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Show iaco More tlie disss ESoar iaa o Sfmo IPetisInsr?g Historic ggCEftter" y.y;.. j f ft Vi 1 1 &uns f 'ar Between the States have been I stilled for nearly three quarters of a century, but on April 30 of this year the quiet little city of I Petersburg, Va., will echo once more to their roar. There on that date blue-clad "Yank" and ' t gray or butternut brown-garbed "Johnny Reb" r will fight again one of the most spectacular en- i v ' gagements in the whole four years of the Civil war the Battle of the Crater. Of course, this time it will : be only a sham battle, staged ! by the National Park Service, with the "Devil Dogs" of the United States Marine corps ; representing the Union troops and cadets from the Virginia Military institute and nation- al guardsmen from the Old j Dominion playing the part of j the Confederates. But to the thousands of spectators who I are expected to gather in Petersburg for the re-enact-1 ment of this battle there will be a thrill of reality to it as they see the 1937 prototypes of the 1861-65 warriors swing into action and hear the voice of Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman, Free-man, editor, historian and biographer bi-ographer of "Marse Robert" Lee, describing through a loud speaker system the battle bat-tle as it progresses. With his description supplying such parts of the battle as must necessarily be omitted from the re-enactment, they will hear in memory the gigantic roar of the explosion of four tons of powder as it hurled a mountain of earth, artillery, planks of wood and other debris high up in the air, taking nearly 300 Confederate soldiers to their death. They will see the Union storm troops rushing rush-ing down into the huge hole in the ground, and then, slipping and sliding, trying vainly to climb up the other side, while Confederate rifles and cannon reap their harvest of death in that inferno below them. And when the gray-clad soldiers with a series of brilliant charges recapture re-capture the broken lines, they will realize anew the full horror of this terrible fiasco which cost the lives of nearly 4,000 boys in blue and gained not a single yard of disputed terrain in the long-drawn-out fight for possession of Petersburg "the longest siege on American soil." Back of the story of this engagement en-gagement is the history of the stalemate which existed in the fourth year of the Civil war. The genius of Robert E. Lee had balked every attempt of Ulysses S. Grant with his host of blue-coats blue-coats to crush the ragged men in gray in the long series of battles bat-tles that had raged north and east of the Confederate capital. So the Union commander decided to swing around that beleaguered city, cross the James river and strike Richmond from the south through Petersburg, "the back door of the Confederacy." The result was a protracted siege o; nine months. In this time skirmishes occurred almost daily, totaling some 150 minor engagements. A Tragic Climax. But all of them were leading up to a tragic climax the Battle of the Crater. That it was to ' ' "A. f. ' f , ' - -v ' ( ; 'l ''!' ' L J . ul U I I I Lieut. Col. Henry Pleasants. turn out thus was no fault of the man who had the original idea for attempting the most spectacular coup of the whole war. He was Lieut. Col. Henry Pleasants of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Volunteers, a part of the Ninth corps, commanded by Gen. A. E. Burnside. Pleasants had been a mining engineer and most of the men in his regiment were Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania coal miners. During the attacks on Petersburg Peters-burg in June, 1864, Pleasants "sized up" the terrain with the practiced eye of the engineer. The Union troops were behind high earthworks within 400 feet of the Confederates' defensive trench system and nearly opposite oppo-site a strong point called Elliott's salient, which w:as well fortified and almost impregnable. Pleas- i ants had noted, however, that although al-though the Union earthworks were lower than the Confederate, the land sloped very sharply behind be-hind the position of the Ninth corps. Thus what went on behind be-hind their lines was concealed from Confederate observers over a considerable area. So he conceived the idea of tunneling under the Union lines and the "no man's land" between be-tween them and the Confederates and laying a mine under the position posi-tion held by the men in gray. His proposal was sent through the usual military channels to his division commander, Gen. Robert B. Potter, his corps commander, com-mander, General Burnside, both of whom approved of it, to General Gen-eral Grant, who saw in it an opportunity op-portunity to crack the Confederate Confeder-ate line and pour enough troops through the crevasse to capture Petersburg. So he ordered Burnside Burn-side to go ahead with the project. Carrying out those orders was an epic achievement for which Pleasants deserves more credit than history has yet given him. With his regiment of about 400 miner-soldiers he did the job despite lack of co-operation from his superiors. General Meade and Major Duane, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, said the thing could not be done that it was all "clap-trap and nonsense"; that such a length of mine had never been excavated in the history of military oper- ff l;yr?,p&.& The Explosion of the Federal Mine (From a contemporary drawing). The Crater of the Mine Exploded on July 30, 18G4, Showing the Entrance to the Federal Tunnel.. ations and could not be. But when it was completed at last, the "impossible" had been accomplished. From the steep slope the shaft ran in for the more than 500 feet with a clearance clear-ance of about five feet. It was about four feet wide at the bottom bot-tom and three at the top. The whole length was shored and braced with timbers against the countless tons of sand and clay above. The tunnel ran a third of its length at a slight pitch upward, then took a steep pitch for another third, to regain re-gain the proper distance from the curving surface above, and thence ran nearly level to a point below the Confederate fort. Here the main gallery branched into two laterals about 38 feet long for placing the magazine. Into the side galleries, on the eve of the projected attack, were carried 8,000 pounds of powder, the amount to which the requisition requisi-tion was cut by General Meade. The various magazines thus made were linked by fuses in tubes, the fuse led down the gallery gal-lery and tamped with tons of