Petersburg 1864-65 by Ron Field

Author:Ron Field
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Petersburg 1864–65: The longest siege
ISBN: 9781472803054
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

Several sketches produced by eyewitnesses captured the death and destruction following the detonation of the Petersburg mine. LEFT This detail from the work of Frank Leslie’s artist E.F. Mullen shows one of the huge chunks of clay hurled into the air by the explosion. RIGHT Commanding a Confederate artillery battalion near Elliott’s Salient, Major James C. Coit made this sketch while burying the dead of the Crater battle under a flag of truce. (Author’s collection)

Commanding the First Brigade, First Division, IX Army Corps, during the disastrous assault on the Crater in July 1864, General William Francis Bartlett (1840–76) was a student at Harvard when he enlisted as a private in the 4th Massachusetts Volunteers in 1861. Commissioned a captain in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, he lost a leg at Yorktown in early 1862. Following recovery, he received the colonelcy of the 49th Massachusetts in November 1862 and took part in the capture of Fort Hudson in July, 1863. Receiving a less severe wound at the Wilderness in May, 1864, he was able to accept a brigade command. After having his cork leg shot away in the Crater, he asked to be lifted up in order to see the approach of Sander’s Confederate brigade, whereupon he was hit by a ball which badly gashed his scalp. Taken prisoner and placed in Libby Prison, he was returned north as part of a prisoner exchange, and placed in command of the IX Corps, which he led with distinction until the end of the war. For gallant and meritorious services, he was breveted Major General of US Volunteers on March 13, 1865. (US National Archive NWDNS-111-B-4591)

South of the Crater Major Wade Gibbs, a determined artillery officer, gathered enough willing hands together to work a gun from Davidson’s battery which had been abandoned after the explosion. At a range of 1,000 feet this single piece soon began to cause havoc among the Union troops clinging to the southern edge of the crater.

Not all the Union troops were phased by the surrounding chaos. A detachment of the 14th New York Artillery under Sergeant Wesley Stanley, Company D, seized the two Confederate cannon remaining after the explosion and turned them on their assailants to the south. Other groups of men began to dig in. Armed with Model 1860 Spencer repeating rifles, Company K, 57th Massachusetts, commanded by Captain Benjamin A. Spear, also harassed the enemy artillery in their front. First Sergeant Barnard A. Strasbaugh, Company A, 3rd Maryland Battalion, led another squad of sharpshooters armed with this weapon. During the confused fighting, he single-handedly captured eight Confederate prisoners. For this action, and for recapturing the flag of the 2nd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. However, these tactics merely exacerbated the situation, as the main objective of the first two brigades of assault troops was to press on and capture Cemetery Hill beyond.

In the absence of any divisional leadership, brigade and regimental commanders attempted to salvage the situation. The 179th New York and 3rd Maryland Battalion tried unsuccessfully to push into the hanging Confederate flank to the north.

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