 |
| Outline of the crater and the magazines.3 |
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[352]
latter-named division employed for the purpose, and Ledlie's, composed of white men, was chosen by lot for the perilous duty.1 It stood ready for action at half-past 3 o'clock in the morning, the hour appointed for the explosion.
An accident postponed that event until almost five o'clock,2 when the fort, its guns, caissons, and other munitions of war, and its garrison of three hundred men, were thrown high in air and annihilated.
In the place of the fortification was left a crater of loose earth two hundred feet in length, full fifty in width, and
twenty-five to thirty feet in depth.
The National guns then opened a heavy cannonade and bombardment, with precision and effect,4 all along the line.
To this only a feeble response was given by the astounded Confederates,5 and the way seemed open for the easy capture of the coveted Cemetery Hill beyond the crater, by the assaulting column.
But that column moved slowly and feebly, first in clearing away most dangerous obstructions,6 and then in halting in the crater, as if seeking shelter from a storm of shot and shell.
No such storm occurred until long after the explosion;7 yet Ledlie's division went no further than the site of the ruined fort.
Portions of the divisions of Potter and Wilcox followed, but their way toward the crest was blocked by Ledlie's halted column.
Then the division of colored soldiers, under General Ferrero, was sent forward to storm the hill.
For a moment it seemed as if those troops would be successful.
They pushed well up toward the crest, and captured some men; but they,
1 This division was composed of two brigades, the first led by General J. J. Bartlett, and the second by Colonel Marshall, and consisted of the Ninth, Twenty-first, Thirty-fifth, Fifty-sixth, Fifty-seventh, and Fifty-ninth Massachusetts, under Bartlett, and the One Hundredth Pennsylvania, One Hundred and Seventy-ninth New York, Third Maryland, Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, and the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery, under Marshall.
2 Pleasants lighted the fuse at a quarter past three o'clock, and waited an hour for the explosion, when Lieutenant Jacob Douty and Sergeant Henry Reese, of Pleasants's regiment, volunteered to go in and examine into the cause of the delay. The fire had stopped where the fuses had been spliced. They were relighted by these daring men, and at sixteen minutes before five o'clock the mine exploded. See Pleasants's Report.
3 this shows the outline of the crater and the position of the magazines which composed the mine. It is copied from Pleasants's Report.
4 General Hunt, the Chief of Artillery, in his report, speaks of the manner of firing on that occasion, as “partaking of the nature of target practice,” and which “was very effective.”
5 The Confederates had received intimation of the construction of this mine, and had begun a counter-mine in search of it; but they had no positive knowledge concerning its progress or destination.
6 In front of their works the Confederates had strong abatis, and also tripping wires, such as the Nationals used at Knoxville and elsewhere. Among these were sharp stakes, which might impale those who were thrown down by the wires.
7 Lieutenant-Colonel Pleasants, in his report, made on the 2d of August, says:--“I stood on the top of our breastworks, and witnessed the effect of the explosion on the enemy. It so completely paralyzed them, that the breadth of the breach, instead of being two hundred feet, was practically four or five hundred yards. The rebels in the forts both on the right and left of the explosion ran away, and for over an hour, as well as I could judge, not a shot was fired by their artillery. There was no fire from the infantry from the front for at least half an hour, none from the left for twenty minutes, and but few shots from the right.”
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.