On July 30, 1864, Union soldiers under Colonel E. G. Marshall were ordered to spearhead an assault at Petersburg, Virginia, following the detonation of a mine beneath Confederate lines. The mission, now known as the Battle of the Crater, became one of the Civil War’s most disastrous engagements.
Before the attack, troops of the 14th New York Heavy Artillery were moved into position roughly 20 yards from the mine. They were never told what would happen or what would be demanded of them in the coming crisis. Officers were given their orders, but enlisted men learned only through visible signs of impending action: extra provisions, massed formations, and battle lines drawn near the enemy defenses. As dawn approached, the ground suddenly shook.
A dark pyramidal mass was thrown skyward from the Confederate fortification. So close was the blast that the foremost ranks initially scattered, believing a Confederate mine had been sprung against them. Few had realized how close the enemy stronghold actually was. In the chaos that followed, Lieutenant Thompson of Company B was thrown into a mud pit by the explosion.
Rising blind and covered in dirt, he echoed the command to advance. The fortifications ahead stood as high as a man’s shoulder, and there were no scaling ladders. Soldiers hacked footholds with bayonets and climbed over the timbers as Colonel Marshall urged them forward, shouting that there was no time to form ranks. Roughly 150 men reached the crater with Marshall and the regimental standards.
What they found inside was horrifying. The pit was filled with debris, powder fumes, and the bodies of buried and dying men. Some soldiers saw the heads and limbs of the interred twisting above the unsettled soil. Partly buried firearms jutted from the ground.
Union guns opened fire immediately, shells shrieking overhead while smoke from explosions obscured the scene. On both flanks, Confederates recovered quickly and began pouring rifle fire into the exposed Union soldiers. Some of the fighting grew so close that muskets were swung as clubs. Sergeant James S.
Hill of Company C seized a regimental battle flag during the melee. Despite the pressure, Union troops attempted to push beyond the crater toward a second breastwork. Confederate resistance forced them back into the old fort within the pit. Recognizing that they were surrounded by superior numbers, the men decided to hold the breach as a foothold for later advances.
Additional regiments arrived, including the second Pennsylvania heavy artillery. General Hartranft, seeing Marshall’s men in action, urged the units behind them to attack the breastworks flanking the crater. Those units, however, were cut down by constant cannon and rifle fire. As their formations fell apart, survivors poured into the overcrowded pit.
Confusion mounted as men from multiple commands gathered with no single commander to direct them. Every reinforcement was watched with hope, only to end in despair as the newcomers were repelled or forced into the packed excavation. The wounded preferred the pit over retreating across open ground, knowing the route back was raked by enemy fire. The final rally came when colored division troops advanced in impressive formation.
The sight briefly silenced the doubters, and most soldiers prepared to move forward again. But the attack quickly collapsed. The colored troops scattered under heavy fire, and panic swept through the crater. Among the Union dead during that final push were Black soldiers who had entered the pit and met a dire end.
With no route of escape left unwatched, commanders ordered the men to pull back. But the ground between the crater and Union lines was dominated by Confederate artillery and sharpshooters. As one soldier later wrote, the path was paved with corpses. Captain Houghton of Company L offered to guide his men back, but every soldier chose to stay.
Some plans were considered, including digging trenches for escape or waiting for nightfall, but both were prevented by enemy action. Two or three small Confederate detachments attacked the crater and were beaten back, yet fresh enemy troops made it clear the position could not be held. Captain Houghton eventually made his own run across the deadly open ground. He later described dodging case shot from a Confederate cannon that cut down many retreating men.
The ground was so littered with casualties that it was impossible to step without treading on the fallen. Colonel Marshall and General Bartlett were among those left in the crater when it was finally overrun. They were taken prisoner. The men who surrendered faced a prolonged ordeal in captivity, lasting until the end of the war.
Survivors remembered scenes that disturbed even hardened soldiers. One Confederate soldier was seen trapped fast in a mound of collapsed earth inside the crater, alive and struggling. Union troops tried to free him but were driven away by Confederate fire. Near the pit, vertical countermines about 50 feet deep had been left exposed, and one Confederate who had plunged into one lay groaning at the bottom, with no way to rescue him.
Prisoners revealed that the Confederate fort had been crowded that night. Union movements had been spotted, and an assault was anticipated in advance. Countermeasures had been prepared. But the explosion itself was entirely unforeseen.
The account comes from George L. Kilmer, a soldier in the 14th New York Heavy Artillery who survived the battle and later recorded what he witnessed. His testimony preserves a truth that official reports often smoothed over: the chaos, the missed commands, the terror of men buried alive, and the crushing realization that the mission had collapsed into a nightmare. For Kilmer, the memory of the crater never faded.
He wrote not only of the battle itself but of the contradictions that haunted it. Confederate forces expected an attack that morning. They prepared for it. Yet they did not expect the mine.
The question raised by his account remains unsettling. What exactly was planned, and what truly emerged from the smoke and the screams that day at Petersburg?