Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[747] petrified wood, whole trees being found which had been transformed into a very friable, easily broken stone, which still preserved the grain of the wood and the knots and branches of the trees. Thus a substantially straight cut could be made in it without any danger of a slide of the earth on the sides of the excavation.

General Grant asked me how long it would take to cut the canal through. I said, “After we get at it, sixty days,--possibly more,--depending somewhat upon the interruptions made by the enemy.” I said I thought the best way would be, and in that General Barnard agreed with me, to commence by placing a coffer-dam at the lower end of the canal, and then to cut the excavation wide and deep enough up to within twenty-five or thirty feet of the river on the other side, and let the bank at the upper cut stand as a shield against the enemy's direct fire.

The work proceeded according to this plan, under the direction of my skilled engineer, Maj. Peter S. Michie, now one of the board of instructors of West Point Military Academy, than whom I know of no better or more efficient engineer. It was pursued with great diligence and success. Once it was finished we could hold the James River up to Fort Darling with our fleet, if the naval forces of the United States were able to compete with the enemy's fleet above, which we assumed they were able to do. And when at Fort Darling we should be in condition to make an attack upon Richmond itself, which would lie almost under our guns, for we would be inside of the interior defences of that city.

The enemy, appreciating the importance of this strategic undertaking, and finding that we could not be reached by direct fire of their artillery from any point, because of our “shield,” erected some mortar batteries on the other side of the James and undertook to stop our work by a continuous and frequent fire of mortar shells, dropping them into our excavation. After a little time they dropped them there with considerable frequency, but did very little damage, and scarcely any harm to the workmen. At a mile and a half distance it is not easy to drop a shell with any certainty into a space three hundred feet long and ninety feet wide. The soil, as I have said before, was very hard on the sides, so that along the banks we could dig caves, or, as they were called, bomb-proofs, in which the workmen could take refuge whenever there was any danger of a shell