Changes

===The Crater===

===The Crater===

Rejoining his old corps in the Army of the Potomac during the Wilderness Campaign, Burnside served under Grant through his attacks on Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, and subsequently laying siege to the army at Petersburg. It was Burnside who came up with a plan to end the siege: soldiers who once worked in the Pennsylvania mines would dig a tunnel under the Confederate defenses, pack it with explosives, and set the charge off; the resulting explosion would open a breach in the lines which the Union could take advantage of.  Burnside, having received approval from Grant, began the tunnel, and trained a unit of black soldiers to go around the blasted area and take hold of the weakened Confederate line, allowing other Federal forces to follow through.  Some three hours before the blast took place, Burnside was ordered to replace his trained black soldiers with a white corps which was not trained for the task.  When the explosion took place on July 30, the new soldiers jumped into the crater instead of going around it, and stared at it awestruck.  The Confederates thus were given time to regroup and open fire from the rim, and the short Battle of the Crater ended in a humiliating defeat with heavy casualties.  Burnside, charged with the fiasco, was sent on leave.  He was not placed in a command again, and President [[Andrew Johnson]] accepted his resignation from the Army on April 15, 1865, the day Lincoln died from an assassin’s bullet.

Rejoining his old corps in the Army of the Potomac during the Wilderness Campaign, Burnside served under Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, the overall commander of the Union forces, and Major General George G. Mead, still the commander of the Army of the Potomac.  Burnisde offered service during the Wilderness Campaign by his attacks on Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, and subsequently continued his service during the long and tedious siege of Petersburg.  Besieging an enemy force was never the most enjoyable or interesting part of a war, as it usually involved trapping them in a city and then starving them into submissiuon or cracking their lines.  Every soldier in the Army of the Potomac, from General grant to the newest private soldier was trying their utmost to find a way to break General Robert E. Lee's lines.  

 

It was Colonel Henry Pleasants, a man in Burnside's IX Corps, who came up with a plan to end the siege: the men in his regiment, who happened to have been Pennsylvania miners in their lives before the war, would dig a tunnel under the Confederate defenses, pack it with explosives, and set the charge off.  Theoretically, the resulting explosion would open a breach in the Confederate lines which the Union would be able to exploit to their benefit.  Burnside, having received approval from Grant, had the men begin to dig the tunnel, and trained a unit of black soldiers to go around the blasted area and charge throught the (hopefully) battered and shattered and weakened Confederate line, which would, in turn, allow other Federal forces to follow through.   

 

Several hours before the blast took place, Generals Grant and Mead, who felt uneasy about using black soldiers, ordered Burnside to replace his trained black soldiers with a white unit which was not trained for the task.  Although this decision seems to have been made with a racist frame of mind, the generals were really concerned with two matters: the first was that these black troops did not have as much combat time as other troops.  The second problem was this: if the confederates were not damaged by the blast, they could potentially slaughter the black troops, which would open the commanding genreals to harsh allegations about the "massacre" of troops.  When the explosion took place on July 30, the white soldiers jumped into the crater instead of going around it, and stared at it awestruck.   

 

The Confederates thus were given time to regroup and open fire from the rim, and the short Battle of the Crater ended in a humiliating defeat with heavy casualties.  Burnside, charged with the fiasco, was sent on leave.  He was not placed in a command again, and President [[Andrew Johnson]] accepted his resignation from the Army on April 15, 1865, the day Lincoln died from an assassin’s bullet.

==After the war==

==After the war==