After running a half-hearted campaign and losing to Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election, General George McClellan and his family spent several years traveling throughout Europe. He returned in 1868 and began a prosperous career as an engineer before becoming president of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway. He returned to politics in 1873 and was elected governor of New Jersey. He wrote and traveled extensively in the final years of his life. He died in 1885 from heart failure, believing much of the criticism of his leadership in the Civil War was unfounded.
McClellan’s replacement, General Ambrose Burnside, served in the army for the remainder of the Civil War without significant distinction. He also rebounded from losing command of the Army of the Potomac to achieve political success. In 1866, Burnside was elected governor of Rhode Island. Eight years later, the Republican was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served as chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor. He died while holding that office in 1881.
Burnside’s replacement, General Joseph Hooker, fared poorly in the years following his removal from the Army of the Potomac as it approached Gettysburg. He was a corps commander in the Atlanta campaign before suffering a stroke in November 1865. He recovered enough to return to duty but suffered another stroke before resigning from the military in 1868. He traveled despite reliance on a cane and physical assistance during his trips. Some believed the term “hooker” came from Hooker’s lifestyle, although there is evidence of its use prior to his army command. Hooker died in 1878 from what his physician called paralysis of the heart.
General George Meade also suffered from poor health following his command at Gettysburg. When Ulysses S. Grant was appointed general in chief of the Union army in 1864 and established his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, Grant essentially took over Meade’s command. Meade retained nominal authority of his army until the conclusion of the war, but suffered from bouts of pneumonia and jaundice in 1864 and 1865. Despite chronically poor health, he held several post– Civil War commands before collapsing and dying in November 1872. An autopsy revealed an enlarged liver that showed scar tissue on a path similar to a bullet wound Meade had suffered in the war.
The Army of the Potomac’s debacle in the 1862 Peninsula Campaign led to more than Letterman taking medical command. President Lincoln named Henry Halleck his general in chief to coordinate the Union’s armies. Halleck became an outspoken critic of what he considered an overly cautious McClellan. As Letterman worked to develop his battlefield care system between battles, Halleck often urged McClellan to take the fight to the enemy more aggressively. Later, Halleck was accused of the same timidity by President Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton. Toward the end of the war, Halleck’s authority had been eviscerated to the point that he believed he was little more than an advisor to the president and secretary of war. After falling out of favor in Washington, Halleck transferred to the Department of the Pacific in San Francisco following the war. He helped Letterman win his race for coroner before transferring to the Department in the South. He died at his post in Louisville in 1872, leaving an estate of more than $400,000.
POSTWAR LIFE
Thousands of physicians benefited from the experience they gained in the Civil War. Contract and volunteer surgeons returned to their private lives, while the careers of military officers took many paths after the army demobilized. Some of the physicians Letterman worked with and relied upon became leaders in their specialties, while others completed their medical careers in relative anonymity.
John Shaw Billings was one of hundreds of surgeons at Gettysburg. Battle so exhausted Billings that he took a month’s sick leave before returning to the Army of the Potomac. In late 1864, he transferred to the surgeon general’s office. He became a widely renowned medical administrator in the years following the Civil War and built a medical library that became one of the largest in the world. He helped design and establish the Johns Hopkins Medical School and in 1883 became curator of the Army Medical Museum. Following his retirement from the military, Shaw led the creation of the New York Public Library. He died in 1913, the day before his seventy-fifth birthday.
Dr. William W. Keen had recently graduated from medical school when he reported to Letterman in late 1862. Keen treated hundreds of casualties following Gettysburg and within a year had become a battle-toughened surgeon. He pursued his medical education in Europe following the war and became one of the first surgeons in the United States to adopt antiseptic techniques. Many acknowledged him as the first brain surgeon following a successful brain tumor surgery in 1887. A prolific writer, he published more than 650 articles, editorials, and books. He wrote and updated medical textbooks and became the Civil War’s most internationally recognized surgeon.
