Only a few of the more
thoughtful men paid any attention. It was nothing. Such things happened
every day. God only kept the records.
The new fuse was set and lighted. The minutes seemed hours as the men
waited breathlessly. With a dull muffled roar from the centre of the
earth beneath their very feet the fort rose two hundred feet straight
into the sky, driven by a tower of flame that stood stark and red in the
heavens. And then with blinding crash the mighty column of earth, guns,
timbers and three hundred grey bodies sank into the yawning crater. The
pit was sixty-five feet wide and three hundred feet long.
The explosion had been a complete success. The undermined fort had been
wiped from the landscape. A great gap opened in Lee's lines marked by
the grave of three hundred of his men.
Burnside's division rushed into the crater and climbed through the
breach. His men were met promptly by Ransom's brigade of North
Carolinians and held. The Union support became entangled in the hole,
stumbled and fell in confusion.
General Mahone's brigades hastily called, rushed into position, and a
general Confederate charge was ordered. In silence, their arms trailing
by their sides, they quickly crossed the open space and fell like demons
on the confused blue lines which were driven back into the crater and
slaughtered like sheep.
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