A Perfect Hell of Blood: The Battle of the Crater

Announcing Our 530th Meeting

DATE: Friday, September 7                       

A Perfect Hell of Blood: The Battle of the Crater

Presented by A. Wilson Greene

         

We welcome back our friend Will Greene to the September meeting. Will recently completed a 44-year career in public history as a park historian, battlefield preservationist, and museum director.  Greene holds degrees in history from Florida State University and Louisiana State University, where he did his graduate work under the legendary T. Harry Williams.  He worked for the National Park Service for sixteen years, was the first executive director of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (now the Civil War Trust) and is the founding executive director of Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier.   

He is the author of six books and more than 20 published articles on Civil War history, Greene's latest publication is A Campaign of Giants: The Petersburg Campaign from the Crossing of the James to the Battle of the Crater.  

Greene lives in Walden, Tennessee with his wife, Maggie, and his cat, Ozzie Guillen.  Will was our guide in and 2013 and will be our guide on next spring’s field trip to cover Jackson’s 1862 Shenandoah campaign.

“A Perfect Hell of Blood: The Battle of the Crater”

The Petersburg Campaign lasted 292 days, but the one Petersburg event that stands out for most students of the Civil War is the Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864.  The basic facts about this infamous engagement that Ulysses S. Grant called "the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war" are well known.  A Pennsylvania regiment, full of former coal miners, dug a mine shaft in which they packed 8,000 pounds of black powder under a prominent Confederate fort.  The explosion blasted a huge hole in the ground, but the Union attackers, instead of going around the crater, stopped and sought shelter.  Confederate counterattacks regained the lost ground in some of the war's most brutal close-quarters combat.  Will Greene discovered in the course of his research new information, some of which runs counter to the standard Crater narrative.  His illustrated talk, "A Perfect Hell of Blood," will reveal some of those findings and in the process remind listeners how war can transform men into remorseless killers.