Civil War Memoir Seth Lovell Company A, 140th New York Infantry

The following is from Grand Army of the Republic~Department of New York~Personal War Sketches of the Members of Charles P. Sprout Post No. 76, of Lockport

Sprout who was with the New York 28th Infantry was killed in Action at Cedar Mountain, Virginia on August 9, 1862

Seth M. Lovell
Born Tompkins, New York
Company “A”, 140th New York Infantry

…Rappahannock Station was the first battle in which I was engaged. I was afterward at Mine Run, Centerville and the Wilderness. I was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness…. Was never in hospital, except as a prisoner at Lynchburg…having been captured by the Rebel Army, May 5, 1864.

The day after I was wounded and left on the field in hands of the enemy. Was taken about three miles from battlefield to a place in [the] Woods near Robinson’s Tavern on the Pike, where we lay for one month, thence taken to Orange Court House—Gordonsville, Danville, thence to Macon, August, and Andersonville, Ga., where I remained until November 1864, then taken to Florence S.C. Left Andersonville on account of Sherman’s Army coming near. Was paroled from Florence S.C. with 12,000 sick and convalescents in December 1864, too sick to know date….

Most important events in my experience—Battle of Wilderness and incarceration as a Prisoner of War in the different Earthly hells where we were left to die like sheep with the rot. The most fearful record was that of my prison life in Andersonville, where the average death rate reached 125 per day, through the hot season. The life here of a wounded prisoner begs a description, and no person who participated in the horrors of Andersonville can ever forget, neither can he describe adequately to those not having shared the same fate.