Compiled by Wayne Blanchard January 9, 2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
–about 500 Burkhardt. Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in…Civil War. 2007, 160.
–>450-475 Burkhardt. Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter…Civil War. 2007, 172.[1]
Narrative Information
Burkhardt: “….a bloodbath…[took] place at Petersburg, on July 30, 1864. About five hundred black soldiers, wounded, surrendered, or trapped, fell in a no-quarter rampage by Confederates that day, making it the war’s largest single massacre….Confederates put them individually to the sword, sometimes literally. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of eyewitness accounts by numerous soldiers from many different Northern and Southern states and the casualty lists attested to the slaughter’s scope and character….
“Beginning in June, the armies had burrowed into the ground on a thirty-five-mile long front from Richmond south to Petersburg. Though attrition favored the stronger North over time, neither side could easily break the deadlock imposed by the complex defense systems on both sides of the front. But in the Federal 9th Army Corps sector, the Confederate line projected outward in a salient so that only about 135 yards separated the two trench lines. Directly opposite the salient, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants, a peacetime mining engineer, led the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry, a unit filled with many former coal miners. Pleasants proposed digging a tunnel to a point below the Confederate salient, packing the end with explosives and then blowing a huge gap in the enemy line. That would open the way for assaulting troops to sweep down into Petersburg, capture the city, split Lee’s army, and render Richmond untenable.[2]
“Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, 9th Corps commander, quickly approved Pleasants plan and ordered tunneling to begin. But he initiated the far-reaching project without consulting his superior, Major General George G. Meade, Army of the Potomac commander. That riled Meade, adding to the bad blood already existing between the two. From first to last, Meade had little faith in what became known as ‘Burnside’s mine’ and willfully obstructed it at every turn. When Pleasants began digging the 510-foot tunnel on June 25, 1864, Meade refused him tools, materials, or assistance in any form. Most important, he rejected Pleasant’s request for twelve thousand pounds of powder for the explosion. He insisted that he and his Regular Army engineers knew that eight thousand pounds would suffice. Burnside carefully explained that ‘the greater the explosion, the greater the crater radius.’ In short, the larger blast would make a wider hole with gently sloping sides, easily passable for assaulting troops He said he spoke from practical experience and so did Pleasants. Meade said army manuals dictated otherwise and the rule book won.[3]
“As the mine neared completion, Grant increasingly saw it as a splendid opportunity to break the stalemate. Burnside’s 9th Corps of about fourteen thousand officers and men would spearhead the assault. Numerically, his black 4th Division was the strongest, with forty-three hundred men in nine regiments. Although untried in battle, they were fresh, brash, and enthusiastic, so Burnside chose them to lead the assault. He ordered Brigadier General Edward Ferrero, their leader, to plan and train for a rush to Cemetery Hill, the key to Petersburg.[4]
“Meanwhile, Meade intensified his obstructionist efforts. Grant impatiently dismissed Meade’s objections, and the assault was set for July 30. Grant then told Meade, ‘The details for the assault I leave to you to make out.’ That was a crucial error. On the morning of July 28, Meade and Burnside met to discuss the operation. As their conference ended, Meade abruptly ordered Burnside to substitute white troops for the black division as the lead element. Burnside vigorously protested the last-minute change and finally Meade agreed to submit the question to Grant. Yet not until the forenoon of July 29, only hours before the attack, did Burnside learn that Grant had upheld the switch. Meade later explained he merely wanted the best troops to spearhead an assault that he considered only a forlorn hope. But Grant reported, ‘General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front…and it should prove a failure, it would then be said…that we were shoving those people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them.’ Still later, Grant admitted that Meade’s interference had most likely fatally sabotaged the plan.[5]
“That last-minute change caused a pernicious ripple effect. Black soldier morale plunged; white troops were not briefed about the operation; and Burnside, angry or petulant, abdicated major responsibilities….
