The Battle of the Crater: A Novel

by Gingrich, Newt

  Burnside nodded. Few had much love, or respect, for Pleasants’s division commander. Good-natured and forgiving at heart, one prone to not like confrontations, Burnside was beginning to have to face the fact that the entire corps was filled with rumors that Ledlie’s nerves were shot, that he had become a “bunker and bottle” general.

  He hesitated.

  “Let’s just call this a friendly visit then,” Burnside replied, and motioned him over to a small rough-hewn table, which served as his desk. Pleasants sat down across from him on a wobbly stool with a sheaf of oversized papers rolled up in his hand.

  “Well, let’s see what you came here about,” Burnside offered, motioning to the papers. Obviously a bit nervous, Pleasants rolled them out, weighting down the corners with a couple of empty bottles, and Burnside leaned forward to look at the drawings.

  “This came from talking with some of my men earlier today, sir. Remember, sir, nearly every man in my regiment worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines before the war. I thought about it, had some plans drawn up, and by God, sir, I think it just might work…”

  * * *

  It was past midnight when Pleasants finally stepped out of the bunker, Burnside following him, offering a cigar, which Pleasants refused. Burnside lit his up and puffed it to life.

  “I want you to start on this at once. Only your regiment is to be involved. I’ll have Captain Vincent draw up a provost detail to block off any approach to your front line position from even a single man outside of your regimental area. You are right, sir; this does depend on absolute secrecy. I’ll compress your flanks in a bit to free up men for your project, but it must be kept secret.”

  “As I said, I have impressed that upon the men already, sir.”

  “I leave the details to you and your men. As you said, nearly all in your command were miners before the war. If anyone can figure out how to do it and carry the job through, it’ll be them.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Tomorrow, survey the site.”

  “I’ll need a theodolite for starters, sir.”

  “The engineers at army headquarters must have one; I’ll get it for you. But you don’t need that to start; you can just do a compass bearing to begin with. Find a secure spot where you are absolutely certain the Rebs cannot see what is going on. As you said, a lot of things to be figured out, but I want it started now.”

  “Sir, a question.”

  “And that is?”

  “If we do it and make it work, I don’t want to see it just as an exercise in murder.”

  “What?”

  “Just that, sir. I mean just blowing up the fort and that is the end of it. To me that is little better than murder. I think this could be far more, a way of breaking the siege and ending this damn war. That means, sir, a lot more than our just digging.”

  Burnside smiled.

  “I already had something developing even as you set it out before me. A lot more, Colonel, a lot more.”

  “Taking the road and Blandford Church?” Pleasants asked hopefully.

  “You worry about your project, which you are to start now. Let me worry about the rest.

  “I’ll go up to see Meade tomorrow.” He hesitated. “I’m certain he’ll approve. Colonel, you just might have come up with an idea to end this war.”

  Pleasants smiled encouragingly.

  “I’ll get back to you once I meet with Meade.”

  “Sir. Tools, picks, shovels—both long and short handled—shoring material, extra rations for the men doing the hard labor.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Colonel,” and his words, filled with confidence, also carried a tone of dismissal. Saluting, Colonel Pleasants withdrew.

  In part he was buoyant; the former engineer turned general had grasped the plan within minutes and already expanded on how he saw a broader plan to exploit its potential. But this was the Army of the Potomac, and across three bitter years there had been dozens of plans put forth, all of them with the statement, “Boys, we can end the war with this one.”

  He sighed as he watched Pleasants disappear into the darkness. He then returned to his bunker to expand out on the plan, such a rich beautiful plan, which he would take to Meade come morning. Surely Meade, though there was no love lost between them, would see the elegance and simplicity of the idea—its rich potential—and then throw in his endorsement.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CITY POINT, VIRGINIA

  JUNE 28, 1864

  “Route step, boys, keep it at route step,” the sergeant major commanded and then paused. “And look smart!”

  Sergeant Major Garland White moved to the side of the column, looking back down the length of the 28th to see that orders were being followed. He then glanced over the side of the “roadway,” filled with awe and, admittedly, nervousness as well.

