{"id":2844,"date":"2010-07-14T10:54:47","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T15:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=2844"},"modified":"2010-07-14T11:07:07","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T16:07:07","slug":"battle-of-the-crater-july-30-1864","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2010\/07\/14\/battle-of-the-crater-july-30-1864\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the Crater- July 30, 1864"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Battle of the Crater (also known as The Mine) took place on July 30, 1864 in Petersburg<\/a>, Virginia.\u00a0 Union forces under the command of Major General Ambrose E. Burnside<\/a>\u00a0exploded a mine and created a large gap in the Confederate protection of Petersburg.\u00a0 However, the Confederate Major General William Mahone<\/a> and his forces responded with various counterattacks that resulted in high casualties for the Union forces, especially the United States Colored Troop<\/a> Regiments present.\u00a0 The National Parks Service website provides a detailed summary<\/a> of the Battle of the Crater that includes several sketches of the battlefield.\u00a0 The Civil War Preservation Trust\u2019s website offers several resources on the battle such as an article<\/a>\u00a0on the Petersburg Campaign and short biographies of Union General Burnside <\/a>and Confederate General Robert E. Lee<\/a>.\u00a0 John F. Schmutz recounted the battle in his book, The Battle of the Crater: A Complete History<\/a><\/em>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever the first division attempted to advance out of the Crater, they were soon met by intense fire from the Confederate infantry, which had by then recovered its composure after the explosion and bombardment, as well as the Rebel artillery, which had found the range on the Federals in the Crater.\u00a0 Many were hit not only from the exposed flanks, but also from the rear, as the Confederates reoccupied the transverses and entrenchments to the right and left of the Crater.\u00a0 These men had recovered their equanimity and when the Union attempted to re-form on the Confederate side of the Crater, the Rebels faced about and delivered a fire into the backs of the Federals.\u00a0 Coming so unexpectedly, this caused the forming line to fall back into the Crater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another resource which may be interesting to browse is Edward Alexander Porter<\/a>\u2019s Fighting for the Confederacy: the Personal Recollections of General Edward Alexander Porter\u00a0<\/a><\/em>which provides a firsthand account of the battle from the Confederate perspective.\u00a0 Also available on Google Books as a preview is Earl Hess\u2019s In the Trenches at Petersburg<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>which gives a summary of the action at the Crater as well as a map of the battlefield.\u00a0 The Battle of the Crater could be connected to a lesson on United States Colored Troops in the Civil War as\u00a0a previous post\u00a0<\/a>on Blog Divided gives details on the participation of the 43rd USCT Regiment during the battle.\u00a0 For further reading, Gregory J.W. Urwin\u2019s Black Flag over Dixie<\/a><\/em> and John David Smith\u2019s Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era<\/a><\/em> both\u00a0 provide an account of the experiences of black soldiers during the Battle of the Crater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Battle of the Crater (also known as The Mine) took place on July 30, 1864 in Petersburg, Virginia.\u00a0 Union forces under the command of Major General Ambrose E. Burnside\u00a0exploded a mine and created a large gap in the Confederate protection of Petersburg.\u00a0 However, the Confederate Major General William Mahone and his forces responded with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,12,174],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-2844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-maps","category-recent-scholarship","tag-battles-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2844"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2857,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2844\/revisions\/2857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}