“At exactly 4:44 A.M. on July 30, just about morning twilight time, the four tons of powder exploded. Watchers saw a volcanic eruption throw men, timber, guns, and debris high into the sky, followed by a deep rumbling sound or a heavy roar…In an instant, the blast obliterated much of the salient and killed or wounded about 350 Confederates….
“After hesitating at least fifteen minutes, Ledlie’s[6] men finally advanced. Ledlie himself took shelter in a surgeon’s bombproof fifty-five yards behind the front line and there sipped medicinal rum to soothe his nerves. His men halted at the crater’s lip and gawked at a pit two hundred feet long, fifty feet wide and twenty-five to thirty feet deep. But Meade’s insistence upon four tons of powder, rather than the six wanted by Pleasants, created a trap instead of a gap in the Confederate lines. One of Grant’s staff explained that ‘its sides were so steep that it was almost impossible to climb out after once getting in.’ Nevertheless, Ledlie’s ten regiments slipped, slid, and tumbled into the giant foxhole, instantly losing all unit cohesion. Officers shouted orders and threats, but nothing could pry the men from their sanctuary. There they stayed, mulishly immovable.[7]….
“…with the attack obviously stalled, Burnside ordered the black 4th Division to join the melee. Experienced officers thought that a great mistake. A black brigade’s commander believed the situation had already deteriorated from forlorn hope to ‘forlorn hopelessness.’ Stubbornly, Burnside repeated the order. Colonel Joshua K. Sigfried’s brigade went first….Colonel Delavan Bates, commanding the 30th, and Colonel H. Seymour Hall, 43rd U.S. Colored Infantry, led their men to the right, away from the crater and along the Confederate trench line. But two regiments tumbled straight into the crater, and there they stayed, no more anxious to leave than white soldiers. Colonel Henry G. Thomas crossed next with his 2nd Brigade of five regiments. He skirted the crater, moving obliquely about eight hundred feet until he and his men reached the head of the 1st Brigade. In the open and exposed, the brigade lost heavily in officers and men. That caused three regiments to lose their initial enthusiasm and to lag behind. So it was a much-diminished brigade that assembled at 8:10 A.M. for the dash to Cemetery Hill.[8]
“As Thomas’s men organized, Sigfried’s 30th and 43rd formed parallel to the Confederate trenches. Yelling wildly, they coiled for the charge and rushed forward, jumping into the enemy trench. A Confederate major ordered his men to ‘die but never surrender to niggers’ and bolted for a bombproof. Black soldiers followed and bayoneted the major’s men, enforcing his order. About two hundred other Confederates quickly surrendered, and a 43rd lieutenant saved some when he stopped his men from killing them where they stood. But Colonel Hall, the 43rd’s leader, said that his soldiers slew many prisoners, despite officers’ efforts to restrain them. Not all officers even exercised self-restraint. William Baird, a 1st lieutenant with the 23rd U.S. Colored Infantry, witnessed an incident that made him reflect that the war had greatly devalued life. His colonel ordered a captured Confederate officer to help carry a wounded black soldier. Baird recalled, ‘The Confederate with an oath said he would not help carry any negro…the colonel whipped out his revolver and shot him dead.’[9]….
“Before Mahone’s men charged, mine survivors told them that the black Yankees had attacked while shouting ‘Fort Pillow! No Quarter!’ Some also heard that the blacks carried out the threat. Southerners repeatedly cited the battle cry when describing the ensuing unrestrained massacre, and some mentioned blacks’ killing prisoners….