Letterman’s counterpart in General Robert E. Lee’s army, medical director LaFayette Guild, followed a path similar to Letterman. Guild graduated from Jefferson Medical College one year ahead of Letterman, enlisted in the army, and served at several outposts. He was stationed in California at the outset of the Civil War and was dismissed from the army when the Alabama native refused to take the oath of allegiance. Guild and Letterman met personally to resolve the stalemate over returning more than 1,000 wounded Union soldiers in the aftermath of Chancellorsville. Guild supervised the evacuation of moderately ambulatory Confederate wounded after Gettysburg, while Letterman organized Union hospitals in the area to treat thousands of wounded men from both sides. Following the war, Guild moved to San Francisco and worked for the Board of Health as a city and county hospital visiting surgeon near the end of Letterman’s second term as coroner. Guild died on July 4, 1870, the eighth anniversary of Letterman taking medical command of the Army of the Potomac, at forty-four years of age.
Dr. Bernard John Dowling Irwin held a number of medical posts following his opportunistic use of abandoned tents as the first field hospital near the battlefield at Shiloh. Letterman expanded on that concept and systemized it, creating a field hospital structure that provided a critical link between aid station and general hospital. Following the war, Irwin remained in the army, serving at West Point and in the Departments of Dakota and Arizona. He retired in 1894, wrote a number of articles, and rarely mentioned the Medal of Honor he had received prior to the war for bravery in an Indian battle against the Apaches near Fort Buchanan. He was buried at West Point after dying at his vacation home in Canada in 1917.
CALIFORNIA CALLING
Jonathan Letterman shocked his friends and colleagues when he resigned from the army in 1864 to accept a job offer in a field in which he was completely inexperienced: oil exploration. But railroad baron Thomas Scott wasn’t looking for an experienced wildcatter. He could hire oil rig crews from Pennsylvania. He needed a proven organizer and administrator to build a company and oil-drilling operation in Southern California. In addition, Letterman knew the region from his posting at Fort Tejon. The venture failed in little more than a year amid accusations of fraudulent oil samples. Scott spent many years following the Civil War in court, defending his group of promoters against unhappy stockholders.
Benjamin Silliman, the nationally recognized expert whose reports had painted bright California oil prospects, suffered a tarnished reputation when it became clear that his samples had been tainted by an unknown party. Other mine prospecting cases followed, in which Silliman was accused of overstating reserves in various mining ventures. Like Scott, he spent years defending himself, largely against Josiah Whitney and other critics in the scientific community.
California state geologist Josiah Whitney, who was skeptical of oil reserves in California, later established a school of mines at Harvard and was a professor there the rest of his life. He was a founding member of the National Academy of Sciences. His skepticism proved unfounded, when California became a major oil producer by the time he died in 1896. Stephen Peckham, the chemist who became skeptical of the samples allegedly collected in the region he and Letterman were drilling, became an academic following his brief oil explor
ation career. He taught chemistry, physics, and geology at universities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Minnesota. One of the nation’s leading experts on bitumens, he wrote an exhaustive analysis on the production, manufacture, and potential of oil and related products. Letterman’s assistant superintendent, James De Barth Shorb, abandoned the oil industry shortly after Letterman, married into a wealthy local family, and went into the vineyard business.
Jonathan Letterman’s fate, of course, was born of the battlefield. It defined his life and its final chapters. He, too, became a casualty of war and likely would have agreed with the reflections of General George McClellan, his first commanding officer and his friend, when McClellan wrote his wife in 1862:
“I am tired of the sickening sight of the battlefield
with its mangled corpses & poor suffering wounded.
