JUNE 17th.—Clear and pleasant.
A dispatch from Beauregard states that two assaults of the enemy yesterday, at Petersburg, were repulsed with loss; and it is reported that he recovered all lost ground to-day. Yet Beauregard has an enemy in his rear as well as in his front.
When the battles were fought on the south side of the river in May, it appears that one of Gen. B.’s brigadiers (Colston) stopped some battalions on the way to Richmond, in an emergency, and this has certainly given umbrage to the President, as the following indorsement, which I found on a paper to-day, will show:
“No officer has a right to stop troops moving under the orders of superior authority. If he assumes such power, he does it at his hazard, and must be justified by subsequent events rather than by good intentions.
“Gen. Beauregard has, in this case, by approving and continuing the order (Gen. Colston’s) assumed the responsibility of the act. —J. D. June 16th, 1864.”