“A young Virginia officer described the results, telling his sister, ‘As soon as we got upon them, they {blacks} threw down their arms to surrender, but were not allowed to do so.’ Wounded blacks also were not allowed to live. Mahone’s men made short work of them, killing with bayonet or rifle butt.[10]…. Excited and fascinated, a North Carolina youth watched as men scoured bombproofs to find and kill former slaves or cracked the skulls of those caught in the open….[11]
“Successful surrender was no guarantee of continued safety. Brigadier General Alexander reported, ‘Some of the Negro prisoners, who were originally allowed to surrender by some soldiers, were afterward shot by others. Colonel William J. Pegram, a twenty-three-year-old rising star in Lee’s army, said that once scores of blacks rushed in with whites and so managed to surrender. Pegram added, ‘I think over two hundred negroes got into our lines….I don’t believe that much over half of these ever reached the rear. You could see them lying dead all along the route to the rear.’ Colonel Stephen M. Weld, 56th Massachusetts, witnessed both immediate and delayed executions. He had ducked into a bombproof with another officer and a black soldier. Obeying a surrender demand, they emerged. Weld recalled, ‘They yelled out, ‘Shoot the nigger, but don’t kill the white man’ and the negro was promptly shot down by my side.’ Going to the rear, Weld particularly noticed one black soldier walking just ahead of him. He related, ‘Three rebels rushed up to him in succession and shot him through the body. He dropped dead finally at the third shot.’[12]….
“Mahone reportedly reminded his men that the black Yankees had cried ‘Remember Fort Pillow! No Quarter’ and ordered them to take no black prisoners….Confederates rushed into the crater from all sides shortly after 1 P.M. then began the truly manic killing. Major Haskell, thrust into the crater by pushing, maddened infantry, wrote, ‘Our men, who were always made wild by having negroes sent against them…were utterly frenzied with rage. Nothing in the war could have exceeded the horrors that followed. No quarter was given, and for what seemed a long time, fearful butchery was carried on.’….The dead rapidly accumulated in countless heaps. Sergeant Jerome Yates, a twenty-two-year-old 16th Mississippi soldier, told his sister, ‘Most of the Negroes were killed after they surrendered. The ground was covered with dead Negros.’….The butchery ended only when Confederates physically wilted or ran out of prey. Private Bird, the 12th Virginia soldier, reported, ‘The only sounds which now broke the stillness was some poor wounded wretch begging for water and quieted by a bayonet thrust.’….Years later, the memory of the killing pit still haunted Frank Kenfield, the 17th Vermont officer. He said, ‘I often think of this scene and cold shudder goes through me as I think of how those poor colored men were butchered in cold blood.[13]….
“Conservatively, between 900 and 950 black soldiers died that day. Of that number, Confederates massacred more than half, although black troops also suffered severely and disproportionately in legitimate combat….” (Burkhardt, George S. Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007, pp. 159-164, 166-168, 172.)
Suderow: “….At 4:45 a.m., on July 30, 1864, the Federals detonated the explosives beneath a salient held by Gen. Stephen Elliott Jr’s South Carolina brigade, destroying one battery and a regiment and a half of infantry. In their place was a huge smoldering hole in the ground, a crater, measuring 150-200 feet long, 6o feet wide, and 30 feet deep.
“Shortly after the explosion, three white divisions were sent, one after the other, to exploit the break, but they were so badly led that they were easily driven back into the Crater. At 8:00 a.m., Gen. Edward Ferrero’s Fourth (Colored) Division, numbering 4,200 officers and men, was ordered forward, its two brigades led by Cols. Joshua K. Siegfried and Henry Goddard Thomas. Siegfried’s brigade consisted of the 27th, 30th, 39th, and 43d U.S. Colored Infantry. Thomas’s brigade was composed of 19th, 23d, 28th, 29th, and 31st U.S. Colored Infantry.
“Despite heavy opposition from Ransom’s North Carolina brigade and portions of Elliott’s South
Carolinians, the 30th and 43d U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) of Siegfried’s brigade seized the last
Confederate trench that stood between them and Cemetery Hill, capturing 150 prisoners. Thomas’s 2d brigade assaulted simultaneously on Siegfried’s left but was repulsed with heavy losses in his lead regiment, the 31st USCT. He reformed and advanced a second time at 9 a.m., this time with the 29th USCT in the lead.
