SAPPERS AND THE CIVIL WAR: TACTICAL USE OF TUNNEL-MINING IN THE U.S. IN THE 1860'S

Use of both offensive and defensive tunnel-mining activities as tactical elements of warfare was not a new idea even as early as the U.S. Civil war, but seems to have been incorporated into Civil War military doctrine in an ad hoc way, much as it appears to have been similarly incorporated in previous and subsequent warfare worldwide. Two of the greatest military thinkers of all time, Sun Tzu, and Carl von Clausewitz, writing nearly 2000 years apart, pay little or no attention to the underground environment as a legitimate space from which to conduct warfare, yet military strategists throughout time have often reverted to using tunnel-mining techniques to tactically upset the balance of power.

The U.S. Civil War was no exception. Many battles involved the use of tunneling and "mining." The two most referenced battles during which tunnel-mining played a pivotal role were General Grant's siege of Vicksburg (19 May to 4 July, 1863) and General Burnside's siege of Petersburg (June 1864-April 1865). During the latter campaign General Lee ordered counter tunnel-mining activity in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent successful mining on behalf of the Union Forces. Other less well-known battles involved tunnel-mining including General Nathaniel P. Banks' siege of the Confederate garrison at Port Hudson (Hickey's Landing) Mississippi on 27 May 1863. Details of these and other tunnel-mining activities including the role that local geology played and the improvised techniques required to successfully complete the tunnels will be discussed at length. Key to all such tunnel-mining activities was the experience, energy, and professional competence of the sappers, those mostly anonymous soldiers who dug the tunnels and mined the galleries under the most adverse of conditions.