Victory has no charms for me when purchased at such cost.”3
NOTES
Introduction
1. Jonathan Letterman,Medical Recollections of the Army of the Potomac (New York:Appleton & Company, 1866), 100.
2. George Stevens,Three Years in the Sixth Corps (Albany, NY: S. R. Gray, 1866), 154.
3. Ibid., 340–341.
4. Anne Leland, American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Sept. 15, 2009).
Chapter 1
1. Benjamin Cook,History of the Twelfth Massachusetts Volunteers (Webster) Regiment (Boston: Twelfth (Webster) Regiment Association, 1882), 73.
2. Blaine Ewing, Canonsburg Centennial, 1802–1902 (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Printing Company, 1903), 72.
3. Ibid., 73.
4. Boyd Crumrine,History of Washington County, Pennsylvania with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men, (Philadelphia: L. H. Leverts & Co., 1882), 601–611.
5. Alfred Creigh,History of Washington County (Harrisburg, PA: B. Singerly Printer, 1871), 221.
6. Extended correspondence with Canonsburg historian James Herron of the Jefferson College Historical Society. Subsequent references: Herron, Correspondence.
7. Creigh,History of Washington County, 221.
8. Washington City was reorganized as the District of Columbia in 1871.
9. Crumrine,History of Washington County, 601–611.
10. Ledermann is the original family name and is of German origin, from an era when family names often reflected the nature of the tradesman in the family. Later it became Leatherman, the surname of Jonathan’s father. Early records of Jonathan Letterman reflect both Leatherman and Letherman. As late as 1856, he submitted a military report to the Smithsonian Institution under the name of Letherman. Shortly thereafter, he was listed as Letterman in Army documents and that spelling remained for the rest of his life. For clarity throughout, Jonathan Letterman is referred to as Letterman while Leatherman refers to his father.
11. Herron, Correspondence.
12. Ibid.
13. Public announcement,The Reporter, March 20, 1823.
14. Although property deeds are unclear, local tax records indicate Leatherman had moved from the house next to his father-in-law to this location in 1822.
15. 1820 United States Census, U.S. Census Bureau.
16. Herron, Correspondence.
17. Ibid.
18. Catalogue of the Officers and Students (Jefferson College, 1845), 13.
19. Herron, Correspondence.
20. Catalogue of the Officers and Students, 15.
21. James Herron, “Beta Theta Pi,” Jefferson College Times, November 1976.
22. Ibid.
23. H. M. Brackenridge, “The Annual Address Delivered Before The Philo and Franklin Literary Societies, 1838,” 10.
24. Catalogue of the Officers and Students, 13–15.
25. Ibid.
26. Some historical records indicate Jonathan and Anna also had a daughter, Elizabeth, but do not list her dates of birth or death. It may be that she died as an infant, a common occurrence in the early 1800s.
27. Catalogue of the Officers and Students, 10–15.
28. Letterman Papers Collection of Gordon Dammann, founder of the National Civil War Medicine Museum. Subsequent references: Letterman Collection of Gordon Dammann
29. George Milbry Gould, The Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, benefactors, alumni, hospital, etc. Its founders, officers, instructors, 1986–1904: A History (Philadelphia: Thomas Jefferson University, 2009), 113–115.
30. Frederick B. Wagner, MD, Thomas Jefferson University: Tradition and Heritage (Philadelphia:Thomas Jefferson University, 1989), 23–24.
31. Annual Announcement of Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia 1847–1848, 15.
32. Wagner,Thomas Jefferson University, 41, 43–44.
33. Gould, The Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, 108.
34. Wagner,Thomas Jefferson University, 53.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 47–48.
37. John Simon,Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Civil War Surgeon, 1861–1865 (Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press,1996), xvii.
38. Wagner,Thomas Jefferson University, 54.
39. Mary C. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865 (Washington DC: Center for Military History, U.S. Army, 1987), 4.
40. George Worthington Adams, Doctors in Blue (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 50.
41. Herron, Correspondence.
42. Gabriel and Metz,A History of Military Medicine, 134.
43. Ibid., 132.
44. Ibid., 133.
45. Richard A. Gabriel and Karen S. Metz,A History of Military Medicine (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 180.
