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I have rarely read a book with as many errors as Dr. Richard Slotkin's No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864. This book came from Random House, not some obscure publisher. The author dates the Cold Harbor assault as June 7, 1864, when it was June 3. He has IX Corps at Petersburg on June 16, 1864, under Baldy Smith when in fact it did not arrive until Meade had taken command and if if had arrived earlier Hancock would have been in command. The last of the initial Federal assaults on Petersburg took place on June 18, not July 18. Hill's Corps arrived at the Petersburg June 18, not June 19. The Federals did indeed experience a "panic rout" on June 22, The 12th Virginia Infantry had ten companies, not twelve. In 1864, George S. Bernard (a member of the 12th Virginia Infantry and author of War Talks of Confederate Veterans and Civil War Talks: The Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard and his Fellow Veterans) was a private, not a sergeant--he had given up his billet as a sergeant in the 12th's Company I when he transferred back to Company E in early 1863. The author on page 127 writes June 21 when he means July 21, the last day Confederate counter-miners heard Federal mining toward Pegram's Salient. On the next page, the author writes June 24 when he means July 24 in regard to Early's rout of Hunter. On page 140, the author writes July 18-19 when he means June 17-18 in regards to Meade's inability to coordinate his attacks at the end of the initial assaults on Petersburg. The author gets backwards at page 247 Private Bernard's belief that a man belongs in his proper place--Bernard did not switch positions with Private Butts to get out of his proper place but to get into it. Weisiger's Brigade had a sharpshooter battalion, not just a company--each of the brigade's five regiments contributed a company to the battalion. Part of Hall's Georgia Brigade participated in Mahone's first charge. Burnside was hardly responsible for the delay in implementing a truce after the Battle of the Crater--Grant and Meade well knew from the negotiations at Cold Harbor that they would have to admit defeat before a truce would be allowed. United States Colored Troops participated minimally in the fighting north of James River and not at all south of James River in August 1864. United States Colored Troops did not fight at all at Fort Sedgwick, Poplar Grove Church or Hatcher's Run in the autumn of 1864.

Again and again and again quotations are unattributed in the text. The reader wants to know who uttered the words the author thought important enough to quote. The book should also have been properly indexed--when the source of a quotation does appear in the text, he often does not appear in the index. An example is Private Bird of the 12th Virginia Infantry, who is quoted and mentioned in the text but not indexed.

Dr. Slotkin makes valuable observations on the command decisions in the Battle of the Crater, the command structure of the Army of the Potomac, and the importance of United States Colored Troops to the Federal war effort. He finds at work in the Battle of the Crater the same animosities that wrecked Reconstruction. Even here, though, he seems at a loss: Nat Turner's rebellion took place just down the Jerusalem Plank Road from Petersburg in 1831 and it had an impact on how the Confederates--particularly the Southside Virginians in Weisiger's Brigade--reacted to the employment of United States Colored Troops in the assault of July 30, 1864.

In his next book, Dr. Slotkin must get the facts straight, name his sources in the text, and properly index them.

John Horn
Author, "The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864"
_____, "The Petersburg Campaign"
Co-Editor, "Civil War Talks: The Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard and his Fellow Veterans"
[email protected]

Despite its 400+ pages, this work did not rate with what I have come to expect in a battle history. According to the author's bio on the dust jacket he has written three historical novels including one on the Battle of the Crater. In some ways this work shared some of the style of a novel rather than a history. To the general reader that will be okay as the research seems to be thorough, but for a serious Civil War buff it is lacking. It can't compare to the battle histories by authors such as Stephen Sears, Gordon Rhea, Peter Cozzens or David Powell. They and numerous other authors have set a standard which this book just doesn't meet.

The writer seems much more interested in the Union side of this story than the Rebel side. Notice that I used the word "interested" not 'biased." He is fair to both sides, but the emphasis is toward the Yankees. Their personalities are fully developed while we're given mere sketches of the Rebels.

One of the primary themes of this work was the use of black troops in the battle and how the Rebels reacted to them. This was the strength of the book. I found this aspect very interesting.

Several imaginative officers and men in the Union siege of Petersberg, near the end of the Civil War, undertook the extremely dangerous job of digging a tiny shaft hundred of yards under the Confederate lines and detonating a monstrouse mine that tore a hole in the Confederate defenses. It was a nearly perfect operation, despite hesitancy and confusion at the top.

