In theory, the plan was rather ingenious. Hoping to end a bloody stalemate between Union and Confederate forces at Petersburg (a vital railroad junction south of Richmond), a regiment of Pennsylvania coal miners spent a backbreaking month tunneling underground to the Confederate lines 500 feet away and packing 8,000 pounds of gunpowder beneath the unsuspecting Rebels. Ideally, after blowing the front line to pieces, the Union troops would advance swiftly toward the remaining—and almost certainly shaken—Confederate defenses and capture Petersburg. Before dawn on July 30 the fuse was lit, and the explosion, which could be heard for miles, sent Rebel soldiers and debris over a hundred feet into the air. All that remained was a smoldering crater 250 feet across and more than three stories deep. Cheers erupted on the Union side as they began their assault. And then everything went wrong. Instead of running around the crater, Union troops charged directly into it. Without ladders, they found it impossible to scale the thirty-foot dirt walls. Confederate soldiers, who had retreated after the terrifying blast, realized their tactical advantage, rushed to the crater’s edge, and rained a steel blizzard of bullets down on the cornered men. Union sergeant Bowen wrote to his mother two days after the disaster to relate what he had witnessed.
Camp near Petersburg Va. Aug. 1st/64
Dear Mother,
Please excuse all mistakes & the poor writing for I’m not in very good spirits today & don’t feel much like writing. We have had another row in which although we were not actually engaged yet we were formed so near the scene of conflict that shell & shot payed their respects to us rather too devotedly to suit me. We had two men killed & seven wounded. The account of the affair will probably be found in the papers before this reaches you, but still I can give a feeble description of some of the things which probably the paper will not mention.
In the first place the day before yesterday at 1 o’clock in the morning we were aroused & ordered to fall in. We packed up & at 2 o’clock marched out to the Norfolk R.R. down which we marched toward Gen. Burnside’s front line. Reaching a deep cut in the road we halted & were ordered to sit down in our places & make no noise. This excited my hump of curiosity to such a degree that I disobeyed orders enough to climb the steep bank where I had a good view of the rebel & union lines, which are at this point not farther apart than from your house to James Fosters. Nothing unusual seemed to be going on as I could see.
I sat down wondering what was up untill, a little after daylight, just 5 A.M. to the minute, when all at once I heard a loud rumbling noise—felt the earth tremble & in a second after saw a large rebel fort nearest our line flying in all directions. It seemed to be lifted bodily from its foundations & hurled to pieces. Men, cannon, wheels & logs and all were sent flying into the air at the same moment both rebel & union guns opened fire in one simultaneous roar all along the line, & the air was in a moment alive with rushing iron, shreaking & whistling around in all directions.
Under cover of the dense canopy of smoke that settled like a shroud of death over the doomed fort, our forces charged & drove the rebels, who still lived, out of that line of works, & out of a line further back. Musketry added its sharp rattle to the din of battle, & at this time it was a scene of terror indeed. The rebels rushed fresh troops forward & our forces did the same thus the fight continued without an interval of rest untill 7 o’clock when our forces had driven the enemy back at every point & remained victors.
As soon however as the rebels fell back, whipped, their artillery on the right, left & front of the portion of the works which we captured turned a murderous cross fire on our forces, & we were forced to fall back to our own line.
Nearly all the troops engaged on our side were the colored troops of Burnside & they would have continued the charge into the city itself if the command had been given. They are regular black devils on a charge, & don’t know when to stop. From the rebel Brig. Gen. that we captured we learned that there were about four hundred men blown up in the fort. What our loss is I don’t know yet but it must be heavy from the grape & canister poured into the flanks of the charging party. The rebels worked all night digging out the men from the ruins. The rebel dead & wounded as well as our own on the field could not be got off by either party untill this morning.
Think of what the poor fellows suffered lying two nights & nearly two days under the burning sun, on the hot sand, without even a drink of water. I went out on a hill yesterday several times & with a pocket glass I could see hundreds of poor fellows squirming & rolling around on that open field. Some who could, of course, crawled in during the night, but a great many could not.
