A Stillness at Appomattox (105 page)

So
when
Burnside
came
in
with
this
new
idea,
Meade
was prepared
to
be
receptive.
The
same
could
not
be
said
for
his engineers,
who
pooh-poohed
the
whole
proposal
and
said
it was
clap-trap
and
nonsense.
They
said
loftily
that
there
was nothing
novel
about
mining
the
enemy's
works—it
was
standard
operating
procedure,
once
the
besieging
party
had brought
its
own
trenches
up
to
within
a
few
yards
of
the
objective
point—but
they
declared
that
no
army
on
earth
had ever
tried
to
do
it
at
anything
like
the
distance
involved
on Burnside's
front.
A
mine
shaft
of
that
length,
they
went
on, could
not
possibly
be
ventilated
and
the
men
who
had
to dig
it
would
all
be
suffocated,
if
they
were
not
first
crushed under
falling
earth.
Besides,
the
Rebels
would
find
out
about it
and
would
interfere.
The
army's
engineers,
in
short,
would have
none
of
it.

Meade
himself
felt
much
the
same
way,
but
Grant
was anxious
to
get
on
with
the
war
and
he
was
pressing
Meade to
see
if
there
was
not
some
way
to
break
the
Rebel
front. Meade
had
to
confess
that
there
did
not
seem
to
be
any
way, but
he
did
tell
Grant
that
Burnside
had
some
men
digging a
mine
"which
General
B.
thinks
when
exploded
will
enable him
by
a
formidable
assault
to
carry
the
line
of
works."
So with
this
cautious
endorsement,
and
largely
because
there was
nothing
else
in
sight,
the
Schuylkill
miners
suddenly
began
to
be
very
important
people.
⁷

Pleasants
began
by
getting
from
each
of
his
company
commanders
a
list
of
all
the
men
who
were
actually
coal
miners. He
organized
these
men
into
shifts,
with
a
non-com
named Harry
Reese
as
mine
boss,
precisely
as
if
he
were
going
to mine
for
coal,
and
he
put
them
to
work
round
the
clock,
seeing
to
it
that
each
man
got
a
dram
of
commissary
whisky when
he
finished
his
stint.
Picks
and
shovels
were
supplied, and
although
the
picks
were
not
the
kind
used
in
coal
mines, there
were
plenty
of
blacksmiths
in
IX
Corps
artillery
units and
Pleasants
persuaded
them
to
remodel
the
implements. The
work
went
faster
than
he
had
anticipated,
and
in
a short
time
he
needed
timbers
to
shore
up
the
ceiling
and walls.

At
this
point
he
found
that
the
army
was
letting
him
do this
job
rather
than
helping
him
do
it.
Meade
had
promised Burnside
to
send
a
company
of
engineers
and
any
other
aid that
might
be
needed,
but
the
company
never
showed
up and
when
Pleasants
asked
for
some
timber
nothing
seemed to
happen.
So
Pleasants
sent
a
detail
from
his
regiment
down into
the
ravine
behind
the
lines,
tore
down
a
railroad
bridge, and
used
those
timbers
as
long
as
they
lasted.
Then
he
discovered
an
abandoned
sawmill
four
or
five
miles
to
the
rear. He
got
Burnside
to
issue
a
pass
and
provide
some
horses
and wagons,
and
he
sent
two
companies
back
to
operate
the
mill and
cut
the
necessary
lumber.

Pleasants
also
needed
handbarrows
to
carry
the
dirt
out of
the
tunnel
and
dispose
of
it
in
some
place
where
Rebel lookouts
would
not
see
it.
Army
headquarters
had
promised sandbags,
but
the
sandbags
never
arrived,
so
Pleasants
collected
cracker
boxes,
reinforced
them
with
iron
hoops
taken from
pork
barrels,
nailed
stout
handles
on
them,
and
detailed parties
to
lug
these
in
and
out
of
the
shaft.

After
a
week
progress
came
to
a
halt
when
the
miners struck
a
belt
of
wet
clay
and
the
ceiling
sagged,
breaking
the timbers
and
nearly
closing
the
tunnel.
Pleasants
retimbered the
shaft,
shored
up
the
ceiling
with
stouter
props,
and
drove on.
Next
he
struck
a
bed
of
marl
which
had
a
way
of
turning
to
rock
soon
after
the
air
struck
it.
The
soldiers
amused themselves
by
carving
tobacco
pipes
out
of
this
in
their
spare time,
but
it
was
mean
stuff
to
tunnel
through
and
the
colonel finally
had
to
increase
the
tunnel's
angle
of
climb
so
as
to
get into
a
softer
earth
stratum.
He
was
making
his
tunnel
five feet
high,
four
feet
wide
at
the
bottom,
and
some
two
and one
half
feet
wide
at
the
top,
and
it
was
strongly
timbered all
the
way—ceiling,
both
sides,
and
floor.
Cutting
and
transporting
all
of
this
timber
and
getting
it
inside
the
mine,
and taking
all
of
the
dirt
out
and
concealing
it
in
the
ravine
under
fresh-cut
bushes,
kept
calling.for
more
and
more
hands, and
before
long
practically
the
entire
regiment
was
at
work.
⁸