Surgeon In Blue

by Scott McGaugh

  Supplies now became a major concern. On June 25, Letterman ordered Surgeon Jeremiah Brinton to Washington to collect more, although there were still some supply wagons from the Sanitary Commission accompanying the Army of the Potomac. Letterman told Brinton to take the supplies he obtained to Frederick, Maryland, for experience had taught him that Frederick would be a good location for a depot should the next battle take place in western Maryland or central Pennsylvania. As Letterman focused on medical logistics for a battle whose location was yet uncertain, he didn’t know he also would have to forge a working relationship with still another commanding officer of the Army of the Potomac.

  As Hooker continued to blame some of his generals for his army’s defeat at Chancellorsville, his pleas for reinforcements from Harpers Ferry were denied. President Lincoln knew that Hooker had lost the confidence of some of his generals. Once again, he was confronted with a badly fractured command structure in the Army of the Potomac, and he wrote Hooker, “I must tell you that I have some painful intimations that some of your corps and division commanders are not giving you their entire confidence.”27

  Like Burnside before him, Hooker also suffered from a poor relationship with crotchety general in chief Henry Halleck. When Halleck refused Hooker’s reinforcement request, Hooker committed the tactical blunder of threatening in a telegram to resign. “I have now imposed upon me, in addition, an enemy in my front of more than my number, I beg to be understood, respectfully but firmly, that I am unable to comply with this condition with the means at my disposal, and earnestly request that I may at once be relieved from the position I occupy,” Hooker wrote.28 Five hours later on the night of June 27, Halleck made it clear who would decide Hooker’s fate when he replied by telegram: “As you were appointed to this command by the President, I have no power to relieve you. Your dispatch has been duly referred for Executive action.”29

  When Halleck showed Hooker’s message to Lincoln, Hooker’s fate was sealed. Lincoln decided to make another change at the top of the Army of the Potomac, practically on the eve of battle. Secretary of War Stanton’s chief of staff, Colonel James Hardie, delivered the news in the middle of the night to Hooker a few miles outside Frederick, where Hooker learned command had been transferred to George Meade. Many considered it a surprise appointment. Lincoln once again had appointed a commander whose leadership style was in stark contrast to his predecessor’s, which the president had found lacking.

  Lincoln replaced the outgoing Hooker with a tall, gaunt, bespectacled man whose glasses sat on a large Roman nose and framed sad eyes weighted down by dark bags. The bachelor Hooker had been replaced by a thoughtful man who wrote long, pensive letters to his wife. Fluent in French and valuing modestly and a reserved decorum, Meade had a leadership style that was nearly bereft of charisma and that sparked little inspiration among the troops.

  Meade had graduated in the middle of his 1831 West Point class and had served in Florida and Massachusetts before resigning from the army in 1836 to become a civil engineer. This son of a wealthy businessman found civilian life unfulfilling, and he returned to the army six years later. He surveyed coastlines, built lighthouses, and had little command experience before joining the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln had placed the leadership of the Army of the Potomac in the hands of a logical man who relied on common sense, was generally cautious, and who was called a “snapping turtle” by subordinates who bore the brunt of his hair-trigger temper.30

  Three days after taking command, Meade followed in the footsteps of his predecessor by limiting Letterman’s ability to treat wounded in the coming battle. Not knowing precisely where Lee’s army was located, he issued an order concentrating much of Letterman’s medical supplies to an area between Union Mills and Westminster, Maryland. Only the bulk of ammunition and ambulances proceeded with the Army of the Potomac in search of Lee.

  It had to appear like déjà vu to Letterman, who wrote, “The expediency of the order I, of course, do not pretend to question, but its effect was to deprive the (medical) department of the appliances necessary for the proper care of the wounded, without which it is impossible to have them properly attended to as it is to fight a battle without ammunition.”31

  On June 29, Meade’s Army of the Potomac marched toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, still unsure of Lee’s tactical plan. After three major battles in nine months that produced more than 38,000 casualties, the army and Letterman’s medical corps proceeded on a collision course with an enemy army for the fourth time in less than a year. He and his medical officers would be confronted by a deluge of human destruction and death in what remains the most deadly battle fought on American soil.

