The Battle of the Crater: A Novel

by Gingrich, Newt

  He thought of the note, carefully folded away in his breast pocket for future reference if need be. That tactical control of the forthcoming operation rested solely with him.

  It had been masterful on Grant’s part. A victory won, and of course the correspondents would all rush to Grant for his views and comments. Grant, with that outwardly humble nature of his, would say the glory was due to the Army of the Potomac. “His” Army of the Potomac, he thought bitterly. And if it were defeat? The note said it all: “tactical control of the forthcoming action” would rest in his hands.

  I will take the blame; he will take the glory.

  Another shell detonated somewhere near the road, the hollow thump washing over him six seconds later.

  Damn that Burnside, he thought, almost whispering the curse out loud.

  This army was fought out; Grant had bled it out. And yes, he had bled out Lee as well and pinned him in place. It was not masterfully done the way a Napoleon would have done it. It was like a battering ram relentlessly slamming away until the wall around Richmond collapsed. And it had bled his army out.

  If that meddlesome fool, Burnside, had left well enough alone with his madcap schemes the siege would have played out. We just keep extending the lines farther and farther west until Lee is finally overstretched and snaps. This was again placing it all on one shake of the dice, another damn Spotsylvania, or Cold Harbor, perhaps even a Pickett’s Charge in reverse.

  … And then Burnside pulls out what he thinks is a trump card with his colored division, claiming they were fresh, eager, full of piss and vinegar and would carry the day. The fool—didn’t he realize that either way he and this army would lose with such a gesture?

  Who would win this victory, if there was even a remote chance of victory? Every damn abolitionist newspaper would trumpet that it was not his comrades, his army, his Army of the Potomac that had won the crowning glory. It had finally taken colored soldiers to do it. If there was to be a glory at last well earned, by God, it would be by his men, not them.

  And if it went down to defeat, as he feared the chances were it would, he would be the one blamed for having approved such madness. And again the abolitionist newspapers would scream that he, George Meade, was more than happy to sacrifice colored men in yet another Cold Harbor. While every anti-abolitionist paper would mock him for having trusted such a task to “darkies” in the first place.

  He could see the handwriting on the wall, and inwardly he cursed Grant. A slaughter and Meade carries the blame, Lincoln blames him, and he finds himself quietly removed and stationed out in Nebraska or some godforsaken command the way Pope and others had been exiled.

  Victory and it would not be the Army of the Potomac that could claim it.

  The storm coming down from the northwest drew closer and for a moment he actually wished that it would pass directly over them, that a bolt would strike the ground directly above the mine and set it off here and now. It would blow the Rebel fort to hell; dispatches the next day would claim it had accomplished its purpose and the entire scheme would be forgotten.

  But he knew fate would not deal him such a kind hand.

  He thought again of the dispatch and the authority it gave him and at that moment he decided to well and truly use it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  JULY 29, 1864

  TRAINING CAMP AT DIVISION NINTH CORPS

  NOON

  “Mounted and moving at a slow trot, General Ambrose Burnside rode the length of the battle line, a line of nine regiments, nearly four thousand men. They looked fit, proud, and ready. They seemed far tougher than the men who had marched across the bridge and first passed in review little more than a month ago. He could sense their spirit, their eagerness to get on with the task.

  He had no words to say to them. He knew he was not, like some generals, an orator who could inspire. He rode the line, hand raised in salute, somehow wishing that this final gesture before battle would convey the respect he held for them. Reaching the end of the line he slowed, turning to look back at Ferrero, their division commander, and Thomas and Siegfried. The brigade commanders.

  “We all know the plan,” he announced. “Tell the men I am proud of them and tomorrow evening it will be my honor to shake the hand of each and every one of them in Petersburg.”

  The three did not reply.

  “Don’t let the rumors affect you. The good news is that I just received a message from Colonel Pleasants. The last of the sandbags have been placed, the mine is still secure, and he is confident it will go exactly as planned.

  “I will meet you gentleman at my headquarters at eleven tonight for a final review.”

  The three saluted and he turned to ride back to his headquarters a half mile away. He was surprised and then increasingly unnerved to see General Meade with his staff, dismounted and obviously waiting for him. He slowed, and finally came to a stop; an orderly came up to hold the reins as he dismounted. Stomach knotting, he approached Meade, who simply gestured for him to follow, the two walking off toward the burned-out farmhouse near his headquarters.

  Without any preamble Meade stopped and turned to face him.

  “Did you receive my memo?” he asked.

  “No, sir, I was out inspecting the troops.”

  “It should have been sent up to you at once.”

  “Sir, I was inspecting the troops and had said I would return by noon.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  It was obvious that Meade was displeased with this response.

  “Then I will tell it to you, here and now. I am pulling the Fourth Division out of the attack.”

  Burnside stood as if struck, started to say something, then actually turned and walked away from him.

  “Do not turn your back on me, Burnside,” Meade snapped. “Do you understand the order I have just given you?”

