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[426] in circulation to exhibit the Confederate authorities as having acted with unwarrantable malignity toward the deceased Colonel Dahlgren. The fact was that his body was sent to Richmond and decently interred in Oakwood Cemetery, where other Federal soldiers were buried. The enormity of his offenses was not forgotten, but resentment against him ended with his life. It was also admitted that, however bad his preceding conduct had been, he met his fate gallantly, charging at the head of his men when he found himself inextricably encompassed by his foe.

Custer and Kilpatrick, who were to cooperate with him in the expedition, especially the first-named, manifested a saving degree of ‘that rascally virtue,’ as Charles Lee of Revolutionary memory called it. After the feeble demonstration upon some parked artillery which has been described, he fancied that he heard the roaring of cars coming with reenforcements, and retreated, burning the bridges behind him—a precaution quite in vain, as there were none there to pursue him.

Kilpatrick, followed as above stated by Colonel Bradley T. Johnson, who hung close upon his rear, finally reached the defenses of Richmond. There, out of respect to the field artillery he encountered, he turned off to cross the Chickahominy, and that night he was routed by the cavalry command of our gallant cavalier General Wade Hampton. Thus ended the combined movement with which Northern papers had regaled their readers by announcing as made ‘with instructions to sack the rebel capital.’

During the first week in May, Major General B. F. Butler landed at Bermuda Hundred with a considerable force, and moved up so as to cut the telegraph line and reach by a raiding party the railroad at Chester, between Richmond and Petersburg. General Ransom, then in command of the defenses at Richmond and those of Drewry's Bluff, with a small force attacked the advance of General Butler, and after a sharp skirmish compelled him to withdraw.

Meantime, because of the warning which Stuart had sent, General Ransom was summoned to Richmond to resist an impending assault by General Sheridan on the outer works north of the city. Taking the two disposable brigades of Gracie and Fry and a light battery, he hastened forward, arriving at the fortifications on the Mechanicsville Turnpike just in time to see a battery of artillery, then entirely unsupported, repulse the advance of Sheridan. During the night the clerks and citizens, under General G. W. Custis Lee, had formed a thin line along part of the fortifications on the west side of the city. As the day advanced Grace's brigade was thrown in front of the works and pressed forward

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