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358	HISTORY OF CAMBRIA COUNTY.
Skelly) being cut off, escaped and succeeded in getting into the Union lines. To do this, however, he had to abandon his artillery. He left 500 of his men with Wilson and brought 1,000 of Wilson's men with him.     Wilson was again attacked at Stony Creek, but he pushed eastward, and arriving at Jarratt's Station halted until daylight of June 30. He then proceeded to Blunt's bridge on the Blackwater river and found the bridge destroyed and the river not fordable. He repaired the bridge, crossed and then destroyed it, just as Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee came up on the other side. He arrived at Light House Point the afternoon of July 2, having been gone ten days and having marched 330 miles and destroyed more than sixty miles of railroad. It was a brilliant and successful affair. FROM COLD HARBOR TO PETERSBURG.     After the terrible loss of life at Cold Harbor, Gen. Grant determined that it required too many sacrifices to break the lines of Lee, who always had the advantage of being in earthworks or intrenchments of some kind, and decided that he would operate against Lee's army from the south side of the James river. The main fortifications for the defense of Richmond were at Petersburg, twenty-two miles south of Richmond on the south side of the Appomattox river. These forts and intrenchments were formidable; they ran from the Appomattox river one mile east of the city to the City Point railroad; thence south to the Norfolk railroad; thence west to a point a mile west of the Weldon railroad, then north to the Appomattox river.     Inasmuch as this gigantic struggle for the abandonment of slavery took place in and around Petersburg during the last eight months of the war, covering a field thirty miles south of it and seventy-seven miles west, it is necessary to have in the mind the different locations and distances in which the movements were made.     Lee's and Grant's intrenchments and forts began near the Appomattox river, about one mile east of Petersburg, and took a southerly course for three miles, the forts appearing in the following order:         Lee's         Grant's Colquitt's Salient. Fort McGilvery. Gracie's Salient. Fort Stedman. Elliott's Salient (Mine). Fort Haskell.

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