On May 14, 1862, the Democrat and
Sentinel printed dispatches from the War Department detailing the events of the
recent engagement that occurred nine days earlier between the Union forces of
Major General George B. McClellan and the Confederate forces of Major General
James Longstreet near Williamsburg, Virginia. Nearly 32,000 Confederate forces had
retreated from Yorktown when they were engaged by Hooker’s division. Longstreet
counterattacked the advancing enemy and even threatened to overwhelm their
numerically stronger force; but in the end, the battle would be considered a
draw as the Confederates continued their withdrawal from the area during the
night. However, before the Confederates would turn over the field of battle to
the Union soldiers, they would leave behind several surreptitiously placed torpedoes
that would herald in a new type of modern warfare.
McClellan reported that “the Rebels
have been guilty of the most murderous and barbarous conduct in placing
torpedoes within the abandoned works, near wells, near springs, near flag
staffs, magazines and telegraph offices, in carpet bags, barrels of flour, etc.”[1]
These torpedoes were not self-propelled metal tubes filled with explosives
launched from a naval vessel, but they were stationary devices buried in the
earth and rigged to explode on the slightest contact.[2]
The Confederates would basically create the modern land mine. Union soldiers
described the torpedoes as improvised explosives made from either “mortar or columbiad
shells armed with friction primer fuses.”[3]
As the Union soldiers advanced on the abandoned Confederate positions near
Williamsburg, they triggered many of the mines by stumbling on the exposed
wires attached to the fuses.[4]
Union Colonel Charles Wainwright described the situation in more detail: “All
that was visible was a foot or two of telegraph wire sticking out of the
ground, the idea seeming to be that men or horse would get entangled, and so
pull the wire, which was to fire the torpedo.”[5]
Union sources claim that the Confederates placed mines
on the roads approaching the former Confederate position for up to three miles
away.[6]
The torpedoes were not only designed to explode when snagged by a passing
infantryman on the march, but the Confederates also booby-trapped “any place
that was likely to be visited by our men [Union forces].”[7]
“Canteens, articles of clothing, and equipment were thrown aside to tempt the
unwary relic-seeker; but the person who picked them up pulled the wire or cord
which was fastened to the cap of a hidden shell.”[8]
Confederate Brigadier General Gabriel J. Rains, the
man attributed with developing the mines, reported to his superiors that he
McClellan had exaggerated about the amount of explosives planted in the area
before their retreat.[9]
Rains explained that “wells, springs of water, barrels of flour, carpet-bags,
&c. are places incompatible with the invention.”[10]
Rains would downplay the extent of the mining operation most likely for fear of
punishment from the Confederate high command in Richmond, who would first hear
of the weapons use in newspapers days after the battle.[11]
Rains admitted that he used “some four small shells…hastily prepared by my
efforts” to cover their retreat and slow the enemy’s advance to give more time
for the “sick, wounded, and enfeebled” to reach safety.[12]
He also saw nothing morally wrong with the hidden mines, since Union forces
were shelling civilian areas with “death-dealing fragments.”[13]
Leadership on both sides of the war would agree with Rain, and both sides had
men who would disagree with his weapon.
The Confederate Secretary of War George W. Randolph
argued, “It is not admissible in civilized warfare to plant shells merely to
destroy life and without other design than that of depriving your enemy of a
few men, without materially injuring him.”[14]
Rain would be arrested for his use of his explosive weapons at Williamsburg,
but would be released shortly afterwards without a trial.[15]
The Confederate government would have Rain organize the Torpedo Bureau in October
1862, where he would work with other specialists to engineer sophisticated
water mines to guard the Confederate coasts and rivers.[16]
These were the same weapons famously cursed by Union Rear Admiral David G.
