Civil_War_Quarterly_-_Spring_2016_

With less than 12 hours remaining before

the attack, new plans had to be made.

Rather than give Ledlie specific instruc-

tions, however, Burnside merely parroted

Grant’s order to press forward and take

Cemetery Hill at any cost. He then ordered

Potter and Willcox to follow Ledlie, one

veering to the left and one to the right, to

be followed by the black division. He left

all other tactical decisions to his subordi-

nates. Ultimately, Burnside and Pleasants

would spend the day 400 yards behind the

Crater, protected by a 14-gun battery.

Meade too remained safely back, another

half-mile behind Burnside and Pleasants.

Slowly the men of IX Corps moved up

on the night of the 29th into their

assigned positions. Ledlie’s division was

out front, just behind the ridge where

Union pickets were dug in and just to the

rear of the mine entrance. Potter’s and

Willcox’s divisions were deployed along

the slope of a railroad cut—the Norfolk

& Petersburg Railroad bisected the Union

line at that point—while Ferrero’s men

waited in the bottom of the cut, chagrined

at being shunted to the rear. Elsewhere

along the Union line, the other corps

waited as well, including Hancock’s,

which now had returned, as hoped, from

its movement beyond the James. A bad

fuse delayed the detonation, but after it

was relit the explosion came at 4:44 AM.

In a sudden, fiery blast, Elliot’s Salient

ceased to exist. “Then came a monstrous

tongue of flame shot fully two hundred

feet into the air, followed by a vast col-

umn of white smoke,” recalled an

onlooker from the 20th Michigan. “A

great spout or fountain of red earth rose

to a great height, mingled with men and

guns, timbers and planks, and every other

kind of debris, ascending, spreading,

whirling, scattering and falling with great

concussion to the earth once more.”

Another Union onlooker, prefiguring a

larger, more ominous blast 81 years later

at Hiroshima, Japan, saw the smoke ris-

ing toward the sky “with a detonation of

thunder spread out like an immense

mushroom whose stem seemed to be of

fire and its head of smoke.”

The fresh Crater, which would soon

become a horrendous death trap for thou-

sands of Union soldiers, first entombed

half of Pegram’s guns and crews and entire

companies of Elliot’s command, as well as

damaging part of the cavalier trench. A

total of 278 Confederates were sent to

their graves by the huge blast. Great clods

of dirt, some as large as houses, littered the

floor of the Crater along with the torn

bodies of its erstwhile defenders. Some

defenders were seen running from the

trenches, but most of the South Carolini-

ans remained at their posts in the smoky

haze. It would take a full half-hour for the

stunned defenders to reorganize and put

up any type of effective defense. “The way

was completely open to the summit of the

hill,” recalled a Union observer, “which

was protected by no other line of works.”

After recovering from the shock of the

blast, North Carolina and Virginia regi-

ments positioned on either side of Elliot’s

Salient shifted men to support the sur-

vivors of Elliot’s five South Carolina regi-

ments. “When we arrived at our position,”

a North Carolinian recalled, “we counted

twelve United States flags in the works,

and the whole field in front of the crater

was filled with Yankees.” Confederate

defenders on both sides of the Crater

began pouring a deadly fire from both

ABOVE: Union troops await the order to attack. The original plan, calling for African American troops to

lead the attack, was countermanded by a politically motivated Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. BELOW, Left to

right: Generals William Mahone, James Ledlie, and Edward Ferrero.

Q-Spr16 The Crater_Layout 1 1/14/16 12:41 PM Page 26