THE MINE EXPLOSION AT PETERSBURG
General Grant was a man of skill and genius in the game of war. But
until the summer of 1864 he had never played that game against another
great master of it. He had baffled and beaten Albert Sydney Johnston,
whose reputation as a commander of great skill rests rather upon the
anticipation of his comrades in the old army at the outbreak of the
war, than upon any demonstration of such skill made by himself. Grant
had held his own and more against Beauregard in the tremendous second
day's struggle at Shiloh. He had overcome great natural obstacles in
his effort to take Vicksburg and he had received there the surrender
of Pemberton,--a general who had never before commanded an army in the
field, or in any other way manifested a capacity for command. Grant
had also met Bragg at Chattanooga and beaten him. But none of these
antagonists had been comparable with Lee as a great master of strategy
and command.
When Grant found himself defeated at Cold Harbor, as he has himself
described his situation, he had been baffled in both the purposes
with which he had undertaken his campaign. He had not crushed Lee's
army, nor had he succeeded in cutting it off from its base in the
fortifications of Richmond. He had said at Spottsylvania that he would
"fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." The summer was
still young when he found himself at Cold Harbor unable to do further
fighting upon that line. He had crippled his enemy, it is true, but he
had lost more than three men to that enemy's one, and that enemy still
lay between him and Richmond in a mood of resoluteness and defiance.
There was no way open to him by which, with any show of sanity, to
assail Lee further in the field. It was then that he decided upon a
campaign on other lines than those which he had chosen at the beginning
of the summer.
He hoped by his movement upon Petersburg to take Lee at last by
surprise, to cut his communications, and compel his precipitate retreat
from the Confederate capital. Here again he was baffled of his purpose.
There remained to him only the resource of dogged determination. He
called for reinforcements in order that his army might always outnumber
that of his adversary by two or three to one, and thus equipped with
superior force, he determined, by continually extending his lines to
the south and west, to draw Lee's slender line of defense into the
condition of an attenuated thread.
Let us make this military situation clear to the minds of unmilitary
readers. Grant lay east of Richmond and Petersburg, with a secure
base of supplies at City Point on the James river, just in his rear.
That base was perfectly protected by a great war fleet which lay in
the river and held it. It was easily accessible from the North by
transports of every kind, bringing troops or supplies of food or
ammunition. Grant's rear was as secure and as well furnished as if it
had rested upon New York harbor.
He so disposed his men as to threaten Richmond and Petersburg over a
space of about thirty miles. His battalions and his guns besieged the
two cities all the way from a position north of Richmond, across James
river and the Appomattox, to a point south and west of Petersburg.
Good roads and a railroad in his rear lay beyond the possible sight of
his enemy, and by the use of these he could concentrate any force he
pleased at any point he might select upon Lee's attenuated lines,--all
without Lee's knowledge, and beyond the possibility of his discovery.
From the beginning of these siege operations to the end General Grant's
plan was not that which is here suggested, but another and slower one.
It was his plan to continue the extension of his lines southward and
westward toward the Weldon railroad, thus compelling his adversary
to stretch out his lines and weaken his defenses at every point, and
at the same time threatening his communications with the south. This
cautious policy is explained and perhaps justified by the fact that in
the preliminary operations against Petersburg, in which General Grant
was baffled of his purpose to take that town with a rush, the Federals
had lost no less than 10,000 men in a stubborn fight with Lee's small
head of column. To assail Lee and such an army as that which Lee
commanded behind entrenchments was a task so difficult and so perilous
that it might well give pause to the most daring and most obstinate of
generals.
No sooner was position taken up in front of Petersburg than Grant
began his bold operations against the Weldon railroad leading thence
southward. On the twenty-first and twenty-second of June Grant and
Meade sent heavy forces southward and hurled them upon the Confederate
defenses of that railroad. These forces were promptly met by the
Confederates and disastrously defeated with a loss of 1,700 prisoners
and four guns captured.