Glasgow Farragut at Mobile Bay in August 1864: “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed
ahead!”[17]
Despite everyone’s disgust of seeing such weapons
used on the field, both sides would move forward with their development and
use. Both sides would also employ similar tactics in their removal from the
field to protect their own troops, captured prisoners. Not long after the
explosion of the first triggered mine, possibly killing Oliver H. Sargent,” a
member of the 22nd Massachusetts [who] participated in the opening siege
at Yorktown, Virginia,” Union forces set out disable the new weapon.[18]
Soon after the fighting stopped, the Union forces captured a “free colored man”
named Thomas G. Wright, who warned the commanding officer that their forces
were in “grave danger of being destroyed.”[19]
He went on to explain that he was forced under gun point to plant the mines by Confederate
officers and explained where he had placed them “from Lee’s Mill to Causinham’s
Battery practically in a straight line from Warwick River to the York River.”[20]
McClellan employed Wright at $25 a day[21]
to remove the explosives and had Confederate prisoners remove them “at their
own peril.”[22]
Major General William T. Sherman would not disagree
with the placement of mines to “retard the advance of the enemy,” but he would
object to their placement in “occupied areas.”[23]
He threatened: “Now if torpedoes are found in the possession of an enemy to our
rear, you may cause them to [be] put on the ground and tested by wagonloads of
prisoners, or, if need be, citizens implicated in their use.”[24]
In Fort McAllister State Park, there is a historical marker erected to inform
tourists that on December 13, 1864, Sherman “personally gave orders that the
captured Confederate garrison be required to remove the unexploded mines.”[25]
Modern warfare would be forever
changed with General Rain’s implantation of the land mine during the War
Between the States. He would later make a statement that would be extremely
accurate: “There is no fixed rule to determine the ethics of war….Each new
weapon, in its turn, when first introduced, was denounced as illegal and
barbarous, yet each took its place according to its efficacy in human slaughter….”[26]
[1]
George McClellan, “The Pursuit of the Rebels,” Democrat and sentinel
(Ebensburg, Pa.), 14 May 1862, accessed January 6, 2014. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86071378/1862-05-14/ed-1/seq-1/.
[2]
Webb Garrison, Civil War Curiosities,
(Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1994), 149.
[3]
Norman Youngblood, The Development of
Mine Warfare: A Most Murderous and Barbarous Conduct, (Westport: Greenwood
Publishing Group, Inc., 2006), 40.
[4]
Heyward Emmell, The Civil War Journal of
Private Heyward Emmell, Ambulance and Infantry Corps: A Very Disagreeable War,
ed. Jim Malcolm (Lanham: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), 20.
[5]
Norman Youngblood, The Development of
Mine Warfare, 40.
[6]
Henry N. Blake, Three Years in the Army
of the Potomac, (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1865), 67.
[7]
Norman Youngblood, The Development of
Mine Warfare, 40.
[8]
Henry N. Blake, Three Years in the Army
of the Potomac, 67.
[9]
Norman Youngblood, The Development of
Mine Warfare, 41.
[10]
Ibid.
[11]
Michael Morgan, “The Confederacy increasingly used crude but effective land ‘torpedoes’
against the enemy,” Americas’ Civil War Vol. 15 Issue 5 (2002): 26.
[12]
Ibid.
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Norman Youngblood, The Development of
Mine Warfare, 41.
[16]
Angus Konstam, Confederate Submarines and
Torpedo Vessels 1861-65, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2004), 23.
[17]
Webb Garrison, Civil War Curiosities,
149.
[18]
“Sargent, Oliver H.,” accessed on January 6, 2014. http://scdb.swem.wm.edu/?p=creators/creator&id=3237.
[19]
U.S. Senate. 63rd Congress, 2nd Session, Marcus
D. Wright, Executor, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914, (Serial
Set 518).
[20]
Ibid.
[21]
Ibid.
[22]
George McClellan, “The Pursuit of the Rebels,” Democrat and sentinel.
[23]
Michael Morgan, “The Confederacy increasingly used crude but effective land ‘torpedoes’
against the enemy,” 26.
[24]
Ibid.
[25]
“GeorgiaInfo,” accessed on January 6, 2014. http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/gahistmarkers/confedlandmineshistmarker.htm.
[26]
Michael Morgan, “The Confederacy increasingly used crude but effective land ‘torpedoes’
against the enemy,” 26.
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