But the Federals lost the battle and by the end of the day the bottom of the huge crater caused by the explosion was so drenched in blood that it could almost be compared to a bath tub.

What worried me a little as I began Richard Slotkin's book was that it might turn out to be excessive in its political correctness. African-American soldiers, known at the time as US Colored Troops (USCT) were heavily involved in the fighting. The ratio of dead to wounded was much higher than among the white troops who participated. The last thing I wanted to read was that it was the UCST who stood their ground to the end, the white Federals who ran away and deserted them, and the white Confederates who rushed in and slaughtered every black in sight.

Thank God Slotkin is a professional historian and sticks to the rules. There are few editorial interpolations. They come at infrequent intervals and are thoroughly balanced. Of course the USCT were singled out for execution on the field. (There were incidents in which white Federals bayoneted their black comrades.) Some of the black POWs were killed while being marched back behind Confederate lines. It's understandable. How do you avoid race as a variable in a Civil War battle between the Union troops and those representing a slave-holding society. But even at that, there were Confederate officers who tried to put a stop to the murders and abhorred those they could not prevent.

It's understandable too that Confederates in the heat of battle shouldn't spare a despised black man even if he were on his knees begging to surrender. But, as Slotkin points out, the USCT were motivated by their white officers with a slogan like "No quarter!" and "Remember Fort Pillow" -- an earlier engagement in which black suffered disproportionate casualties. The slogans were introduced because the USCT in this instance consisted of green troops who, it was felt, being new and being black, might need an extra shot of elan. And so the USCT, when they were finally sent into the maelstrom, took the slogans seriously and shouted them loudly enough for Confederate troops to hear and respond with equal viciousness. Both sides began yelling, "No quarter!" It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There isn't space to describe the battle itself and it was in fact so confusing -- in the book as in history -- that, not being a military historian, I found it hard to follow. Of the several Union generals involved, two of the most important spent the battle back in the medical bunker drinking medicinal whiskey. The USCT, who had been designated and trained to lead the assault, were replaced at the last minute by white troops who were fagged out, reduced in number, exhausted. General Burnside, in immediate charge of the operation, spent his time sending messages, on those occasions when he could be bothered to send messages, in a spiteful exchange with his superior, General Meade, and urging his subordinates to charge into the battle at all hazards without telling them how to do it.

And, man, did they need someone to tell them how to do it. The mine explosion wrecked a salient in the Confederate lines, true, but the Confederates had expected an assault in the area and prepared for it effectively. They responded speedily. After the initial blow, there was a launch window of an hour or less before the Southerners could recover and mount a counter attack. But the assault was slow. And it was made over broken ground. Some Union soldiers stopped to gape at the crater and a few climbed down to dig out some half-buried Confederates. The landscape around the crater was a topological nightmare of which the Union had only the most rudimentary knowledge. Deep trenches in the neighborhood of the crater zig-zagged, running this way and that, some into dead ends. It was like a trap into which some innocent animal had rushed.

I also have to applaud Slotkin not just for his balanced and thoroughly believable story of one of the most brutal and bloody battles of the Civil War -- one of the few in which the bayonet became an important weapon -- but for the effort put into the research. Unless you've done it yourself, it's hard to comprehend how much work it takes to dig up this sort of information, organize it in your mind and on paper, and make it presentable. I've done it a couple of times and respect anyone who can do as good a job as Slotkin has. True, I couldn't follow the various semi-independent movement in the battle, but it's clear that the author did.

The crater outside Petersberg, Virginia, is still there. It's now part of a National Park. But it's been weathered down by 150 years of rain until now it looks like little more than a grassy hollow in the earth. The issues of which the battle was emblematic are disappearing at the same slow rate.

A very detailed book on the Battle of the Crater. One thing is missing. It is a good Order of Battle. Normally I would not even buy a book like this without one, but it was solid book.

After being warned by other reviewers that this book wasn't detailed enough, I read this others but ended up putting them aside halfway through. Slotkin, though, tells a story that keeps a reader interested. If I could only buy one book on the Battle of the Crater, this would be the one.

received in good order