  They were crossing the James River over the great pontoon bridge, which spanned nearly a mile in length. After the disaster at Cold Harbor, the Army of the Potomac had been stalled in front of Richmond for another week. Their movement, which had started in early May, was halted. Nearly all thought it would now be a repeat of McClellan’s disastrous Peninsula Campaign of 1862, with General Grant also conceding defeat and withdrawing back toward Fredericksburg.

  But the western general, a veteran of maneuvering up and down the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi Rivers, had an ace up his sleeve after all. The massive bridge was constructed in secret, towed up the river in sections during the night, and, in less than a day, anchored in place. It had steam tugs placed at intervals to help keep it secure and a drawbridge in the middle to allow river traffic supplying the army to move through. Before the bridge was even completed, Grant had secretly abandoned his works in front of Richmond. Force-marching the entire army south, he had flung the Army of the Potomac across the river, and now in front of him was Petersburg.

  It should have been obvious to everyone, all along, that Petersburg was the true key to Richmond, the back door into the Rebel capital. Four rail lines from the Deep South converged there, along with several major roads. From that bustling river town at the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers came forth the supplies and replacement troops, funneled north into the beleaguered Rebel capital. It was now all so obvious: take the back door at Petersburg and Richmond will fall within days, like a decaying apple dropping from a tree whose roots have been torn out.

  Now, it was obvious. Grant, for that brief moment, had shown, yet again, the strategic flair that had won him so many victories in the west, from Forts Henry and Donelson to Vicksburg and Chattanooga. But once across the river, although Petersburg was all but undefended, the Army of the Potomac froze, just as it froze after stealing a march on Bobbie Lee, not quite believing they had done so, giving the Rebels time to respond.

  Grant had hesitated for three crucial days—compounded by the endemic disease of the Army of the Potomac: faulty staff work and communications. He launched only half-hearted probing attacks, which had easily stormed over the massive defensive works of the city, which were then manned by only a few thousand troops, but he stopped less than a mile from his goal: the center of the city. By that time Lee had rushed men south to meet the threat, and it had settled into yet another bloody siege.

  Perverse as it seemed to have uttered a prayer for such continued violence, Garland White and the men of the 28th had openly prayed that the war would wait, just a few weeks longer, for them to arrive. Since ordered out of Washington, they had languished for nearly two weeks at a reserve depot behind the Richmond lines. With every dispatch from the front—the vast move to the south, crossing the James, the fighting in front of Petersburg—they had met the reports with frustration. They were so close, with victory obviously pending, but they were prevented from engaging in the siege.

  Young Lieutenant Grant, and even Colonel Russell, both veterans of the hard fighting of the previous two years, had smiled wearily, shaken their heads, and offered reassurance, if it could be called such, that t
he fight was a long way from being finished, and they would still get their chance.

  Other USCT regiments were coming into the depot. To their delight one of them was the 29th USCT, recruited out of neighboring Illinois. More than a few friends and kin had been reunited. Near on to four thousand strong, nine regiments, they had assembled, waited, and drilled until at last a vast cavalry column, under the legendary Phil Sheridan, came riding in with orders for the men to fall in with him and proceed south … to the war.

  The day before Sheridan arrived they had even seen their first action: a brief tangle with some Rebel militia and cavalry. The regiment had taken its first casualties, two dead and half a dozen wounded. That evening their camp had been buzzing with excitement—at last they were in the thick of it—until some white cavalry troopers, walking through their encampment, dulled their enthusiasm with disdainful remarks that their experience was nothing more than a little mischief against a handful of rabble, and they would sing a different song when they finally went head to head with a real army led by Lee himself.

  Garland had taken it upon himself to go personally to Colonel Russell to seek his opinion on the affair. The colonel had expressed his pride in how they had handled themselves under fire but then agreed that it was merely a foreshadowing of far more to come.

