Military
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At 4:40 a.m. on July 30, 1864, men of Captain Richard Pegram’s battery and two South Carolina regiments lay sleeping at Elliot’s Salient when an explosion turned the place into a smoking hole 170 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. Two hundred and seventy-eight Confederates died in the blast, and two 1,700-pound cannons were hurled completely out of the works. Colonel William McMaster of the 17th South Carolina Infantry recalled utmost consternation, with some men scampering out of the lines, others paralyzed with fear, and smoke and dust filling the air. The depressions of four magazines exploded by Colonel Pleasants’s men remain visible inside the Crater.
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Petersburg, Virginia · United States
