Military action of the American Civil War
The Battle of the Crater took place during the American Civil War, part of the Siege of Petersburg. It occurred on Saturday, July 30, 1864, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General George G. Meade (under the direct supervision of the general-in-chief, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant).
After weeks of preparation, on July 30 Union forces exploded a mine across from Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside's IX Corps sector, blowing a gap in the Confederate defenses of Petersburg, Virginia. Instead of being a decisive advantage to the Union, this precipitated a rapid deterioration in the Union position. Unit after unit charged into and around the crater, where most of the soldiers milled in confusion in the bottom of the crater. Grant considered this failed assault as "the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war."
The Confederates quickly recovered, and launched several counterattacks led by Brigadier General William Mahone. The breach was sealed off, and the Union forces were repulsed with severe casualties, while Brigadier General Edward Ferrero's division of black soldiers was badly mauled. It may have been Grant's best chance to end the siege of Petersburg; instead, the soldiers settled in for another eight months of trench warfare.
Burnside was relieved of command for his role in the fiasco, and he was never returned to command, while Ferrero and General James H. Ledlie were observed behind the lines in a bunker, drinking liquor throughout the battle: Ledlie was criticized by a court of inquiry into his conduct that September, and in December he was effectively dismissed from the Army by Meade on orders from Grant, formally resigning his commission on January 23, 1865.
Background.
During the Civil War, Petersburg, Virginia, was an important railhead, where four railroad lines from the south met before they continued to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. Most supplies to General Lee's army and Richmond funneled through that location. Consequently, the Union regarded it as the "back door" to Richmond and as necessary for its defense. The result was the siege of Petersburg. It was actually trench warfare, rather than a true siege, as the armies were aligned along a series of fortified positions and trenches more than long, extending from the old Cold Harbor battlefield near Richmond to areas south of Petersburg.
After Lee stopped Grant's attempt to seize Petersburg on June 15, the battle settled into a stalemate. Grant had learned a hard lesson at Cold Harbor about attacking Lee in a fortified position and was chafing at the inactivity to which Lee's trenches and forts had confined him. Finally, Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants, commanding the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry of Major General Ambrose E. Burnside's IX Corps, offered a novel proposal to break the impasse.
Pleasants, a mining engineer from Pennsylvania in civilian life, proposed digging a long mine shaft under the Confederate Army lines and planting explosive charges directly underneath a fort (Elliott's Salient) in the middle of the Confederate First Corps line. If successful, not only would all the defenders in the area be killed, but also a hole in the Confederate defenses would be opened. If enough Union troops filled the breach quickly enough and drove into the Confederate rear area, the Confederates would not be able to muster enough force to drive them out, and Petersburg might fall. Burnside, whose reputation had suffered from his 1862 defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg and his poor performance earlier that year at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, agreed to Pleasants's plan.
Mine construction.
Digging began in late June, but even Grant and Meade saw the operation as a "mere way to keep the men occupied" and doubted it of any actual tactical value. They quickly lost interest, and Pleasants soon found himself with few materials for his project, and his men even had to forage for wood to support the structure.
Work progressed steadily, however. Earth was removed by hand and packed into improvised sledges made from cracker boxes fitted with handles, and the floor, wall, and ceiling of the mine were shored up with timbers from an abandoned wood mill and even from tearing down an old bridge.
The shaft was elevated as it moved toward the Confederate lines to make sure moisture did not clog up the mine, and fresh air was drawn in by an ingenious air-exchange mechanism near the entrance. A canvas partition isolated the miners' air supply from outside air and allowed miners to enter and exit the work area easily. The miners had constructed a vertical exhaust shaft located well behind Union lines. At the vertical shaft's base, a fire was kept continuously burning. A wooden duct ran the entire length of the tunnel and protruded into the outside air. The fire heated stale air inside of the tunnel, drawing it up the exhaust shaft and out of the mine by the chimney effect. The resulting vacuum then sucked fresh air in from the mine entrance via the wooden duct, which carried it down the length of the tunnel to the place in which the miners were working. That avoided the need for additional ventilation shafts, which could have been observed by the enemy, and it also easily disguised the diggers' progress.
On July 17, the main shaft reached under the Confederate position. Rumors of a mine construction soon reached the Confederates, but Lee refused to believe or act upon them for two weeks before he commenced countermining attempts, which were sluggish and uncoordinated, and were unable to discover the mine. However, General John Pegram, whose batteries would be above the explosion, took the threat seriously enough to build a new line of trenches and artillery points behind his position as a precaution. Shafts were also sunk by the Confederates in an effort to intercept the passage. Pleasants became aware of the Confederate's counter-movements and was able to frustrate their effort by changing the direction of the main and lateral galleries while increasing their depth below the surface.
