This Day in Civil War History (Union Fiasco at Battle of the Crater)

July 30, 1864—Having tried readily repulsed head-on and flanking maneuvers against Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant hoped for greater success with one of the most daring operations of the Civil War: a mine that would be exploded under Confederate entrenchments east of Petersburg, Va., panicking the defenders so much that the position could be easily taken.

It seemed like the kind of audacious scheme that could end the drawn-out war—sort of like British General James Wolfe’s scaling of the seemingly impregnable Plains of Abraham that resulted in the French loss of North America in the Battle of Quebec in 1759.

But in war, as in so much else, execution is everything. Unfortunately, the Battle of the Crater, as it came to be called, produced a fearsome loss of life for the Army of the Potomac, in a campaign that was already piling up so many casualties that Northern anti-war sentiment was running at a fever pitch more than three years after Fort Sumter.

All might be fair in love and war, but you couldn’t tell that to the man responsible for pitching the idea of the mine to Grant: IX Corps Commander Ambrose Burnside, whose principal contribution to history turned out to be the flamboyant mutton chops that wayward linguists, in a truly backhanded tribute to its progenitor, called “sideburns.”

Before the war, Burnside was supposedly jilted at the altar by a Southern belle named Lotte Moon. Afterwards, he began to sport the tonsorial style that made him famous—in my humble opinion, to hide the deep shade of crimson the Virginia teenager had left him with.

Burnside was no luckier in war, believe it or not. In contrast to some of the vainglorious louts who preceded Grant in leading the Union effort in the eastern theater of operations, Burnside begged off—twice--when Lincoln asked him to lead the Army of the Potomac, saying he wasn’t worthy of command. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, where he ordered one fruitless charge after another upon Marye’s Heights, he demonstrated how right he was to be modest.

Now, in the coming engagement, as the Federals attempted to end what was looking more and more like a remorseless siege, Burnside showed once against the decency and vision that made others momentarily think him fit for command, along with the lack of nerve that left his troops slaughtered.

What I like about General Grant is that, when stymied, he always sought another way, even if unconventional, to advance his goal, most memorably in his Vicksburg campaign the year before. That situation occurred again here, when Burnside came bearing an idea from the 48th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Several soldiers in the regiment, hailing from the Schuykill Valley coal-mining region, looked out at the Confederate position ahead of them and said they could blow it “out of existence if we could run a mineshaft under it.”

In his legendary three-volume history of the Civil War, Shelby Foote noted that the commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George Gordon Meade, assented to Burnside’s scheme at least partly because it would keep his men busy, and there seemed no better ideas at hand besides another assault upon the rebels that might end in a bloodbath.

Maybe so, but that’s not why Grant agreed. His Personal Memoirs outline his rationale for going along with the idea:

* He didn’t want Lee to transfer troops west, where they were desperately needed against William Tecumseh Sherman, who was advancing at twice the speed into enemy territory as the Army of the Potomac.

* He knew that Rebel “intelligence” had already sensed the building of the mine—and had completely exaggerated its scope, believing it would not only encompass the Confederate entrenchments but the entire city of Petersburg itself. An ill-defined threat, Grant believed, would work as much to the advantage of the operation as no knowledge of the mine at all.

* He saw the mine explosion as part of a larger campaign in which a diversion would be created—Lee would be drawn away from the south side of the James River, leaving only 18,000 men to defend the Petersburg rail hub that Richmond, the Confederate capital, relied on as its transportation lifeline.

Burnside, delighted that someone was taking his ideas seriously again after the Battle of Fredericksburg, had his men working on the tunnel for a month before the date set for the assault. He’d even picked out the division that would lead the way: an African-American unit that he had admirably prepared for what he hoped would be their desired hour of glory, one that would make Northern politicians and generals think of newly freed slaves as heroes rather than ditch-diggers.

From this point on, Burnside made one mistake after another. It all started when Meade countermanded his assignment of the well-drilled African-American regiments to lead the assault at the Crater.

Meade sensed—correctly—that reporters were denying him credit for his army’s advances and lumping its reverses at his feet. (The media were punishing him for discipline he’d meted out to a Philadelphia reporter for an unfavorable article.) No way did Meade want to be blamed for ordering untried African-American troops on a risky mission that could unleash a bloodbath. Use the white divisions instead, he told Burnside.

Burnside was doubly dismayed—he’d been told this only the day before the battle, and the fresh black regiments he’d trained would now take a backseat to white divisions.

