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made a spirited dash upon the outer works.
Custer's brigade carried them at that point, and made one hundred prisoners. As in the case of
Kilpatrick's raid, so now, the second line of works were too strong to be carried by cavalry.
The troops in and around the city had rallied for their defense, and in an attack the Nationals were repulsed.
Then
Sheridan led his command across the
Chickahominy, at
Meadow Bridge, where he beat off a considerable force of infantry sent out from
Richmond, and who attacked him in the rear, while another force assailed his front.
He also drove the foe on his front, when he destroyed the railway bridge there, and then pushed on southward to Haxhall's Landing,
on the
James River, where he rested three days and
procured supplies.
Then, by way of
White House and Hanover Court-House, he leisurely returned to the Army of the Potomac, which he rejoined on the 25th of May.
Before proceeding to follow the Army of the Potomac further in its advance toward
Richmond, let us see what had been doing for awhile on its right by forces which, as we have observed, had been arranged in
Western Virginia for co-operating movements.
For some time that region had been the theater of some stirring minor events of the war. Confederate cavalry, guerrilla bands, and resident “bushwhackers” had been active and mischievous; while
Moseby, the marauding chief, was busy in the region east of the
Blue Ridge, between
Leesburg and the
Rappahannock, which his followers called his “Confederacy.”
So early as the beginning of January,
Fitz-Hugh Lee, with his cavalry, made a fruitless raid on the Baltimore and Ohio railway, west of
Cumberland.
A little later,
General Jubal Early, in command of the
Confederates in the Shenandoah Valley, sent
General Rosser on a foraging excursion in the same direction.
He was more successful, for in
Hardy County he captured
ninety-three
six-mule wagons heavily laden with supplies, twelve hundred cattle, and five hundred sheep, with two hundred and seventy men of the guard, who made only slight resistance.
Four days later, he suddenly appeared
at Patterson's Creek Station,
