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.] Battle of the Crater; and Experiences of Prison Life. I have been asked by the Society under whose auspices we are gathered to-night to tell you something of my personal experiences in the Battle of the Mine, or of the Crater, as it is sometimes called, and to supplement those experiences with some account of my life in a Southern prison. At the time of the battle I was captain of Company A, Fourth Rhode Island Volunteers Infantry. The regiment to which I belonged was a portion of the Ninth Army Corps, under the command of General Burnside. The battle was fought on the 30th of July, 1864. But some months previous, as far back as January, 1863, the regiment, as also the corps, had been detached from the Army of the Potomac. Burnside, as you know, succeeded McClellan after the battle of Antietam in command of the Army of the Potomac; but he himself was removed from that command in January, 1863, and taken away from the Army of the Potomac. But the regiment to which I belonged 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 rejoin the Ninth Corps, which had been brought back to the Army of the Potomac. We arrived in front of Petersburg, at a point on the line where the Ninth Army Corps was stationed, on the Fourth of July, 1864. The two lines, our line and the enemy's, were at this point very near each other, from one hundred and fifty to three hundred yards apart, the distance varying according to the line of the works. We were ordered to encamp in some woods in the rear of our line of rifle-pits, and not far from them. Shots from the enemy were continually coming into our camp, being fired at the men in the breastworks in front. We had to erect a barricade in the camp to protect ourselves, behind which we lived. Men of course strayed more or less away from the barricade, and every now and then some one would be wounded. Every three or four days it became our turn to take our places in the rifle-pits, where we had to stay forty-eight hours, and sometimes longer. We never went into the rifle-pits without some one being killed or wounded.