Book Read Free

Surgeon In Blue

Page 31

by Scott McGaugh


  40. “The Call for Volunteers,” Harper’s Weekly, April 27, 1861.

  41. Louis C. Duncan,The Medical Department of the United States Army in the Civil War (Washington, DC: U.S. Army, 1910), 5.

  42. Ibid., 4.

  43. Ibid., 5.

  44. Emma Edmonds,Nurse and Spy in the Union Army:The Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps, and Battle-Fields (Hartford, Connecticut:W. S. Williams and Co., 1865), 43.

  45. Letter by surgeon Frank H. Hamilton,American Medical Times, July 27, 1861.

  46. Ibid.

  47. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2005), 467.

  48. Duncan,The Medical Department, 33.

  49. Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1870), vol. 2, 334–345.

  50. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 26.

  Chapter 3

  1. Charles J. Stille, History of the United States Sanitary Commission (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott), 49.

  2. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 27.

  3. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 163.

  4. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 12.

  5. Ibid., 11.

  6. John Y. Simon,Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Civil War Surgeon, 1861–1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996) 357.

  7. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 33.

  8. Medical & Surgical History, vol.12, 928.

  9. Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan, The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo, 1988), 116.

  10. Duncan, The Medical Department, 38.

  11. Jeffry D. Wert,The Sword of Lincoln, The Army of the Potomac (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 43.

  12. Hood,Jonathan Letterman, 53.

  13. Medical & Surgical History, vol. 12, 177–178.

  14. “Report of the Sanitary Commission,” Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1861, 542.

  15. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 103.

  16. Ibid., 169–170.

  17. Between October and December 1861, more than 3,900 men were discharged from the Army of the Potomac for lack of their physical fitness; about 2,900 of them were disabled at the time they enlisted. Tripler considered them frauds who cost the government nearly $200,000 a month before they were sent home.

  18. Duncan,The Medical Department, 84.

  19. William A. Hammond,A Treatise on Hygiene With Special Reference to the Military Service (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott., 1863), 349–350.

  20. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 113.

  21. The Sanitary Commission did not get everything it sought in the new legislation. The provision of medical supplies and wagons remained the province of the quartermaster corps, for example.

  22. William Quentin Maxwell,Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956), 126.

  23. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 131.

  24. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 32.

  25. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 184.

  26. Alfred Jay Bollet, MD, Civil War Medicine Challenges and Triumphs (Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002), 350.

  27. Charles S. Tripler, Report of Surgeon Charles S. Tripler, Army of the Potomac, August 12, 1861 to March 17, 1862 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), 10.

  28. Letterman Collection of Gordon Dammann

  29. Freemon,Gangrene & Glory, 68–69.

  30. Bollet, Civil War Medicine, 120.

  31. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 60–61, 69.

  32. John T. Greenwood, “Hammond and Letterman: A Tale of Two Men Who Changed Army Medicine,” The Landpower Essay, June 2003, 3.

  Chapter 4

  1. Bollet, Civil War Medicine, 8–9.

  2. Clements, “Memoir of Jonathan Letterman, M.D.,” 2.

  3. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 8.

  4. Ibid., 7.

  5. Clements,Memoir of Jonathan Letterman, 4.

  6. Maxwell,Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel, 161.

  7. Sears,George B. McClellan, 230–231, 236.

  8. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 194–195.

  9. Medical & Surgical History, vol. 11, 214.

  10. John Davis Billings, Hardtack and Coffee, (Memphis, TN: General Books, 1887), 112.

  11. Ibid., 115–135.

  12. Medical & Surgical History, vol. 14, 351.

  13. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 210.

  14. Maxwell,Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel, 42.

  15. Billings,Hardtack and Coffee, 81.

  16. Hood,Jonathan Letterman, 80.

  17. “Character of Wounds,” Harper’s Weekly, June 11, 1864, 379.

  18. Medical & Surgical History, vol. 11, 218.

  19. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 24–25.

  20. Ibid., 24–30

  21. Medical & Surgical History, vol. 2, 934.

  22. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 32.

  23. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 75.