  Russell was a good man, a good officer, proud of his regiment, and had devoted many an evening since the regiment first mobilized back in Indiana to converting Garland from a man of the cloth, but already a leader of men, into a man of war, a sergeant major who would lead men into battle. The bond was now close, one of mutual respect. In the breast pocket of his uniform, tucked in behind a Bible, Garland now carried “Scott’s Manual of Drill,” personally given to him by Russell and far more difficult to master than even the most confusing and obscure passages of Revelations.

  Standing on the edge of the wooden road, resting high out of the water on barges anchored every thirty feet across the mile-wide river, Garland could not contain his amazement at this vast structure. His army had built it in a single night to span a mighty river and then fling across it a hundred thousand men, two hundred pieces of field artillery, and all the accoutrements of war that went with them. It made him think of the vast bridges built by the likes of Alexander and Caesar to move their armies, and perhaps blasphemously, that even Moses and Joshua might have found this useful in their marches, if they had not had the hand of God to part the waters for them.

  The drawbridge ahead was down for the passing of the division. Steam tugs were on the down-river side, pressed up firm against the side of the bridge, their paddlewheels turning ever so slowly to help keep the bridge firmly in place. The roadway beneath their feet lurched and moved back and forth—slightly.

  “Route step, boys; no marching, lads; just route step,” Garland announced. He could see that more than a few of the men were nervous; the ones who could not swim were outright terrified, looking back and forth wide-eyed, exclaiming over the experience.

  “Quiet in the ranks!” he snapped. “Just keep to route step and we’ll soon be across.”

  He caught the eye of Sergeant Felton of Company A, motioning for him to keep the regimental flags up high and vertical. Felton nodded and whispered a command to the color bearers.

  The regiment tramped across the hundred-foot span of the drawbridge, passing under the support trusses and the hissing steam engine used to raise and lower the bridge. The sound of the decking beneath their feet was different, the men bunching up nervously, trying to get across as quickly as possible.

  “Keep in your files, boys. Just relax,” he said soothingly, even though it did make his stomach knot up as he gave a sidelong glance back over the side of the bridge … He couldn’t swim a stroke and knew that if the bridge should collapse, or if he fell over the side—burdened down as he was with pack, ammunition, NCO sword, and rifle—he would sink like a stone to the bottom of the dark muddy waters. It was one thing to be shot fighting for freedom. It was altogether more terrifying to imagine being drowned in that struggle in a dark muddy river.

  The last of the regiment passed. Twenty yards behind them the men of the 29th approached, their colonel dismounted, leading his skittish mount by the bridle. Garland offered him a salute, turned, and double-timed along the side of his column, offering encouragement and a pat on a shoulder to a man here and there, finally regaining the front of the unit.

  Russell, dismounted along with the other officers, looked over at him and smiled.

  “All’s well?” Russell asked.

  “Yes, sir. Boys are a bit nervous though with this bridge.”

  Russell leaned over.

  “So am I. Hate pontoon bridges; I can’t swim.”

  “Nor can I, sir.”

  The two laughed softly, the column slowing for a moment, commands shouted to stand at ease, then moving forward again.

  The opposite shore was drawing closer, now only a few hundred yards off. The sight before them filled Garland with yet more wonder.

  City Point had been converted from a small whistle-stop port on the James into the sprawling supply center for the army besieging Petersburg. There were dozens of ships of every description: tugs and barges, packet boats, two- and three-masted ships, an old stern-wheel boat flying a hospital flag, and two massive monitor ironclads, which were ponderously backing away from freshly built piers. A steam-driven crane was chugging away, lifting a huge stumpy-looking mortar that must have weighed half a dozen tons off the deck of a barge, swinging it over to a waiting wagon drawn by a dozen mules.

  Scores of rough-made huts, hundreds of tents, and vast open-sided warehouses had gone up in just a few short weeks. Beyond the low bluff were hundreds of supply wagons, rows of guns, stacks of ration boxes, and pyramid-like piles of barrels. All along the waterfront, hundreds of men labored, moving crates and boxes of ammunition. With dismay, Garland saw that nearly all of them were colored and in uniform. They had labored this way in Washington when not on burial details, and again in the depot behind the lines at Richmond, and he had a momentary sinking feeling that this was to be their fate yet again: to have finally reached the front and then be sent to the rear, only to labor while other men, white men, got to fight for freedom.