“Both brigades were met by a furious counterattack by Weisiger’s Virginia brigade and Wright’s Georgia brigade from Brig. Gen. William Mahone’s division. After fierce fighting, most of Siegfried’s and Thomas’s soldiers were driven back into Union lines or into the Crater, where they joined white troops already seeking shelter there.
“At least four Confederate assaults were launched at the Crater between 9:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. It finally fell to Sanders’s Alabama brigade of Mahone’s division at one o’clock. The Federals took over four thousand casualties in what Grant himself called “the saddest affair I have ever witnessed in the war.”
“Careful examination of eyewitness accounts, including contemporary letters, demonstrate that several massacres occurred during and after the Battle of the Crater.
“The first took place when Weisiger’s Virginians and Wright’s Georgians killed wounded black soldiers and black soldiers trying to surrender as they charged and cleared the trench of Siegfried’s brigade. They also killed black soldiers who had been sent to the rear as prisoners. George Bernard of the 12th Virginia, Weisiger’s brigade, said they littered the trench with murdered blacks”
A minute later I witnessed another deed which made my blood run cold. Just about the outer end of the ditch by which I had entered stood a negro soldier, a non-commissioned officer (I noticed distinctly his chevrons) begging for his life of two Confederate soldiers who stood by him, one of them striking the poor wretch with a steel ramrod, the other holding a gun in his hand, with which he seemed to be trying to get a shot at the negro. The man with the gun fired at the negro, but did not seem to seriously injure him, as he only clapped has hand to his hip, when he appeared to have been shot, and continued to beg for his life. The man with the ramrod continued to strike the negro therewith, whilst the fellow with the gun deliberately reloaded it, and, placing its muzzle close against the stomach of the poor negro, fired, at which the latter fell limp and lifeless at the feet of the two Confederates. It was a brutal, horrible act… Yet this, I have no doubt from what I saw and afterwards heard, was but a sample of many other bloody tragedies during the first 10 minutes after our men got into the trench, many of whom seemed infuriated at the idea of having to fight negroes.
Within 10 minutes the whole floor of the trench was strewn with the dead bodies of negroes, in some places in such numbers that it was difficult to make one’s way along the trench without stepping upon them.
“Lt. Freeman Bowley of the 30th USCT wrote, “We were the last to reach the Crater by way of the traverse, and the rifles of the Union soldiers were flashing in our faces when we jumped down in there. As I landed inside, I turned for a second to look back, and caught a glimpse of the Confederates bayoneting the wounded men who had just been shot down.”
“In a letter to his sweetheart dated August 5, 1864, Pvt. Henry Van Lewvenigh Bird of the 12th Virginia wrote,
“Saturday’s fight was a bitter struggle. No furlough wounds given there and no quarter either. Prayers for mercy and the groans of the wounded were alike hushed in death. There was no volley and cheers to excite the men to the work of death. The knowledge of dishonor to the loved ones behind if we failed and victory before us if we succeeded carried everything before it resistlessly. The negro’s charging cry of “No quarter” was met with the stem cry of “amen” and without firing a single shot we closed with them. They fought like bulldogs and died like soldiers. Southern bayonets dripped with blood and after a brief but bitter struggle the works were ours. The only sounds which now broke the stillness was some poor wounded wretch begging for water and quieted by a bayonet thrust which said unmistakenly “Bois ton sang. Tu n’aurais plus de soif.” [Drink your blood. You will have no more thirst].
“Dorsey Binion of the 48th Georgia, Wright’s brigade, wrote, “When we got to the works it was filled with negroes and they were crying out `no quarter’ when a hand to hand conflict ensued with the breach of our guns and bayonets and you may depend on it we did not show much quarter but slayed them. Some few negroes went to the rear as we could not kill them as fast as they passed us.”
“After driving Ferrero’s division into the Crater, Mahone’s division hunted down blacks who were hiding in bombproofs and slaughtered them from about 10 a.m. until noon in a second massacre. The ones they spared were sent to the rear, but many of these prisoners were killed in a third massacre as they ran rearward.
