The Battle of the Crater

As Federals and Confederates faced each other from opposing fortifications east of Petersburg, Virginia, the 48th Pennsylvania of Major-General Ambrose E. Burnside’s Ninth Corps had tunneled beneath the Confederate line in hopes of planting gunpowder and blasting a hole in the enemy defenses. After creating a gap, Federal troops would rush through, capture Petersburg, and then move north on the Confederate capital of Richmond.

The 511-foot tunnel ended beneath Elliott’s Salient, southeast of Petersburg. It included two shafts at the tunnel’s end that made it resemble a “T” with an elongated stem. Each shaft was packed with 4,000 pounds of gunpowder, linked by a single fuse that ran back to the Federal line. The gunpowder was scheduled to detonate at 3:30 a.m. on July 30.

General Robert E. Lee, commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, determined that the recent Federal raid on Richmond had been just a diversion for an attack on the Petersburg lines, so he alerted his troops at 2 a.m. on the 30th to be ready. Nearly half of Lee’s entire army was north of the James River defending Richmond.

Burnside observed the action from his headquarters, with Major-General George G. Meade, commanding the Army of the Potomac, two miles in the rear. General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant observed as well. A battery of 164 Federal guns were ready to fire as soon as the explosion took place. Federals lit the fuse as planned, but it did not ignite the gunpowder. Meade grew impatient and told Burnside to open the artillery barrage and advance anyway.

Burnside opted to wait as two brave volunteers from the 48th went into the mine and discovered the fuse had burned out. They re-lit the fuse and hurried out, and the explosion finally took place at 4:44 a.m. It was one of the most tremendous explosions ever to be conducted, witnessed, or sustained by man.

An observer noted, “Without form or shape, full of red flames and carried on a bed of lightning flashes, it mounted to heaven with a detonation of thunder spread out like an immense mushroom whose stem seemed to be of fire and its head of smoke.” A Confederate later wrote, “A fort and several hundred yards of earth work with men and cannon was literally hurled a hundred feet in the air… (it was) probably the most terrific explosion ever known in this country.” Major-General Bushrod R. Johnson, commanding Confederates in this sector of the Petersburg line, recalled:

“The astonishing effect of the explosion, bursting like a volcano at the feet of the men, and the upheaving of an immense column of more than 100,000 cubic feet of earth to fall around in heavy masses, wounding, crushing, or burying everything within its reach, prevented our men from moving promptly to the mouth of the crater and occupying that part of the trench cavalier which was not destroyed, and over which the debris was scattered.”

The blast instantly killed hundreds of Confederates, including nearly 300 from the 19th and 22nd South Carolina. The debris buried a regiment and an artillery battery, effectively putting an entire brigade out of action. When the dust settled, a 500-yard-wide gap had been blown in the Confederate line, and a crater had formed that was about 170 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. A gap was opened all the way to Petersburg.

Burnside’s corps was to exploit the breach, led by the division of Brigadier-General James Ledlie, and supported by the divisions of Brigadier-Generals Orlando Willcox and Robert Potter. Brigadier-General Edward Ferrero’s division of U.S. Colored Troops would follow the white divisions. To Burnside’s left, Major-General Gouverneur Warren’s corps was to advance if Warren saw that Confederates abandoned the lines in his front to stop Burnside. Major-General Edward O.C. Ord’s corps was to do the same on Burnside’s right.

Ledlie’s men hesitated before advancing, as if stunned by the damage the explosion had caused. Meade frantically wrote Burnside, “Our chance is now; push your men forward at all hazards (white and black), and don’t lose time in making formations, but rush for the crest.” The troops got going and marched straight into the crater instead of around it, with the troops of Willcox and Porter following them. Soon, thousands of Federals were in the crater with no way of scaling the steep slope to get back out. No one thought to provide ladders.

Meade continued urging Burnside to advance, writing, “There is no object to be gained in occupying the enemy’s line… The great point is to secure the crest at once, at all hazards.” Soon the messages between the generals became testy, with Burnside finally calling Meade’s tone “unofficerlike and ungentlemanly.” As the Federals tried to find a way out of the crater, the Confederate survivors quickly regrouped, lined the crater’s rim, and fired down into the helpless enemy below.

Both Burnside and Meade pleaded with Warren to help, but Warren claimed that an advance was not practical, “our advantages are lost,” and stayed put. Burnside finally committed Ferrero’s black soldiers to the fight around 9 a.m., but they soon became trapped with all the other Federals. The Confederates were enraged at the sight of uniformed black men and killed several, even after they surrendered. The Federals lacked any effective leadership; Ledlie and Ferrero “passed a bottle of rum back and forth” in a bombproof during the battle.

Meanwhile, Major-General William Mahone’s Confederates (the last of Lee’s reinforcements) counterattacked against Federals west of the crater and drove them back, reestablishing the Confederate line and ending any chance for a Federal drive on Petersburg. Mahone’s artillerists then began pouring fire into the crater, turning it into a “cauldron of hell.” After three charges, the Federals were all either killed, wounded, captured, or driven back to their lines.

