The Crater stop on Petersburg National Battlefield’s Eastern Front Tour

EASTERN FRONT DRIVING TOUR

STOP 8:  The Crater

Allow up to 45 minutes for a visit

The final stop on the Eastern Front Driving Tour at Petersburg National Battlefield is at The Crater, the scene of one of the more interesting events that took place during the fighting at Petersburg. A three-quarter mile paved walking path leads to wayside exhibits, monuments, and historical features. While paved, there are some hills. Those in wheelchairs may need help, but it is possible to see all of the attractions.

A fancy outhouse—a portable toilet in a permanent building—is located across the street from the parking area.

THE BATTLE OF THE CRATER

By June 18, 1864, the fourth and final day of the initial assault on Petersburg, the Union line was roughly .4 mile away from Elliott’s Salient—named for its commander, Steven Elliott—a new fortification that the Confederates built when they fell back to this area after being overrun at their fortifications on the Dimmock Line. It was manned by Confederate infantry from South Carolina and Captain Richard Pegram’s artillery battery.

Monument dedicated to the South Carolina soldiers who fought and died at the Battle of The Crater

The Union army placed a battery of cannon at a location that would later become Fort Morton (Stop 7 on the tour). In fact, if you are at The Crater and look to the east, you can see the cannon on display at Fort Morton and the chimney of the Taylor Farmhouse kitchen ruins. Separating Elliott’s Salient and the Union battery is a valley with a railroad and two creeks running through it.

Confederate cannon at Elliott’s Salient aims towards Fort Morton at Petersburg National Battlefield

On the 18th, 22,000 Union soldiers departed from the Fort Morton area and headed into the valley towards Elliott’s Salient. Confederate artillery and musket fire stopped them cold at the bottom of the hill, and there, just 600 feet away, many of them dug in. This is where they remained once Union general Ulysses S. Grant halted the attack and opted for a siege of Petersburg instead of a continued frontal assault.

While the goal of a siege is to surround a city and wait for the enemy to run out of food, ammunition, and other supplies, that doesn’t mean the aggressor simply sits back and waits for time to take its toll. At Petersburg, Grant was constantly trying to break through the Confederate line and end the siege as quickly as possible; he just wasn’t running suicide attacks against heavily fortified Confederate forts and batteries. Thus, the Union soldiers who were now dug in below Elliott’s Salient were trying to figure out a way to capture the fort without getting slaughtered.

One of the units at the bottom of the hill was the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants. One of his men, a coal miner before the war, came up with the idea of digging a tunnel under the Confederate fort, packing it with gunpowder, and blowing it up. Pleasants thought this was a great idea, for after all, he had a whole slew of coal miners from Pennsylvania under his command. A messenger was sent back to the brass at Fort Morton with the idea, and it was approved by General Ambrose Burnside, commander of the IX Corps of which the 48th Pennsylvania was a part. Once the dirt settled from the explosion, Burnside wanted to attack, running Union troops through the newly formed gap, splitting the Confederate line, and possibly taking Petersburg. This is the event shown at the beginning of the movie, Cold Mountain.

Digging began on a 511-foot tunnel on June 25, 1864, and continued for a month. The miners chose a location that couldn’t been seen by the Confederates above, and because they were already lower in elevation than the salient, they could dig straight ahead instead of first having to dig downward. When the tunnel reached under the salient, the miners dug a shaft to the left and right forming a T. This is where the gunpowder was placed.

The idea of blowing up a fort by digging a tunnel under it was nothing new. Tunnel bombs have been around since gunpowder was invented, and they had been used previously during the Civil War. In fact, the Confederates suspected that’s what the Union troops were up to, so they dug holes called listening galleries in the ground. A person would climb down into a hole and listen for the sound of digging. Turns out the mine was 30 feet below ground, and the Confederate listening galleries were usually only 15 feet deep, so they never heard anything. Furthermore, because of the thick clay soil, the sound of digging was muted.

The soil in the area is a mixture of wet clay, silt, and sand called loam. This is soft, but extremely dense like putty. Because of this, wood planks were needed to shore up the shaft. Given the abundance of trees in the area today, finding wood doesn’t seem like it would be much of a problem, but during the war all the trees in the area had been cut down. Thus the soldiers ended up disassembling a railroad bridge and commandeering an old saw mill a few miles at the back of the line and began manufacturing wooden planks. Most of the maneuvering was done during the night so the Confederates wouldn’t see.