“Artillerist William Pegram provided evidence that the Confederates killed blacks as they went to the rear and also hunted down and murdered blacks who hid in Confederate bomb proofs. In a letter dated August 1, 1864, Colonel Pegram wrote:
I think over two hundred negroes got into our lines, by surrendering and running in, along with the whites, while the fighting was going on. I don’t believe that much over half of these ever reached the rear. You could see them lying dead all along the route to the rear. There were hardly less than six hundred dead — four hundred of whom were negroes. As soon as we got upon them, they threw down their arms in surrender, but were not allowed to do so. Every bomb proof I saw, had one or two dead negroes in it, who had skulked out the fight & been found & killed by our men. This was perfectly right, as a matter of policy.
“The fourth massacre occurred after the Federals in the Crater surrendered. Michael L. Kerrick of Mahone’s division wrote, “The Negros hollared No Quarter, Remember Fort Pillow and when our boys charged they took them at their word. At least some did. They killed them with the butts of their muskets. They piled them up three or four deep in the ditches.” Lt. Freeman Bowley of the 30th USCT wrote, “As the Confederates came rushing into the Crater, calling to their comrades in their rear, `The Yankees have surrendered!’ some of the foremost ones plunged their bayonets into the colored wounded.”
“After the war Mahone tried to evade responsibility for the butchery, but he was found to have incited his men to murder the blacks….” (Suderow, Bryce A. “The Battle of the Crater: The Civil War’s worst massacre.” Civil War History, Sep 1997.)
U.S. Congress: “In the attack upon the enemy’s lines before Petersburg, the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, 1864, the ninth corps gained an advanced position beyond a deep cut in the railroad, within about one hundred and twenty-five yards of the enemy’s lines. Just in rear of that advanced position was a deep hollow, where work could be carried on entirely out of sight of the enemy. Within a few days after that position had been gained, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants, 48th Pennsylvania volunteers, made the suggestion to General Potter, commanding the division, that a mine could be run under one of the enemy’s batteries, by means of which it could be blown up, and an opening made in the enemy’s lines.’ The suggestion having been submitted to General Burnside, it was approved by him, and work was commenced upon the mine on the 25th of June.
“It will be seen from the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Pleasants that he labored under disadvantages in the successful accomplishment of this important work, which would have deterred a man of less energy and determination. It was not merely the evident lack of faith in the success of the enterprise shown by all the officers of high rank but his division and corps commanders, but that lack of faith was accompanied by an entire failure to furnish the assistance
and implements necessary to the success of the undertaking within a reasonable time….the failure of the attack, resulting from causes with which Colonel Pleasants could have no connexion [sic.], should not be allowed to detract from the need of praise due to that officer.” (United States Congress, Committee on the Conduct of the War. Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War on the Attack on Petersburg, on the 30th Day of July, 1864. Washington: GPO, 1865. p.1)
Wolfe: “….The battle was a Union disaster and marked by particularly cruel treatment of the black troops who participated, many of whom were captured and murdered….
“Sometime about Thursday, July 28, the Pennsylvanians began packing it with explosives — 320 twenty-five-pound kegs, or four tons of powder. Pleasants had asked for six tons, but even with four, the explosion would be the largest man-made blast in the Western Hemisphere to that point….
“Burnside…gathered together his three remaining division commanders — James H. Ledlie of the First Division, Robert B. Potter of the Second, and Orlando B. Willcox of the Third — and called for a volunteer to lead the charge. When no one spoke up, he had them draw straws. The short straw went to Ledlie, a New York railroad engineer whom some had accused of being drunk during one of the North Anna engagements in May; he certainly was the least competent of the four….
