Much of the month of July we passed in the trenches. Father was in command at Petersburg, and Colonel J. T. Goode commanded the brigade.... Our left was about a hundred yards south of a bastion known as Elliott's salient.

Life in the trenches was indescribably monotonous and uncomfortable. In time of sunshine the reflected heat from the new red-clay embankments was intense, and unrelieved by shade or breeze; and in wet weather one was ankle-deep in tough, clinging mud. The incessant shelling and picket-firing made extreme caution necessary in moving about; and each day, almost each hour, added to the list of casualties. The opposing lines were not over two hundred yards apart, and the distance between the rifle pits was about one hundred yards. Both sides had attained accurate marksmanship, which they practised with merciless activity in picking off men.

The men resorted to many expedients to secure some degree of comfort and protection. They learned to burrow like conies. Into the sides of the trenches and transverses they went with bayonet and tin cups to secure shade and protection from rain. Soon, such was their proficiency that, at sultry midday or during a rainfall, one might look up or down the trenches without seeing anybody but the sentinel. At the sound of the drum, the heads of the soldiers would pop up and out of the earth, as if they had been prairie-dogs or gophers. Still many lives were lost by the indifference to danger which is begotten by living constantly in its presence. . .

A man, because he had not been hit, would soon come to regard himself as invulnerable. The fact that his comrades had been killed or wounded appeared to make little impression upon him. Past immunity had made him so confident that he would walk coolly over the same exposed ground where somebody else had been shot the day before. The "spat," "whiz," " zip," of hostile bullets would not even make him quicken his pace. Mayhap he would take his short pipe out of his mouth and yell defiantly, "Ah-h— Yank—yer—kain't—shoot," and go on his way tempting fate, until a bullet struck him and he was dead or maimed for life. . . .

When our troops first manned the lines, the things most dreaded were the great mortar shells. They were particularly terrible at night. Their parabolas through the air were watched with intense apprehension, and their explosion seemed to threaten annihilation. Within a week they had ceased to occasion any other feeling among the men than a desire to secure their fragments. There was little chance of a shell's falling upon the men, for they could see it and get out of the way. Unless it did actually strike some one in its descent, the earth was so tunnelled and pitted that it was apt to fall into some depression, where its fragments would be stopped and rendered harmless by surrounding walls of dirt. Iron was becoming scarce. As inducement to collecting scrap-iron for our cannon foundries, furloughs were offered, a day for so many pounds collected. Thus, gathering fragments of shell became an active industry among the troops. So keen was their quest that sometimes they would start towards the point where a mortar-shell fell even before it exploded.

Such was life in the trenches before Petersburg. Looking back at it now, one wonders that everybody was not killed, or did not die from exposure. But, at the time, no man there personally expected to be killed, and there was something - nobody can define what it was - which made the experience by no means so horrible as it now seems. . . .

About day-break, July 30, the mine was exploded. . . . It consisted of a shaft 510 ft. long, with lateral galleries under our works 38 and 37 feet long respectively; in these, 320 kegs of powder, containing 25 pounds each — in all 8000 pounds were placed, and preliminary to the explosion, 81 heavy guns and mortars and over 80 light guns of the Union army were brought to bear on the position to be mined and attacked. . . . The fuse of the mine was lighted about 3.30 A.M. The ragged remnant of the Confederate army still left before Petersburg enjoyed unusual repose that night, for the firing along the lines had almost ceased. A long delay ensued. After waiting for more than an hour for the explosion, two Union soldiers, at the risk of their lives, crawled into the gallery of the mine and found

96. Change

in the for

the fuse had failed; they relit it and returned. ... the Confederate infantrymen and cannoneers at the doomed salient slept on, as the fuse sparkled and sputtered inch by inch towards the four tons of gunpowder which were to rend with the violence of an earthquake the spot on which they were resting.

