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Bross’s charge was already stalling and beginning to fall back when Mahone’s line bulldozed into it. The Confederates took heavy casualties from a volley from the cavalier trench before rolling over it as well with bayonet and gun butt, taking few prisoners. As they pushed relentlessly forward into the maze of trenches north of the crater panic set in among the disorganized Union troops.
Retreat back across the shot-swept ground to the main Union lines seemed like certain death, so most of the dieorganized and largely leaderless Union attackers packed themselves into the perceived safety of the crater.
Mahone’s men were alreading arriving at the edge of the crater. While his first attack came came up on the northwest side, Mahone sent the remainder of Hall’s Georgia brigade to the south side. Sharpshooters lined the rim in between the two. Soon the Union attackers had been pushed back into the crater itself and a few trenches to the south.
A brutal stalemate developed. A small number of Rebels were inflicting heavy losses on a much larger but badly disorganized mass of Yankees whose very numbers had become an obstacle. But the Federals still threw back Confederate probes, holding the perimeter of their smoking hole. By early afternoon word reached the crater that Meade had ordered Burnside to withdraw. Circumstances of which he left to his commanders on the scene; they agreed that their only chance was to wait until darkness to make a break across the deadly no-mans-land.
But Mahone had one more card to play. His last brigade, Alabamans under Colonel John C.C. Sanders, had come up. Reinforced by North and South Carolina regiments on both flanks and supported by an artillery barrage, they would launch an attack to clear out the crater.