until at last I had to use the whole regiment — non-commissioned officers and all. The great difficulty I had was to dispose ot the material got out of the mine. I found it impossible to get any assistance from anybody; I had to do all the worlr myself. I had to remove all the earth in old cracker boxes; I got pieces of hickory and nailed on the boxes in which we received our crackers, and then iron-clad them with hoops of iron taken from old pork and beef barrels. . . . Whenever I made application I could not get anything, although General Burnside was very favorable to it. The most important thing was to ascertain how far I had to mine, because if I fell short of or went beyond the proper place, the explosion would have no practical effect. Therefore I wanted an accurate instrument with which to make the necessary triangulations. I had to make them on the farthest front line, where the enemy’s sharp-shooters could reach me. I could not get the instrument I wanted, although there was one at army headquarters, and General Burnside had to send to Washington and get an old-fashioned theodolite, which was given to me. . . . General Burnside told me that General Meade and Major Duane, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, said the thing could not be done—that it was all clap-trap and nonsense; that such a length of mine had never been excavated in military operations, and could not be; that I would either get the men smothered, for want of air, or crushed by the falling of the earth; or the enemy would find it out and it would amount to nothing. I could get no boards or lumber supplied to me for my operations. I had to get a pass and send two companies of my own regiment, with wagons, outside of our lines to rebel saw-mills, and get lumber in that way, after having previously got what lumber I could by tearing down an old bridge. I had no mining picks furnished me, but had to take common army picks and have them straightened for my mining picks. . . - The only officers of high rank, so far as I learned, that favored the enterprise were General Burnside, the corps commander, and General Potter, the division commander.”
On the 23d of July Colonel Pleasants had the whole mine ready for the placing of the powder. With proper tools and instruments it could have been done in one-third or one-fourth of the time. The greatest delay was occasioned by taking out the material, which had to be carried the whole length of the gallery. Every night the pioneers of Colonel Pleasant’s regiment had to cut bushes to cover the fresh dirt at the mouth of the gallery; otherwise the enemy could have observed it from trees inside his own lines.
VIEW OF THE CONFEDERATE LINE TAKEN UP BY GENERAL BEAUREGARD, JUNE 18. FROM A POINT ON THE UNION PICKET LINE TO
THE FRONT AND LEFT OF FORT HASKELL.
From a sketch made in 1886.
BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL HENRY PLEASANTS, U. S. V.
by others in quick succession. The enemy had paused while waiting for the arrival of their battery. So far from being dismayed, the brave civilians around me, with Colonel Archer at their head, offered to charge the battery, but I knew that the moment they left the cover of the trenches to cross the open ground they would be destroyed by the breech-loading carbines of the dismounted men supporting the battery and far overlapping our front. Our only hope was in delay. . . .
But the end was very near. The enemy, sheltered by the Gregory house and the defective construction of our works, which allowed approach under cover to within fifty yards, redoubled the fire of their skirmishers and artillery; while a line in open order, overlapping both our flanks, advanced, firing rapidly. The brave militia discharged their pieces at close range. Numbers of them fell killed or wounded, and before the survivors could reload the enemy turned our left flank and more of our men fell by bullets that struck us in the rear from lunette No. 26, which we had not had men enough to occupy. Yet those heroic citizens held their ground. In the heat of the fight I picked up and discharged at the enemy two or three of the muskets dropped by our fallen men. We were now hemmed in on three sides, and only a narrow path leading through an abrupt ravine offered a way of escape. The howitzer, which continued its fire to the last, was captured while limbering up, the horses being shot in their traces, and two artillerymen killed. Some of the militia were killed or wounded with the bayonet or carbine butts, and many were captured. Our shattered remnants made their way down and across the ravine and re-formed at my command on Reservoir Hill, in order, if needed, to support Graham’s battery, which had just arrived and unlimbered on the top of the hill.
After driving us from the trenches the enemy paused awhile to call in their dismounted men and to send to their rear our wounded and prisoners. They then formed in mounted column, with a few files thrown forward in open order. They advanced upon the main road, evidently expecting to enter the city without further opposition.
The moments gained at such fearful cost barely gave time for Graham’s battery to cross the bridge. They came up Sycamore street at full gallop and
THE BATTLE OF THE PETERSBURG CRATER.
BY WILLIAM II. POWELL, MAJOR, U. S. A.
Aide-de-camp to General Ledlie during the charge at the Crater.
BY the assaults of June 17th and 18th, 1864, on the Confederate works at Petersburg, the Ninth Corps, under General Burnside, gained an advanced position beyond a deep cut in the railroad, within 130 yards of the enemy’s main line and confronting a strong work called by the Confederates Elliott’s Salient, and sometimes Pegram’s Salient. In rear of that advanced position was a deep hollow. A few days after gaining this position Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants, who had been a mining engineer and who belonged to the 48tli Pennsylvania Volunteers, composed for the most part of miners from the upper Schuylkill coal region, suggested to his division commander, General Robert B. Potter, the possibility of running a mine under one of the enemy’s forts in front of the deep hollow. This proposition was submitted to General Burnside, who approved of the measure, and work was commenced on the 25th of June. If ever a man labored under disadvantages, that man was Colonel Pleasants. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, he said:
unlimbered on the summit of Reservoir Ilill just as the head of the Federal column was coming down the opposite slope into the hollow. The battery opened fire, and with rapidity and precision hurled a storm of shell and canister upon the approaching cavalry. The enemy, who thought themselves already in possession of the city, halted in surprise. But just at this moment, while they were yet hesitating, Dearing’s cavalry, which had followed after Graham’s battery, charged upon Kautz’s and Spear’s column with irresistible impetuosity. The latter wheeled about, but re-formed on the top of the next hill and gallantly endeavored to make a stand there, being joined by another column advancing upon the Blandford road. But this also was checked by a section of Sturdivant’s battery, which came on their flank from another road. Under the fire of artillery and the charge of Dearing’s cavalry the enemy retreated.
“ My regiment was only about tour hundred strong. At first I employed but a few men at a time, but the number was increased as the work progressed,
CARRYING POWDER TO THE MINE.
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