  24. Ibid., 76.

  25. Louis Duncan, “Pope’s Virginia Campaign,” The Military Surgeon, January 1913, 11.

  26. Duncan,The Medical Department, 41.

  27. Freemon,Gangrene and Glory, 76.

  28. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 33.

  29. Ibid., 34.

  Chapter 5

  1. Alonzo Hill, In Memoriam. A Discourse for Lieut. Thomas Jefferson Spurr, Fifteenth Massachusetts Volunteers (Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1862), 19.

  2. Letterman, Medical Recollections, 34.

  3. Hood,Jonathan Letterman, 97

  4. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 35.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Maxwell,Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel, 171.

  7. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 35.

  8. Ibid., 36.

  9. Ibid., 39.

  10. Duncan,The Medical Department, 23–24.

  11. Ibid., 24.

  12. Wert,The Sword of Lincoln, 159.

  13. Ted Ballard,Antietam (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 2006), 39.

  14. John Tooker, MD, “Antietam: Aspects of Medicine, Nursing and the Civil War,”Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association 118 (2007): 218.

  15. Stevens, Three Years, 153.

  16. 1860 United States Census, U.S. Census Bureau.

  17. Duncan,The Medical Department, 27.

  18. James Greiner,A Surgeon’s Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1994), 23.

  19. Lewis H. Steiner, MD,Diary Kept During the Rebel Occupation of Frederick MD and an Account of the Operations of the U.S. Sanitary Commission (New York:Anson D. F. Randolph, 1862), 31–32, 41.

  20. Antietam National Battlefield: Letters and Diaries of Soldiers and Civilians (National Park Service), http://www.nps.gov/anti/forteachers/upload/Letters%20and%20Diaries%20of%20Soldiers%20and%20 Civilians.pdf, accessed June 4, 2010.

  21. A little more than a year earlier at Bull Run, it took the Army of the Potomac’s medical department a week to evacuate about one-fourth as many casualties from the battlefield.

  22. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 41.

  23. Ibid., 44–45.

  24. Pry House Museum Exhibit, National Civil War Medicine Museum, Antietam, MD.

  25. Pry House Museum Exhibit, National Civil War Medicine Museum, citing the Indianapolis Weekly Sentinel, January 26, 1863.

  26. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 47–48.

  27. Greiner,A Surgeon’s Civil War, 38.

  28. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 262–263.

  29. Maxwell,Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel, 173.

  30. Steiner,Diary Kept, 36.

  31. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 193.

  32. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 50.

  33. Greiner,A Surgeon’s Civil War, 27.

  Chapter 6

  1. 1860 United States Census, U.S. Census Bureau.

  2. Donald C. Pfanz,War So Terrible (Richmond, VA: Page One History Publications, 2003), 14.

  3. Wert,The Sword of Lincoln, 175.

  4. Letterma
n,Medical Recollections, 51.

  5. Medical & Surgical History, vol. 3, 711–712.

  6. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 57–58.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid., 60.

  9. Gabriel and Metz,A History, 190.

  10. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 63.

  11. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 153.

  12. Mary A. Livermore, My Story of the War (Williamstown: Corner House, 1978, original edition 1887), 325.

  13. “The Army of the Potomac from Warrenton,”The New York Times, December 13, 1862.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Pfanz,War So Terrible, 16.

  16. “The Army of the Potomac,”The New York Times.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 368.

  19. Pfanz,War So Terrible, 22.

  20. Duncan,The Medical Department, 176.

  21. Gordon W. Jones, “The Medical History of the Fredericksburg Campaign: Course and Significance,”Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol. 18, no. 3, 248.

  22. Greiner,A Surgeon’s Civil War, 54.

  23. Duncan,The Medical Department, 180.

  24. Pfanz,War So Terrible, 82.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Based on personal research conducted throughout the town of Fredericksburg and on the battlefield.

  27. Pfanz,War So Terrible, 95.

  28. Duncan,The Medical Department, 180.

  29. Franklin B. Hough, “New York Infantry Surgeon’s Fredericksburg Oral History,” Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park Archives.

  30. David Chamberlain, “Letter by 4th Michigan Regiment’s Surgeon,” Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park Archives.

  31. Pfanz,War So Terrible, 102.

  32. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 89.

