Early on 30 July 1864 Union soldiers at Petersburg, Virginia, exploded a mine they had dug under a Confederate salient and blew a crater in the enemy line. The assault that followed broke down: division after division crowded into the crater instead of pushing on to the crest beyond, Confederate counterattacks led by William Mahone sealed the breach, and the division of U.S. Colored Troops was badly mauled. The official Union return for the assault counts 3,798 killed, wounded, captured or missing. Grant called it the saddest affair he had witnessed in the war. On the same day Confederate cavalry burned the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Miners from Schuylkill County
By late June 1864, in the American Battlefield Trust's account, the lines of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee east of Petersburg had settled into a stalemate. The Petersburg battlefield park puts part of the picket line of Major General Ambrose E. Burnside's IX Corps four hundred feet from the salient opposite, which it calls Elliot's Salient. Major General Bushrod R. Johnson, whose Confederate division held the sector, called it Pegram's salient, as does the Park Service's battle summary. By Johnson's report, four guns of Pegram's battery stood in it, and South Carolina regiments of Elliott's brigade held its parapets.1
Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants of the 48th Pennsylvania proposed to run a mine under it, and Burnside approved. Burnside testified that the regiment was "composed almost entirely of miners from Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania". Work began on 25 June. Burnside told Congress that Meade gave "his assent, rather than his approval". The main gallery was finished on 17 July: 510.8 feet long by Pleasants's report, 522 feet by Burnside's. On 27 July the charge went in: 320 kegs of about twenty-five pounds each in Pleasants's account, about 8,000 pounds of powder in Burnside's.2
A change of plan
Burnside meant to lead with his Fourth Division, the colored division of Brigadier General Edward Ferrero, made up of regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops, which, he testified, had been drilling for some weeks for the attack. Meade objected that it had never been under fire, and he "thought it impolitic to trust it to a division of whose reliability we had no evidence". According to Grant, Meade also argued that if the attack failed "it would then be said, and very properly, that we were shoving those people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them".3
Grant testified in December 1864 that he believed it "would have been a success" had Burnside put the colored division in front, adding: "Still I agreed with General Meade in his objection to that plan". Burnside testified that the order to use a white division reached him on the afternoon before the assault, and that he had the leading division chosen by lot; Brigadier General J. H. Ledlie drew it.4
Sixteen minutes of five
The mine was ordered fired at half past three in the morning. Pleasants reported that he lit the fuse at 3.15. When nothing happened, two volunteers of his regiment, named by the committee as Lieutenant Jacob Douty and Sergeant Henry Rees, went in, found that the fire had stopped at a splice, and relit it. Each source gives its own time for the blast: "sixteen minutes of 5" for Pleasants, 4.45 a.m. for Burnside, Meade and the Court of Inquiry, 4.42 a.m. for the committee, and "5 a. m." for Lee.5
The crater's size varies as much. Burnside described "a huge aperture of 150 feet in length by 60 in width, and 25 or 30 in depth"; Pleasants reported at least 200 feet by 50 and 25 feet deep; Johnson, 135 feet by 97 and 30 feet deep; the Park Service's Stop 8 page, 170 feet long, 60 feet wide at either end and 30 feet deep in places.6
Into the crater
Ledlie's division went forward five minutes after the explosion, according to the Court of Inquiry; five to ten minutes, according to the committee. Burnside reported: "To cross such an obstacle and preserve regimental organization was a sheer impossibility". Instead of pressing on to Cemetery Hill, the Court found, Ledlie's men halted in the crater and stayed there about an hour, while the divisions of Willcox and Potter followed. In the committee's words, "the troops crowded into the crater and sought shelter there".7
The colored division and Mahone
Under peremptory orders, Burnside then sent in the Fourth Division. By his report it advanced under heavy fire beyond the crater, tried to take the hill, met a counter-charge and broke to the rear about 8.45 a.m., the time the committee also gives. Some, Burnside added, held the pits "till they were nearly all killed". The Petersburg park says the division advanced farther than any other Union unit; Burnside credits the 2nd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery with getting some 100 yards beyond the crater. The Park Service's battle summary and the American Battlefield Trust say the Black soldiers were badly mauled.8
The Confederate counterattacks, led by William Mahone, sealed the breach. That evening Lee forwarded A. P. Hill's report that Mahone had recovered the four guns and captured 12 stand of colors, 74 officers including Brigadier General Bartlett, and 855 enlisted men; on 1 August Lee corrected the colors to 20. The order to withdraw reached Burnside at 9.15 a.m. by his report and at 9.45 by the committee's; the Court dates it 9.50, the Petersburg park 9:30. The men in the crater were driven out "at 2 p. m." according to the Court, while the committee says they were withdrawn "between one and two o'clock" in confusion caused by an enemy assault. The Park Service calls it the fiercest hand-to-hand combat of the siege, and records that as prisoners were taken to the rear, unarmed Black soldiers who, it says, had earlier been calling for "no quarter" were shot down by some of their captors.9
Counting the cost
The official Union return, covering the IX Corps and the Second Division of the X Corps, counts 3,798 officers and men killed, wounded and captured or missing, 3,475 of them in the IX Corps. The Park Service's battle summary and the American Battlefield Trust give the same Union figure and 1,491 Confederate, and the Trust records a Confederate victory; the Petersburg park speaks of nearly 5,500 casualties on both sides. Other figures differ: on 1 August Grant put the loss at about 3,500, and the committee at between four and five thousand killed, wounded and missing.10
The saddest affair
On 1 August Grant wrote to Halleck: "It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war. Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have". At Meade's request a court of inquiry under Major General Winfield S. Hancock investigated and gave its finding on 9 September 1864. Among the causes of failure it named "The halting of the troops in the crater instead of going forward to the crest". It held Burnside, Ledlie, Ferrero, Colonel Z. R. Bliss and Brigadier General O. B. Willcox "answerable for the want of success", and found that Ledlie was most of the time "in a bomb-proof ten rods in rear of the main line".11
The congressional committee, whose report was ordered printed on 6 February 1865, called the change to Burnside's plan "the first and great cause of disaster". Burnside was relieved of command. According to the Petersburg park, Mahone was promoted to major general. The Park Service suggests the Crater may have been Grant's best chance to end the siege; instead both armies settled into eight more months of trench warfare. The longer story is in our article on the siege of Petersburg.12
Also on 30 July
1864: Confederate cavalry under Brigadier General John McCausland burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Jubal A. Early wrote that he ordered it in retaliation for the burning of private houses in Virginia by Union troops under Hunter, demanding $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in United States currency. In default of payment McCausland was "to lay the town in ashes". The Union department commander, Major General Darius N. Couch, reported that Major Gilmor, who had arrested some of the principal citizens, was told there was probably not $50,000 in currency at hand and replied that "The town must be burnt"; fires were then kindled, "it is said, almost simultaneously in fifty different places". The Reverend B. S. Schneck, an eyewitness, printed a list of the buildings burned, valued by a committee of citizens, whose recapitulation gives a total of 559. Liva Baker gives four hundred buildings burned, 274 of them homes. Early wrote: "For this act, I, alone, am responsible".13
