Confederate defenders from
the 12th Virginia Regiment rush
to repel Union attackers after
the massive predawn explosion
at the Crater, outside Petersburg,
Virginia, on July 30, 1864.IT
was just after 3 AMon Saturday,
July 30, 1864. A month of rela-
tive quiet along a two-mile stretch
of Union and Confederate trench
lines immediately east of Petersburg, Vir-
ginia, was about to come to an explosive
end. In the aftermath of several earlier Fed-
eral attacks on the strategically vital city
in mid-June, a portion of Maj. Gen.
Ambrose Burnside’s IX Corps picket line
lay only 400 feet from Elliot’s Salient, a
highly fortified position on high ground
that formed an angle protruding out from
the main Confederate line, commanded by
Maj. Gen. Bushrod Rust Johnson.To support the defenders’ artillery and
mortars, a second line, or “cavalier
trench,” had been dug close behind the
main redoubt. Elliot’s Salient boasted four
smoothbores of Lt. Col. William Pegram’s
battery and was backed by two regiments
of veteran infantrymen of Brig. Gen.
Stephen Elliot’s South Carolina Brigade.
Across a north-south ravine from Elliot’s
Salient were trenches occupied by the
troops of Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants’ 48th
Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment, many
of them coal miners in civilian life.
In an unprecedented feat of excavation,
and after coming up with the idea on their
own, the men of Pleasants’ regiment dug a
511-foot-long tunnel right up to the RebelQ-Spr16 The Crater_Layout 1 1/14/16 12:40 PM Page 22