Battle of the Crater
......they hesitated. The Unions plan was to move quickly forward once the mine was exploded and pass through the breach in the Confederate's works made by the explosion. What they hadn't counted on was was that the bottom and sides of the crater was covered with a loose, light sand, furnishing scarcely foothold, and it was for this reason, as well as that as the narrowness of the place, it was only with great difficulty that the troops could pass through it.
Another unexpected obstacle confronting the first troops to enter the pit was the steep perimeter wall and they could find no footing except by facing inward, digging their heels into the earth, and throwing their backs against the side of the crater, or squatting in a half-sitting, half standing position......
Spiteful Confederate fire chewed into the flanks of the barely controlled Federal mass occupying the crater, and valuable time was lost as officers deployed men to try and counter the threat. The ragged Rebel force lacked the weight to be effective, however, and only served to provide a ready target for the confused Federal riflemen. "Our men were literally mowed down," one dazed South Carolinian later remembered. About two hundred survivors stumbled back into trenches, where they stubbornly hung on, blocking any easy Union advance toward Cemetery Hill.
Word of a breakthrough reached Robert E. Lee at his headquarters, just across the Appomattox River from Petersburg and now he reacted quickly. He dispatched his aide to General Mahone's headquarters with orders for the doughty Virginia officer to pull two brigades out of the line south of the breach to help plug the gap. Lee then mounted his horse, Traveller, and rode toward Petersburg.
More Confederate troops were brought in and the fighting in and around the crater pit was chaotic and violent. "This day was the jubilee of fiends in human shape, and without souls," one southerner later asserted. "Most of the fighting was done with bayonets and butts of muskets," added a North Carolina soldier. "Blood ran in the trenches all around."
Conditions in the crater were deteriorating rapidly. One Michigan soldier noted, "The day had been intensely hot, and the men had been exposed in the boiling sun without food or drink since the night before. Many were completely used up." "By the middle of the afternoon," a Maine soldier noted bitterly, "the affair was over....the enemy had recovered positions of all the ground we had taken in our first advance, and except for the ugly gap where the demolished redan had stood, their lines were intact, and as strong as before the explosion of our mine." One New Hampshire diarist ended his July 31 entry, "A sad day for our corps. The old story again...a big slaughter, and nothing gained."
At 5:00 a.m. on August 1, a truce was declared so both sides could retrieve their wounded and bury their dead. Not a shot was heard all along the line. A New Hampshre man remembered that is was "a beautiful Sabbath morning. Officers and men of both armies mingled there, where we were caring for the dead, or sat upon the breastworks on our left and right and engaged in friendly conversation." During the time of removing the dead the Confederates brought a brass band and posted it on their front lines of the works," continued Pennsylvanian J. R. Holibaugh. "We had a band on our line. So for two hours the bands played alternately, the Federals playing National airs and the Confederates playing Southern airs."
Union losses at the Crater, among the Ninth Corps and the Army of the James troops and associated artillery engaged, were officially reported as 504 killed, 1,881 wounded, and 1,413 missing, for a total of 3,789.
The most recent estimate of Confederate losses at the Crater, among the troops of Mahone's, Johnson's and Hoke's divisions, Elliott's Brigade, and associated artillery, suggests these figures as miniums: 361 killed,727 wounded, and 403 missing, for a total of 1,491)
The Mine
City Point
Siege Index
A Soldiers account of the Battle.
As it looked in 1864 and Present Day
