Early in the afternoon of April 16, 1865, the first major act in the Battle of Girard-Columbus occurred when Union General Emory Upton sent the First Ohio cavalry charging down old Crawford Road to capture the Dillingham Bridge, then known as the lower or wagon bridge. Confederates on the Georgia side had prepared for this tactic by removing the bridge's flooring and placing turpentine-soaked cotton along the length of its superstructure. Confederate Colonel C. C. McGehee crawled out on the wooden framework and set it ablaze, and when the First Ohio saw the bridge burst into flame, it broke off its all-out charge.