The Crater

By July of 1864, the Union and Confederate armies had settled into stagnant lines around the railhead of Petersburg, about 30 miles south of Richmond. In an attempt to break the stalemate, a plan was developed to tunnel under the Army of Northern Virginia, detonate a mine and exploit the resulting hole in the line and confusion among the defenders. The idea was that a break-through would enable them to pour enough troops through to drive on to Petersburg. And taking Petersburg would cut Richmond’s lines of communications.

Well, that was the idea, although George G. Meade, CG of the Army of the Potomac, and Ulysses Grant, general-in-chief, didn’t rate it much. The miners, from the 4^th Pennsylvania began digging the shaft in late June, but they were operating under the handicaps of improvised supports and tools.

Our old pal Ambrose Burnside, now a mere corps commander, had allocated a division of African-American troops, who were trained pretty well by the standards of the day for their part in the operation. However, on the day before the attack, Meade (who lacked confidence in black men’s combat capabilities) ordered Burnside to use white troops, who had had no training, and weren’t even given clear objectives and expectations by their commander. Who, as it turns out, was both drunk and way behind the lines when the battle commenced.

On 30 July, the mine was detonated after some initial problems, blowing a 200-foot crater in the Rebel line. (The materials for the explosives were as defective as everything else given the 4^th Pennsylvania.) Nearly 280 Confederate soldiers were killed in the initial explosion, and their comrades were rendered stupefied for some minutes.

But so were the attacking troops, who had no notion of what they were supposed to be doing, much less how they should be doing it. They actually rushed into the crater left by the explosion, thinking to take cover there. Instead they were the fish in a rain barrel, being decimated by Confederate fire. 

Only now did Burnside send in the black troops, but they were going into a meat grinder and they, too, were cut down. Many of them were bayoneted after surrendering; it was a dangerous business, being a black man in the Union Army.

The end result was 3800 Union casualties (including 504 dead) and 1500 Confederate (with 361 killed).

Oh—and no change in the lines around Petersburg. The two armies would face each other over the rest of the summer, fall, winter and early spring of 1865.