[Amnorix]

July 30, 1864, the Battle of the Crater.

Slightly to the south of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, the Army of the Potomac under the direct and close supervision of Union Commander in Chief Ulysses S. Grant is besieging the city of Petersburg. The city is critical to the supply situation of Richmond, as the Confederate supply trains travel through Petersburg to reach the capital. As such, the siege is not a true siege in which the defenders are encircled and susceptible to being starved out. Rather, it is a relentless war of attrition, with Union forces ever lengthening their lines and forcing the numerically inferior Confederates to match while repulsing steady probing attacks.

The siege began in early June and is already nearly two months old. There is as yet no sign of imminent success. The Union leadership is anxious for victory. Lincoln's war at this time is facing serious criticism. Despite holding every imaginable advantage, the war is now over three years old, and Sherman's army is seemingly stalemated outside Atlanta while Grant is similarly stuck outside Richmond. Meanwhile, the Presidential elections loom only a few months away, and absent a decisive and strategic victory beforehand there is little doubt that Lincoln's opponent, Democrat and former General George McClellan will win and sue for peace.

Originally Posted by Abraham Lincoln (August 1864)

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceeingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.

On this date 1864 was Grant's best opportunity to end the stalemate before Petersburg, penetrate Lee's lines and destroy the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The idea was brilliant in its simplicity. Colonel Henry Pleasants, a coal mine engineer in his civilian life who led a Pennsylvania regiment of coal miners proposed to his commander, Ambrose Burnside, that they dig a tunnel under the Confederate fortifications and blow it up. Work began on June 25.

The tunnel was four feet wide at the bottom, two feet wide at the top, and five feet high. After over a month of digging, on July 27 the miners carried 8,000 pounds of black powder to the end of the tunnel and placed it into side galleries. They then refilled a portion of the tunnel so the blast wouldn't return through the entrance. Burnside organized a force that would rush into the gap created by teh explosion.

At 3:15 a.m. today, 146 years ago, Colonel Pleasants lit the 98 foot fuse and sprinted out of the tunnel. 45 minutes later, nothing having happened, two volunteers entered the tunnel and relit the fuse. In minutes, a tremendous explosion rocked teh lines and 170 feet of Confederate entrenchments erupted in a huge blast throwing dirt and timbers hundreds of feet in the air. An entire Confederate regiment had simply disappeared. Confederate troops left standing near the blast were dazed and helpless. Immediately 110 Union cannon and 50 mortars, placed as advantageously as possible, commenced firing in support of the imminent Union assault.

The initial Union plan would now have had an attack led by black troops against the Confederate lines. These troops were veteran units who had proven themselves, and had been specifically trained for two weeks on how to carry the works. The commander of the Army of the Potomac, however, General George Meade, was uncertain as to the reliability fo black troops, however, and concerned that if the attack failed he would criticized for not valuing their lives, and face bad publicity. At the last minute, no volunteers coming forward, it was determined to have straws drawn by lot to determine which units would attack. The division of James H. Ledlie, a drunkard with political connections, "won" the draw. Burnside argued with Meade, but Grant sided by Meade and the decision was as he had modified it. Ledlie stayed behind to drink rum while his untrained troops rushed into the crater.

And therein lay defeat, for the troops stupidly rushed INTO THE CRATER. The actual pit that had been created by the blast, rather than around the edges of it and into a direct assult on the Confederate works in an effort to penetrate the lines. Instead, the men rushed into a pit only to find themselves faced with rapidly recovering and reorganizing Confederate troops defending the top of a sheer cliff and shooting down on the hapless men, easy targets.

Originally Posted by Ulysses S. Grant

The effort was a stupendous failure. It cost us about four thousand men, mostly, however, captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps commander and the incompendency of the division commander who was sent to lead the assault.

Originally Posted by Ulysses S. Grant

It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.

The long but checkered career of Ambrose Burnside would end as a result of this complete fiasco. Burnside had known that he was often in over his head, and nearly two years earlier had begged Lincoln not to appoint him commander of the Army of the Potomac. Nevertheless, when Lincoln ordered him to the command, he had done his best but had failed utterly and had been dominated by Lee at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Previous to that he had also commanded the wing of the Union army in trying to take what famously became known as Burnside's Bridge at the Battle of Antietam. He had therefore been demoted, by the time of Petersburg, to corps commander serving under Meade.

It is ironic that after such a mediocre career and so many spectacular failures he would finally be relieved for a failure which was inarguably not his fault, but rather the fault of the commanders above him, Meade and Grant.

Originally Posted by Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

Burnside had repeatedly demonstrated that it had been a military tragedy to give him a rank higher than colonel. One reason might have been that, with all his deficiencies, Burnside never had any angles of his own to play; he was a simple, honest, loyal soldier, doing his best even if that best was not very good, never scheming or conniving or backbiting. Also, he was modest; in an army many of whose generals were insufferable prima donnas, Burnside never mistook himself for Napoleon. Physically he was impressive: tall, just a little stout, wearing what was probably the most artistic and awe-inspiring set of whiskers in all that bewhiskered Army. He customarily wore a high, bell-crowned felt hat with the brim turned down and a double-breasted, knee-length frock coat, belted at the waist—a costume which, unfortunately, is apt to strike the modern eye as being very much like that of a beefy city cop of the 1880s

His legacy remains, however, those fascinating mutton chops to which he gave his name (though, somehow fittingly, the facial hair is merely a play upon his name): sideburns