PERSONAL NARRATIVES
OF EVENTS IN THE
War of the Rebellion,
BEING PAPERS READ BEFORE THE
RHODE ISLAND SOLDIERS AND SAILORS
HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Fifth Series.—No. 8.
PROVIDENCE:
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY.
1898.
SNOW & FARNHAM, PRINTERS.
BATTLE OF THE CRATER
AND
Experiences of Prison Life.
BY
SUMNER U. SHEARMAN,
[Late Captain, Fourth Rhode Island Volunteers.]
PROVIDENCE:
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY.
1898.
[Edition limited to two hundred and fifty copies.]
I have been asked by the Society under whoseauspices we are gathered to-night to tell you somethingof my personal experiences in the Battle of theMine, or of the Crater, as it is sometimes called, andto supplement those experiences with some account ofmy life in a Southern prison.
At the time of the battle I was captain of CompanyA, Fourth Rhode Island Volunteers Infantry. Theregiment to which I belonged was a portion of theNinth Army Corps, under the command of GeneralBurnside. The battle was fought on the 30th ofJuly, 1864. But some months previous, as far backas January, 1863, the regiment, as also the corps, hadbeen detached from the Army of the Potomac. Burnside,as you know, succeeded McClellan after the battleof Antietam in command of the Army of the[6]Potomac; but he himself was removed from that commandin January, 1863, and taken away from theArmy of the Potomac. But the regiment to which Ibelonged ultimately became separated from the corps,and was on detached duty in the city of Norfolk, Virginia,and afterwards at Point Lookout, Maryland,where we were when the order came for us to rejointhe Ninth Corps, which had been brought back to theArmy of the Potomac.
We arrived in front of Petersburg, at a point onthe line where the Ninth Army Corps was stationed,on the Fourth of July, 1864. The two lines, our lineand the enemy's, were at this point very near eachother, from one hundred and fifty to three hundredyards apart, the distance varying according to theline of the works. We were ordered to encamp insome woods in the rear of our line of rifle-pits, andnot far from them.
Shots from the enemy were continually cominginto our camp, being fired at the men in the breastworksin front. We had to erect a barricade in thecamp to protect ourselves, behind which we lived.Men of course strayed more or less away from the[7]barricade, and every now and then some one would bewounded. Every three or four days it became ourturn to take our places in the rifle-pits, where we hadto stay forty-eight hours, and sometimes longer. Wenever went into the rifle-pits without some one beingkilled or wounded.
While we were encamped in this way, we heard ofthe plan of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants, ofthe Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Inf