The Battle of the Crater: The Civil War's Worst Massacre

The Battle of the Crater: The Civil War's Worst Massacre Bryce A. Suderow After fighting his way south from the Rapidan to the gates of Richmond during May and June 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant found himself stalemated in front of the formidable trenches protecting Petersburg, the rail junction that supplied the Confederate capital. During June and July 1 864, soldiers of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside's Ninth Corps tunneled under the Confederate lines outside Petersburg and filled two galleries with eight thousand pounds of gunpowder. The goal was to explode the gunpowder to create a breach in the Confederate lines and to rush troops through the gap to seize Cemetery Hill. It was supposed that once this commanding position was taken, the Confederates would be forced to abandon Petersburg and Richmond , Lee's army would be beaten into submission, and the war would end. At 4:4s AM·» on July 30, 1 864, the Federals detonated the explosives beneath a salient held by Gen. Stephen Elliott Jr.'s South Carolina brigade, destroying one battery and a regiment and a half of infantry. In their place was a huge smoldering hole in the ground, a crater, measuring 150-200 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. Shortly after the explosion, three white divisions were sent, one after the other, to exploit the break, but they were so badly led that they were easily driven back into the Crater. At 8:00 a.m., Gen. Edward Ferrero's Fourth (Colored) Division, numbering 4,2oo officers and men, was ordered forward, its two brigades led by Cols. Joshua K. Siegfried and Henry Goddard Thomas. Siegfried's brigade consisted of the 27th, 30th, 39th, and 43d U.S. Colored Infantry. Thomas's brigade was composed of 19th, 23d, 28th, 29th, and 31st U.S. Colored Infantry.' Despite heavy opposition from Ransom's North Carolina brigade and portions of Elliott's South Carolinians, the 30th and 43d U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) of Siegfried's brigade seized the last Confederate trench that stood ' According to Brvt. Maj. Gen. Henry G. Thomas, Siegfried's brigade numbered 2,000 and Thomas's 2,300. "The Colored Troops at Petersburg," in Battles and Leaders ofthe Civil War, vol. 4 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), 563. Civil War History, Vol. xliii. No. 3 © 1997 by The Kent State University Press 220CIVIL WAR HISTORY between them and Cemetery Hill, capturing 150 prisoners. Thomas's 2d brigade assaulted simultaneously on Siegfried's left but was repulsed with heavy losses in his lead regiment, the 3 ist USCT. He reformed and advanced a second time at 9 a.m., this time with the 29th USCT in the lead. Both brigades were met by a furious counterattack by Weisiger's Virginia brigade and Wright's Georgia brigade from Brig. Gen. William Mahone's division .After fierce fighting, most ofSiegfried's andThomas's soldiers were driven back into Union lines or into the Crater, where they joined white troops already seeking shelter there. At least four Confederate assaults were launched at the Crater between 9:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. It finally fell to Sanders's Alabama brigade of Mahone's division at one o'clock. The Federals took over four thousand casualties in what Grant himself called "the saddest affair I have ever witnessed in the war."2 Careful examination ofeyewitness accounts, including contemporary letters, demonstrate that several massacres occurred during and after the Battle of the Crater. The first took place whenWeisiger's Virginians andWright's Georgians killed wounded black soldiers and black soldiers trying to surrender as they charged and cleared the trench of Siegfried's brigade. They also killed black soldiers who had been sent to the rear as prisoners. George Bernard of the 12th Virginia, Weisiger's brigade, said they littered the trench with murdered blacks: A minute later I witnessed another deed which made my blood run cold. Just about the outer end of the ditch by which I had entered stood a negro soldier, a non-commissioned officer (I noticed distinctly his chevrons) begging for his life of two Confederate soldiers who stood by him, one of them striking...