"Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg" by Dr. Earl Hess

This book probably constitutes the state of the art on the history of the battle of the Crater, though the Marvel/Cavanaugh effort remains a pleasant introduction to the subject and the Schmutz version provides the most detail.  I think it possible to do better than any of these books, but we may have reached the point of diminishing returns.  I count at least six or seven recent books on the Crater.  The next author to take up the subject might do well to begin with the formation of Pegram's or Elliott's Salient.

Dr. Hess, in his introduction, refers to the "constricted parameters of the H. E. Howard series of books on Virginia battles."  Mr. Howard never constricted my parameters when I wrote for him.  Perhaps Dr. Hess has encountered someone with a different experience.

Dr. Hess admirably looks the facts in the eye on Colonel Pleasants, who engineered the mine.  Pleasants had a terrible temper and a chip on his shoulder.  Without them, relations with the engineering staff of the Army of the Potomac would have gone much more smoothly.  As Dr. Hess points out, some of the engineers on General Meade's staff thought highly of the mine.

I think this book has a superior account of the fighting at First Deep Bottom, which preceded the mine explosion to capture Richmond and wreck the Virginia Central Railroad or at least draw Secessionist forces away from Petersburg.

I must concur in result with Dr. Hess' placing the blame for the disaster mainly on Burnside, though Meade and Grant ought not to have interfered with Burnside's plan.  (See my post on whether Burnside ought to have disregarded their orders not to lead with the Colored Division.)  I see the problem of General Ledlie's misunderstanding of Burnside's orders as the problem of unwritten orders that came up so often during the Civil War--for example, on the Confederate side at Gettysburg.  Burnside ought to have given his division commanders written orders that they could not have misunderstood.  Ledlie's ordering his brigadiers to hold the Confederate line rather than advance to the crest beyond probably doomed the attack.

I disagree with Dr. Hess as to the trees Burnside failed to remove, which Dr. Hess thinks was no problem.  The vision of the Federals was limited and Wright's Battery, which inflicted a devastating fire on the Unionists, was screened.

Curiously, this book fails to mention the disruption of Northern formations by debris from the mine explosion.  Most accounts indicate that enough men bolted for the rear that it took around ten minutes to get the troops organized again to advance.

This book has the most helpful maps of any I have read on the Crater.  They convey more information than any others I have seen.

I agree that the Confederate engineers and artillerists were unsung heroes.  They arranged so formidable a killing ground as to have convinced General Grant that fortifications could practically hold themselves.  The South Carolinians of Elliott's Brigade were also relatively unsung.  It was only natural that the Virginians (primarily Mahone's Brigade) involved, many of whom haled from Petersburg, should sing their own praises at the expense of the others involved in stopping the Federals.  Ironically, the people of Petersburg never regarded the soldiers of Mahone's Brigade as highly as they did the militia who helped foil General Butler's attack on Petersburg on June  9, 1864.

I am not convinced that if Captain Girardey ordered Mahone's Brigade to charge, Colonel Weisiger (the brigade's commander) did not.  Girardey was at the left of the brigade, almost 200 yards from Weisiger at the brigade's right.  Both might well have ordered the charge.

In this day and age, with contemporary software, it's just as easy to do proper footnotes as to lump a lot of sources together in endnotes that the reader must connect to various sentences in the paragraph at the end of which the notes appear.  This is not Dr. Hess' fault, though, but his publisher's.

Dr. Hess on page 161 mixes up Private George S. Bernard of Co. E of the 12th Virginia (also author of War Talks of Confederate Veterans and Civil War Talks) with Private David Meade Bernard of Co. E of the 12th Virginia.  George was at the left of Mahone's Brigade.  Meade, George's half-brother and a member of the brigade's sharpshooter battalion, was at the brigade's extreme right.

Whatever flag hung in the Petersburg Siege Museum while this book was being researched, is not the battleflag of the 12th Virginia.  That flag was torn up at Appomattox.

The indexing of the book was poor.  For example, W.A.S. Taylor and the 61st North Carolina each appear at least twice in the text but only once in the index.