Now began four major mistakes made by Burnside that doomed a plan that had promised so much:

* He was so dispirited by the change of plans that, rather than pick the leader of the charge himself, he left it to his division commanders to pick lots for the honor. The “winner” was Gen. James Ledlie, the least experienced of the three.

* Burnside had not acted to clear away the debris and entanglements that inevitably got in the way of his troops after the fuse was finally lit—after a delay of an hour and a half. The troops were left to make their way through the opening in painfully slow single file.

* Burnside had allowed to be chosen, in Ledlie, someone not only inefficient but nowhere to be found when his raw troops needed him to guide them through the confusion of the explosion. The reason why? Ledlie was swigging on a bottle of rum far away from the lines, as he was wont to do when the stress got to him—or, as Grant bitingly put it, he had “found some safe retreat to get into before they started.”

* Burnside failed to implement quickly orders that could have spared thousands of Union casualties. As Union troops flooded into the Crater, they stalled and became sitting ducks for Confederate reinforcements. Around 9:30 am, nearly five hours after the “immense mushroom” rose from where the explosion occurred, Meade gave the order to cease a follow-up attack and withdraw. Burnside, however, did not transmit this for nearly three hours, leading to a horrific loss of life. (Much of this was perpetrated by Rebels incensed not only by the prospect of losing a battle to former slaves, but also by being blown to Kingdom Come while sleeping. )

What transpired next between the hapless Burnside and Meade—whom someone memorably described as “a damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle”—was something to behold. Meade began to dress Mr. Mutton Chops down, demonstrating, in a staffer’s description that I love, insults that “went far toward confirming one’s belief in the wealth and flexibility of the English language as a medium of personal dispute.”

(It kind of reminds me of George Washington at the Battle of Monmouth, where, rounding upon insubordinate general Charles Lee, he is said to have turned the air blue with his language for miles around.)

After that exchange of views, Meade wanted Burnside cashiered immediately, court-martialed for incompetence and God only knows what else. Grant—who described the battle as “the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war”—inclined toward the subtler approach: sending Burnside home on leave. That’s what happened in the end.

Burnside finally found an arena he enjoyed: politics, serving as governor and then U.S. Senator from Rhode Island. But in the years after his death in 1881, historians tended to remember that 4,000 Union troops, against only 1,000 Confederates, became casualties because of his botched operation at the Crater.

This Day in Civil War History (Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg)

July 3, 1863—Stymied after two days of repelled attacks on the Union Army at Gettysburg, Penn., General Robert E. Lee ordered a massive cannonade fire, followed by a 12,000-man infantry charge under a hot, midday July sun, toward what he believed to be a perilously weak Federal center at Cemetery Ridge. But Pickett’s Charge ended disastrously for the proud Army of Northern Virginia, which never again pushed so far north nor enjoyed a string of major successes.

In comparison with Antietam Battlefield, Gettysburg suffers more from development and honty-tonk exploitation in town. But for the immense struggle that took place here, it deserves its pride of place in the annals of American military history. Over 20 years ago, I spent a full day visiting the battlefield, looking out over such storied place names as Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, The Devil’s Den, and, of course, “The Angle,” marking the so-called “Highwater Mark of the Confederacy.”

Location, Location, Location

In the real estate business, the mantra is “location, location, location.” The look I had from the high points on the battlefield in this small Pennsylvania farm community proved that this motto applies just as strongly in the military.

By late morning of the 3rd, the Army of the Potomac had consolidated a line resembling a fishhook from Big Round Top to Culp’s Hill. Dislodging them at this point was well-nigh impossible. Lee’s strong right arm, General James Longstreet, surely thought so, and he would have known all about strong defensive positions, having defended from one against a charge of hopelessly brave Irish soldiers in the Union Army on Marye’s Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

So why did Lee give the order to advance? For a long time, historians didn’t even get to this part of the question, really: They were more interested in trying and convicting Longstreet of being so dilatory in following his chief’s orders that he essentially lost the battle for the South. Nowadays, they are more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

This brings us back to Lee’s inexplicable decision. And here, I’m afraid, we are less in the realm of cold military strategy and tactics and more into the thickets of human psychology. As the fine Civil War historian Stephen W. Sears noted in an adept summary of the battle in the Summer 2003 issue of MHQ Magazine, Lee had just experienced two days in which trusted subordinates had either disobeyed orders or seriously let him down:

* Maj. General Henry Heth precipitated the battle in the first place by disobeying Lee’s order not to engage any part of the Union Army until the entire Confederate Army was together.

