That this story was not the mere figment of the brain of a vain and ambitious young man, seems to be proved by contemporaneous reports published in the prominent journals of the North. One of these is a dispatch from Harrisburg, Pa., which appeared in the New York Herald, dated July 6, 1863, in which is announced the capture of a man on the morning of the second instant, who declared himself a member of Longstreet's staff, and announced that "he was on his way to Culpeper to ascertain what had become of Beauregard's army." A Washington "special" telegram to the New York Tribune, on the third of July, 1863:
The intercepted dispatches from Jeff. Davis, and his renegade adjutant-general, to General Lee, are a more important acquisition than the brief paragraphs that profess to give the substance of their contents would indicate. They reveal the plan of Lee's campaign, wherein and wherefore it was not carried out, the points to which the rebel government is sending reinforcements, and the precarious condition in which it considers its capital to be. The object of the campaign was the capture of Washington, which was to be effected in this wise: Lee was to draw Hooker into Pennsylvania sufficiently far to uncover Washington, which Beauregard, with 30,000 men, to be concentrated at Culpeper Court-house, was then to attack and take. But, as further appears from these dispatches, Jeff. Davis felt unable to spare Beauregard's 30,000 men, or any number of men, to co-operate with Lee.
From the otherwise unaccountable retiring of Meade's artillery on the night of the 2d of July, the statement made by Dahlgren, and the telegraphic reports published in the New York papers, no other conclusion can be arrived at than that General Meade had received intercepted information from Richmond that a part of the plan of General Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania was the concentration of an army at Culpeper to co-operate with the Army of Northern Virginia.
The following is a dispatch from General S. Cooper, Adjutant-General of the Confederate States army, captured by Lieutenant Dahlgren, and which quieted the fears of General Meade concerning the movement from Culpeper against Washington:
General—While with the president last night, I received your letter of the twenty-third instant. After reading it he was embarrassed to understand that part of it which refers to the plan of assembling an army at Culpeper Court-house under General Beauregard. This is the first intimation he has had that such a plan was ever in contempla-
