we can assure him that every Confederate believes he will be beaten,) the disgrace will be dreadful beyond all example. At any rate, however, we shall expect him, when he shall have found himself beaten again, not to contradict himself and lie like Bennett, or Stanton, or himself, saying that these troops are flower of the Confederate forces.