  General Burnside turned, glad that a dozen feet or more now separated them.

  “Yes, damn it! Yes, I heard you. But understand it? No, damn it, I do not understand it!”

  “One more outburst like that and I am relieving you of command as well,” Meade retorted. “And by God, if you had said that in front of our staffs I would have relieved you!”

  “Relieve me of what? An attack you have just doomed to failure? Maybe that would be a blessing. Now you can take the full responsibility.”

  “Then go ahead and resign, if that is how you feel,” Meade replied, “but I will forward that resignation without recommendation other than that you did so in the face of the enemy on the eve of an attack.”

  “You would dare to call me a coward?”

  “You are daring to be insubordinate,” Meade retorted heatedly.

  Burnside took a deep breath. He was cornered and there was only one hope left of getting out of it. He stepped back toward Meade, head slightly lowered.

  “Sir,” he began, “I beg you to reconsider this order.”

  Meade shook his head.

  “I am at least entitled to know why, then.”

  There was almost the flicker of a smile, Meade having obviously regained control of this confrontation.

  “You might place great store in this plan of yours, General Burnside, but there are few beyond you that do. From the beginning every engineer on my staff has warned against it.”

  “And they were proven wrong by the fact that the tunnel exists, built by men, who, it is obvious, know far more about mining than all the West Point–educated engineers with this army.”

  “Perhaps on that point, for the moment, but there are still sixteen hours to go. We know the Rebels are countermining. Even as we stand here they might very well break in and then we must blow the mine immediately. At that point any plan of attack is off anyhow.”

  “I do not see that as a reason to change the order of battle.”

  “I am ordering these changes for other reasons.”

  “Because they are black, is that it?” Burnside snapped. “They’re not part of us, not of the
Army of the Potomac as you see it. Is that the real reason?”

  Meade bristled and Burnside fully expected that the next words spoken were that he was relieved of command.

  “I will explain this once, and once only,” Meade said coldly, “and then you will accept the order as given and follow through on it without any damn abolitionist accusations.

  “The Fourth Division is green. I don’t care how much you’ve trained them. They are green and we both know what that means the moment they are hit, and hit hard. You seem to presuppose that once your mine is blown up every Rebel will be gone and those colored regiments will just walk across the field and take Petersburg.

  “No, it will be a slaughter. The sight of Negro troops will only redouble the fury of the Rebels to fight back. Therefore I want veteran troops to lead the way. Veteran white troops.”

  “Are you saying my men will turn and run the moment things get hot?”

  Meade stood silent.

  “You are calling them cowards.”

  “I have yet to see where men such as they have fought in a pitched battle against veteran Rebels and won.”

  “A brigade of them with the Army of the James took some of these trenches during the first day of the fighting here.”

  “Against mostly militia.”

  “The 54th Massachusetts, surely that proved something.”

  “Yes, that they were slaughtered and did not take the fort. The Southern press said it made their men fight twice as hard. The abolitionist press might make much of it, but it was a senseless slaughter. At Fort Pillow everyone knows they panicked and ran.”

  “So you are saying my men will fail, and therefore you are pulling them out without giving them their chance.”

  “I am pulling them out so that, if there is any hope whatsoever that your scheme actually does work, it has the best possible chance of doing so. And that is final.”

  “Those men trained for a month solid. They know it like clockwork.”

  “Clockwork for trained soldiers? And the moment the plan starts to go awry, and surely it will, they will fall apart.”

  “It is going awry, sir, because you are making it go awry by changing the order of attack only hours before we go in.”

  “You are pressing my patience, Burnside,” Meade said coldly.

  Burnside stood silent and then took a deep breath.

  “Sir, I wish to speak with General Grant about this.”

  Meade, without saying a word, reached into his breast pocket and drew out the message of the night before.

  “You can see from this that General Grant has already authorized and given me full control on this action. He has other things to do this day than listen to the protest of a subordinate, when this letter makes clear he will reinforce the chain of command, and that means my decisions are lawful and enforceable.”

  Burnside scanned the note, including the time and date. It was all so much clearer now. He knew, as well, that if he went around Meade this afternoon and rode to City Point to find Grant, that Grant, by custom and tradition alone, would endorse Meade’s decision. And beyond that, there had never been any love lost between Grant and himself. If he were a Sherman or Sheridan it would be different. But the last thing Grant would ever want to see was a newspaper report that he had sided with “Burnside of Fredericksburg” against “Meade of Gettysburg.”

  He was trumped and just lowered his head, handing the memo back.

  “None of my other divisions are trained for this. Their orders were to simply follow the lead of the Fourth Division, secure the breakthrough, and back up the Fourth as its first brigade advanced on Petersburg.”

  “When was the last time we fought any kind of battle where we had days or weeks to plan and train?” Meade replied. “I would suggest you have an officers meeting now, rearrange your order of battle, and see that they are ready to go by…” He hesitated and then asked, “What time was it set for?”

  “It was three-thirty A.M. Less than fifteen hours from now,” Burnside said bitterly. “That is if the slow fuses your staff supplied work.”