  33. John Brinton, “History of the Army of the Potomac from Oct: 1 to Dec. 20, 1862,” National Archives Record Group 94, Entry 628.

  34. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 371.

  35. Alfred Jay Bollet, MD, “The Truth About Civil War Surgery, Civil War Times, October 2004, 370.

  36. Stevens, Three Years, 180.

  37. Clements,A Memoir of Jonathan Letterman, 11.

  38. Hood,Jonathan Letterman, 100.

  39. Greenwood,Hammond and Letterman, 3.

  Chapter 7

  1. Gary Gallagher, Chancellorsville (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 181.

  2. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 91.

  3. Coincidentally, when Letterman was transferred from Fort Defiance, Arizona, to Fort Union, New Mexico, nearly ten years earlier, he replaced Irwin, who had taken Letterman’s place earlier at Fort Defiance.

  4. Adams,Doctors in Blue, 82.

  5. Simon,Personal Memoirs, 173–174.

  6. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 94. The following month, Washington hospital was transferred to a new medical department so Letterman could not follow through on his medical data collection initiative.

  7. Ibid., 109.

  8. Maxwell,Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel, 202.

  9. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 102–103.

  10. Ibid., 97.

  11. Ibid., 99–100.

  12. The Medical & Surgical Reporter, May 16, 1863.

  13. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 110.

  14. Ibid., 115.

  15. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 210.

  16. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 125.

  17. Gallagher,Chancellorsville, 187.

  18. Wert,The Sword of Lincoln, 254.

  19. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 138.

  20. Gallagher,Chancellorsville, 190.

  21. Russel H. Beatie,Army of the Potomac, McClellan Takes Command September 1861–February 1862 (New York: Da Capo, 2004), 433.

  22. Ibid., 435.

  23. Simon,Personal Memoirs, 234.

  24. Ibid., 235.

  25. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 129.

  26. Medical & Surgical History, vol. 27, 195.

  27. Stephen R. Taaffe,Commanding the Army of the Potomac (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2006), 180.

  28. Billy Arthur,Gettysburg Staff Ride Briefing Book (Fort McNair, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History), 90.

  29. Ibid., 90.

  30. Taaffe,Commanding the Army, 110.

  31. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 165.

  Chapter 8

  1. Arthur,Gettysburg Staff Ride, 5.

  2. Gregory A. Coco,A Vast Sea of Misery (Gettysburg, PA:Thomas Publications, 1988), 188.

  3. Russell Stewart,The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation, 1775–1917 (Washington, DC: United States Army, 2005), 2.

  4. Extended author interviews and battlefield tour with certified Gettysburg guide Phil Lechak.

  5. Stewart,The United States Army, 3.

  6. Gregory A. Coco,Strange and Blighted Land, Gettysburg:The Aftermath of a Battle (Gettysburg, PA:Thomas Publications, 1995), 153.

  7. Philip Andrade,A Survey of Union and Confederate Casualties at Gettysburg (Gettysburg, PA:The Battle of Gettysburg Resource Center), 7.

  8. Stille,Sanitary Commission, 377.

  9. Duncan,The Medical Department, 212.

  10. Arthur,Gettysburg Staff Ride, 12.

  11. Andrade,A Survey, 5.

  12. Jonathan Letterman, Gettysburg Report (Culpeper Courthouse, VA, October 3, 1863).

  13. Gettysburg received 1.39 inches of rain by 4:00 p.m. on July 4, 1863, with the rain far more intense that night.

  14. Duncan,The Medical Department, 217–218.

  15. Coco,Strange and Blighted Land, 210.

  16. Ibid., 173.

  17. Sarah Broadhead,The Diary of a Lady at Gettysburg (privately published, 1864), 20.

  18. Cornelia Hancock, South After Gettysburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1937), 6–8.

  19. Andrew Boyd Cross,Battle of Gettysburg and the Christian Commission (publisher not listed, 1865), 25.

  20. Stephen Sears,The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989), 340.

  21. Gerard A. Patterson,Debris of Battle (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997), 49.

  22. Hood,Jonathan Letterman, 133.

  23. Fatout,Letters of a Civil War Surgeon, 70.

  24. Coco,Strange and Blighted Land, 253.

  25. Ibid., 243–244

  26. Ibid.

  27. Stevens, Three Years, 214.

  28. Patterson,Debris of Battle, 96.

  29. Robert N. Scott,The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1889), vol. 27, 197.

  30. The typical costs for sending the dead home for burial were $15 for embalming, $5 for the wood box, and about $24 for transportation.