I saw one poor black, who had both legs broke above the knee, who, by lying on his back & using his elbows managed to reach our line. He was all night getting over about twenty rods. I don’t think the operation paid, for I believe we lost nearly as many men as the rebs & our lines have not advanced any.
Well I’m not supposed to judge, so I’ll not.
Don’t fear for me. If I live to get my discharge I will promise to come direct home by the shortest rout & not stop by the way. If I make all connections by rail & boat & am not delayed in Washington getting a settlement of accounts you may expect to see me, if ever, on the 18th of this month. I intended to stop in York a day or two but as you are all so anxious I should not, why I’ll obey orders & slide through.
I have your letter & Grandma’s of the 28 July but don’t feel like writing enough to answer today.
My respects to Mrs. Helman, Mrs. Dun & Fagan & all other friends.
Ever your Aff’t. Son
C.T.B
Of the more than 4,000 Union troops killed or seriously wounded in and around the crater, hundreds were African Americans. And one of the worst fates imaginable for a black soldier was to fall into Rebel hands; unlike whites, who were taken prisoner, blacks were often executed on the spot. Lt. Col. William Pegram, a battalion commander in the Confederate’s Third Army Corps, wrote to his wife, Jenny, on August 1 about the Battle of the Crater and the murder of black soldiers who tried to surrender. It was a punishment Pegram heartily sanctioned. (The letter’s salutation and signature could not be located. The bombproofs Pegram alludes to were shallow trenches.)
I suppose you all have gotten, before this, a correct account of the affairs on Saturday. It was an exceedingly brilliant one for us.
The enemy avoided our mine & ran theirs under Cousin Dick’s Batty. They blew it up about daylight, & taking advantage of the temporary confusion & demoralization of our troops at that point, rushed a large body of whites & blacks into the breach. This turned out much worse for them in the end. The ever ready Mahone was carried down to retake the line with his fine troops, which he did, with comparatively small loss to himself, & great loss to the enemy. I never saw such a sight as I saw on that portion of the line for a good distance in the trenches, the yankees, white & black, principally the latter, were piled two or three or four deep.
A few of our men were wounded by the negroes, which exasperated them very much. There was hardly less than six hundred dead—four hundred of whom were negroes. As soon as we got upon them, they threw down ther arms to surrender, but were not allowed to do so. Every bombproof I saw had one or two dead negroes in them, who had skulked out of the fight, & been found & killed by our men. This was perfectly right, as a matter of policy. I think over two hundred negroes got into our lines, by surrendering & running in, along with the whites, while the fighting was going on. I don’t believe that much over half of these ever reached the rear. You could see them lying dead all along the route to the rear, while there was a temporary lull in the fighting, after we had recaptured the first portion of the line, & before we recaptured the second, I was down there, & saw a fight between a negro & one of our men on the trench. I suppose that the Confederate told the negro he was going to kill him, after he had surrendered. This made the negro desperate, & he grabbed up a musket & they fought quite desperately for a little while with bayonets until a bystander shot the negro dead.
It seems cruel to murder them in cold blood, but I think the men did it had very good cause for doing so. Gen Mahone told me of one man who had a bayonet run through his cheek, which instead of making him throw down his musket & run to the rear, as men usually do when they are wounded, exasperated him so much that he killed the negro, although in that condition. I have always said that I wished the enemy would bring some negroes against this army. I am convinced, since Saturday’s fight, that it has a splendid effect on our men.
After the Battle of the Crater, the showdown between Grant and Lee deadlocked at Petersburg with no end in sight, and the two sides fortified themselves behind a maze of trenches. (The foul, vermin-infested living conditions were a grim foreshadowing of what American soldiers would endure during World War I.) Abraham Lincoln was convinced he was going to lose the 1864 presidential election and looked to William Tecumseh Sherman, marching with ruthless determination toward Atlanta, for a desperately needed Union victory. Sherman had no intention of disappointing the president.