* Lieutenant General Richard Ewell, the replacement for Lee’s beloved Stonewall Jackson—a man who knew how to intuit exactly what his boss wanted—had failed to follow up a good day of fighting on July 1 by seizing Cemetery Hill.

* Major General J.E.B. Stuart had ridden off on a wild ride completely around the Federal Army, depriving Lee of important military intelligence on where and in what numbers the enemy were vulnerable.

* Ewell—him again!—protested twice when Lee wanted to shift the Second Corps from the army’s left flank to its right. Each time, Lee gave in.

Now here was “Old Pete” Longstreet, following the same script as the other generals. By now, it may not have mattered how valid or even unassailable his logic was. Lee was not to be messed with, particularly when his blood was up. He was not only one of the most aggressive commanders on either side of the war, but at this point he might have felt, despite his professed humility, the most messianic.

Especially after the stunning blow his men had delivered to the Union at Chancellorsville, he felt that the Army of Northern Virginia was capable of anything he asked it to do. Moreover, He might not have enough time to be around for the special destiny God had prepared for him: He was starting to feel the first hints of the heart disease that would kill him in seven years. For all these reasons, Longstreet could tell his chief would brook no further delays.

No "Shiny Penny," He!

In visits to historic sites, you’re not only likely to receive some geography lessons mixed in with your history, but also a bit of psychology. So it proved with a battlefield tour guide who told me, my brother, and my sister-in-law about one particular soldier in the battle: Alexander Schimmelfennig, one of the so-called “political generals” on both sides who occupied positions of powers higher than their talents deserved.

At one point in the battle, our guide explained, Schimmelfennig avoided the whir of fire by jumping into the first area where he could see a hole. That hole, the guide said, proved to be counterproductive, because it was still a functioning pigsty. In German, “Schimmelfennig” might mean “shiny penny,” our guide indicated, but he sure wasn’t a shiny penny after that!

Two Other Sites Providing Insight into Gettysburg

Two other sites, hundreds of miles removed from the battlefield, also provide fascinating sidelights on Gettysburg. Richmond features Hollywood Cemetery, the final resting place not only for former U.S. President John Tyler (the only one, incidentally, who died no longer a citizen of his country, as he had thrown in his lot with the Virginia secessionists), but also Confederate President Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart, oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, and, most of all, General George E. Pickett.

The name of the military action that immortalized the latter is a bit of a misnomer. Pickett himself was not at the head of his army—he stayed back, the way generals are supposed to do, so they can see what is happening on the field. A good thing he did, though, because, of all his field-officers in the three brigades, only one major emerged unhurt; two of his three brigadier generals died, and the third was grievously wounded.

Pickett, who ended up his days 10 years after the war in a somewhat less glorious profession—insurance salesman—lies buried in Hollywood Cemetery facing the men he led. Many of them had been buried on the field where they fell, but in 1872 they were reinterred and placed here. The plot was originally reserved for soldiers, but eventually the general’s widow, LaSalle Corbell Pickett—his third wife, a woman who played an indelible part in shaping his postwar legend—came to be buried alongside her husband.

The second site that evokes Gettysburg is in a much more urban environment—the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum of Philadelphia. Its Website calls it “the oldest chartered Civil War institution in the United States created to preserve the history of that conflict.” Though there are some Confederate items here, the strength of its holdings, I found when I visited a few years ago, lies in its Union holdings.

On the way to the third floor, for instance, is a copy of a large painting of “Pickett’s Charge” by Peter Rothermel. The first floor contains a room dedicated to Major General George Gordon Meade, the Union commander at Gettysburg, including his war horse, “Old Baldy,” stuffed and mounted in a display case.

Immediately after the battle, Meade disappointed many observers (including Abraham Lincoln) by not destroying the remnants of Lee’s army as they straggled back to Virginia. Dealing with 22,000 casualties of his own, however, Meade was not in a position to engage in another fight to the death so soon after the first one. Moreover, his actions during the battle itself really cannot be faulted.

In fact, if there was one major reason why Robert E. Lee finally lost here after his remarkable string of victories, it was because he was finally facing, in General Meade, a competent commander—someone with a keen appreciation of positioning forces and the ability to follow up to ensure that his subordinates were where he needed them to be—and if they weren’t, that he could find someone, fast, who soon would be.