earth. While this was going on, those working in the big tunnel could hear the Confederates above. Sounds of digging led them to believe their enterprise had been suspected and was about to be countered. Moreover, More-over, the shock of discharge of Confederate guns overhead led to fears of a cave-in. Everything argued for speedy shooting the mine, and preparations for the effort ef-fort to take advantage of the certain cer-tain breach in the lines were hastened. But it was here that the brilliance of Pleasants' achievement was nullified by the blundering of higher-ups. A Fatal Choice. While Pleasants was busy with his operations a division of negro troops were being trained by Burnside to lead the assault through the breach to be caused by the mine. But at the last minute Meade and Grant disapproved disap-proved of their use for this duty lest they be criticized for selecting select-ing colored men to be the "battalion "bat-talion of death." So Burnside had the storm division chosen by drawing straws. As it turned out, this foredoomed the enterprise enter-prise to failure because the lot fell to Gen. James H. Ledlie, commander of the First division of Burnside's corps. It was brought out then and by a congressional investigation later, lat-er, that Ledlie's "bad habits" and consequent unreliability were well known in the Union army. It was disclosed that Ledlie stayed behind in a dug-out drinking drink-ing throughout the Crater action and could not be induced to go out and try to extricate the remnants rem-nants of his division from the deathtrap in which they were caught. Wlien the tunneling operations had been completed on July 23 a total of 18,000 cubic feet of earth had been excavated. The four tons of powder were placed in the laterals on July 27 and the next day the miners' tamping had been completed. Pleasants was then ordered to explode the mine early on the morning of July 30. He lighted the fuse at 3:15 o'clock in the morning. The minutes ticked away and nothing noth-ing happened! So Lieut. Jacob Douty and Sergeant Henry Rees volunteered to risk their lives and go into the tunnel to see why. They found that the fire had stopped where fuse lengths had been tied together, so they spliced fresh ends, lighted the fuse again and dashed hastily out of the tunnel. For a few minutes min-utes the waiting Union troops stood shivering in the cool dawn and then A Gigantic Upheaval. They felt the earth shake under un-der them but the only sound they heard was a dull grumbling roar. Their eyes, however, told them the story of what had happened. Over across "no man's land" they saw a section of the Con- ones, twos and groups could be seen running toward the smoking Crater. Burnside and Ledlie had failed to clear their own defense obstacles obsta-cles and to prepare passages out of and over their own deep trenches. So their storm troops were disordered and delayed accordingly. ac-cordingly. Not a shot was fired from the Confederate side at first, but by the time the Crater was filled by a huddled mob of foremost fore-most men, the Confederate rifles were cracking from flanks and front, hostile guns were throwing gusts of canister, and it was fatal to go beyond that scene of hideous hide-ous death. Out of the Death Pit. Gallant officers of the Union line sprang out of the death pit and led a few of their bravest men as far as 100 yards beyond the Crater's lips, but forward of that none went and nothing could live. Survivors raced back for what shelter the pit could give them. There one after another they fell, ments. Men started despairingly to dig a trench from the Crater back to the Union lines. Men in the lines began to dig a hasty ditch toward the Crater to save what life they could from certain death if the men remained there. Toward noon orders were gotten into the Crater for the men to withdraw as best they could. They dashed for their lines, but only a part of them reached safety. The Confederate loss had been 276 officers and men, and this "stupendous failure," as Grant called it, had cost him 3,798 killed, wounded, captured or missing. In the afternoon the Confederates swept forward to drive away the last straggling Union troops and that night Ma-hone's Ma-hone's division "held the Crater atid all the horrors that lay in and about it." Years later a farmer clearing land near Petersburg discovered by accident a tunnel under the ground. Further investigation revealed re-vealed the fact that it was only one small part of an elaborate system that had been dug by the Confederates during the long siege of Petersburg, many of t . - - ' '1 L . " t J s , " ' ' ,i i 9 ,', J v '' ' S - - - l X ,f ' - " . s , U"' f A4'D 'i'li' si" - V 1 ' I " i hi ' i ' I ; If : ii , . r - A ' ' , ' A ' - ,'7 7' ( "r :! Part of the Confederate tunnel system as it is today. Apparently Ap-parently forgotten since shortly after the Civil war, this tunnel constructed during the long siege of Petersburg, was discovered by accident about ten yeas ago by a farmer clearing land. In the photograph are shown the entrances to two branches of the passage. The one on the right is nearly a mile long. The left one is 1,700 feet long. Both are about 5 feet wide and 12 feet under the surface of the ground at the entrance. federate trenches rise up in a gigantic upheaval. The air above the spot was filled with a mounting mount-ing cloud of earth, men, guns, planks and fragments. Confederates Confed-erates near the Crater ran in every direction. The waiting Union Un-ion legions shrank back, to escape es-cape the shower of debris. Both sides gazed astounded, appalled. A great hole appeared in the ground, 200 feet long, 60 feet wide, 25 feet deep, smoking, dust-shrouded, dust-shrouded, horrible. The Union artillerymen recovered recov-ered from their surprise first. Almost Al-most immediately they began laying down a fiery barrage on both sides of the breach. Five minutes later, blue soldiers in them no doubt, to prevent any repetition of Pleasants' feat. Today the visitor can walk through those tunnels and marvel mar-vel at the engineering skill which has made it possible for these underground un-derground passages to remain but little changed through the 70 years since they were in use. Different, however, is the case with the Crater. Today it is little lit-tle more than a depression in the ground. Shaded by the surrounding sur-rounding trees, grass-carpeted from top to bottom, it little resembles re-sembles that place of horrors where on a hot July day in 1864 nearly 5,000 Americans died in vain. e Western Newspaper Union. |