"There she goes!" exclaimed one of the watchers. The ground trembled for an instant; an immense mass of earth, cannon, timbers, human beings, and smoke shot skyward, paused for an instant in mid-air, illumined by the flash of the explosion; and, bursting asunder, fell back into and around the smoking pit. The dense cloud of smoke drifted off, tinged by the first faint rays of sun-rise; a silence like that of death succeeded the tremendous report. Nearly 300 Confederates were buried in the débris of the crater; their comrades on either side adjacent to the fatal spot fled from a sight so much resembling the day of judgment. . . . At least 300 yards of our lines were deserted by their defenders, and left at the mercy of the assaulting columns. Beyond that breach not a Confederate infantryman stood to dispute their passage into the heart of Petersburg. A prompt advance in force, a gallant dash, not into the crater, but around it and 300 yards beyond it, would have crowned the great explosion with a victory worthy of its grandeur. From the eminence where Blandford Church and cemetery stood, in the rear of the mine, Grant's forces might, within ten minutes after the mine was sprung, have looked backward upon the Confederates, stunned, paralyzed, and separated; and, looking forward, they might have seen the coveted city [Richmond] undefended and at their mercy.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE NORTH

The difference in tone between the two following tunes of the extracts from the messages of Jefferson Davis shows Confederacy, the effect of the Union victories of the summer and April-December, 1863 autumn of 1863 (Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga) on the confidence of the South. The first extract is from an address "to the People of the Confederate States," on

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April 10, 1863, urging them to comply with a resolution of the Confederate Congress that they should cease planting tobacco and cotton in anticipation of an early termination of the war, and devote their land to food crops. The second is from President Davis's message of December 7, 1863, to the Confederate Congress.

(a)

We have reached the close of the second year of the war, and may point with just pride to the history of our young Confederacy. Alone, unaided, we have met and overthrown the most formidable combination of naval and military armaments that the lust of conquest ever gathered together for the subjugation of a free people. We began this struggle without a single gun afloat, while the resources of our enemy enabled them to gather fleets which, according to their official list published in August last, consisted of 427 vessels, measuring 340,036 tons, and carrying 3,268 guns. Yet we have captured, sunk, or destroyed a number of these vessels. . . . To oppose invading forces composed of levies which have already exceeded 1,300,000 men, we had no resources but the unconquerable valor of a people determined to be free, and we were so destitute of military supplies that tens of thousands of our citizens were reluctantly refused admission into the service from our inability to provide them with arms, while for many months some of our important strongholds owed their safety chiefly to a careful concealment of the fact that we were without a supply of powder for our cannon. Your devotion and patriotism have triumphed over all these obstacles and called into existence the munitions of war, the clothing, and the subsistence which have enabled our soldiers to illustrate their valor on numerous battlefields, and to inflict crushing defeats on successive armies, each of which an arrogant foe fondly believed to be invincible.

The contrast between our past and present condition is well calculated to inspire full confidence in the triumph of our arms. At no previous period of the war have our forces been so numerous, so well-organized, so thoroughly disciplined, armed,

and equipped as at present. The season of high water, on which our enemies relied to enable their fleets of gunboats to penetrate into our country and devastate our homes, is fast passing away; yet our strongholds on the Mississippi still bid defiance to the foe,' and months of costly preparations for their reduction have been spent in vain. Disaster has been the result of their every effort to turn or to storm Vicksburg and Port Hudson. . . . Within a few weeks the falling waters and the increasing heat of summer will complete their discomfiture and compel their baffled and defeated forces to the abandonment of expeditions on which was based their chief hope of success in effecting our subjugation. We must not forget, however, that the war is not yet ended, and that we are still confronted by powerful armies and threatened by numerous fleets; and that the Government which controls these fleets and armies is driven to the most desperate efforts to effect the unholy purposes in which it has been thus far defeated. It will use its utmost energy to arrest the impending doom, so fully merited by the atrocities it has committed, the savage barbarities which it has encouraged, and the crowning infamy of its attempt to excite a servile population to the massacre of our wives, our daughters, and our helpless children. . . .

Your country, therefore, appeals to you to lay aside all thought of gain, and to devote yourselves to securing your liberties, without which those gains would be valueless. . . .

Let us all unite in the performance of our duty, each in his sphere, and with concerted, persistent, and well-directed effort there seems little reason to doubt that ... we shall maintain the sovereignty and independence of these Confederate States, and transmit to our posterity the heritage bequeathed to us by our fathers. Jefferson Davis

Executive Office, Richmond

April 10, 1863.

1 President Davis refers to the two strongholds of Vicksburg and Port Hudson on the Mississippi that were left to the Confederates after Grant and Foote from the North and Farragut from the South had won back all but about one hundred and twenty-five miles of the river for the Union.