etc. Excitement chiefly over we marched about 30 rods to a strip in of clearing where we found a division of Hill’s corps in line of battle of receive us. One said to me they had been watching for us all the afternoon.”
Northup and other Union prisoners marched to Orange Court House, then Gordonsville, and from there took trains to Amelia, Lynchburg, Danville, and ultimately Andersonville. Unlike so many others, Northup survived Andersonville. He received a discharge from the army in June 1865. His soldier experiences are available in his book, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons in the South in 1864, published in 1904.
The assaults by the Army of the Potomac at Spotsylvania Court House on May 10 and May 12 netted thousands of Confederate prisoners. Included among those taken on May 12 were Maj. Gen. Edward “Allegheny” Johnson and Brig. Gen. George “Maryland” Steuart. More commonly captured were the multitude of enlisted men and noncommissioned officers throughout the almost two-week fight at Spotsylvania. One such soldier was Sgt. Miles Sherrill, Company A, 12th North Carolina Infantry.
Sherrill, from Catawba County, North Carolina, enlisted at age 19 in 1861. The 12th North Carolina fought in the Seven Days’ battles, South Mountain, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness. Other than a few hospital visits for illness, Sgt. Sherrill went unscathed. However, his previous good fortune ran out at Spotsylvania on May 9, 1864.
During an assault with Gen. D.R. Johnston’s Brigade, Sherrill’s regiment ended up flanked by the Union IX Corps. In the fight, Sherrill received a grievous wound to the left knee. According to his service records, a shell fragment caused the damage. Sherrill remembered years later: “As our troops fell back, Sergeant Silas Smyre and Corporal E. G. Bost endeavored to carry me from the battlefield. They were so exhausted from marching and fighting that they could not hold me up so as to prevent the crushed leg from dragging on the ground. To protect them from being captured, I begged them to leave me to my fate.” Without water, due to a bullet hole through his canteen, Sherrill lay on the field until overpowering thirst and the fear of bleeding to death caused him to call to the enemy and surrender.
Operated on the following day, enduring an amputation procedure under chloroform that took his left leg off at the thigh, Sherrill remained in a field hospital for “two or three days” until taken on an excruciating ambulance ride from the field hospital to a landing on the Potomac River. He then traveled by boat to Alexandria. Sherill spent about three months recovering at the Marshall House hospital, the site of Elmer Ellsworth’s death in 1861. Sherrill next spent time at Lincoln Hospital in Washington City before he received crutches and a transfer to Old Capital Prison. In November 1864, Sherrill received another transfer, this time to Elmira prison in New York state. Fortunately for Sherill, his stay at Elmira proved rather short as he was formally exchanged in February 1865, and returned home. Sherrill eventually became the North Carolina state librarian. He died in 1916. His account is available in his brief memoir, A Soldier’s Story: Prison Life and Other Incidents in the War of 1861– 1865, which was published in 1904.
Tim Talbottisthe Chief Administrative Officerwiththe Central Virginia Battlefields Trust.