Meade ordered Burnside to withdraw his troops at 9:30, but Burnside, convinced that one more drive could break through, did not forward the order to the front until after noon. By that time, the Confederates had reformed their lines and swept any surviving Federals away with a bayonet charge. Lee reported at 3:25 p.m.: “We have retaken the salient and driven the enemy back to his lines with loss… Every man in it has today made himself a hero.”

The Federals sustained 3,798 casualties (504 killed, 1,881 wounded, 1,413 missing or captured), while the Confederates lost 1,491 (361 killed, 727 wounded, 403 missing or captured). The 45th Pennsylvania lost 67 out of 110 men in action; a captain wrote, “The loss of life was terrible. There was death below as well as above ground in the crater. It seemed impossible to maintain life from the intense heat of the sun.” Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Weld of the 56th Massachusetts, hiding in a bombproof, recounted a harrowing tale about how the Confederates handled black prisoners:

“Pretty soon the rebels yelled, ‘Come out of there, you Yanks.’ I walked out, and the negro who had gone in there with me, and Captain Fay came out also. The negro was touching my side. The rebels were about eight feet from me. They yelled out, ‘Shoot the nigger, but don’t kill the white man’; and the negro was promptly shot down by my side… I got over the embankment all right, and was walking to the rear, when I saw a negro soldier ahead of me. Three rebels rushed up to him in succession and shot him through the body. He dropped dead finally at the third shot. It was altogether the most miserable and meanest experience I ever had in my life.”

Colonel William Pegram, commanding a Confederate artillery battalion, wrote his sister after the battle:

“I think over 200 negroes got into our lines, by surrendering and running in, along with the whites, while the fighting was going on. I don’t believe that much over half of these ever reached the rear. You could see them lying dead all along the route to the rear. There were hardly less than 600 dead–400 of whom were negroes. As soon as we got upon them, they threw down their arms in surrender, but were not allowed to do so. Every bomb proof I saw, had one or two dead negroes in it, who had skulked out the fight and been found and killed by our men. This was perfectly right, as a matter of policy… It seems cruel to murder them in cold blood, but I think the men who did it had very good cause for doing so. I have always said that I wished the enemy would bring some negroes against this army. I am convinced, since Saturday’s fight, that it has a splendid effect on our men.”

Mahone later asserted:

“If the mine–itself a success, making an immense breach in General Lee’s works, unsupported by any reserve force, and consternation all around the breach rampant–had been followed up by a vigorous attacking column, and the force was there, it may not be too much to say that the retreat to which he was compelled nine months later would then have been unavoidable and most likely in the order of the d—-l take the hindmost. After the explosion there was nothing on the Confederate side to prevent the orderly projection of any column through the breach which had been effected, cutting the Confederate army in twain… opening wide the gates to the rear of the Confederate capital.”

Grant wired Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck at Washington, “It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war. Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have.” Grant later called this battle “a stupendous failure… and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps commander and the incompetency of the division commander who was sent to lead the assault.”

A soldier from the 48th Pennsylvania, the regiment that dug the mine, sadly wrote home, “I expected to write to you of one of the most glorious victories that was ever won by this army, but instead of a victory I have to write about the greatest shame and disgrace that ever happened to us. The people at home may look at it as nothing but a mere defeat, but I look at it as a disgrace to our corps.”

This disaster at the crater marked a new level of Federal incompetence. A court of inquiry later reported that “the first and great cause of the disaster was the employment of white instead of black troops to make the charge.” Ledlie was censured and later resigned from the army. Ferrero was also censured but later somehow promoted to major-general. Burnside was relieved as commander of the Ninth Corps for not providing an escape route, even though he blamed the defeat on a lack of support from Warren and Ord.

Many in the North saw the Battle of the Crater as the final disaster in what had been a failed campaign at Petersburg. According to an editorial in the Washington Intelligencer:

“After a loss of more than five thousand men, the army has made no advance towards the capture of that city, which is itself only an outpost of the city of Richmond. The delay in springing the mine, the want of concert and promptitude in following up the explosion with a dash by our assaulting column, and the inaptitude which ordered that this assaulting column should be selected from the least trustworthy and homogenous corps in the army, are a sufficient explanation perhaps of this calamity.”

The New York Times opined:

“Under the most favorable circumstances, with the rebel force reduced by two great detachments, we failed to carry their lines. Will they not conclude that twenty-five thousand men that held Grant in check are sufficient to garrison the works of Petersburg? Will they not conclude that, if they were able thus to hold their own with the force of from eighteen to twenty thousand men sent to the north side of the James River neutralized, this force is available for active operations elsewhere?”

The Federals lost a total of 6,367 men in July with no ground gained. The Confederates lost around 3,000. These losses, along with the crater fiasco and the recent Confederate invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania, demoralized the northern war effort and lessened President Abraham Lincoln’s chances for victory in the upcoming election.

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