Another task for the future historian of the Crater is to compare it with the mines at Vicksburg and inquire into what, if anything, Grant and his staff conveyed to IX Corps at Petersburg--or indeed, what knowledge of mine warfare did such of IX Corps as was at Vicksburg glean?  I raise this question more than twenty years ago in The Petersburg Campaign but no one has ventured to inquire much further--including Dr. Hess, who does little more than mention mine warfare at Vicksburg and that it represented desperation.

Dr. Hess correctly points out how formidable the complex of cavalier, bombproofs, and traverses was--formidable enough perhaps to have foiled the attack even if everything had gone right and Burnside had been allowed to lead with the Colored Division.  Grant might well have been wrong in believing that the attack would have succeeded with the Colored Division in the lead.

Had the attack succeeded and had the Federals taken Petersburg, I think the consequences would have been more dire for the Confederacy than does Dr. Hess.  Two of the railroads (the Weldon and the South Side) supplying Richmond would have been cut and the Unionists would have had a third within their grasp (the Richmond & Danville) as well as the inside track on any Confederate army attempting to retreat southward from Richmond.

So while this book is not perfect, this story has been told so many times recently and well enough here that I wonder if anyone will care to take up this subject again soon.

"The Damned of Petersburg" by Ralph Peters

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advanced copy of Ralph Peters' new novel, The Damned of Petersburg.  I could scarcely set it down till I finished.  In this excellent historical novel, full of insights and different perspectives, Mr. Peters has brought to life the desperate fighting that flared around Petersburg and Richmond in the summer and autumn of 1864, the crisis of our Civil War.  Fine maps display the overall situation, and gripping prose conveys how the fighting felt.  This page-turner is a must-read for Civil War novice and aficionado alike.  Readers familiar with Hell or Richmond, Mr. Peters' riveting historical novel on the Overland Campaign, will be familiar with some of the characters, particularly General Barlow, Colonel Oates, and Lieutenant Brown.  The Damned of Petersburg is expected to be in bookstores and available online this summer.

Ought Burnside to Have Turned a Blind Eye at the Crater?

Burnside disregarded Meade's instruction to clear obstructions because it might have alerted the Confederates (who were already alerted) to the possibility of a mine.  All these Crater books I have read recently (going on four) are leading me to the conclusion that Burnside ought to have gone the whole nine yards in disobeying orders.  He ought to have disregarded Meade's (and Grant's) orders to put a white division in the lead.  My authority for this idea is no less than Grant, who conceded later that the mine attack on July 30, 1864 would have succeeded had the black division led.  But Burnside was not von Seydlitz, who disobeyed Frederick the Great and told him (after disobeying three orders in the same action), "My head is at Your Majesty's disposal after the battle, but during the battle please permit me to use it in your service."  Nor was Burnside a Nelson, putting his blind eye  to the telescope at the Battle of Copenhagen when an irresolute superior raised the signal flag to withdraw.

Summary of "The Battle of the Crater" by John Schmutz

Even worse than the poor editing, the many factual errors (another one: George Templeton Strong was not a soldier), and the murkily attributed quotations are the maps.  That they do not contain a scale is not too important, because they all cover the same ground and readers can figure out the scale.  The main problem is that the maps do not go into sufficient detail given the size of the pages on which they appear and the number of times they appear, about once a chapter and there are seventeen chapters.  I would like to have seen the cavalier trench and the fields of fire of the various Confederate batteries.

Despite all the problems with this book, it is the most detailed account of the battle of the Crater that I have yet read.  I agree with Mr. Schmutz that Meade, Burnside, Ledlie and (to a lesser extent) Grant were the principal culprits.  Mr. Schmutz makes clear that Burnside would have done well to have obeyed Meade's orders to remove obstructions, including trees--Wright's Battery, so devastating to the Federals, was shielded by the trees Burnside ought to have removed.  The failure to clear the obstructions helped channel the Federal troops into the Crater, leaving them too disorganized to advance.