  8

  GETTYSBURG

  “I turned away and cried.”

  Grit and sweat coated many of Jonathan Letterman’s surgeons as they marched with approximately 95,000 men northwest across Maryland in late June 1863. Billowing clouds of dust marked the Army of the Potomac’s path toward battle. General George Meade, pushing his men up to thirty miles a day and sometimes through the night, had to find General Lee first before he could stop his advance into the North. Exhaustion became Letterman’s enemy days before Lee’s 70,000 men opened fire.

  Frederick, Maryland, would play a key role in the coming confrontation regardless of the battlefield’s precise location. Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville had demonstrated the need for reliable rail lines for pre-battle supply as well as postbattle evacuation. The quartermaster corps remained dependent on rail, while relief organizations such as the Sanitary Commission and United States Christian Commission stood ready to provide tons of needed supplies if reliable rail routes could be protected. Otherwise, delivery by wagons on rutted roads would be agonizingly slow. After two years of battle, the Army of the Potomac remained dependent on the supplies provided by these private organizations.

  On June 28, on orders from Letterman, Brinton arrived in Frederick with twenty-five wagonloads of supplies. Accompanying the army’s headquarters group, Letterman had left the day before, headed for Taneytown, Maryland, approximately twenty-five miles northwest of Frederick and near the Pennsylvania border. Meanwhile, the army itself, grouped into three massive wings, moved northward toward the state border. Brinton and his wagons stayed in Frederick as the primary supply depot in support of the army’s northerly advance.

  Although General Hooker had briefed Meade shortly after Meade replaced him, Meade urgently needed field intelligence in order to reposition his army to protect both Baltimore and Washington while tracking Lee in search of an opportunity to attack. The pressure became evident in a man inexperienced at commanding an army. Meade began to lose sleep, miss meals, and frequently change his mind.1 In drawing him farther and farther away from Baltimore and Washington, Lee hoped to neutralize the Army of the Potomac’s manpower and firepower superiority with an aggressive offensive strategy on a battlefield of his choosing.

  On June 29, Meade sent a dispatch to General in Chief Halleck, informing him that as Meade’s army advanced toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he remained mindful of protecting routes to Washington, Baltimore, and Harrisburg. His infantry and cavalry corps were at various locations in Pennsylvania and Maryland and had not yet consolidated. As he searched for Lee, he considered Big Pipe Creek, about fifteen miles south of Gettysburg, a possible point of engagement or a fallback position.

  On June 30, as more of Meade’s units crossed into Pennsylvania, an army circular ordered soldiers to draw three days’ rations. This represented the first real evidence that Meade’s chase of Lee was about to end, and possibly the first concrete indication received by the medical department of where the battle might erupt. That same day, a cavalry division led by General John Buford encountered Confederate troops near the crossroads town of Gettysburg. Buford established defensive blocking positions west and north of Gettysburg. That night he informed General John Reynolds, commander of the First Corps located eight miles south of Gettysburg, of the actions he had taken. Reynold
s approved Buford’s troop deployment and made plans to advance toward Buford. Meade, and Letterman, knew battle was near.

  Generals Lee and Meade had positioned their military firepower on a battlefield chessboard with Gettysburg at the center. While Meade anticipated the battle would take place probably south of Gettysburg, the precise location was impossible to predict, and Letterman had to factor in that uncertainty during the few days he had to prepare. He commanded approximately 650 doctors, deployed among more than 225 regiments, and controlled approximately 1,000 ambulances, one per hundred men.

