The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (George Washington Series)

by Newt Gingrich

  Most were unshaven, all of them lean and wiry, and their eyes had that strange hard gaze of veterans, as if looking off to some far distant land that only a veteran could truly see and understand.

  The men of the nine new regiments of this, the newly formed Fourth Division of the fabled Ninth Corps, did not yet have that look, that “feel,” no matter how proudly they now marched. More than a few derisive comments drifted from the other side of the road: “Fresh fish”; “You boys gonna see the elephant now for sure”; “Hey there darkie, you think you’re a soldier?”; and far worse. The worn veterans of this worn army did not take lightly to new recruits until they had proven themselves in battle, and now they could complain further about the fact that they were black as well.

  In spite of the insults only a few of the men marching by wavered, turning slightly to cast an angry glance at their taunters.

  “They better get used to it,” one of Burnside’s staff whispered.

  “No, we better get used to them,” another staffer responded firmly.

  Burnside ignored the comments, eyes fixed on these men, examining them with the practiced gaze of a general who had commanded men in battle for over two years and in nearly every theater of the war.

  When in Mississippi, Tennessee, and the coast of Carolina, he had seen slaves by the thousands coming into their lines, but these men looked different. All nine regiments were recruited out of northern or border states, the muster rolls showing him that in fact, contrary to myth regarding the USCT, a very high proportion of them had been born as freemen in the North. The majority even had some education and could read and write. Those not born free had either been manumitted by their owners long before the war or had purchased their own freedom and then drifted north. Few had come straight from slavery into army blue. They looked healthier than the typical slave who had endured years of hard labor, usually with scant rations and few comforts.

  Their officers, as he knew, were the pick of the army. When the USCT began to form after the Emancipation Proclamation, the decision had been made that all their officers were to be white. The criteria for their selection were rigid. They had to be combat veterans, preferably of noncommissioned rank, of good moral character, literate, with letters of recommendation from their company and regimental officers.

  If they passed this first mark and were accepted by the examining board, it was off to a newly established officers’ training school in Philadelphia, the first of its kind. The veterans were then drilled yet again, but now in how to teach drill to new recruits, along with classes ranging from history to military justice and proper etiquette of an officer. Only after testing and another review board were they recommended for promotion to either lieutenant or captain of a company. Potential regimental commanders, already commissioned, went through the same rigorous drill before at last being assigned to their regiments.

  They knew the prejudices they would face; they had already faced them when they had first volunteered to serve with the colored troops. Those who had chosen service with the USCT to simply get out of the front lines for a while or for the shoulder bars were weeded out early enough. The men who remained believed in what they were doing and were as eager as their troops to prove their mettle.

  The last of the regiments came off the bridge, men of the 32nd Ohio, fifers playing the traditional, “Rally ’Round the Flag.” Burnside was deeply moved by it all. It had been a long time, a very long time, since he had seen and heard troops march to such music, showing such precision and fresh new pride.

  The veterans who had been watching on the far side of the road stood silent, realizing that a bevy of generals were standing across from them. As veterans, they knew when it was time to make themselves scarce before being tasked with some additional duty. The contrast between the two, though, Burnside caught him yet again. To a casual civilian eye, regardless of race, the comparison would be that the men on the far side of the road were filthy rabble, the men who just marched by the true soldiers.

  It was this “rabble,” though, who had endured the forest fire in the Wilderness, the bloody charge at Cold Harbor, who had held their ground at Gettysburg and Antietam. It was they who had seen this army through three long years of bloody war. And once, long ago, a very long time ago, they had marched as the colored troops did now, uniforms clean and neat, flags held high, fifers playing, and singing together the patriotic songs.

  A place like Cold Harbor or Antietam took that out of a man forever, emptying him and filling him instead with a weary cynicism, as well as a toughness for war with all its myriad horrors. Nearly all were volunteers or men who might have drawn an enlistment bounty but were then matched to hometown regiments. The “bounty men” and draftees were shipped down to the army in locked boxcars to form new regiments—many a man deserted with the first opportunity. Those who stayed were, in general, men ready to prove themselves; they were volunteers. The cowards had long ago run off. Many of the best of them were in shallow graves across Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The ones that were left had no illusions: they knew that chances were high that a shallow grave was in their future.

  And as Burnside gazed at them he knew what he had to do. Veterans, often far better than their generals, knew when a battle order, especially a charge, had some chance, no matter how small, of success. After the utter debacle at Cold Harbor, this army of veterans had all but mutinied. They had disobeyed orders out of a cold pragmatic sense of survival. Never again would there be a charge like the one at Cold Harbor. If ordered to take a heavily fortified position, more often than not the veterans would just stare in silence at their commanders, many times even joined by their company and regimental officers. They would stay in their trenches, or at best make a half-hearted demonstration of advancing a few dozen yards, then immediately fall back.