“At the same time, 110 Union guns and 54 mortars all opened fire. (The delay had actually been to the artillerymen’s benefit; by now it was light out and they could see what they were shooting at.) This is the moment when Ledlie’s men were supposed to advance, but like everyone else, they were briefly paralyzed by the force of the blast. At least 278 Confederates—South Carolinians and Virginians mostly—were killed instantly, and a giant crater—what has come to be known as the Crater—was opened up in the ground where moments earlier they had been sleeping. It was more than 170 feet long, 60 feet across, and 30 feet deep. When Ledlie’s troops reached it, rather than march around it they marched into it. There, they discovered that the earth that had fallen back into the Crater had become a mash that trapped the struggling men.
“The historian William Marvel has offered two explanations for this crucial mistake. First, he has noted that that the Union men stopped to help dig Confederate survivors from the wreckage, a humane act that nevertheless “proved their undoing, for had they instead swept up and down the trenches and pushed ahead to the heights beyond”—per the battle plan—”they might have captured Petersburg that day.” Marvel has also noted that soldiers were accustomed to seeking shelter, and the Crater was like the biggest and safest foxhole anyone had ever seen—except that it was not. Its steep thirty-foot walls and slippery red clay made it nearly impossible for the men to escape once they had entered, and when Burnside’s remaining divisions followed Ledlie’s men into the fray, pretty much everyone just piled in, making for a perfect mess. Once the Confederates shook off their initial shock, they wheeled their cannons up to the edge of the hole, pointed them down, and let loose….
“The scene inside the Crater was hellish. The day was a scorcher, and a mist of humidity and smoke hung over the hole. “The heat drove some men literally mad,” Marvel has noted. One New York soldier tripped over the naked bodies of the South Carolinians originally blown up by the explosion on his way to what appeared to be “a large body of Union soldiers lying as though in line of battle waiting for the command to move forward.” To his horror, they were all dead. Men of the United States Colored Troops, from Ferrero’s Fourth Division, were in there, too. This was their first combat, and some of them cried, “Remember Fort Pillow!”—referring to an April battle in Tennessee in which black troops had been murdered by their Confederate captors. Their cheer inspired more than they intended it to, however.
“Robert E. Lee had ordered up two infantry brigades under William Mahone to fill the gap in the lines. “Small and lean as a starvation year,” in the words of Douglas Southall Freeman, “Little Billy” Mahone was a Virginia Military Institute graduate and a veteran of all the major Army of Northern Virginia campaigns since the Seven Days’ Battles (1862). His Virginians, who were busy firing down into the Crater and in some instances even hurling bayonet-fixed muskets in the manner of spears, saw the black troops as an ugly provocation. Said one Virginia officer: “Boys, you have hot work ahead; they are negroes and show no quarter.”
“Even as the battle turned in the Confederates’ favor and Meade and Burnside squabbled over when and how to retreat, the fighting — which had spread across a square mile, centered on the Crater — took on a new and savage intensity. Black troops who tried to surrender were not always spared, and those who were captured were sometimes murdered. “Many a dusky warrior had his brains knocked out with the butt of a musket, or was run thru with a bayonet while vainly imploring for mercy,” recalled one of the black regiments’ white officers. The Confederate artillery general Edward Porter Alexander confirmed this: “Some of the Negro prisoners who were originally allowed to surrender … were afterward shot by others, & there was, without doubt, a great deal of unnecessary killing of them.”
“William Pegram, a Confederate colonel whose cousin’s battery was blown up by the initial explosion, wrote in a letter to his sister that “it seems cruel to murder [the black soldiers] in cold blood, but I think the men who did it had very good cause for doing so.” From Pegram’s point of view, part of that cause included his own troops’ morale. “I have always said that I wished the enemy would bring some negroes against this army,” he wrote. “I am convinced, since Saturday’s fight, that it has a splendid effect on our men.”
