Background
During the Civil War, Petersburg, Virginia, was an important railhead, where four railroad lines from the south met before continuing to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. Most of the supplies to Lee's army and to the city of Richmond funneled through this point. Consequently, the Union regarded it as the "back door" to Richmond, without which defending the Confederate capital would be impossible. The result was the Siege of Petersburg (which was actually trench warfare rather than a true siege), in which the armies were aligned along a series of fortified positions and trenches more than 20 miles (32 km) long, extending from the old Cold Harbor battlefield near Richmond to areas south of Petersburg.
After Lee held at bay Grant's attempt to seize Petersburg on June 15, the battle settled into a stalemate. Grant had learned a hard lesson at Cold Harbor about attacking Lee in a fortified position and was chafing at the inactivity to which Lee's trenches and forts had confined him. Finally, Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants, commanding the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry of Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside's IX Corps, offered a novel proposal to break the impasse.
Pleasants, a mining engineer from Pennsylvania in civilian life, proposed digging a long mine shaft underneath the Confederate lines and planting explosive charges directly underneath a fort (Elliott's Salient) in the middle of the Confederate First Corps line. If successful, this would not only kill all the defenders in the area, it would also open a hole in the Confederate defenses. If enough Union troops filled the breach quickly enough and drove into the Confederate rear area, the Confederates would not be able to muster enough force to drive them out, and Petersburg might fall. Burnside, whose reputation had suffered from his 1862 defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg and his poor performance earlier that year at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, gave Pleasants the go-ahead.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of The Crater
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