CHAPTER LI

THE MINE EXPLOSION AT PETERSBURG

General Grant was a man of skill and genius in the game of war. But until the summer of 1864 he had never played that game against another great master of it. He had baffled and beaten Albert Sydney Johnston, whose reputation as a commander of great skill rests rather upon the anticipation of his comrades in the old army at the outbreak of the war, than upon any demonstration of such skill made by himself. Grant had held his own and more against Beauregard in the tremendous second day's struggle at Shiloh. He had overcome great natural obstacles in his effort to take Vicksburg and he had received there the surrender of Pemberton,--a general who had never before commanded an army in the field, or in any other way manifested a capacity for command. Grant had also met Bragg at Chattanooga and beaten him. But none of these antagonists had been comparable with Lee as a great master of strategy and command.

When Grant found himself defeated at Cold Harbor, as he has himself described his situation, he had been baffled in both the purposes with which he had undertaken his campaign. He had not crushed Lee's army, nor had he succeeded in cutting it off from its base in the fortifications of Richmond. He had said at Spottsylvania that he would "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." The summer was still young when he found himself at Cold Harbor unable to do further fighting upon that line. He had crippled his enemy, it is true, but he had lost more than three men to that enemy's one, and that enemy still lay between him and Richmond in a mood of resoluteness and defiance. There was no way open to him by which, with any show of sanity, to assail Lee further in the field. It was then that he decided upon a campaign on other lines than those which he had chosen at the beginning of the summer.

He hoped by his movement upon Petersburg to take Lee at last by surprise, to cut his communications, and compel his precipitate retreat from the Confederate capital. Here again he was baffled of his purpose. There remained to him only the resource of dogged determination. He called for reinforcements in order that his army might always outnumber that of his adversary by two or three to one, and thus equipped with superior force, he determined, by continually extending his lines to the south and west, to draw Lee's slender line of defense into the condition of an attenuated thread.

Let us make this military situation clear to the minds of unmilitary readers. Grant lay east of Richmond and Petersburg, with a secure base of supplies at City Point on the James river, just in his rear. That base was perfectly protected by a great war fleet which lay in the river and held it. It was easily accessible from the North by transports of every kind, bringing troops or supplies of food or ammunition. Grant's rear was as secure and as well furnished as if it had rested upon New York harbor.

He so disposed his men as to threaten Richmond and Petersburg over a space of about thirty miles. His battalions and his guns besieged the two cities all the way from a position north of Richmond, across James river and the Appomattox, to a point south and west of Petersburg. Good roads and a railroad in his rear lay beyond the possible sight of his enemy, and by the use of these he could concentrate any force he pleased at any point he might select upon Lee's attenuated lines,--all without Lee's knowledge, and beyond the possibility of his discovery.

From the beginning of these siege operations to the end General Grant's plan was not that which is here suggested, but another and slower one. It was his plan to continue the extension of his lines southward and westward toward the Weldon railroad, thus compelling his adversary to stretch out his lines and weaken his defenses at every point, and at the same time threatening his communications with the south. This cautious policy is explained and perhaps justified by the fact that in the preliminary operations against Petersburg, in which General Grant was baffled of his purpose to take that town with a rush, the Federals had lost no less than 10,000 men in a stubborn fight with Lee's small head of column. To assail Lee and such an army as that which Lee commanded behind entrenchments was a task so difficult and so perilous that it might well give pause to the most daring and most obstinate of generals.

No sooner was position taken up in front of Petersburg than Grant began his bold operations against the Weldon railroad leading thence southward. On the twenty-first and twenty-second of June Grant and Meade sent heavy forces southward and hurled them upon the Confederate defenses of that railroad. These forces were promptly met by the Confederates and disastrously defeated with a loss of 1,700 prisoners and four guns captured.

The failure of this enterprise ended operations in that quarter with such purpose for several weeks to come. Another plan was formed by which to break Confederate resistance. Immediately in front of Petersburg the two opposing lines of fortifications lay at one point within less than fifty yards of each other. Each line was strongly built and each was protected at every point by traverses,--earthworks built at right angles to the main works, as a protection against an enfilade or cross fire. So close were the works together, and so incessant was the fire that it became at last impossible for men on either side to show their heads above the works in order to discharge their guns. On either side port holes were made by the placing of sand bags on top of the parapets, in such fashion as to leave holes through which the men might fire their guns. Even these port holes were unavailable for use if by any chance the enemy looking toward them through a port hole on the other side could see the sky beyond. The moment a man undertook to shoot through the port hole his head, obscuring the light, revealed his presence there to some sharpshooter on the other side who was standing ready with gun aimed and "bead drawn" waiting to fire into the hole the instant the sky beyond should be obscured by human presence. So ceaseless was the fire at this point that repeated experiments showed that any twig thrust above the crest of the parapet would be instantly cut in two by one of the multitudinous bullets which were flowing in a continuous stream from one side to the other.

The space between the works was so perfectly and completely commanded by Confederate artillery that no general in his senses would have thought of attempting to cross it, even with the most heroic of veterans. But just in rear of the Federal lines there was a cavernous hollow between the hills, where anything might be done without the possibility of Confederate discovery. A regiment composed mainly of Pennsylvania coal miners was brought to that point, and instructed to push a mining shaft under the hill in order to plant a great mine immediately beneath the Confederate works.

The tunnel began in the ravine in rear of the Federal works, and extended thence 500 feet. This brought it immediately under an important redan in the Confederate lines. There a cross gallery eighty feet long was dug, and packed full of gunpowder,--8,000 pounds in all.

The plan was to surprise the Confederates and break their lines by the explosion of this tremendous mine on the morning of the thirtieth of July. It was intended to take advantage of the confusion thus created, and push a strong column through the gap made in the works, thus cutting Lee's army in two, and compelling it to retreat.