I am surprised that a book this detailed failed to deal with the experience of mine warfare at Vicksburg that I pointed out more than twenty years ago in The Petersburg Campaign.  Grant knew about the propensity of soldiers to collect in the crater of an exploded mine and I have yet to see any evidence that he communicated his observations to Burnside, as Grant ought to have done.  Likewise, at least part of IX Corps fought at Vicksburg, and I have never seen any evidence that those who observed the results of mine warfare at Vicksburg communicated their observations to the miners and planners at Petersburg.

I also think Mr. Schmutz ought to have given more credit to the Confederates for defeating the Federals.  The Southerners took steps to counter a breach in Pegram's Salient with artillery deployed behind and flanking the Salient.  They dug a cavalier or gorge trench to furnish the Salient's defenders with a fall back position.  For four hours, the survivors of Elliott's Brigade fought magnificently, as did Wise's and McAfee's Brigades, to hold the Federals at bay.  Then many of these extraordinary Secessionist soldiers joined Mahone's troops to administer the coup de grace.  Burnside's troops went up against some very tough troops.

I have one more book on the Crater to read, by Dr. Earl Hess.  Given his extraordinary In the Trenches at Petersburg, my expectations are up.  That is the most memorable book on Petersburg I have read so far on this trip through the Cockade City canon.

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"The Battle of the Crater" by John Schmutz--on the home stretch

I have plodded into the home stretch on this book.  Errors and omissions multiply.  The origin of the 29th United States Colored Troops is omitted.  The regiment came from Illinois, where free blacks were prohibited.  Ledlie's fiasco at North Anna occurred before May 26, 1864.  The 6th Wisconsin was in V Corps, not II Corps.  There are more quotations unattributed in the text, very trying when only endnotes are used.  Even with footnotes, this is not a good practice.  There is no scale on the maps, which are too small for much detail, especially when the pages are so big.  I have never seen any contemporary refer to Mahone's Brigade as the "Old Dominion Brigade."  A soldier of the 12th Virginia, the Petersburg Regiment, which belonged to the brigade, once referred to himself and his fellows as "Kid Glove Boys."  Mahone's courier Tom Bernard was not a captain but an enlisted man.  The 14th Virginia was not in Mahone's Brigade.  Preparatory to its charge, Mahone's Brigade countermarched by battalions, not by regiments.  Captain Girardey was on the brigade's left, not its right, when he called for it to charge.  Material that is quoted in one place is again quoted a few pages later on several occasions, and on one page the same quotation is made twice--this book was badly in need of an editor.  Mr. Schmutz would have done better to refer to the Union or Confederate right or left, because his use of just "right" or "left" is confusing.  He gets George Bernard of the 12th Virginia's Company E mixed up with George's half brother Meade, who was serving with the brigade sharpshooter battalion.  The colors of the 87th Pennsylvania were not captured by the 3rd Georgia June 22, 1864, but on the following day.  One of General Sanders' middle names was Caldwell, not Colwell.  Major Haskell is mistakenly referred to as a colonel in one place.  The 12th Virginia did not have eighteen killed and twenty-four wounded or ten percent of those engaged, but twenty-three killed and twenty-three wounded, or more than thirty percent of those engaged.  Mahone's Brigade lost not 267 but 283.

Despite the annoying shortcomings of this book, it makes valuable contributions to an understanding of the unusual, though not unique, Crater battle.  I will go into them when I finish the book, which should be next week.

The Petersburg Regiment, 12th Virginia Infantry

My next book, The Petersburg Regiment, 12th Virginia Infantry, will lay to rest the mystery of Anderson's Division, Army of Northern Virginia, on the second and third days at Gettysburg.  The breakdown of Anderson's attack on July 2 and the failure of Anderson's Division to support Pickett's Charge will be explained.  

March 18, Salt Creek Civil War Round Table

I will discuss my latest book at the Salt Creek Civil War Round Table at 7 p.m. on Friday March 18, 2016.  Salt Creek CWRT meets at Fairview Village now called OAK TRACE, 200 Village Drive, 
Downers Grove, IL 60516.  This location is between 63^rd Street and 75^th Streets on Fairview Avenue. The meeting will take place in the Village Apartments, which is a 5 story building, in the Great Hall.