When completed, 8,000 pounds of gunpowder was placed in the tunnel—Burnside wanted 10,000 pounds but couldn’t get it. The fuse was lit about 4 AM on July 30th, but after 30 minutes there still had not been an explosion. Men had to go back into the tunnel to see what happened—the fuse had gone out. They relit it and ten minutes later the earth underneath Elliott’s Salient exploded. Sixteen thousand men of Burnside’s 1st Division under the command of General James Ledlie were to storm the fort, but none had been told what was going to happen. It took them ten minutes after the explosion before they charged up the hill, and when they got there they stopped, shocked by what they now saw. A hole 170 feet by 80 feet and 30 feet deep had been blown in the fort, instantly killing 278 Confederate soldiers. Many of the Union soldiers were under the assumption that they were supposed to capture the fort, not charge into Petersburg, so they started digging up Confederates who were stuck in the mud to take prisoner. And when Confederate artillery opened fire on them from the right and left, the men used the crater for protection.

This delay gave the Confederates ample time to bring men forward to plug the hole. The Union troops did capture a few hundred yards of Confederate trenches, but many ended up stuck in the crater, taking fire from reinforcements lined up above them on the rim.

The Battle of the Crater map

Around 9 AM, Confederate general William Mahone arrived with a division of men and recaptured the trenches. More Confederates arrived on the scene, and by mid-afternoon the Union troops had been driven out of the crater and back down the hill where they started from. General Grant, who was watching from Fort Morton, called the whole ordeal “a stupendous failure.” Nearly 4,000 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured during the battle. Confederate loses were around 1,500.

Position marker for Confederate general William Mahone’s right flank during the Battle of The Crater

After the Battle of the Crater, as the fighting was called, the Confederates made a new fort out of the crater even though there were plenty of men buried below. After the war in 1866, an excavation was done to retrieve as many bodies as possible. Because the bodies were so quickly buried in the loam and sealed completely off from oxygen, when found over a year later, the story goes that many were still bleeding, as if they had been killed just minutes earlier.

TOURING THE CRATER

As with the Fort Stedman stop on the Eastern Front Driving Tour, there are paved paths everywhere at The Crater and no maps showing the layout. From the parking lot, the trail splits, with one directional sign pointing to TO CRATER VIA TUNNEL (right) and one pointing to the CRATER (left). There are two points of interest at this stop, one being the actual crater and the other being the entrance to the tunnel. All these signs are doing is pointing you in the direction of these two features. Be sure you head towards the tunnel first, for it makes more sense to see where everything began. Dirt trails cross the paved path here and there, but just ignore them and stick to the pavement.

Paved path to The Crater and the Union tunnel entrance at Petersburg National Battlefield

The walk to the tunnel is about a quarter mile. Stairs lead down to a reconstruction of the entrance. While it is not the original entrance, it is in the correct location. Those in wheelchairs cannot get right down to it, but they can easily see it from the walkway.

Stairs lead down to the Union tunnel entrance at The Crater stop on Petersburg National Battlefield’s Eastern Front Tour

Reconstructed Union tunnel entrance at The Crater stop on Petersburg National Battlefield’s Eastern Front Tour

Reconstructed Union tunnel entrance at The Crater stop on Petersburg National Battlefield’s Eastern Front Tour

From the tunnel, take the path up to Elliott’s Salient. The path follows closely to the tunnel and passes a spot where the miners dug a shaft to the surface as part of a complex ventilation system.

Ventilation shaft of the Union tunnel at The Crater stop on Petersburg National Battlefield’s Eastern Front Tour

When you get to the top of the hill, there is another loop trail that circles the crater, which is now largely filled in. Only a small depression in the ground remains.

What remains of The Crater, Petersburg National Battlefield

There are many wayside exhibits, a cannon, monuments, and markers along the trail around the crater, and to see them all you must make a full circle back to the starting point. You will pass the trail that forks off from the loop and returns to the parking lot, but if you take it and don’t complete the full circle, you’ll miss some of the monuments.

Loop trail around The Crater, Petersburg National Battlefield

Monument dedicated to Confederate general William Mahone, who saved the day for the Confederates at the Battle of The Crater

Stop 8: Fort Morton | Eastern Front Tour Home Page

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