Pvt James E. Mitchell, CSA

Pvt. James E. Mitchell, Co. C, 11th North Carolina Infantry
Early on the morning of April 2, 1865, the 11th North Carolina Infantry braced to meet the 3rd Division of the VI Corps, Army of the Potomac. Defending the earthworks running through John Hart’s farm, and on land now preserved by Pamplin Historical Park, they received support to their right from the 52nd North Carolina. The other three regiments of Gen. William MacRae’s Brigade were still detached at White Oak Road to bolster defenses there.

One of the young soldiers manning the line that morning was the 11th North Carolina’s Pvt. James E. Mitchell. Born in 1846, in Bertie County, Mitchell was only 17 when he enlisted as a substitute on April 22, 1862. As was often the case with new soldiers, Mitchell suffered through a period of illness in the fall of 1862. He experienced another bout of sickness in the summer of 1863, causing to him miss the Gettysburg Campaign. Mitchell had the misfortune of becoming a prisoner of war at Bristoe Station on October 14, 1863. After spending several months at Maryland’s Point Lookout prison, Mitchell received a parole and exchange in the spring of 1864.

The 11th North Carolina saw hard fighting in the Overland Campaign. At the Battle of Cold Harbor, Gen. William Kirkland received a wound in the right thigh, and thus command of the brigade went to William MacRae, who then led it through the end of the war. MacRae’s Brigade and the 11th continued to battle during the Petersburg Campaign as part of Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill’s Corps. The fall and winter of 1864 found MacRae’s Brigade settled into a section of the earthworks protecting the Boydton Plank Road and Southside Railroad supply routes. The piece of ground they defended for several months ran from a branch of Arthur’s Swamp through the yard of the John Hart farm and continued on through the Dinwiddie County fields to the southwest.

Remembering that April 2, 1865, morning, the 11th North Carolina’s Col. W. J. Martin and Capt. E. R. Outlaw, wrote that, “the men were placed five or six feet apart. Breaking through the line at the point of assault, the Federals swung around to the left and swept down the trenches, turning our own artillery against us as it was captured.”

During the chaos and confusion, Pvt. Mitchell fled in retreat. Initially able to avoid capture, he was not ultimately successful and fell into Union hands at the Southside Railroad. Marched to City Point and then transported by ship to Hart’s Island in New York harbor, Mitchell pledged the oath of allegiance and received his release on June 17, 1865.

Mitchell returned to his native Bertie County and began working as a clerk. In the fall of 1869 he married, and by a decade later he was laboring as a merchant and farmer. James and Mary Evelyn Mitchell had at least four children. Mitchell died in 1896 at about age 50, and was buried in the Cashie Baptist Church Cemetery.