Here formation became impossible. An aide was sent in hot haste to General Ledlie, for his own fame somewhat too securely placed in the rear. Ledlie sent back word to Marshall and Bartlett, leading, that they must advance and assault at once; it was General Burnside’s order. The aide says: “This message was delivered. But the firing on the crater now was incessant, and it was as heavy a fire of canister as was ever poured continuously upon a single objective point. It was as utterly impracticable to re-form a brigade in that crater as it would be to marshal bees into line after upsetting the hive; and equally as impracticable to re-form outside of the crater, under the severe fire in front and rear, as it would be to hold a dress parade in front of a charging enemy.” So far from the pit being cleared, it received fresh accessions. Griffin’s brigade, coming up, tried to pass by the right, but entangled in a maze of grey earthworks, trenches, traverses, and disordered by the searching fire, it too fell aside and sank into the hollow made by the mine. “Every organization melted away, as soon as it entered this hole in the ground, into a mass of human beings clinging by toes and heels to the almost perpendicular sides. If a man was shot on the crest he fell and rolled to the bottom of the pit.” The blue Third Division, arriving, attacked the manned works to the left, took and for a little held them, then was driven back. Haskell’s grey battery of sixteen guns on the Jerusalem Plank Road came greatly into action. Lee and Beauregard were watching from the Gee house. Mahone, of A.P. Hill’s Corps, was coming up with three brigades, coming fast.... The coloured division of the Ninth Army corps had a song,— “We looks lak men er-marchin’ on, We looks lak men ob war—” They had sung it sitting on the ground around camp-fires the night before when they had been told that they would lead the charge—the great charge that was going to take Blandford Church and Cemetery, and then Petersburg, and then Richmond, and was going to end the war and make all coloured people free, and give to every one a cabin, forty acres, and a mule, and the deathless friendship of the Northern people. “We looks lak men er-marchin’ on, We looks lak men ob war—” They had not led that grotesquely halted charge, but now they, too, were required for victims by the crater. Burnside sent an order, “The coloured division to advance at all hazards.”