“Another Confederate soldier, William Cowan McClellan of the 9th Alabama, described to his brother the scene once the fighting had stopped:
They were the worst looking set you ever saw, yankees layed the defeat to the Negroes, Negroes were disposed to lay it on the yankees. We captured 250 Negroes, all of whom were wounded in some way: Bayoneted, knocked on the head by the butts of muskets. all would have been killed had it not been for Gen. Mahone, who would beg our men to spare them. one fellow in our Brigade killed several. The Gen. told him for gods sake stop. Well, Gen. let me kill one more, he deliberately took out his pocket knife and cut ones throat. Great many of the yankees officers, even Negroes, were killed on the spot.
“….After eight and a half hours of fighting, Burnside’s Ninth Corps, which engaged about 16,500 men, suffered 3,800 killed, wounded, and captured. The battle cost Lee’s 9,500 men only about 1,500 casualties. Not surprisingly, the United States Colored Troops bore the brunt of these numbers. Their casualty count was 1,327, which included 450 men captured, a number of whom were killed after surrendering.” (Wolfe, Brendan. “Battle of the Crater.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Brendan Wolfe (ed.). Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 6-26-2012 update.)
Sources
Burkhardt, George S. Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Google preview accessed 1-9-2024 at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Confederate_Rage_Yankee_Wrath/uaDEAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Confederate+Rage,+Yankee+Wrath:+No+Quarter&printsec=frontcover
Suderow, Bryce A. “The Battle of the Crater: The Civil War’s worst massacre.” Civil War History, Sep 1997. Accessed 4-3-2013 at: http://www.worldlymind.org/cratemass1.pdf
United States Congress, Committee on the Conduct of the War. Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War on the Attack on Petersburg, on the 30th Day of July, 1864. Washington: GPO, 1865. Accessed 1-9-2024 at: http://archive.org/details/reportofcommitte05unit
Wolfe, Brendan. “Battle of the Crater.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Brendan Wolfe (ed.). Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 6-26-2012 update. Accessed 4-3-2013 at: http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Crater_Battle_of_the#start_entry
[1] This refers just to black Union soldiers. As Burkhardt’s account notes, there were some murders by black Union soldiers, and at least one officer, of captured Confederate soldiers as well.
[2] Cites: Jones, Archer. Civil War Command and Strategy (NY: Free Press, 1992), p. 203; Shaver, Lewellyn A. A History of the Sixtieth Alabama Regiment, Gracie’s Alabama Brigade (Montgomery, AL: Barrett & Brown, 1867, reprinted by Butternut Press, Gaithersburg, MD, no date), pp. 63-65; Giles Shurtleff to Mary, July 21, 1864 (Papers of Elliott Grabill and Giles Shurtleff, Oberlin College); Bosbyshell, Oliver Christian (Philadelphia: Avil Printing, 1895), pp. 164-66.
[3] Cites: Meade, George G. and George G. Meade, Jr., The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army (George G. Meade III (ed.), 2 vols., NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 2:217, 218; War Dept. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 40, 1:59, 556-68; U.S. Congress. Report of Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War on the Attack on Petersburg, on the 30th Day of July, 1864 (38th Cong., 2d sess., Washington: GPO, 1865), pp. 14-15, 126-28; Bosbyshell, 48th in the War, 166-69.
[4] Cites: Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (2 vols., NY: Charles L. Webster, 1885), vol. 2, p. 310; Report of Joint Committee, Attack on Petersburg, pp. 119, 123, 125; War Depart., Official Records 40, 1:177, 280; Thomas, Henry G. “The Colored Troops at Petersburg,” pp. 563-564 in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buell. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (Vol. 4).
[5] Cites: Grant, Ulysses S. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (John Y. Simon, ed., 20 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), vol. 11, pp. 303, 305-307, 312-313, 320-323; Meade and Meade, Life and Letters, 2:217-218; OR 40, 1:46, 132-34; Report of the Joint Committee, Attack on Petersburg, pp. 16-17, 42, 102, 125.
[6] Brigadier general James H. Ledlie, 1st Division under Burnside.
