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After the first attempt to storm Petersburg failed on June 18, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant decided to try again. War weariness was growing in the North. Gold shot up in price. Republicans schemed to replace Abraham Lincoln. The Democrats delayed their nominating convention, confident that Grant would be no nearer to victory. With William Tecumseh Sherman seemingly stalled before Atlanta, Grant decided to try again.
One day after June 18, Grant ordered George Meade to swing out to the west and cut off the railroads leading to Petersburg, while Grant unleashed his cavalry on Lee’s communications. The Federals suffered a stunning defeat at Jerusalem Plank Road, and Grant’s cavalry was ravaged. Grant settled for a siege while still looking for a chance to turn the tide.
Grant saw that chance in Ambrose Burnside’s mine.
For weeks, IX Corps dug a mine under P.G.T. Beauregard’s front with the plan to blow a literal hole in the Confederate works. Despite mockery from Meade and others, the mine was ready by July 30. By then, Robert E. Lee had most of his army at Deep Bottom, opposing the latest offensive by Grant. It seemed Petersburg would fall, and with it Lincoln’s election all but decided. Instead, the attack failed. Warren Wilkinson of the 57th Massachusetts called the Crater “a scene of unparalleled horror. In places, the panic-stricken soldiers were so tightly packed together that they could not move or even raise their arms to defend themselves.” When the dust cleared, one of the most horrific battles of the Civil War was over and Grant was no closer to Petersburg.
Sean Michael Chick and John F. Schmutz portray the weeks after the June 18 attack in Unparalleled Horror: The Battles of Jerusalem Plank Road and the Crater, June 19-July 31, 1864. The narrative considers Grant and Lee’s evolving reaction to a situation neither man wanted. Lee saw Grant’s eventual victory as a “mere question of time,” while Grant was under tremendous pressure to deliver a victory that would secure Lincoln another term. The result was a series of Federal disasters, although Lee lacked the strength to pry Grant away from Petersburg, therefore leaving both sides in a stalemate as the summer of 1864 wore on and the presidential election loomed.
Sean Michael Chick graduated from the University of New Orleans and from Southeastern Louisiana University with a Master of Arts in History. He currently works in New Orleans as a tour guide. He is the author of Grant’s Left Hook: The Bermuda Hundred Campaign, Dreams of Victory: P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War, A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, and The Shiloh Campaign, 1862: Battle for the Heartland.
John F. Schmutz is a veteran of the US Army and holds degrees from Canisius College, the University of Notre Dame Law School, and George Washington Law School. His books include The Battle of the Crater: A Complete History, two volumes on “The Bloody Fifth,” The 5th Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood’s Texas Brigade Army of Northern Virginia, and The “Immortal Six Hundred” and the Failure of the Civil War POW Exchange Process. A native of Oneida, New York, he currently lives with his wife in San Antonio, Texas.
