Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1882-01-18
lFrom the Detroit Free Press
THE PIT OF DEATH.
BY NJ. QUAD.

Up the hill, past the bIrying grounds
and as the roads fork l look for signs OF
the crater. There are the signs. Away
to the left and high in the air are the
buzzards sailing in slow circles. found
them at Sharpsburg, at Winchester, al
Malvern Hill, at Cedar Creek-I saw
them lowering over score of different
battle-helds. That was the first think ]
looked for as l rode along the dusty
highway towards the fighting grounds.
! When the buzzards could be seen there
was no need to ask further information.
At Malvern Hill there were hundred of
them futtering over the field where the
corpses had lain thickest. At Cedar
Greek could have killed them asthey sat
on the breastworks and uttered their
horrible notes. At Charlottesville I
drove one off the stone erected to the
memory of StonewalL Jackson, and over
| IN the field where a blackened chimney,
rotting cannon-wheels and hiIlocks of
earth mark the spot where Hooker
massed his guns, half hundred of the
croaking birds disputed the ground with
me.
And SO. turning to the left, [ ride
down a foot-path running between a cot
ton and peanut field, and find myself at
length In front Of hill covered with
pine and peach trees. This hill is the
crater. When once you have. climbed
Its side it Is no longer hill. You look
down into an irregular hollow a hundred
and fifty feet long by from twenty to
forty broad, and that hollow will live
forever In our war history as the crater.
Weeds, grass and the young peach and
pine trees hide much of the horror of the
spot, but one who has time to tarry can
place everything as it was on that morn
ing of July 80, 1864, when it was a hole
twenty-five feet deep and full of dead
and wounded federals.
The mine can be traced from the crater
to the spot where the federals turned the
first sod. The long gallery is marked by
caving III of the earth, and the shaft
has caved in and filed up until one
would not know what it was. Right at
this point, and what first suggested the
idea of the mine, the lines are so close
together that one can stand at the crater
and hurl peach stone into the thicket
where the federal pickets were stationed.
At no other point on the lines around
Petersburg we're federal and confederate
able to look into each others eyes. 1t is
hardly twenty steps across the cotton
field to the edge of the thicket, and here
for months not a hand could be shown
that a dozen bullets did not whiz for it.
When there was no firing, the confeder-
crates in the fort and the federal pickets
IN the thicket could converse in ordinary
tones of voice.
When Grant swung around he pushed
on until Lee checked him, and then
stopped right there and began intrench-
ing. This made very irregular line.
At the crater the federals held the
thicket along the creek, the railroad be-
hind it and the forest still further back.
Hardly eighty rods above, the confed-
crates held the same thicket. creek and
railroad track.
1t is said that the idea of tunneling
under the six-gun confederate fort atthis
point originated with a PENNSYLVANIA
miner who was serving in one of the
regiments IN Burnside's CORPS A lieu
tenant IN New York infantry regiment
is also mentioned, and had the mine been
success probably dozen men would
have stepped forward to claim the honor.
No matter who carried the idea to Burn
side, he grasped at it. War means hor-
rible wounds and sickening sights and
death in a dozen terrible forms, but in
war between civilized nations men do
not look upon such weapons as mines
with much favor. A direct attack upon
this six-gun fort would have resulted in
repulse. If it could be blown out of
the way there would be agap in the con
federate lines through which whole
brigades could pour. One brigade
through that gap and Lees lines were
gone.
The work was done by old coal miners
working in regular gangs, and the shaft