author
Sumner U. (Sumner Upham) Shearman
1839–1914
A Civil War veteran, lawyer, politician, and later clergyman, this author wrote from hard personal experience. His best-known work gives a vivid first-person account of the Battle of the Crater and the grim months he spent as a prisoner of war.
1 Audiobook
Battle of the Crater; and Experiences of Prison Life
by Sumner U. (Sumner Upham) Shearman
About the author
Born in Rhode Island in 1839, Sumner Upham Shearman served in the Union army during the American Civil War. He was a captain in the 4th Rhode Island Infantry and later drew on those experiences to write Battle of the Crater and Experiences of Prison Life, a firsthand memoir of combat and captivity.
Available library and public-domain records describe him as a man who moved through several callings over the course of his life. After the war, he was active in Rhode Island politics and studied law; in later years he became a clergyman and lived in Massachusetts.
Shearman died in 1914. Today he is remembered mainly for the clarity and immediacy of his war writing, which preserves one soldier's view of a brutal turning point in the Civil War and the suffering that followed.