A Thousand Words a Battle: Petersburg
The Battle of the Crater, Petersburg
July 30, 1864
During the siege of Petersburg, Major General Ambrose Burnside, commander of the Federal Ninth Corps, approved a plan to explode a mine under the earthworks of the Confederate army, then have the corps’ Fourth Division—the colored division—lead the attack into Petersburg. However, Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac, changed Burnside’s strategy a day before the attack. The black soldiers would not lead the assault but, instead, would be the last troops in.
On July 30, 1864, there was a tremendous explosion under the Confederate lines at Elliott’s Salient. The explosion of this mine, and the huge hole in the ground that opened up as a result, began what became known as the battle of the Crater.
Accounts of two officers in the Fourth Division detailed their experiences in this horrendous battle. Lieutenant Freeman Bowley of the 30th USCT recounted his remembrances:
My regiment led the division. With fixed bayonet , we started across the open field under a heavy cross-fire for the enemy’s line. Down went their flag, the color sergeant staining the stars and stripes with his blood. A grape-shot had torn his head in pieces. A corporal quickly caught up the colors, but the color lance was shattered by a shot. A shower of canister made a great gap in my company, but the men closed up and went on. We were led to the right of the “Crater,” as the chasm was called which the explosion of the mine had caused, and the First Brigade assaulted the Confederate line, carrying the rifle pits, and capturing two hundred prisoners and a color. But more than half the Thirtieth had gone down.
In the desperate fighting that followed, our colonel, Delevan Bates, was shot through the face and Major James C. Leeke was mortally wounded. Many of our best officers . . . fell. A terrific counter-charge was made by the Confederates, and we were routed. Most of the troops, white and black, rushed for the Union lines…. Whoever has read the history of the Civil War knows that, of all its battles, none exceeded in horror this slaughter at the Crater. Of six hundred or more men, representing every regiment of the Ninth Corps, who rallied there, but one hundred and thirty escaped unhurt, and all these were taken prisoners by the Confederates. All the colored men who rallied with me were killed.[1]
Lieutenant Robert Beecham of the 23rd USCT described their incursion to and around the Crater:
Just as soon as the troops in advance of us had time to get out of our way, so that we could move, we followed as in one continuous stream. We moved out on a double-quick, and 100 yards or less brought us to the outmost Union line; another 100 yards and we were abreast of the Confederate works. . . . [W]e were led to the right, passing over the rim of the crater into the Confederate works, fronting the enemy, by the rear rank. . . . As we passed over the rim of the crater I noticed that the crater was full of our soldiers. . . . [A]nd every soldier of common sense could see at a glance that the object of the charge must be to carry the hill behind the crater. . . . My brigade passed to the right of the crater and advanced as far as we could get, on account of the troops in advance of us who had halted, and then we halted also.
The Confederates soon recovered from their confusion and concentrated their batteries upon us, catching us like sheep in a slaughter pen, for there was the whole Ninth Corps crowded into a space where there was barely room for one division to operate. . . . The order came to us through Lieutenant Colonel Bross, who seemed to be in command of the 29th regiment of our brigade, and the highest rank of any officer I saw along our front line. . . . Colonel Bross formed his regiment in the lead of the column as best he could in that jam of mixed soldiers- white and black together; and next in the column came the 23rd . . . . The black boys formed promptly. There was no flinching on their part. They came to the shoulder touch like true soldiers, as ready to face the enemy and meet death on the field as the bravest and best soldiers that ever lived. . . . An absolutely certain defeat, if not annihilation, awaited us, and we knew it.[2]
Both Lieutenants Bowley and Beecham were captured, but both survived the battle and the war.
— Steward T. Henderson
[1] Freeman S. Bowley, A Boy Lieutenant: Memoirs of Freeman S. Bowley 30th United States Colored Troops Officer (Philadelphia H. Altemus Co. 1906), 83, 85.
[2] Robert K. Beechman, As If It Were Glory: Robert Beecham’s Civil War From Iron Brigade to the Black Regiments (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), 182 -184.
