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 The Battle of the Crater  9 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 , 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 ,soldiers of Maj.Gen.Ambrose E.Burnside’s thCorpstunneledundertheConfederatelinesoutsidePetersburgandfilled 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,Gen Robert E.Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia would be beaten into submission, and the war would end. At : am on July ,,the Federals detonated the explosives beneath a salient held by Brig. Gen. Stephen Elliott Jr. and his 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 measuring– feet long,  feet wide,and  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,” as the place quickly became known. At : am, Brig. Gen. Edward Ferrero’s th Division (U.S.Colored Troops),numbering , 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 th,th,th,and d U.S. Colored Infantry Regiments. Thomas’s brigade was composed of the th, d, th, th, and st U.S. Colored Infantry.1 Despite heavy opposition from Brig.Gen.Matt W.Ransom’s North Carolina brigade and portions of Elliott’s South Carolinians, the th and d U.S. Colored Troops (usct) of Siegfried’s brigade seized the last Confederate trench that stood between them and Cemetery Hill,capturing  prisoners .Thomas’s brigade assaulted simultaneously on Siegfried’s left but was  Bryce A. Suderow repulsed with heavy losses in his lead regiment,the st usct.He reformed and advanced a second time at : am, this time with the th usct in the lead. Both brigades were met by a furious counterattack by Brig. Gen.David A. Weisiger’s Virginia brigade and Brig. Gen. Ambrose R. Wright’s Georgia brigadefromBrig.Gen.WilliamMahone’sdivision.Afterfiercefighting,most of Siegfried’s and Thomas’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 : am and : pm. It finally fell to Brig. Gen. John C. C. 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 of eyewitness accounts ,including contemporary letters,demonstrates that several massacres occurred during and after the Battle of the Crater.The first took place when Weisiger’s Virginians and Wright’s Georgians killed black soldiers who had beenwoundedandotherswhoweretryingtosurrenderastheRebelscharged 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 th Virginia,Weisiger’s brigade,said his comrades 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 noncommissioned officer (I noticed distinctly his chevrons) begging for his life of two Confederate soldiers who stood by him,one of them striking the poor wretch with a steel ramrod, the other holding a gun in his hand, with which he seemed to be trying to get a shot at the negro. The man with the gun fired at the negro, but did not seem to seriously injure him, as he only clapped his hand to his hip, when he appeared to have been shot, and continued to beg for his life. The man with the ramrod continued to strike the negro therewith, whilst the fellow with the gun deliberately reloaded it,and,placing its muzzle close against the stomach of the poor negro,fired, at which the latter...

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