  By now, Letterman’s ambulance system had become battle tested, highly organized, and likely was the least of Letterman’s concerns. A corps chief of ambulances summarized the state of Letterman’s ambulance organization, noting each division possessed a train of forty two-horse ambulances, several supply wagons, and a forge wagon for repairs. The total medical force for the corps included thirteen officers, 350 men, more than 300 horses, approximately 100 ambulances, and about a dozen supply and forge wagons. The ambulances had seats for the lightly wounded that could be adjusted to allow three men to lie horizontally. A water keg was fastened to the back of the ambulance; beef stock, bandages, and other supplies were stored under the front seat; and a canvas stretcher was hung on each side.2

  However, as Meade had moved his troops toward Gettysburg, he restricted the advancement of medical supplies, following Union army doctrine that gave precedence to ammunition and commissary over medical supplies and general baggage. Ammunition and food supplies had to be at the front of the line as Meade searched for Lee and positioned his corps for imminent battle. Letterman would have to wait until the battlefield was known and established before completing his preparation.

  Meanwhile, Letterman shifted the army’s supply depot from Frederick to the railhead at Westminster, about twenty-five miles from Gettysburg. That brought Letterman’s supplies closer, but still miles away from potential battle. A single railroad line to Baltimore, nearly fifty miles away with no sidings or telegraph, served the supply depot. An army that required 700 tons of supplies daily became dependent on a single railroad and wagon trains that faced a long trip from Baltimore through Philadelphia to the Gettysburg area.

  The crack of a carbine cut through the thick, humid air and reached Gettysburg at about 7:30 a.m. on July 1. Confederate General Henry Heth’s lead elements collided with Buford’s defensive line west of Gettysburg. A three-hour battle ensued. Wagons carried Union casualties to field hospitals established by Letterman’s surgeons in Gettysburg churches and public buildings but soon spilled over into Pennsylvania College, the Lutheran Theological Seminary, High Street School, the courthouse, and several homes. The battle of Gettysburg had begun, sooner than Meade or Lee had anticipated.

  A second wave of Confederates attacked Union defenders at 2:00 p.m., this time from the north under the command of General Richard Ewell. As the battle raged, Confederate general Jubal Early launched an attack on the Union’s Eleventh Corps from the northeast. The Union’s infantry line began to collapse. By late afternoon it became clear Union reinforcements could not reach the fighting north of Gettysburg in time to avoid a rout by Lee. Union general Oliver Howard ordered a Union retreat to Cemetery Hill south of town.

  The enemy fire dissolved an orderly retreat by Union defenders into a chaotic flight back through Gettysburg and south a short distance to Cemetery Hill. Letterman’s ambulances, which had efficiently brought the wounded into Gettysburg, now faced a frantic evacuation of the same casualties out of Gettysburg to hospitals established on dozens of farms south of town. Hundreds of wounded soldiers had to be left behind.

  As the first day’s battle drifted south of Gettysburg, some late-arriving Union army units marched “double quick” toward Cemetery Ridge. The exhausting advance took a heavy toll on men who had yet to see the enemy. “Soon men began to stagger from the ranks, and fall by the wayside. Every piece of woods through which we passed was filled with prostrate men from previous columns; and others all along the roadside, with no one to care for them, lay dying, and not a few dead,” wrote one officer.3

  When Confederate general Ewell declined to press the Rebel advantage with an attack on Cemetery Hill, the first day’s battle ended. As Meade’s commanders consolidated the Union position on the nearby Cemetery Ridge with reinforcements late in the day, Letterman’s medical corps had already been faced with 4,550 wounded men. Some had been abandoned in the frantic retreat out of Gettysburg. Many had made it to Cemetery Hill before being taken to field hospitals at White Church and the George Spangler farm. Others remained at makeshift aid stations.

  Meade, and presumably Letterman, had not learned of the fighting until 11:30 a.m., when the first messenger from the battlefield reached the general. Reports came in during the afternoon as the fighting slowly moved south, reaching Gettysburg about 4:00 p.m., and farther south as the lead Union units retreated toward Cemetery Ridge. A few hours’ fighting had proven that a great battle would take place on the outskirts of the small market town of 2,400 residents that sat at the intersection of twelve major roads.