[7] Cites: Meade, Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 217; War Dept. War of the Rebellion Official Records 40, 1:103-104, 118-119, 557-558, 563, 788; Weld, Stephen Minot. War Diary and Letters of Stephen Minot Weld, 1861-1865, 2d ed. (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979), p. 353, July 30, 1864; Conrad Noll, diaries, July 30, 1864, UM; Hugh L. Kerrick to Sister, Aug. 30, 1864, PNB; Powell, ‘Petersburg Crater,” B&L 4:551; William Taylor to Wife, July 31, 1864, CW&M; Bryon Mr. Cutcheon, “Personal Recollections,” chap. “The Battle of the Crater,” 14, UM: Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 264.
[8] Cites: Report of the Joint Committee, Attack on Petersburg, pp. 21, 34, 105, 122: War Dept. War of the Rebellion…Official Records…, 40, 1:166, 103-104, 106, 118-119, 124-125, 596-597; Thomas, “Colored Troops,” B&L 4:564-565; Porter, Charles H. “The Petersburg Mine,” p. 232 (Read 1-12-1884, Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 5; Bowley, Freeman S. “The Petersburg Mine,” War Papers 6, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS), San Francisco, Cal., 1889, pp. 7-10; Hall, H. Seymour. “Mine Run to Petersburg,” War Talks in Kansas (MOLLUS-Kans., Kansas City, MO: Franklin Hudson, 1906), p. 223-224.
[9] Cites: War Dept. War of the Rebellion…Official Records…, 40, 1:596; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” pp. 9-10; Hall, “Mine Run,” pp. 224, 233, 235, 237-239; William Baird, “Reminiscences,” 20, University of Michigan.
[10] Cites: William J. Pegram to Jenny, Aug. 1, 1864, Pegram-Johnson-McIntosh Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Allen, George H. Forty-Six Months with the Fourth R.I. Volunteers, in the War of 1861 to 1865 (Providence, RI: J.A. & R. A. Reid, 1887), pp. 289-290; Mickley, Jeremiah M. The Forty-Third Regiment United States Colored Troops (Gettysburg, PA: J. E. Wible, 1866), p. 75; Etherage, William H. “Another Story of the Battle of the Crater,” (Southern Historical Society Papers 37, 1909), pp. 204-205; Bernard, George S. War Talks of Confederate Veterans (Petersburg, VA: Fenn & Owen, 1892), pp. 156, 159.
[11] Cites: Haskell, John C. The Haskell Memoirs (Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood (eds.), NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960), pp. 76-77; Day, William A., A True History of Company I, 49th Regiment North Carolina Troops, in the Great Civil War Between the North and South (Newton, NC: Enterprise Job Office, 1893), p. 84; Kerrick to Sister, Aug. 30, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield Library; Bernard, War Talks, pp. 316-317.
[12] Cites: Dorsey M. Binion to Sister, Aug. 1, 1864, Michael Musick Collection, United States Army Military History Institute; Haskell, Memoirs, 78; Alexander, Edward Porter. Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander Gary W. Gallagher, ed. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1989), p. 462; Pegram to Jenny, Aug. 1, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; Jerome Yates to Marie, Aug. 3, 1864, University of Texas; Weld, War Diary, 356-357.
[13] Cites: Yates to Marie, Aug. 3, 1864, University of Texas; Yates Compiled Military Service Record, Record Group, National Archives 94, Adjutant General’s Office, National Archives; Holt, David E., A Mississippi Rebel in the Army of Northern Virginia: The Civil War Memoirs of Private David Holt (Thomas D. Cockrell and Michael B. Ballard, eds., Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1995), p. 289; Stewart, William H., “Carnage at the ‘Crater,’ Near Petersburg.” Confederate Veteran, vol. 1, no. 2, Feb. 1893, p. 41; Kenfield, Frank. “Captured by Rebels: A Vermonter at Petersburg, 1864,” Vermont History, vol. 36, Autumn 1968, p. 233.
