Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg (review)

The Battle of the Crater is best remembered both for the massacre of African American troops and as a golden opportunity to end the war that slipped through Ulysses S. Grant’s fingers. In Into the Crater, Earl Hess examines the action at the Crater in great detail and puts to rest controversies, including persistent claims that without Ambrose Burnside’s egregious bungling, the war might have ended nearly a year before it did.

Hess’s account proceeds chronologically from the first notion of detonating explosives beneath Confederate lines, when Henry Pleasants, a lieutenant colonel in the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Infantry, persuaded his superior officers that an underground attack held more promise than an assault on the Confederate trenches, to the disposition of the site after the war. From the beginning the plan was plagued with weaknesses, from the choice of a less than ideal location—Pegram’s Salient—to a haphazard execution. But the Federals were not alone in committing costly errors of judgment, for when the Confederates dug a countermine, they aimed their shaft too high and missed an opportunity to intercept the Union soldiers.

Hess discusses in great detail how the miners of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania overcame difficulties as they tunneled beneath the Confederates lines, and the engineering involved in the process is interesting. Nonspecialists might encounter some difficulty defining unfamiliar terms, such as “gallery” (a mine shaft) and “cavalier” (a walled entrenchment), and some context surrounding the siege of Petersburg would have been useful. Once the digging was completed, Union soldiers packed four tons of gunpowder into small, hollowed-out rooms at the end of the gallery and pieced together three long fuse lines.

Hess rightly blames Burnside for many of the problems with the execution of the plan, as he put an incompetent officer in charge of the attack and then evaded responsibility for its failure. Whereas Burnside originally wanted African American troops to lead the attack, George Meade was reluctant, for should it fail, he would be accused of using the men as cannon fodder. As a result, Burnside cast lots to determine who would lead the attack, leaving Brigadier General James H. Ledlie, “one of the worst division commanders of the war,” in charge of leading the ambitious and unprecedented attack on Confederate lines (60).

In great detail, Hess describes the debacle that became the Battle of the Crater. After a false start where the fuses fizzled out, the Union bomb detonated at about 4:44 a.m. on July 30, 1864. The problems were legion: the breach was too small for the number of Union troops, Ledlie stayed behind the lines rather than lead his men, and the cohesion of his unit broke down under the novel and confusing circumstances. As one Union officer put it after returning from the Crater, “It was as utterly impracticable to re-form a brigade in that crater as it would be to marshal bees to hold a dress parade after upsetting the hive” (96). With no division or corps commanders on sight, few Union troops ventured out of the crater to widen the breach and complete the penetration of Confederate lines. Hess notes that the United States Colored Troops made the most strenuous efforts to move forward, but they faced long odds. The Confederates quickly recovered their wits and counterattacked.

Hess correctly praises Brigadier General William Mahone for understanding the situation and pressing Confederates troops into the breach. He also notes that, contrary to general knowledge about the battle, the Confederates had also established a strong artillery presence and used their cannons to pound the Union troops. It was during this phase of the fighting that Confederate troops slaughtered African American soldiers after they surrendered. Hess suggests that because the Army of Northern Virginia was first exposed to African American soldiers in blue in the smoldering crater, their response was as much an expression of shock as it was of rage.

Hess has written...