The failure of this enterprise ended operations in that quarter with
such purpose for several weeks to come. Another plan was formed
by which to break Confederate resistance. Immediately in front of
Petersburg the two opposing lines of fortifications lay at one point
within less than fifty yards of each other. Each line was strongly
built and each was protected at every point by traverses,--earthworks
built at right angles to the main works, as a protection against an
enfilade or cross fire. So close were the works together, and so
incessant was the fire that it became at last impossible for men on
either side to show their heads above the works in order to discharge
their guns. On either side port holes were made by the placing of
sand bags on top of the parapets, in such fashion as to leave holes
through which the men might fire their guns. Even these port holes
were unavailable for use if by any chance the enemy looking toward
them through a port hole on the other side could see the sky beyond.
The moment a man undertook to shoot through the port hole his head,
obscuring the light, revealed his presence there to some sharpshooter
on the other side who was standing ready with gun aimed and "bead
drawn" waiting to fire into the hole the instant the sky beyond
should be obscured by human presence. So ceaseless was the fire at
this point that repeated experiments showed that any twig thrust above
the crest of the parapet would be instantly cut in two by one of the
multitudinous bullets which were flowing in a continuous stream from
one side to the other.
The space between the works was so perfectly and completely commanded
by Confederate artillery that no general in his senses would have
thought of attempting to cross it, even with the most heroic of
veterans. But just in rear of the Federal lines there was a cavernous
hollow between the hills, where anything might be done without the
possibility of Confederate discovery. A regiment composed mainly of
Pennsylvania coal miners was brought to that point, and instructed
to push a mining shaft under the hill in order to plant a great mine
immediately beneath the Confederate works.
The tunnel began in the ravine in rear of the Federal works, and
extended thence 500 feet. This brought it immediately under an
important redan in the Confederate lines. There a cross gallery eighty
feet long was dug, and packed full of gunpowder,--8,000 pounds in all.
The plan was to surprise the Confederates and break their lines by the
explosion of this tremendous mine on the morning of the thirtieth of
July. It was intended to take advantage of the confusion thus created,
and push a strong column through the gap made in the works, thus
cutting Lee's army in two, and compelling it to retreat.
The affair was badly managed from beginning to end, and resulted in a
disaster which amounted almost to a crime. For the execution of such
an enterprise as this, General Meade ought to have selected his most
daring and determined subordinate to lead the assailing force. Instead
of that he permitted the selection to be made by some species of lot
drawing, and the choice fell upon General James H. Ledlie, who proved
himself peculiarly unfit for the conduct of an enterprise that required
so much of heroic daring. General Grant in his "Memoirs" says of this
officer that, "Ledlie, besides being otherwise inefficient, proved also
to possess a disqualification less common among soldiers." He did,
indeed, order his men to advance into the breach made by the explosion
which occurred at about daylight, but he did not lead them. He remained
instead, during all that terrible day, securely ensconced in the ravine
that lay in rear of the Federal line.
The explosion completely destroyed a Confederate fort and its garrison,
leaving a vast crater thirty feet deep and two hundred feet long into
which Ledlie's men were sent like sheep to the slaughter. Having
reached the crater they stopped there instead of pushing on as had been
intended and running over the weak second line of Confederate defense.
Thus the whole purpose of the enterprise was completely defeated at the
outset for lack of capable leadership.
It must be remembered that at that period of the war Lee's army was
so far battle seasoned that any form of panic was to it completely
impossible. Even when it saw the most important part of its line blown
up, and thousands of Federal troops rushing into the crater, the Army
of Northern Virginia remained steadfast and unshaken. Hurried orders
were given, and promptly obeyed. Within ten minutes after Ledlie's
column came to a halt in the crater it was forever too late for them to
gain the advantage intended by rushing through that slender second line
which held the Jerusalem plank road, and which alone stood then between
the Federal army and Petersburg. Under Lee's command, the Army of
Northern Virginia had become as perfect a piece of military mechanism
as ever existed, and under Lee's command, for both Lee and Beauregard
were promptly present at the post of danger, the men of that army were
quickly shifted into positions against which an advance of their enemy
would have been nothing less than wholesale suicide.
