The enemy’s account of our loss in the battle before Atlanta is exaggerated greatly. Sherman’s army is doomed, I think.
Seven p.m. No rain here, but my family were drenched in a hard shower at Hanover Junction, and what was worse, they got no blackberries, the hot sun having dried the sap in the bushes.
August 3d.—Cloudy, but no rain.
The press dispatches last night assert that still another raiding party, besides Stoneman’s, was dispersed or captured.
It is rumored to-day that Beauregard has sprung a mine under Grant’s fortifications. This may be so. Later. It was not so.
All quiet at Petersburg. President Lincoln was at Fortress Monroe on Sunday last, after the explosion and its failure.
The Northern papers acknowledge that Grant sustained a terrible disaster at Petersburg, losing in killed, wounded, and missing 5000. They say the negro troops caused the failure, by running back and breaking the lines of the whites. The blacks were pushed forward in front, and suffered most.
From the same source we learn that our troops have penetrated Pennsylvania, and laid the city of Chambersburg in ashes. This may be so, as they have burned some half dozen of our towns, and are now daily throwing shell into Charleston, Atlanta, and Petersburg.
A letter to the Secretary from J. Thompson, in Canada (per Capt. Hines), was received to-day. He says the work will not probably begin before the middle of August. I know not what sort of work. But he says much caution is necessary. I suppose it to be the destruction of the Federal army depots, etc. in the United States.