Federal General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant was in constant search of a way to break the Confederate defenses east of Petersburg, Virginia. With northerners growing more restless, Grant was under increasing pressure to destroy General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Early in July, Grant asked Major-General George G. Meade, commanding the Army of the Potomac, “Do you think it possible, by a bold and decisive attack, to break through the enemy’s center?” Grant stressed that “we would want full preparations made in advance so there should be no balk.”
Grant told Meade, “If it is not attempted we will have to give you an army sufficient to meet most of Lee’s forces and march around Petersburg and come in from above. This probably could not be done before the arrival of the Nineteenth Corps.” Meade concluded that he did not have the strength for either a frontal attack or a flanking movement, because of “the facility with which the enemy can interpose to check an onward movement.” Meade proposed cavalry raids to cut Lee’s lines of communication and supply. He also suggested that the tunneling expedition, which had begun in June, could produce something positive.
The 48th Pennsylvania, a regiment consisting mainly of anthracite coal miners, worked through most of July to tunnel under the Confederate lines at Elliott’s Salient, southeast of Blandford Cemetery. The objective was to dig to a point directly beneath the Confederates and detonate enough explosives to blow an exploitable breech in Lee’s defenses. A massed Federal advance would then penetrate the breech and break the enemy line.
Brigadier-General E. Porter Alexander, chief Confederate artillerist, warned Lee that the Federals were digging a tunnel under the Confederate lines. Alexander suspected that they were operating under Elliott’s Salient, but the Confederates did not start digging countermines until over two weeks later. They dug around Elliott’s Salient and other nearby redans, but they could not find the Federals beneath them.
By July 17, the Pennsylvanians had completed the tunnel, ending it directly under the Confederate redoubt. It ran 511 feet long and five feet high. It was reinforced to withstand the weight of Confederate batteries overhead, and it was dug at a slight angle to provide drainage. The Federals began digging lateral chambers under the Confederates the next day. They extended on either side of the main tunnel for 75 feet, enabling the Federals to detonate gunpowder directly below the enemy.
According to Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants, commanding the 48th: “The great difficulty I had was to dispose of the material got out of the mine. I found it impossible to get any assistance from anybody; I had to do all the work myself. I had to remove all the earth in old cracker boxes. I got pieces of hickory and nailed on the boxes in which we received our crackers, and then iron-cladded them with hoops of iron taken from old beef and pork barrels.”
The tunnel and its lateral chambers were completed on the 23rd. Pleasants later asserted that had his men been furnished with the proper mining tools, they “could have done it in one-third or one-fourth of the time.” With the tunnel ready, the Federals now had to wait for approval up the chain of command to proceed with their plan.
Meade hesitated to approve the operation, largely because he did “not think that there was any reasonable chance of success by such an attack.” It had taken nearly a month for the mine to be completed, and Meade wrote Major-General Ambrose Burnside, commanding the mining operation, on the 26th, “It is altogether probable that the enemy are cognizant of the fact that we are mining because it is mentioned in their papers, and they have been heard to work on what are supposed to be shafts in close proximity to our galleries.”
Burnside countered that if the mine was detonated quickly, it was “probable that we will escape discovery.” He therefore stressed it was “highly important, in my opinion, that the mine should be exploded at the earliest possible moment consistent with the general interests of the campaign.”
Burnside then shared his plan with Meade to “explode the mine just before daylight in the morning, or at about five o’clock in the afternoon. Mass two brigades of the colored division in rear of my first line, in columns of division… and as soon as the explosion has taken place, move them forward with instructions for the division to take half distance…” The two black brigades would be followed by the rest of Burnside’s divisions “as soon as they can be thrown in.” Burnside added, “It would, in my opinion, be advisable, if we succeed in gaining the crest, to throw the colored division right into the town.”
Meanwhile, General Marsena Patrick discussed matters with Meade and concluded the operation was bound to fail because of “the jealousy on the part of Corps Commanders against each other & against Meade–especially the bad blood that exists between Meade & Burnside–preventing unanimity of counsels, or concert of action, even among the troops belonging to the Army of the Potomac.”
Patrick went on: “The same spirit alluded to… so hostile to Burnside will prevent Meade, probably, from taking hold with any vim to carry out Burnside’s idea of an assault following the explosion of his mine; which if a successful ‘Blow up’ as it seems to me can be followed up by an assault which will carry everything before it.” Patrick and his fellow army officers were well aware of “the feeling in the North & East that Grant has failed in this campaign,” and the Lincoln administration would soon be looking for someone to punish for it.
Burnside did not share Patrick’s pessimism. He was so confident that the explosion and subsequent attack would succeed that he had his headquarters broken down so he could march into Petersburg with his troops.
Bibliography
- Catton, Bruce, The Army of the Potomac: A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1953.
- Catton, Bruce, Grant Takes Command. Open Road Media, Kindle Edition, 2015.
- Davis, William C., Death in the Trenches: Grant at Petersburg. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1983.
- Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative: Red River to Appomattox. New York: Vintage Civil War Library, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Kindle Edition), 2011.
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- Long, E.B. with Long, Barbara, The Civil War Day by Day. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1971.
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