  They were not cowards; they were the hardened elite of an elite army. They simply knew what was possible and what was next to impossible.

  He looked toward the long, sinuous column of black men—four thousand of them—a column near to half a mile long, dust swirling up by their passage, as they marched to a reserve position a mile behind the main lines where they would camp tonight.

  These men did not yet know what was possible and what was not. Such men, if ordered to charge, would do so without hesitation, filled with the new recruits’ desires to prove themselves. Their veteran officers might know the reality, but they wished to prove their own worth as well. And finally, these were colored troops … if ever a division of men had joined this army with a burning passion to prove something, it would be this one.

  “Burnside.”

  He stirred from his musings and looked to his left. It was Meade.

  How much things had changed between them. Only eighteen months ago, Burnside had been in command of the Army of the Potomac in front of Fredericksburg, and Meade was just a division commander. Meade’s reputation then was that he was a brave leader from the front, but brusque, cantankerous, and in an army noted for giving nicknames, his men could only find terms such as “ole goggle eyes,” or “the snapping turtle.” He had to admit inwardly that both nicknames fit, especially “the snapping turtle.” Meade walked with head drawn in slightly but when angered would lean forward as if ready to snap.

  In a year and a half their positions had changed dramatically. In six months Meade had sprung from division command to lead a corps at Chancellorsville and then command the entire army at Gettysburg. Burnside had been demoted to command of Ninth Corps after the fiasco at Fredericksburg and the infamous “Mud March” a month later, and his corps detached from the Army of the Potomac and shifted west for over a year, keeping the two generals apart.

  Meade made no bones about his lack of respect for Burnside. In his after-action report for Fredericksburg, he bitterly complained that his was the only division to pierce the Rebel lines, after which he had called for support to exploit the breakthrough, and Burnside had done nothing.

  And with a humility rat
her unique for commanding generals, Burnside was the first to admit that at Fredericksburg the failure was his and his alone.

  Meade, however, apparently would never forget or forgive.

  “A word, Burnside,” Meade announced, motioning for Burnside to come the last few steps to him. Of course he did as ordered; such deference was expected to the commander of an army, even one who was in the strangely unique position of being in command but essentially having little real power. For over them all was the presence of Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all the Armies of the Union, who had chosen to make his headquarters here, and in the field often took direct tactical command of this force. What little power Meade still retained he guarded jealously, especially when Grant was back in Washington to meet with the President or Secretary of War Stanton.

  Meade gestured for his staff to leave and Burnside did the same for his, the two officers turning to slowly walk together down to the edge of the river. A long column of supply wagons was now on the bridge, their progress stopped as the drawbridge was raised to let a twin-turret monitor pass upstream.

  “I’ve reviewed your suggestion, Burnside, for this scheme of yours about digging a tunnel,” Meade announced without preamble.

  “And?”

  “I’ve passed it up to Grant, of course, but did so without my endorsement.”

  A bit surprised, Burnside slowed and looked straight at Meade.

  “May I ask why?”

  “My engineering staff says it is impossible to construct a mine of over five hundred feet in length beneath the surface, and keep it properly ventilated without poking breathing holes to the surface, which of course would reveal it to the Rebs.”

  Burnside sighed inwardly, saying nothing yet. It wasn’t wise to interrupt Meade in mid-thought.

  “Second, that your demand for ten tons of medium- and coarse-grain powder for the explosion is excessive.”

  He stopped, looking up at Burnside with a sidelong glance.

  A casual observer not knowing the two might have been confused as to who the commander really was. Burnside towered over his commander, who was wiry, short, and round-shouldered. Meade, head cocked, protruding eyes gazing up at Burnside, had his neck now thrust forward like a turtle ready to snap.

  “I assume there are more negatives,” Burnside finally replied.

  “Plenty more. You’ve taken a lot onto yourself, Burnside. Your plan states that three corps will be engaged in the assault and should be a single unified command, which you imply should be you. Good God, that is a third of our army here and would leave no reserves if things turn into a disaster.”

  He fell silent for a moment, shaking his head.

  “And without my authorization, have you not already told your men to start digging?”

  “They’ve gained thirty feet so far,” Burnside finally offered.

  “You ordered them to start digging this thing of yours without getting proper clearance from me?”

  “Sir, respectfully, they are men of my corps and since the order to start in no way impacts the daily duties of the rest of my command, other than a minor adjustment to which regiment holds the front line, I see no harm in the exercise.”

  “It could build false expectations.”

  “Sir?”

  “As I said, my engineers tell me that ultimately it is impossible.”

  “Sir, may I address the issues raised? That is of course if you are finished.”