  “Call your officers together.”

  “It will mean having to entirely rearrange where they will deploy during the night.”

  “For God’s sake, man,” Meade shouted, “you have your orders, now see to them.”

  He turned and stalked off. Burnside just stood there, thunderstruck. Silent, he watched as Meade mounted, along with his staff, and rode off.

  Finally, one of his adjutants slowly came up to him. It was obvious to all that something had transpired. The man was clearly nervous.

  “Officers call,” Burnside whispered. “I want all four of my division commanders to report to me immediately.”

  2:00 P.M.

  “So that is it,” Ambrose Burnside said morosely, leaning forward, hands clasped, head half lowered. His four division commanders, James Ledlie, First Division; Robert Potter, Second Division; Orlando Wilcox, Third Division; and Edward Ferrero of the Fourth sat in silence.

  The bombproof they were in was hot and stuffy with the afternoon heat. The only light was provided by the open door up to the surface. A shell crumped nearby. The Rebel batteries seemed to be a bit more active today.

  Burnside waited for some kind of response, any response, but there was only silence. He finally raised his head, scanning them to gauge response.

  What caught him were two things. Ferrero actually seemed to be relieved. As he had spilled out Meade’s orders to them, Ferrero had blown out noisily, as if ready to voice something, but then just leaned back on his stool, looked to the ceiling, and was absolutely silent.

  That had startled him. For God’s sake, Meade had directly insulted this man’s troops. He would have expected a bitter retort, a challenge back, an angry cry that by heavens his men were the best in the army and were being denied their chance, their honor besmirched.

  There was only silence, and it was becoming clearer by the second that Ferrero was inwardly delighted with the news. His reaction was stunning. Ferrero, at the start of the war, had raised a regiment at his own expense. For three years he had risen steadily through the ranks, repeatedly cited for bravery. Some thought it a bit ironic that before the war his family had owned a rather famous chain of dance instruction studios, but Ferrero would grin and reply that learning drill under fire and trying to teach an overweight woman the latest craze, such as the polka, required just about the same skills and the same courage.

  He had not hesitated when offered command of the Fourth, though there were rumors that Ferrero had claimed it as a path for further promotion; as more black regiments came into the army, they would be formed into their own corps, and by seniority he would gain that command position. He had seen to the task of drilling the men of the Fourth with some skill, bringing in a crew of tough and competent sergeants from his old regiment. To Burnside, however, he had appeared to be increasingly withdrawn from it all.

  Like so many veterans of three years of war, had this man seen one battle too many? Perhaps he feared he had gone to the well once too often when it came to the luck of being a general on the front line. Was he now glad to be pulled from that line?

  At the moment the concern struck Burnside as moot. Ferrero’s division was out of the front line, though within the last hour he had at least wrangled from Meade the concession that the Fourth could serve as the corps reserve—if a breakthrough did indeed occur.

  Ferrero knew he was out of the discussion as well. He just sat back silently, gazing at his three compatriots the way a man might after folding his poker hand and who, out of curiosity, wished to see what would transpire next for those still in the game … in this case a game where lives were at stake.

  No one expressed outrage other than a few muttered comments about “high command,” and how this most certainly threw plans awry, but nothing beyond that. Not one of the other three stood up to denounce the decision, then “beg” for the honor of his division leading the charge.

 
; As he looked from Potter, to Wilcox, to Ledlie, all three avoided his gaze.

  Burnside finally broke the silence.

  “Gentlemen, we cannot reverse General Meade’s order. Ferrero’s division will be pulled to the rear of the column. I need one of you to volunteer for his division to lead the assault and to start to prepare that division for the task.”

  He paused, pulled out his pocket watch, and flipped it open.

  “In nine hours. That is when your men will begin to break camp and move into position for the attack.”

  Again silence; none even dared to make a reply.

  “Surely, one of you will volunteer?” Burnside asked, and there was a note of pleading in his voice.

  Wilcox cleared his throat. Burnside felt that surely he could count on this man.

  “Sir, you are asking which of us wishes to commit suicide. We have all been in enough frontal assaults to know the odds. I will not willingly volunteer my men to such a task without first consulting my brigade commanders and through them my regimental commanders. These men have been through pure hell the last three months. Perhaps you are now asking the impossible.”

  The other two quickly nodded their assent to Wilcox’s bold words, which were essentially telling their commander to go to hell.

  “I wondered, all along,” Ferrero whispered in assertion, “when has any operation with this army gone according to plan? At least when we were an independent command, things always went well for us. But with this army?”

  Burnside shot him an angry glance, ready to ask why in hell then had he accepted command of the division and the task that was laid before him.

  “They always do this at the last minute,” Potter interjected. “Just once, I’d like to see them stick to something. Damn them, we see how Lee does it, but not in this army. I wish we were back in Tennessee with you in independent command, General. You ran the show around Knoxville and the hell with Grant, or even worse this damn Meade.”

  Again nods of approval.