206 The American Civil Warfresh air through a wooden conduit. After
three weeks of labor, the miners had
completed a tunnel that ran 511ft (156m)
and ended squarely beneath the main enemy
line. For 10 days they dug a lateral chamber
and then packed it full of gunpowder -
four tons of it. They planned to blow up the
massive charge at dawn on 30 July.
The Pennsylvanian soldier-miners had
achieved an incredible success, but the
Federal military hierarchy had not done
nearly as well preparing to capitalize on the
fruits of their labor. General Ambrose
E. Burnside, who had failed so egregiously at
Fredericksburg in 1862, was back with the
army in command of the Federal IX Corps
and responsible for the sector where the
48th had dug so diligently. He decided to
assign his well-trained but untested all-black
division to exploit the gap to be made by the
explosion. General Meade refused to let
Burnside use the black troops as the first
wave because he knew that, if they took
heavy losses, he would be pilloried by
politicians and journalists. Burnside chose
(by the mindless expedient of drawing
straws) to substitute the least effective of
his white divisions, commanded by the
inept - and perhaps drunken - General
James H. Ledlie.
Exploding the mine involved moments of
high drama. An officer of the 48th lit the
long, long fuse at 3.00 am and thousands of
men in blue waited in breathless silence for
the explosion. Thousands of Confederates in
deadly danger dozed in innocence. Nothing
happened. By 4.15 am it had become
apparent that nothing was going to happen
without intervention. Two brave
Pennsylvanians, Lieutenant Jacob Douty (a
doughty fellow indeed) and Sergeant Harry
Reese, crawled into the long, dark mine to
investigate. They found that the fuse had
failed at one of its several splices, relit it, and
scurried to safety. Finally, at 4.45 am the
'earth trembled for miles around,' as a
Virginia soldier put it, under the echoes of a
mighty explosion. The blast killed or
wounded nearly 300 South Carolinians.
When Smith Lipscomb, who survived,
tumbled out of the air and landed on his
feet, his 'thies [thighs] felt like they were
almost shivered.' Lipscomb thought that he
must have been badly crippled, but a Federal
volley 'convinced me I was not as badly hurt
as I thought I was,' he recalled later. The
injured man staggered back under cover and
began rubbing his painful legs. Before long
he had found a rifle and began shooting at
the enemy. The carnage continued until