46. Charles Ayars, “Some Notes on the Medical Service of the Army, 1812–1839,”The Military Surgeon, May 1922, 506.
47. Public announcement,The Reporter, March 20, 1823.
48. Ayars, “Some Notes on the Medical Service,” 524.
49. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 95.
50. Gabriel and Metz,A History of Military Medicine, 180.
51. Ibid.
52. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 117.
53. Ibid., 124.
54. Catalogue of Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia 1849–1850, 14.
55. Letterman Collection of Gordon Dammann.
56. Joseph T. Smith, “A Review of the Life and Work of Jonathan Letterman, M.D.”Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, August 1916, 243.
Chapter 2
1. Michael Schene, “Not a Shot Fired: Fort Chokonikla and the ‘Indian War’ of 1849–1850,” Tequesta (1977, no. 37): 24.
2. Guy Henry,Military Record of Civilian Appointments of the United States Army (New York: Carleton Publishers, 1869), 2–4.
3. Canter Brown Jr.,Fort Meade 1849-1900 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1955), 7.
4. Schene, “Not a Shot Fired,” 31.
5. “Surgeon General Lawson Annual Report, 1839,”The Eclectic Journal of Medicine vol. IV, no. 6 (1840): 193–200.
6. Surgeon General William Hammond later cited Fort Meade’s original hospital as typical of the poorly located and inadequately constructed outpost hospitals that often contributed to the chronic poor health of soldiers.
7. Henry,Record of Civilian Appointments, 8, 10.
8. Ibid., 13.
9. Ibid., 10.
10. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 75, 128.
11. Ibid., 128–129.
12. Richard H. Coolidge, MD,Statistical Report of the Sickness and Mortality of the Army of the United States (Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson, 1856), 310.
13. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 10.
14. Ibid.
15. James Roberts,Stonewall Jackson (New York: MacMillan, 1997), 106.
16. Brown,Fort Meade, 9–11.
17. Jonathan Hood, Jonathan Letterman and the Development of a Battlefield Evacuation System (PhD Dissertation, 2004: Texas Tech University, http://librar
y.ttu.edu/about/collections/theses_dissertations.php, accessed January 2, 2010), 28–29.
18. George C. Tanner, History of Fort Ripley, 1849–1859 (Minnesota Historical Society, 1905), 179–202.
19. Ibid.
20. Peter Boulay, History of Weather Observations, Fort Ripley, Minnesota 1849–1990 (Minnesota State Climatology Office, 2006), 6.
21. Compilation of Minnesota weather records dating to 1820, http://www.climatestations.com, accessed May 16, 2010.
22. Boulay,History of Weather Observations, 8.
23. Coolidge,Statistical Report of Sickness, 318, 320.
24. Hood,Jonathan Letterman, 24–31.
25. Maurice Frink, Fort Defiance & the Navajos (Boulder, CO: Pruett Press, 1968), 3.
26. Ibid., 20, 22.
27. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1815–1865, 15, 17.
28. Frank R. Freemon,Gangrene and Glory (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 21.
29. Ibid.
30. Jonathan Letterman,Sketch of the Navajo Tribe of Indians, Territory of New Mexico (1856) (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1856), 287.
31. Ibid., 294.
32. Bennett A. Clements, “Memoir of Jonathan Letterman, M.D.,” Journal of the Military Service Institution, September 1883, 26.
33. Letterman,Sketch of the Navajo, 221.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 222.
36. John V. Quarsten,Fort Monroe, The Key to the South (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2000), 9.
37. William and John Gorenfeld, “Carleton at Bitter Spring,” Wild West, June 2001, http://www.musketoon.com/2005/01/15/bvt-majorjames-carleton-at-bitter-spring-1860, accessed September 14, 2010.
38. Hood, Jonathan Letterman, 35.
39. George Worthington Adams,Doctors in Blue (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 5.
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