Weisiger’s infantry led the way as the two brigades climbed the east side of the ravine, reaching the Jerusalem Plank Road south of the Blandford Cemetery and north of the Crater. Mahone met them there and sent his old brigade in column east through a covered way across the road.

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Fifty yards east of the road the men moved south and entered another ravine that ran parallel to the Crater and Confederate trench lines then held by the Federals. The Old Dominion boys had advanced unseen to within 200 yards of their foes.

Mahone wanted to bring Wright’s Brigade into line, but realized he could not wait as the Union troops were about to surge out of the Crater. He therefore ordered Weisiger to lead his brigade in an unsupported charge.

Before the men of the 12th Virginia moved off, they received a somber address from Captain Richard Jones, who was leading the regiment: ‘Men you are called upon to charge and recapture our works, now in the hands of the enemy. They are 100 yards distant. The enemy can fire only one volley before their works are reached. Rise and move forward at the command at double quick and yell. Everybody is expected to do their duty in this crisis.’ It was approximately 9 a.m.

Weisiger readied his men. The 6th Virginia was on the right, the 12th Virginia on the left flank, with the 16th, 41st and 61st Virginia in the center. Company officers passed the word to fix bayonets. At 9:30 a.m. Mahone ordered Weisiger to start the attack. The troops sprung to their feet, and the 200-yard-long, 20-foot-deep Southern line went screaming toward the Crater.

‘The [Union] battle flags seemed almost thick as cornstalks in a row,’ remembered a stunned private in the 12th. ‘The whole face of the earth, including the ditch which our men formerly occupied, fairly teemed with the enemy.’

Heavy Union gunfire forced the attackers to veer away, and the Southerners first struck the enemy-held trenches north of the Crater. For an hour the Virginians fought alone in furious hand-to-hand combat and gradually cleared the Union troops from the trenches. By 10:30 a.m., Wright’s Brigade of Georgia regiments had joined the fray. Also deflected by the rifle fire coming from the Crater, they too found themselves huddled in the ditches north of the Crater with Weisiger’s men. The Confederates then slowly pushed their way to the rim of the Crater and got into a severe firefight with Burnside’s IX Corps soldiers, including United States Colored Troops. Racial hatred flared, and some of Weisiger’s men shouted ‘No quarter!’ when they saw their USCT opponents.

The Crater became a fury of smoke and deafening noise from rifle discharges and artillery shells hurled by hand. Bayonet-tipped muskets were thrown as spears. Portable Coehorn mortars were brought up by the Rebels to rain bombs onto the struggling Yankees. Yet the Union mass in the Crater held on, the black and white troops resisting every Rebel effort to push them out of their manmade hole.

Mahone needed more men to win the fight, and he rushed up Brig. Gen. Sanders’ Alabama regiments. The new arrivals launched a spirited attack that ended enemy resistance. The Confederates took full possession of the Crater and the field works surrounding it by 1 p.m.

The Battle of the Crater cost Mahone’s old regiments more lives than had any other major battle fought since Grant crossed the Rapidan River on May 4. Out of about 1,500 total Confederate casualties — 361 killed, 727 wounded and 403 missing — Weisiger’s Brigade sustained 84 killed, 117 wounded and 14 captured. David Weisiger was one of the injured, though he would recover. His temporary rank of brigadier general was made permanent from the date of the battle, and in some circles he was known as the ‘Hero of the Crater.’ On the other side of the ledger, the Federals sustained 504 dead, 1,881 wounded and 1,413 captured or missing.

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