In the meanwhile Ledlie's men in the crater were as helpless to retire
as they were to advance. They were practically leaderless and the space
in rear of them was already commanded by Confederate artillery which
could sweep it with canister from end to end. To this commanding force
of artillery Lee promptly added thirty-five other guns, placing each in
a position from which it could hurl its missiles from one end to the
other of the doomed space.
It was not until after midday that these preparations and others of
a like kind were completed. But in the meanwhile detachments from
Lamkin's battery of mortars were pushed up and placed behind traverses
within sixty yards of that cavernous hole in which thousands of Federal
soldiers were lying helpless for lack of a leader fit to command them.
These mortars continued ceaselessly throughout the morning to hurl
twenty-four-pound shells into the hole at the rate of twenty a minute.
This fire was murderous in an extreme degree, but there was no escape
from it. The men subjected to it had no choice but to sit still and
await the end. They could neither advance nor retreat with any hope of
escape in either direction.
Finally a little after midday, and after he had completed his
preparations and the placing of his guns, Lee ordered Mahone, with a
heavy infantry force, to charge across the field to the very edge of
the crater, and pour into it a fire so destructive that its further
tenancy should be rendered impossible. The more desperate of the
Federal troops in the hole risked flight toward their own lines, fifty
yards away. Not many of them succeeded in getting there. The rest
surrendered, and the Confederates occupied the crater.
The narrow space between the two lines was literally piled high with
dead Federal soldiers, lying on top of each other, sometimes three
deep, and in some places five. A day later there was a suspension of
hostilities for a few hours, and the dead were dragged away and buried.
This badly managed affair well nigh rivaled the blunder at Cold Harbor
in its costliness to the Army of the Potomac. Grant's loss was more
than 4,000 men,--Lee's less than 1,000.
The whole enterprise was of doubtful military propriety. Yet if it had
been conducted with an energy and capability equal to that which had
been brought to bear upon other fields it might have promised the
early and complete destruction of Lee's defenses. If there had been,
in command of the troops set apart for the assault, such a man as
Sheridan, for example, or Hooker, or Hancock, the chance was an even
one or better that the force hurled suddenly upon Lee's broken line
could have made its way into Petersburg by impetuous advance. It must
be accounted one of General Meade's rare failures in judgment, that he
did not place the assailing force under some such commander upon whom
he could depend to give wise personal direction and leadership to the
desperate fighting needed on such an occasion.
In its outcome, this enterprise which had been planned for
the destruction of Lee and his army, resulted rather in their
strengthening. Having recaptured the crater they promptly threw up a
line of works along that side of it which lay nearest to their enemy,
thus in fact, shortening the distance between the two lines, without in
any way weakening their position.
An unfortunate circumstance connected with this affair was the fact
that General Burnside, who had general command in that part of the
field, made a desperate endeavor--which came a few minutes too late--to
force the Confederate second line by an advance of the negro troops
under his command. These pushed themselves as far forward up the hill
as they could go and were there hurled back and driven into the great
pit. In the event many of them were captured. The Confederates refused
to recognize these black men as soldiers or to treat them as prisoners
of war. It was a time, indeed, when the Southern soldiers were in
a state of peculiar exasperation and revengefulness against negroes
in arms. During a recent raid certain negro troops had committed
unforgiveable outrages upon women, and in consequence the mood of mind
of the Army of Northern Virginia was such that a negro soldier in arms
had better have fallen into hell than into their hands. General Lee and
his subordinates did what they could to compel a merciful treatment
for the negro troops who were captured in the crater. It was all to no
purpose. Every effort made to send these men to the rear as prisoners
under charge of details ended in a report from the commander of the
detail that the negroes had "escaped." Their escape was of such kind
that burial parties had to be sent into the covered ways leading to
Petersburg to clear them of the negro corpses there.
General Grant has said of this mine enterprise: "The effort was a
stupendous failure. It cost us about 4,000 men, mostly however,
captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps
commander (Burnside) and the incompetency of the division commander
(Ledlie) who were sent to lead the assault."