  Meade grunted his assent, while fumbling in his pocket for a cigar, then muttering a curse that he had left his cigar case behind. Burnside reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a silver case containing half a dozen Cubans, and offered one to his commander, who muttered his thanks. Burnside took one out as well; the two bit off the ends, spitting them out. Burnside struck a lucifer on the sole of his shoe, offered the flame to Meade, and then puffed his own cigar to life.

  The two stood silent for a moment, wreathed in smoke. Burnside hoped that the small gesture would calm Meade and be an indicator of deference and good will.

  “May I respond to your objections, George?” he asked, venturing to address Meade by his first name.

  “I assumed you would.”

  “First, regarding the assertion of your staff engineers that the task is impossible.”

  “That is what they say, and Burnside, these are mostly West Point trained men. If anyone knows military engineering, they are the ones.”

  “How many of them have ever worked in a coal mine?”

  “What?”

  “Just that, sir,” deciding to drop the more familiar “George.” “My men of the 48th Pennsylvania nearly all come out of the anthracite coal fields. Their commander, Colonel Pleasants, was a mining engineer before the war.”

  “So what does he know that my men don’t?”

  “Practical experience, sir. A lot of new techniques learned since you and I were at West Point. I raised the same question when Pleasants first approached me. He gave me a quick education on it all and had already devised a plan.”

  “Oh, really? Air, drainage if they hit a spring, keeping it all concealed … Those coal mines have steam engine pumps and ventilators, for God’s sake. If we drag that equipment up, the Rebels will laugh themselves sick before turning a few dozen mortars loose on it.”

  “It’s rather ingenious actually,” Burnside replied. “A simple woodstove was all they needed. Also, the tunnel for its entire length will slope uphill, and if they hit a spring, it will just naturally drain out. Where they started is well concealed about sixty yards further back from the front line, near the bottomland that traverses the front, and all diggings will be hauled out at night to be dumped in a ravine so the Rebs can’t see the difference in the soil. It is a well thought-out plan, and I urge your engineers to come up and look it over.”

  He did not add that perhaps it would be a damn good education for them as well as to what is and is not impossible, rather than making armchair decisions miles behind the lines.

  Meade puffed meditatively on his cigar.

  “They’ve already dug thirty feet?”

  “Yes, sir, a good start in just three days.”

  “But that was without my authorization.”

  “Sir, your various corps commanders have a hundred thousand men digging all the time—new trenches, revetments, covered passageways, and even tunnels from front lines to the rear—clearing and corduroying roads…”

  He fell silent for a moment.

  “Surely they do not come and bother you with every detail of what they are doing?”

  Meade stared at him sullenly without a reply.

  “Regarding the amount of powder, that was the recommendation of Colonel Pleasants. And, sir, that came in turn from a number of men with experience blasting in mines and tunnels. Surely ten tons will not tax our supplies.”

  He pointed to a monitor pressing its way up the James.

  “That ship boasts four fourteen-inch guns, each shell propelled by nearly a hundred pounds of powder. There must be several tons on board her alone.”

  “We’re not the Navy,” Meade grumbled.

  It was a minor point at the moment, Burnside thought. They could argue it out later.

  “As to the tactical plan, sir. It is straightforward. Once the mine is blown, there will be a gap in the Rebel lines a couple of hundred yards across. Everything gone, everything. It is fair to say that in the ensuing minutes, panic will reign to either flank for several hundred yards or more. We will be looking at a gap at least a quarter of a mile wide.”

  His voice was now raised with enthusiasm. Picking up a stick, he began to trace out his thoughts on the mud beneath their feet.

  “The first division in will flank either side of the mine, but they do not stop! They continue on forward, six hundred yards, and seize the Jerusalem Plank Road. The regiments to the right will then pivot and race the third of a mile to the Blandford Church and the hill it rests upon.

  “From the detonation of the mine to s
eizing that hill should take no more than half an hour at most—at most.”

  Burnside emphasized his point by punching the stick into where he had traced out the hill.

  “We both know, sir, that if that hill is taken, Petersburg is finished.

  “Behind the lead division, in column by regiments, will come my other three divisions. One of them to pivot to the left to hold the road against counterattack, one to hold the breach open, the other to pivot right to reinforce the position at the church and then surge on into the town, which will literally be below their feet.

  “That is why I’ll need two more corps, sir. Next corps in will widen the breach along the front line, secure the position, and ensure that a couple of battalions of field artillery are pushed forward to reinforce the hill. The third corps will serve as operational reserve to exploit the breakthrough and secure the town. Sir, before the morning is over, Petersburg will be ours, with Lee’s army cut in half and its base of supplies gone. By nightfall the rest of the army could be pinning them against the Appomattox River and finishing them off. And as we both know, when Petersburg is ours, Richmond will fall, and by God, we could be looking at the victory that will win the war.”