DK - The American Civil War

gunpowder, totaling four tons of

charge, sandbagged to direct the

force upward. The miners retraced

their steps, unwinding a 98-ft (30-m)

fuse. The plan was to break the enemy

line in an instant, then exploit the

breach with waves of assault troops

who would pour through the

punctured works and roll up the

Confederate army.

At 4:45 a.m., on July 30, Elliott’s

Salient erupted in an earthshaking roar,

a blast that carried skyward men,

cannons, gun carriages, and tons of

earth. When the dust had cleared, the

Salient was gone, replaced by a 170-ft

(52-m) long crater, nearly 80ft (24m)

wide and 30ft (9m) deep. The assault

troops clambered out of their trenches,

reached the edge of the crater, then

halted, stupefied at the sight of

shattered men and guns strewn across

its bottom. Other troops managed to get

around it, but since their leaders had

I

n June 1864, Lee remarked to his

staff that if Grant managed to

cross the James River and arrive

before Petersburg, “it will become a

siege, and then it will be a mere

question of time.” By July the

military situation had indeed taken

on all the appearance of a siege. For

35 miles (56km), a curving line of

entrenchments stretched from north

of Richmond to west of Petersburg—

a labyrinth of front lines, secondary

lines, bombproof shelters, rifle pits, and

small forts, or redoubts, scarred the flat

landscape. Sharpshooters ruled this

denuded world, picking off the

unwary. Artillery always

thundered somewhere. It

was a life lived almost entirely

underground. Dirt, mud, sun,

rain, wind, and sky—and the

occasional whizzing bullet—

marked its boundaries.

Mining the line

As the standoff settled into a

lethal stalemate, members of the

48th Pennsylvania Volunteers, who

had been coal miners in civilian life,

persuaded their commander, Lieutenant

Colonel Henry Pleasants, a mining

engineer, that it was possible to dig a

mine beneath a Confederate redoubt

called Elliott’s Salient, pack it with

explosives, and blow a hole in the

enemy lines. Though doubting its

usefulness, Grant eventually approved

the scheme.

Digging began on June 25 and by

remained behind, they quickly

became disorganized. In the ensuing

chaos, the Confederates recovered

enough to mount counterattacks,

and the Battle of the Crater, as it

would be called, degenerated into a

savage struggle. Screaming men

pounded each other, amid

cries of “No quarter!”

Black Union troops,

trapped in the crater,

were shot down even

after surrendering. One

Southerner later

recalled with horror:

“My heart sickened at

the deeds I saw done.”

Those Union survivors

who had not been

captured fled back to

their own lines. Grant admitted that

it was “the saddest affair I witnessed

in the war.”

Railroads and a cattle raid

Grant redoubled his efforts around

the armies’ edges, seeking to thin the

Confederate lines until they broke.

On August 18–21, Major General

Gouverneur K. Warren’s Fifth Corps

seized another of Lee’s arteries to the

south. In the Battle of the Weldon

Railroad, troops of General A. P. Hill’s

Third Corps slammed into Warren’s,

forcing them back into open fields.

There the Union infantry held, despite

Hill’s repeated assaults—and held the

railroad too.

Loss of the Weldon Railroad raised

the specter of starvation for Lee’s

soldiers. In mid-September, General

Wade Hampton and 4,000 troopers

rode around the Army of the Potomac,

almost as far as Grant’s massive supply

depot at City Point. They raided the

Union cattle corral, rustling some 2,000

head and, driving the herd back the

way they had come, managed to lose

only 60 men.

The Siege of Petersburg

The battle for Petersburg was fought over months of siege warfare. Union general Ulysses S. Grant and

Confederate general Robert E. Lee matched each other earthwork for earthwork—over 100 miles (160km)

altogether—though Grant continually tried to break the stalemate by stretching Lee’s lines to breaking point.

BEFORE

Since May 1864 the Union Army of the
Potomac and the Confederate Army of
Northern Virginia had been fighting each
other north of the James River.

TRENCH WARFARE
Union troops assaulted Confederate forces
that were firmly planted behind cunningly
contrived earthworks. But as the soldiers
settled into the Richmond-Petersburg lines, the
Confederate mastery of field fortifications
was soon matched by that of the Union
armies. Stalemate loomed.

SUPPLY LINES
After failing to defeat Lee in open battle, Grant
shifted his strategy, hoping to sever the
Confederate supply lines—the railroads
running to the south and west that kept the
Army of Northern Virginia in the field.
During the siege of Vicksburg ❮❮ 190–93,
Grant had tightened a ring around the
defending army so no supplies could get in
and starved it into submission—a tactic that he
would pursue again.

July 17 the miners had excavated a

510-ft (155-m) shaft, ending directly

beneath Elliott’s Salient, only 20ft

(6m) above them. They had cleverly

concealed their work, devising

ingenious ways to provide ventilation.

But the inevitable noise had alerted the

Confederates who sank countermines

in response. Those went wide of the

mark, so the Pennsylvanians dug lateral

tunnels—like the crossbar on a “T”—

which they packed with 230 kegs of

The estimated

number of total

casualties—killed, wounded, captured,

and missing—incurred by both armies

during the six weeks’ fighting from the

Battle of the Wilderness to Cold Harbor.

88,000

Inside the mine

War artist Alfred Waud made this sketch with

accompanying notes. It shows Lieutenant Colonel

Henry Pleasants as he supervised the laying of powder

kegs in the mine shaft that later became the Crater.

“Hold on with a bulldog grip,

and chew and choke as much

as possible.”

ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN A TELEGRAM TO ULYSSES S. GRANT, AUGUST 17, 1864

Hill’s name was on both Robert E. Lee’s

and Stonewall Jackson’s dying lips, such

was the impression the slight, red-

bearded “Little Powell” made as a fighter.

The Virginian Hill and his Light Division

saved the day in numerous closely fought

battles, including the Seven Days Battles.

As commander of the Third Corps, Hill

was one of Lee’s most trusted lieutenants

before being killed in action outside

Petersburg—barely a week before the

Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

CONFEDERATE GENERAL 1825–65

AMBROSE POWELL HILL

The number of black regiments at

the siege of Petersburg. Secretary

of War Edwin Stanton stated, “The hardest

fighting was done by the black troops.”

38

GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864