  31. Office of the Surgeon General Letters and Endorsements, vol. 4, record group 112, National Archives.

  32. Patterson,Debris of Battle, 160.

  33. Ibid., 190–191.

  34. Michael B. Chesson,The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 108.

  35. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 169–170.

  36. Samuel D. Gross, Autobiography of Samuel D. Gross (Philadelphia: George Barrie Printers, 1887), 285.

  37. Ibid., 55.

  38. Ibid. 281.

  39. This was the equivalent of the entire population of the nation’s capital at the start of the Civil War.

  Chapter 9

  1. Letterman family letters. Thomas Sim Lee Collection, Catholic University, Washington, DC.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Letterman Collection of Gordon Dammann.

  4. In early October, President Lincoln had established the Thanksgiving holiday by proclamation, in part asking the “Almighty Hand to heal the nation and restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

  5. Letterman, Medical Recollections, 182.

  6. Ibid., 183
.

  7. Joseph Smith, “A Review of the Life and Work of Jonathan Letterman, M.D.,”John Hopkins Hospital Bulletin 27 no. 299: 245.

  8. Letterman,Medical Recollections, 185–186.

  9. Ibid., 183.

  10. Glenn E. Billet, The Department of the Susquehanna (Lancaster, PA: L. B. Herr & Son, 1962), 9, 13.

  11. Scott,War of the Rebellion, vol. 33, 382.

  12. Ibid., 380.

  13. Ibid. 379–383.

  14. Horace Hillery,Putnam County in the Civil War (Patterson, NY: typewritten essay, 1961), unnumbered.

  15. A memorial was a statement included in the official Congressional Record that was a public recognition of an individual or organization.

  16. Clements,A Memoir of Jonathan Letterman, 21.

  17. Ibid., 14.

  18. “Dispatches,”The New York Times, December 6, 1863.

  19. Duncan,The Medical Department, 259.

  20. Ibid., 260.

  21. “Government Care of the Soldier Hospitals and Supplies,”The New York Times, August 8, 1864.

  22. “Letters,”The New York Times, December 20, 1863.

  23. Duncan,The Medical Department, 270.

  24. Ibid., 272.

  25. Official Register of the Officers and Cadets (West Point, NY: U.S. Military Academy, June 1864).

  26. Letterman family letters. Thomas Sim Lee Collection, Catholic University, Washington, DC.

  27. Letterman Collection of Gordon Damman.

  28. “Hammond Trial,”The New York Times, August 23, 1864.

  29. Simon,Personal Memoirs, 310.

  30. Sears,George B. McClellan, 386.

  31. Sears,The Civil War Papers, 623.

  32. Gillett,The Army Medical Department 1818–1865, 229.

  33. Bollet, Civil War Medicine, 188.

  Chapter 10

  1. Arthur Wright, “Biographical Memoir of Benjamin Silliman,” National Academy of Sciences Paper Presentation, April 1911.

  2. Benjamin Silliman, Jr.,A Description of the Recently Discovered Petroleum Region in California with a Report on the Same (New York: Francis & Loutrei Printers, 1865), 2.

  3. Ibid., 22.

  4. Ibid., 18–19.

  5. Gerald T. White,Formative Years in the Far West, A History of Standard Oil Company in California and Predecessors (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962), 2–9.

  6. The Philadelphia and California Petroleum Company Prospectus (Philadelphia: Crissy & Markley Printers, 1865), 4–6.

  7. Martin D. Saltzman, “Who Salted the Sample,”Chemistry & Industry, January 1, 1996, 9.

  8. J. Williamson,Professor Silliman’s Report Upon the Oil Property of the Philadelphia and California Petroleum Company (Philadelphia: E. C. Markley & Son Printers, 1865), 5.

 

‹ Prev