  As if reading his mind, Russell took in the vista before them and just shook his head.

  “Generals ahead,” he whispered. “I think it’s Burnside and Meade. As soon as the men are off the bridge, marching step, eyes right, salute arms.”

  Still a hundred yards from shore, Colonel Russell stilled his misgivings about being mounted on a shaky pontoon bridge, swung himself into the saddle, and unsheathed his sword.

  He looked down at Garland and smiled.

  “Let’s make a good first impression. Order the fifers to play ‘Hell on the Wabash,’ let them know we’re Indiana men here to fight, Sergeant Major.”

  * * *

  General Ambrose Burnside stiffened to attention as the head of the column cleared the approach ramp to the bridge, smiling inwardly as the fifers at the front of the column broke into a jaunty air, the theme song for men from the Hoosier state.

  “That must be the regiment from Indiana,” one of his staff, Captain Maury Hurt, exclaimed. He had always liked that tune, being a graduate of Oberlin College, and, though a Quaker, he had joined the fight for the ending of slavery.

  “They look good, damn good,” another of his staff exclaimed.

  “Looking good and fighting good are two different things,” one of Meade’s staff retorted.

  Burnside did not let the remark bother him, though he did look over his shoulder at the major who had made it, fixing him with his gaze for a second. The man just smiled defiantly. Turning back he caught a glimpse of a photographer with Brady trying to capture the scene, nearby him an illustrator with sketchpad out, working feverishly with quick strokes to try and capture the moment. Good, he hoped they would capture the truth of the moment.

  “Battalion, prepare to pass in review!�
�

  Although he did not recognize the mounted officer, he was obviously the commander of the lead regiment, and he spared a glance over his shoulder as he looked back at his column. Facing forward, sword resting on his shoulder, his mount nervously danced a bit as they came up the slippery, corduroyed road, paved with logs split in half and rough-hewn boards.

  Flag-bearers of the regiment hoisted their colors high, the national flag and the distinctive sky-blue colored flag emblazoned with an eagle: flags unique to the regiments of the USCT. A light breeze was coming in off the James, flinging the colors out, so that they snapped and fluttered, the gold thread catching the sunlight so that the flag seemed to sparkle.

  General George Meade, in direct command of the Army of the Potomac under Grant, stood with his staff a few yards away, showing no emotion one way or the other, but then again, he rarely did. He came to attention though.

  “Battalion, eyes right! Pass in review!”

  As one the men of the 28th stiffened, left hands crossing their breasts to steady their weapons, turning heads to the right, shifting from the route step, required on any pontoon bridge, to the march, keeping perfect time to the beat of the fifers and drummers.

  “Very smart indeed,” Burnside announced as he returned the salute.

  Regiment after regiment passed by, the men of the 29th out of Illinois, followed by the 31st out of New York, their fifers playing, “We Are Coming, Father Abraham.” Each regiment showing a smartness to drill, shoulders squared back, uniforms new and clean, muskets polished to a mirror-sheen.

  They did not yet look like the true veterans of the Army of the Potomac did after nearly two months of solid campaigning in the field. A scattering of those stood on the far side of the road, the dye of the dark blue of their jackets faded from the sun, sweat, and rain, cuffs of trouser and jackets frayed. Trousers once sky blue were now a dingy, faded, nearly indistinguishable color, heavily layered with the red clay of Virginia. Their knees were patched with whatever fabric could be found, and trouser leggings stuffed into heavy oversized gray wool socks in a vain attempt to keep out the chiggers, fleas, and ticks that swarmed in the fields and trenches. Few of them wore the regulation kepi hat, a useless issue to soldiers if ever there was one. Most had tossed them aside for broad-brimmed floppy hats of black, gray, or brown to shade the eyes and the back of the neck from the blistering sun. The only thing about the veterans that was precise, clean, and obviously well tended were their rifles, which were casually slung, inverted, over their shoulders.