  Both armies concentrated their forces under a full moon the night of July 1. At approximately midnight, Meade arrived at a small, white farmhouse on Taneytown Road, about a mile south of Gettysburg. Letterman typically established his headquarters at or adjacent to his commanding officer’s base. Meade’s diminutive farmhouse was divided into two ground-floor rooms and a small loft. A barn, about thirty yards away, towered over a peach and apple orchard. Regiments of exhausted soldiers marched through adjacent rolling fields of corn, wheat, barley, and rye nearly ready for harvest. They tethered their horses to split-rail fences in anticipation of battle.4

  After midnight, Letterman rode down the Taneytown Road, canvassing the location of various hospitals. Now a battle-tested veteran, he knew how an unexpected enemy advance could threaten hospitals once thought to be outside the enemy’s reach. Were any of his hospitals potentially vulnerable? What if Lee broke through the Union line after daybreak? And where might that breach occur? Who would be threatened? Letterman advised at least one hospital to relocate immediately because he expected the enemy to begin shelling the area at dawn.5

  That night, Lee’s and Meade’s troops established their lines along two parallel arcs south of Gettysburg. Confederate troops were closest to Gettysburg, having pushed Meade farther south. Lee deployed his men along Seminary Ridge southwest of town. Their line ran generally north along the ridge up to the southwestern edge of Gettysburg, then east along the southern edge of town, and then bent south to the Culp’s Hill area. Inside that arc, Meade’s smaller arc, shaped like a fish hook, began in the southwest in the vicinity of two hills, Little Round Top and Round Top, extended generally north toward Gettysburg along Cemetery Ridge, turned east at Cemetery Hill, and extended to the east before turning south at Culp’s Hill. The two massive armies had squared off against one another in parallel arcs, about a mile apart, each hugging a ridge line and daring the other to attack.

  At approximately 1:00 p.m. on July 2, Lee committed his army. He ordered General James Longstreet to march his two divisions southward from Herr Ridge to roll up the Union left flank. Then on his own initiative, Union general Daniel Sickles pushed his men forward at the southwestern end of the Union arc in search of more defensible ground. After stopping about two-thirds of a mile in front of the Union line, Sickels’s men had become vulnerable on two sides.

  Longstreet engaged Sickles’s men about 3:30 p.m.with artillery, after taking several hours to get into position. Waves of Confederates attacked the thin Union line arrayed from a rocky outcropping known as Devil’s Den, through a nineteen-acre wheat field, to the peach orchard where the Union line bent northward on the Emmitsburg Road. The Second Corps’ General Winfield Hancock had thinned his Union forces in order to reinforce Sickles to the southwest. Hancock then rebuilt his line by sending exhausted troops that had just reached Gettysburg directly into battle. Som
e of the most intense fighting of the Civil War ensued. One regiment from Minnesota suffered a casualty rate of 80 percent.

  Confederates also raced up the slopes of Little Round Top where Union defenders stubbornly held their ground. Aid stations were established on the back sides of hills and then abandoned when the enemy gained ground. Sickles shifted several units of his Third Corps to blunt the assault. Brutal fighting ensued around Little Round Top and a nearby wheat field as thousands fell dead and wounded.

  The battlefield soon thickened with smoke in the still air as Letterman’s ambulance corps sought makeshift aid stations, sometimes established in pockets of rocks fifty yards from the fighting. When the smoke thinned or volleys of fire paused, ambulance drivers spotted the stations’ plain red or yellow flags and could hear the cries of injured men, bleeding and desperate for evacuation to a field hospital.

  Longstreet’s attack became the opening foray of what developed into a three-pronged Confederate assault on July 2. While Longstreet pressed the Union left flank, General Ewell attacked the Union right on Culp’s Hill to keep Meade from shifting units westward toward Longstreet. Darkness halted the assault before the troops could become fully engaged. About 8 p.m. the Confederates attacked the center of Meade’s forces near Cemetery Hill. The casualty toll mounted as the Union line held.

  July 2, 1863, became one of the bloodiest days of the Civil War by the time the fighting ended. The Confederate flanking attack on the Union left had gained some ground; its assault on the Union right had gained partial control of Culp’s Hill; and the attack in the center of the Union line had nearly been successful but failed to generate a strategic advantage. Meade had positioned reinforcements quickly, while Lee’s commanders faced longer realignment distances and suffered from faulty coordination and communication.