The affair was badly managed from beginning to end, and resulted in a disaster which amounted almost to a crime. For the execution of such an enterprise as this, General Meade ought to have selected his most daring and determined subordinate to lead the assailing force. Instead of that he permitted the selection to be made by some species of lot drawing, and the choice fell upon General James H. Ledlie, who proved himself peculiarly unfit for the conduct of an enterprise that required so much of heroic daring. General Grant in his "Memoirs" says of this officer that, "Ledlie, besides being otherwise inefficient, proved also to possess a disqualification less common among soldiers." He did, indeed, order his men to advance into the breach made by the explosion which occurred at about daylight, but he did not lead them. He remained instead, during all that terrible day, securely ensconced in the ravine that lay in rear of the Federal line.

The explosion completely destroyed a Confederate fort and its garrison, leaving a vast crater thirty feet deep and two hundred feet long into which Ledlie's men were sent like sheep to the slaughter. Having reached the crater they stopped there instead of pushing on as had been intended and running over the weak second line of Confederate defense. Thus the whole purpose of the enterprise was completely defeated at the outset for lack of capable leadership.

It must be remembered that at that period of the war Lee's army was so far battle seasoned that any form of panic was to it completely impossible. Even when it saw the most important part of its line blown up, and thousands of Federal troops rushing into the crater, the Army of Northern Virginia remained steadfast and unshaken. Hurried orders were given, and promptly obeyed. Within ten minutes after Ledlie's column came to a halt in the crater it was forever too late for them to gain the advantage intended by rushing through that slender second line which held the Jerusalem plank road, and which alone stood then between the Federal army and Petersburg. Under Lee's command, the Army of Northern Virginia had become as perfect a piece of military mechanism as ever existed, and under Lee's command, for both Lee and Beauregard were promptly present at the post of danger, the men of that army were quickly shifted into positions against which an advance of their enemy would have been nothing less than wholesale suicide.

In the meanwhile Ledlie's men in the crater were as helpless to retire as they were to advance. They were practically leaderless and the space in rear of them was already commanded by Confederate artillery which could sweep it with canister from end to end. To this commanding force of artillery Lee promptly added thirty-five other guns, placing each in a position from which it could hurl its missiles from one end to the other of the doomed space.

It was not until after midday that these preparations and others of a like kind were completed. But in the meanwhile detachments from Lamkin's battery of mortars were pushed up and placed behind traverses within sixty yards of that cavernous hole in which thousands of Federal soldiers were lying helpless for lack of a leader fit to command them. These mortars continued ceaselessly throughout the morning to hurl twenty-four-pound shells into the hole at the rate of twenty a minute. This fire was murderous in an extreme degree, but there was no escape from it. The men subjected to it had no choice but to sit still and await the end. They could neither advance nor retreat with any hope of escape in either direction.

Finally a little after midday, and after he had completed his preparations and the placing of his guns, Lee ordered Mahone, with a heavy infantry force, to charge across the field to the very edge of the crater, and pour into it a fire so destructive that its further tenancy should be rendered impossible. The more desperate of the Federal troops in the hole risked flight toward their own lines, fifty yards away. Not many of them succeeded in getting there. The rest surrendered, and the Confederates occupied the crater.

The narrow space between the two lines was literally piled high with dead Federal soldiers, lying on top of each other, sometimes three deep, and in some places five. A day later there was a suspension of hostilities for a few hours, and the dead were dragged away and buried.

This badly managed affair well nigh rivaled the blunder at Cold Harbor in its costliness to the Army of the Potomac. Grant's loss was more than 4,000 men,--Lee's less than 1,000.

The whole enterprise was of doubtful military propriety. Yet if it had been conducted with an energy and capability equal to that which had been brought to bear upon other fields it might have promised the early and complete destruction of Lee's defenses. If there had been, in command of the troops set apart for the assault, such a man as Sheridan, for example, or Hooker, or Hancock, the chance was an even one or better that the force hurled suddenly upon Lee's broken line could have made its way into Petersburg by impetuous advance. It must be accounted one of General Meade's rare failures in judgment, that he did not place the assailing force under some such commander upon whom he could depend to give wise personal direction and leadership to the desperate fighting needed on such an occasion.

In its outcome, this enterprise which had been planned for the destruction of Lee and his army, resulted rather in their strengthening. Having recaptured the crater they promptly threw up a line of works along that side of it which lay nearest to their enemy, thus in fact, shortening the distance between the two lines, without in any way weakening their position.

An unfortunate circumstance connected with this affair was the fact that General Burnside, who had general command in that part of the field, made a desperate endeavor--which came a few minutes too late--to force the Confederate second line by an advance of the negro troops under his command. These pushed themselves as far forward up the hill as they could go and were there hurled back and driven into the great pit. In the event many of them were captured. The Confederates refused to recognize these black men as soldiers or to treat them as prisoners of war. It was a time, indeed, when the Southern soldiers were in a state of peculiar exasperation and revengefulness against negroes in arms. During a recent raid certain negro troops had committed unforgiveable outrages upon women, and in consequence the mood of mind of the Army of Northern Virginia was such that a negro soldier in arms had better have fallen into hell than into their hands. General Lee and his subordinates did what they could to compel a merciful treatment for the negro troops who were captured in the crater. It was all to no purpose. Every effort made to send these men to the rear as prisoners under charge of details ended in a report from the commander of the detail that the negroes had "escaped." Their escape was of such kind that burial parties had to be sent into the covered ways leading to Petersburg to clear them of the negro corpses there.

General Grant has said of this mine enterprise: "The effort was a stupendous failure. It cost us about 4,000 men, mostly however, captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps commander (Burnside) and the incompetency of the division commander (Ledlie) who were sent to lead the assault."