carried by assault without a vast expenditure of human life, were turned by skillful flank movements, which were equivalent to battles won. In all these operations the Ninth Corps participated so gallantly as to reflect the highest honor upon all its officers and men, and especially upon its hopeful general and his division commanders. When it was said that the Ninth Corps, during those forty days of marching and fighting, complied with every demand upon human endurance and human courage, performing all that was required of it, and suffering commensurately, the highest praise was awarded both to the living. and to the dead.

General Burnside, always ready to waive his rank, permitted the incorporation of the Ninth Corps into the Army of the Potomac, which made him subordinate to General Meade. Well might General Harrison, a Senator of the United States, afterwards say that jealousy, that bane of military life, never found harbor in Burnside's heart:

"There was no room in that well-lighted breast for this black angel. As a subordinate, he never failed to yield a quick and loyal obedience to his superior; nor ever sought to justify his own judgment in the council by a hesitating support of the plan of battle which his superior had chosen. He was a true soldier-one who had not only a master but a cause, into the fellowship of which he received all who made that cause common. He might join in the high rivalry of those who would give most to this sacred cause, or win most honor to the flag; but if he might not be first to plant the flag on the enemy's battlements, he would at least be found among those who hailed with cheers both the flag and the victor."

THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG-THE MINE BENEATH THE ENEMY'S WORKS-PLAN OF ATTACK-THE COLORED TROOPS COUNTED OUT THE ASSAULT-DELAY IN THE EXPLOSION-A TERRIBLE SCENE-GENERAL MEADE PETULANT - RETREAT OF THE NINTH CORPS AFTER HARD FIGHTING-RELIEVED FROM DUTY.

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IEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, having become convinced that he could not capture Richmond by a flank movement, determined to besiege the enemy, who was securely entrenched before Petersburg and Richmond. His headquarters was established at City Point, with the Army of the James keeping his lines north of the James River, and the Army of the Potomac those on the south bank. Frequent assaults were made, both from the right and left. The lines were gradually extended, and although General Lee made several desperate attempts to release himself, he soon found that to move out of his entrenchments at any point was certain destruction, while to stay and be besieged was equally as certain, though the process was slower and longer.

The Ninth Corps was in front of Petersburg, and from day to day, for six weeks, by the aid of the shovel and the pick, General Burnside's lines were insidiously advanced

by zig-zags and covered ways, until the outline pickets of both armies had scarcely five hundred yards between them. The sharp-shooters on either side were especially vigilant, and skirmishing and artillery fire were almost incessant. It was only necessary for General Burnside to occupy Cemetery Hill, to place his guns in a position where they would command an easy range of the old town of Petersburg. The crest of this hill, frowning with guns, was not more than eight hundred yards distant from the ad

vance works of the Ninth Corps, and its gently sloping sides were welted with long rows of earth-works, pitted with redoubts and redans, and ridged with serried salients and curtains, and all the works of defense known to the educated military engineers.

The vital importance to the Union Army of Cemetery Hill was evident to all, and many schemes were advanced by which it might be made useless for the enemy's purpose, or made to change hands altogether; but to take it by direct assault must necessarily cost many lives, and the attempt might not be a success. It was then that Lieut.-Col. Henry Pleasants of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Volunteers, which was in General Potter's division of the Ninth

Corps, conceived the idea of mining the enemy's redoubt in front of Cemetery Hill, and blowing its contents into the air. The Forty-eighth Pennsylvania had been recruited in the coal regions of that State. Colonel Pleasants was a practical miner, and so were nearly all of its officers and men. They had talked over the practicability of this work, and they were anxious to undertake it. When the project was laid before General Burnside, he consulted the engineer on his staff, Maj. J. C. Duane, who ridiculed the whole plan as impracticable, and even impossible of execution. General Burnside was of a different opinion, and, laying the project before General Meade, who was at that time his commanding officer, he received authority to go on with the work.

Colonel Pleasants and his men commenced work on the 25th of June, under great disadvantages. No officer of rank, except Generals Burnside and Potter, gave them any encouragement. The miners were obliged to carry out the earth in bread-boxes, and to cut down bushes and strew over the excavated material to prevent the suspicions of the enemy. They were not even allowed the use of a theodolite at General Meade's headquarters, for their measurements, and they were obliged to send to Washington for an instrument. The roof of the mine was propped up by old lumber, picked up about the camp, and the ventilation improvised for the occasion was imperfect. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, eighteen thousand cubic feet of earth was removed, and on the 23d of July, a subterranean gallery five hundred and ten feet long, with two lateral galleries, one thirty-seven feet long and the other thirty-eight feet, with eight magazines, had been constructed. Four magazines were placed in each lateral gallery made beneath the enemy's earth-work. It

was supposed at one time that the Confederates suspected the existence of the mine, but after listening. intently, it was ascertained that the troops who occupied the redoubt were engaged in the ordinary drill and fatigue duty, little imagining what was going on immediately under their feet.

Lieutenant-General Grant had meanwhile been anxious to make an assault upon the Confederate works, and had requested the views of General Meade upon the chances of success. General Meade, in turn, had asked the advice of his corps commanders. General Burnside, on the 3d of July, replied that he thought it best to wait until the mine was completed, unless it was the question of changing the plan of operations, in which case he was in favor of an immediate assault; then he added, "If an assault be made now, I think we have a fair chance of success, provided my corps can make the attack, and it is left for me to say when and how the other two corps shall come to my support." General Meade took offence at this remark, as a reflection, on the part of General Burnside, upon his skill as the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac. In his reply, dated on the 4th of July, General Meade declared that in all offensive operations he should "exercise the prerogative of" his "position, to control and direct the same," and intimated that the "acceding" on his part to General Burnside's conditions "would not be consistent with" his "position of commanding general of the army." General Burnside immediately sent his disclaimer of any wish to assume the prerogative which did not belong to him, and which had only existed in the suspicious imagination of General Meade. The correspondence closed, but it was never forgotten by the commander of the Army of the Potomac, and it was the first step in the

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