General Grant sent the following dispatches:

FROM FIELD SIGNAL STATION.

General McClernand:

McArthur advanced from Warrenton last night. He is on your left. Communicate with him, and use his forces to the best advantage.

U. S. GRANT,

Major-General.

FROM FIELD SIGNAL STATION.

General McClernand:

Sherman and McPherson are pressing the enemy. If one portion of your troops are pressed, re-enforce them from another. Sherman has gained some successes.

U. S. GRANT.

MAY 22, 1863-2. 30 p. m.

GENERAL: I have sent a dispatch to you saying that McArthur left Warrenton last night. Was about half way to the city this morning at 1 a. m. Communicate with him, and use his forces to the best advantage. McPherson is directed to send Quinby's DIVISION to you right, and you will be aided as much by his penetrating into the enemy's lines as by having him to support the columns you have already got. Sherman is getting on well.

Yours,

U. S. GRANT,

Major-General.

Subsequently General Grant changed his mind, and ordered two brigades of Quinby's DIVISION to report to me, upon notice of which I sent the following dispatch to General Grant:

HEADQUARTERS THIRTEENTH ARMY CORPS, May 22, 1863-3,15 p. m.

Major General U. S. GRANT:

GENERAL: I have received your dispatches in regard to General Quinby's DIVISION and General McArthur's. As soon as they arrive, I will press the enemy with all possible dispatch, and doubt not that I will force my way through. I have lost no ground. My men are in two of the enemy's forts, but they are commanded by rifle-pits

in the rear. Several prisoners have been taken, who intimate that the rear is strong. At this moment I am hard pressed.

JOHN A. McClernand,
Major-General, Commanding.

Returning to the foregoing extracts from General Grant's report, it is found that he distinctly and emphatically affirms-

1. That "each corps had many more men than could possibly be used in the assault," and that "more men could only avail in case of breaking through the enemy's lines," &c.

In noticing this allegation, it is proper that I should advert to a few prefatory facts, which seem to have escaped the attention of General Grant.

My army corps [the Thirteenth], in common with others, even before it commenced the march from Milliken's Bend, had been deplorably wasted and diminished by disease and death, caused by useless but exhausting labor in digging and opening canals, sometimes unintermitted during nights, and often attended with exposure in rain and in mud and water. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of valuable to this list, in consequence of exposure encountered in making roads, repairing and watching levees, and building bridges across bayous, while opening the way for themselves and other corps that followed from Milliken's Bend to Carthage