The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1864-08-19
The Petersburg Disaster.
ITS CAUSES AND REsurrs
Correspondence of the New York Tr;hn,o

nD>SoAnAnHo hhnI VI THR POT0hAc0
August 3, 1864
Twilight yesterday was not dark enonoh
to hide the shame of the true soldiers %
the Army of the Potomac, kinded by the
reading of the first accounts of the New
York city papers of the last attempt made
to take Petersburg by storm. The dis
played headings" Explosion of Mine
under the Rebel Works" " A Battery Of
Sixteen Guns Blown up! - "The Grand
Assault on the Rebel Defences ""Three
Tiers OF Earthworks Carried "-proyoked
EXPLANATIONS OF establishment muffled m
der modification and sorrow. Glorions
news from Petersburg! Why, O swindled
people, the ink that made the lie that oava
to false journalism in New York its last
sensation was not yet spread on the tynes
when every drummer hoy and mule. driver
in the Army of the Potomac knew that a
browning disaster and browning disgrace
had happened to it, and the number of our
killed, wounded and missing was whis.
pered among them to be five thousand.
"Three tiers of earthworks carried"
Aye, carried as Pharaoh's cavalry and the
war chariots carried the Red Sea-carried
precisely in that way. You murdered
demi-gods of July 80, the hands of love
or patriotism that seek your remains must
60 down full tathoms FIVE. "Glorious
news from Petersburg!' A skillfully en-
gineered volcanic upheaval of the fortified
earth, that should have opened wide to the
9th Corps the gates of victory, was con-
verted by imbecility and cowardice into a
yawniDg crater of volcano which swal-
mn xt-1th %
thousand men. "The grand assault on
the rebel defences! Why, oh my poor
friends and brother men at the North, the
very orderlies around headquarters quire
OF each other in undertones if somebody is
not to be hung for that affair of Saturday,
and the negroes who black boots and wait
on table criticise the crime and laundering
of the 30th, with the feeling which the
useless destruction of soldiers inspires, and
the impatence Of men who witness the
wanton waste of successes and Opportu-
mites.
No: Grants pertectly-devised plan of
drawing the bulk of Lees army out of Pc
tersburs by teint movement upon Rich
mond by the north bank of the James, and
his plan of opening passage for his troops
into Petersburg by overturning with gun
powder the rebel works nearest bis own
lines each wise, each feasible, both per-
fectty successful-have both been defeated
and wasted by subordinates | tell no Sc
cret when | say that Grant wrapped him.
self in silence on Monday, and that his
heart was gnawed at by disgust and rage;
and the statement of this fact is the meas
ure OF great soldiers appreciation of the
misconduct which turned an accomplished
victory to a disgraceful and ruinous
defeat
What was the affair of Saturday?
shall tell it only in the outlines, for it is
my desire to do no wrong, yet my deter
minatiOn to tell the truth. So, until |
gatIer the sure facts of the case, I will
only say generally, that the commando
of the corps charged with the duty and in
trusted with the coveted honor of making
the assault, did not accompany the troops
that led it, that not commander of a
division of the corps accompanied the
troops; that the work which their absence
thus dscredited and impaired, was left en-
tirely to brigade commanders; that the
charge made by the leading force was not
supported for three-quarters of an hour;
that when the support came I'D to and en-
tered in the crater produced by the ex-
ploslon of the mine, it found it full of the
advance, in q necessarily disordered state;
that the delay in supporting the leading
charge gave the rebels time to recover
from the confusion and terror caused by
the explosion, to gather opposite the breach
all their available force, to drive back into
the crater the force that had advanced be-
yond it, to train upon the fatal pit all their
artillery, to rain into it fire of musketry,
grape and canister, that tore remorseless-
ly, and without the possibility of error Of
aim, the solid mass of wriggling, heaving,
twisting, crawling, helpless soldiers, black
and white, that, inextricably intermingled.
deled all attempts to tacticaliy extrlcate
them. The survivors crawled out of the
hell-hole one by one. The iebels swooped
upon the pit before it could be emptied, |
am assured that We left in it, of dead and
of wounded and captured, and have under
treatment this side of it of wounded. 5000
men. SW
TIE spRINGlNG OF TRK FEDERAL MINE
From the Richmond Examiner, Aug. g.
The Petersburg papers give some add
tonal particulars of the springing of
Grants mine, on last Saturday, in front of
Petersburg. 1t took place about AZ in the
morning. The situation was on one Of
our salients, near the centre of the lines,
and a few hundi ed yards beyond the Brad
ford Cemetery. Prisoners taken subse-
quent to the explosion from the enemy,
and near the spot, state that several OF our
men were dug out of the ruins alive. A
paper describing the same says:
The chasm caused by the enemy's explosion
appears to be about forty feet In depth and
some tive hundred feet in circumference, and
It resembles more what one would imagine to
have been the effects of a terrible earthquake
than any thing else. Immense boulders of
earth were piled up rudely, one above the 9th
err. and great fragments of bOmbproof. gun
CARRIAGES. timbers, &c, were lying promiscu
ously in every direction.
The sides and bottom of the chasm were lit
eralIy lined with Yankee dead. and the hodies
were in every conceivable position. Some had
evidently been killed with the butts of NM
kets az their crushed skulls and b., iy mntIa-
ted faces too plainly indicated, while the great
er portion were shot, great pools of blood hay-
ing flowed from their wounds and stained the
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