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Show Petersburg, June 9th One of the desperate days of .history for Virginians came on June 9, 1864. General U.S. Grant, wearing down General R.E. Lee's outnumbered army, swept southward around Richmond and approached it from the south, at Petersburg. THERE WERE insufficient Confederate troops to defend " the city; the old men and boys of that town rallied to its defense de-fense and repulsed the Federal attack, until regular Confederate Confeder-ate forces arrived. Every year since, the graves of those volunteers have been decorated on June 9, although Confederate Memorial Day is observed on May 30. CRATER DAY, when Union Un-ion forces ignited a huge amount of underground explosive explo-sive in an attempt to pierce Confederate lines, came on July 30 of that summer, (also at Petersburg) and claimed many lives on both sides. That attack, too, was repulsed. re-pulsed. Nine months later, both Petersburg and Richmond Rich-mond fell to Grant's victorious troops. |