From the character of our breastworks, or rather our cross ditches, it was impracticable to charge down the rear of our breastworks.  The only chance of reaching Petersburg was through the “Crater” to the rear.  Smith and Crawford, whose combined commands did not exceed two hundred and fifty men, forced them back.  Had either Potter, Russell, Thomas, or Griffin charged down one hundred yards farther than they did, the great victory would have been won, and Beauregard and Lee would have been deprived of the great honor of being victors of the great battle of the “Crater.”

* * * * *

ELLIOTT’S BRIGADE.

After the explosion, with less than one thousand two hundred men, and with the co-operation of Wright’s Battery and Davenport’s Battery, and a few men of Wise’s Brigade, resisted nine thousand of the enemy from five to eight o’clock.  Then four thousand five hundred blacks rushed over, and the Forty-ninth and Twenty-fifth North Carolina, Elliott’s Brigade, welcomed them to hospitable graves at 9 o’clock A.M.

At about 9.30 A.M. old Virginia—­that never tires in good works—­with eight hundred heroes rushed into the trench of the Seventeenth and slaughtered hundreds of whites and blacks, with decided preference for the Ethiopians.

Captain Geo. B. Lake, of Company B, Twenty-second South Carolina, who was himself buried beneath the debris, and afterwards captured, gives a graphic description of his experience and the scenes around the famous “Crater.”  He says in a newspaper article: 

By captain George B. Lake.

The evening before the mine was sprung, or possibly two evenings before, Colonel David Fleming, in command of the Twenty-second South Carolina Regiment—­I don’t know whether by command of General Stephen Elliott or not—­ordered me to move my company, Company B, Twenty-second South Carolina, into the rear line, immediately in rear of Pegram’s four guns.  I had in my company one officer, Lieutenant W.J.  Lake, of Newberry, S.C., and thirty-four enlisted men.  This rear line was so constructed that I could fire over Pegram’s men on the attacking enemy.

The enemy in our front had two lines of works.  He had more men in his line nearest our works than we had in his front.  From this nearest line he tunnelled to and under Pegram’s salient, and deposited in a magazine prepared for it not less than four tons of powder, some of their officers say it was six tons.  We knew the enemy were mining, and we sunk a shaft on each side of the four-gun battery, ten feet or more deep, and then extended the tunnel some distance to our front.  We were on a high hill, however, and the enemy five hundred and ten feet in our front, where they began their work, consequently their mine was far under the shaft we sunk.  At night when everything was still, we could hear the enemy’s miners at work.  While war means kill, the idea of being blown into eternity without any warning was anything but pleasant.