Military
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At 11:00 a.m. six cannon of Major John Lane’s Georgia artillery battalion, followed closely by Brigadier General Edward A. Perry’s weakened 270-man Florida infantry brigade, moved down the Ox Ford Road to cover the vital crossing of Ox Ford. As the Union army threatened to cross the North Anna, eleven cannon of Lieutenant Colonel David G. McIntosh’s artillery battalion, supported by Brigadier General Ambrose “Rans” Wright’s Georgia infantry brigade, raced along the road to reinforce Lane and went into battery overlooking Ox Ford. By 8:00 p.m. these units, all of Brigadier General William H. Mahone’s Division, had taken positions on the bluffs overlooking the river, and their field of fire covered both the Telegraph Road bridge and Ox Ford. In the exchange of cannon fire that evening, Lieutenant Robert S. Pearce, commanding Clutter’s battery of McIntosh’s battalion, received a mortal wound. Union success at Jericho Mill and against Henagan’s redoubt on the Telegraph Road that same evening forced General Robert E. Lee to fall back to a new line anchored on the North Anna River at Ox Ford. After working through the night of May 23 and early morning of May 24, the Army of Northern Virginia, which Lee had positioned in an “inverted V” capable of splitting Grant’s army into three parts, again lay ready for the inevitable Union advance. Lee rode these lines along the Ox Ford Road and said of General Ulysses S. Grant, “If I can get one more pull at him, I will defeat him.”
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