Civil_War_Quarterly_-_Spring_2016_

ing. With the cavalier trench cleared, the

Confederate defenders worked their way

toward the crowded blue maze north of the

Crater, killing with abandon and taking

few prisoners, white or black. Again panic

struck the Union ranks, and mobs of men

turned and headed back for the Crater only

to find the intervening ground a cauldron

of lethal crossfire. With Mahone’s attack-

ers in hot pursuit, most of the fleeing blue-

coats tumbled into the perceived safety of

the Crater. There, in a ghastly turn of

events, some panicky Union troops bayo-

neted incoming black troops, fearing

enemy reprisals if they were captured fight-

ing alongside the black troops.

Approaching Confederates deployed

movable Coehorn mortars 50 feet from the

Crater and began sending a steady stream

of shells into the churning morass. “We got

closer and closer to the enemy,” recalled a

Confederate battery commander, “until we

were throwing shells with such light

charges of powder that they would rise so

slowly as to look as if they could not get

to the enemy, who were so close that we

could hear them cry out when the shells

would fall among them, and repeatedly

they would dash out and beg to surren-

der.” Mahone, whose Virginians by now

had captured most of the line north of the

Crater, ordered a line of sharpshooters to

target the western edge of the Crater while

sending the rest of his Georgia brigade

against its southern flank. The Georgians

made two bloody attacks and extended

Weisiger’s line to the south but failed to

take the trenches south of the Crater. The

Union mass in the smoldering rubble stub-

bornly held on, resisting all efforts to push

them out of their man-made hole.

Mahone’s attack had taken about an

hour. Before it began, Burnside had begged

Meade to allow fresh V Corps units to join

the fray, but at 9:30 AMMeade sent orders

instead for Burnside to begin conducting a

withdrawal. The angry Burnside sought out

Meade and in “language extremely insub-

ordinate” demanded the operation continue

with the aid of V Corps. After Grant arrived

and backed Meade, a disconsolate Burnside

returned to his headquarters and prepared

to pull his commands back to safety. He

would, however, be in no particular hurry

to do so. Scores of additional Union troops

would die because of his tardiness.

As the merciless summer sun baked the

horrid pit, Union soldiers used the bloated

bodies of dead comrades as makeshift para-

pets. Some Federals braved the hell of no-

man’s-land in a heroic effort to bring water

and ammunition back to their comrades.

Despite the dreadful conditions and abject

confusion, the Federals continued somehow

to keep the defenders at bay, throwing back

a series of limited Confederate thrusts.

More and more survivors crawled out of

the Crater and headed back toward their

Men of the 2nd Division, IX Corps, rush into the

maelstrom of the Crater. Furious Confederate

defenders took few prisoners, seeing the mine

explosion as a particularly underhanded tactic.

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