The mine was in a "T"-shape. The approach shaft was long, starting in a sunken area downhill and more than below the Confederate battery, making detection difficult. The tunnel entrance was narrow, about wide and high. At its end, a perpendicular gallery of extended in both directions. Grant and Meade suddenly decided to use the mine three days after it was completed after a failed attack known later as the First Battle of Deep Bottom. Union soldiers filled the mine with 320 kegs of gunpowder, totaling . The explosives were approximately under the Confederate works, and the T-gap was packed shut with of earth in the side galleries. A further of packed earth was placed in the main gallery to prevent the explosion blasting out the mouth of the mine. On July 28, the powder charges were armed.
Preparation.
Burnside had trained a division of United States Colored Troops (USCT) under Brigadier General Edward Ferrero to lead the assault. The division consisted of two brigades, one designated to go to the left of the crater and the other to the right. A regiment from both brigades was to leave the attack column and extend the breach by rushing perpendicular to the crater, and the remaining regiments were to rush through, seizing the Jerusalem Plank Road just beyond, followed by the churchyard and, if possible, Petersburg itself. Burnside's two other divisions, made up of white troops, would then move in, supporting Ferrero's flanks and race for Petersburg itself. Two miles (3 km) behind the front lines, out of sight of the Confederates, the men of the USCT division were trained for two weeks on the plan.
Despite the careful planning and intensive training, on the day before the attack, Meade, who lacked confidence in the operation, ordered Burnside not to use the black troops in the lead assault. He claimed that if the attack failed, black soldiers would be killed needlessly, creating political repercussions in the North. Meade may have also ordered the change of plans because he lacked confidence in the black soldiers' abilities in combat and feared that if they were butchered, Radical Republicans would make an issue out of it and claim they were deliberately allowed to be killed. Burnside protested to Grant, who sided with Meade. When volunteers were not forthcoming, Burnside selected a replacement white division by having the three commanders draw lots. Brigadier General James H. Ledlie's 1st Division was selected, but he failed to brief the men on what was expected of them and was reported during the battle to be drunk, well behind the lines, and not providing leadership. Ledlie would be dismissed for his actions during the battle. Ledlie, a civilian soldier with no proper military training, also commanded the smallest and weakest division in the army; one brigade was made of heavy artillery regiments that had not performed well in combat so far and Burnside himself had complained about their performance during the June 18 assaults on Petersburg. Worse than that, Ledlie was known as a coward; during the battle on June 18 he had hidden behind the lines and although his officers and enlisted men knew it, this escaped Burnside's notice.
Battle.
The plan called for the mine to be detonated between 3:30 and 3:45 a.m. on the morning of July 30. Pleasants lit the fuse accordingly, but as with the rest of the mine's provisions, they had been given poor-quality fuses, which his men were forced to splice themselves. After more and more time passed and no explosion occurred (the impending dawn creating a threat to the men at the staging points, who were in view of the Confederate lines), two volunteers from the 48th Regiment (Lt. Jacob Douty and Sgt. Harry Reese) crawled into the tunnel. After discovering the fuse had burned out at a splice, they spliced on a length of new fuse and lit it again. Finally, at 4:44 a.m., the charges exploded in a massive shower of earth, men, and guns. A crater (still visible today) was created, long, wide, and at least deep.
The explosion immediately killed 278 Confederate soldiers of the 18th and 22nd South Carolina and the stunned Confederate troops did not direct any significant rifle or artillery fire at the enemy for at least 15 minutes. However, Ledlie's untrained division was not prepared for the explosion, and reports indicate they waited 10 minutes before leaving their own entrenchments. Footbridges were supposed to have been placed to allow them to cross their own trenches quickly. Because they were missing, however, the men had to climb into and out of their own trenches just to reach no-man's land. Once they had wandered to the crater, instead of moving around it, as the USCT troops had been trained, they thought that it would make an excellent rifle pit in which to take cover. They therefore moved down into the crater itself, wasting valuable time and realizing too late that the crater was much too deep and exposed to function as a rifle pit and quickly becoming overcrowded while the Confederates, under Brigadier General William Mahone, gathered as many troops together as they could for a counterattack. In about an hour, they had formed up around the crater and began firing rifles and artillery down into it in what Mahone later described as a "turkey shoot."
Sensing that the plan had failed, Grant sent Meade an order to terminate the attack. Meade passed this order on to Burnside but the latter believed it could still work and ignored the order, so he sent in Ferrero's division. Burnside preferred to work from his headquarters so he had only a vague idea of what was going on at the front lines as disaster was unfolding. Now faced with considerable flanking fire, the USCT also descended into the crater, and for the next few hours, Mahone's soldiers, along with those of Major General Bushrod Johnson and artillery, slaughtered the IX Corps as Union soldiers attempted to escape from the crater or surrender. Confederates along the rim of the crater could be heard to yell "Take the white man prisoner! Kill the nigger!" The black Union soldiers who attempted to surrender were specifically targeted for battlefield execution or, if they were taken as prisoners, executed in the rear. Some