Day 26. March 26, 1862. – We Saw a Grate Smoke Raise Up: Letters, Diaries, Wires from the Valley of the Late Rebellion

application of cups and leeches….

March 26 Wensday

Quite cool this morning the sun came up bright the sky clear. Found myself at the Union Hotel Hospital. I don’t feel very well and I hope I may soon be well and live in peace and happiness at home with my family. There was 3 amputations performed today limbs taken off one above the knee two below the knee one was a confederate. It looks hard* to see men have their limbs taken off. Our Regiment came back from Strausburg today. They look very tired and I hope they may have some rest and be able to refresh themselves up as we have saw service. There was two confederate officers died last night. They have gone to their long homes too. The ladies of this town of Winchester have been very kind today sending in refreshments and a grate many things that is nourishment to the wounded men. I have nothing new to put down this day. The men on the battlefield have all been buried and the trees looks as if there was a hard fought battle. It only lasted 1 ¾ hours and there was about 300 rebble killed 500 wounded of our men. Times are hard here

Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 48

“7a.m. 31; 2p.m. 50; 9p.m. 42. Rain began 6p.m.”

Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 11

(Excerpt of letter to wife, writing about Kernstown)

“We are poorly provided with tents and cooking utensils, but have guns enough. The battle of Sunday last was one of the hardest yet fought. The enemy had 25,000 and we 2,500 engaged. Our loss is not nearly as great as reported and many of our men are still coming in. We took 10 prisoners. Jackson said he accomplished all he expected by his move.”

America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 243

“Medical knowledge was an oxymoron. A visit to a field hospital confirmed it. Sam Watkins, the young Tennessee private in Albert Sidney Johnston’s army, decided to see a wounded friend near his camp. The field hospital was not difficult to find; just follow the penetrating odor caused by gangrene and sepsis, conditions that were rampant. And much more preventable had the overworked doctors and the caring nurses known what general practice would know in another decade or two. The evidence of this ignorance lay in the rear of the building in the form of rotting arms and legs taken from these young men to save their lives. Amputation was the first course of treatment. Watkins stumbled on his friend James Galbreath, who had received a severe wound several days earlier yet was still alive. Watkins gave the wounded soldier some water and promised to write his family. He asked his comrade how he felt, and Galbreath pulled down his cover. “The lower part of his body was hanging to the upper part by a shred, and all of his entrails were lying on the cot with him, the bile and other excrements exuding from them, and they full of maggots.” Watkins pulled the blanket back up. “I then kissed him on his lips and forehead, and left.’”

Note: The manual (below) that Union Hospital Stewards could consult will not get published until next year. The Union’s Surgeon General, William A. Hammond****, asked Dr. Woodward to write one specifically for surgeons serving in this war. Dr. Woodward was, at the time of the manual’s writing, an assistant surgeon for the Union Army. Prior to the war, amputation had a 50% mortality rate; during the war, 26%. The farther away from the core of the body a wound was– like in a finger or toe– the higher the chance you’d survive. Up to 48 hours post-injury, you’d have a 3 in 4 chance to make it; beyond 48 hours, your chances became slim. With so few surgeons paired with the massive casualty counts, your survival really was luck of the draw, & if hit with a Minie, amputation was a near certain outcome. For the Confederate counterpart of the Union manual, see “Regulations for the Medical Department of the C.S. Army,” 58 pages, published in Richmond in April, 1862. (online in the collection at the U.S. National Library of Medicine: collections.nlm.nih.gov)

Note as well: Handbook of Surgical Operations will come out in January, 1863, compiled by Dr. Stephen Smith, of Bellevue Hospital, NY. Find it on Amazon or at: https://books.google.com/books/about/Hand_book_of_Surgical_Operations.html?id=7xA1AQAAMAAJ

Last: For more on Civil War medical books, see civilwarmedicalbooks.com (run anonymously, proprietor of the site is interested in war medical items that are for sale). See, too, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine at civilwarmed.org. As with any Civil War resource, exercise caution & do your own unstinting, time-sucking, life-destroying research. Also, there’s the 1994 Civil War Medicine: Care & Comfort of the Wounded by Robert E. Denney. Soldier letters, diaries, etc. I have not read this but should.

The Hospital Steward’s Manual:

FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF

HOSPITAL STEWARDS, WARD–MASTERS, AND ATTENDANTS, IN THEIR SEVERAL DUTIES.

PREPARED IN ACCORDANCE WITH EXISTING REGULATIONS AND THE CUSTOMS OF SERVICE IN THE ARMIES OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

AND RENDERED AUTHORITATIVE BY ORDER OF THE SURGEON–GENERAL.

Joseph Janvier Woodward, M.D.

ASSISTANT SURGEON U.S.A., MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA, ETC.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1863.

Civilwarmed.org National Museum of Civil War Medicine “Meet the Hospital Steward” William T. Campbell, Ed.D., RN 12/24/14

“Woodward laid out a set of broad medical qualifications of applicants, which went far beyond the scope of the pharmacist. They “must have…sufficient knowledge of…pharmacy to take charge of the dispensary, acquainted with minor surgery, …application of bandages and dressings, extraction of teeth, application of cups and leeches, …knowledge of cooking.”

Despite the small pool of candidates, the army conducted a rigorous selection process to fill positions that began with an official application. In contrast male nurses were usually temporarily detailed without change in rank or title from inexperienced enlisted men.

One of the men who applied to be a hospital steward, Charles F. Beal, served as an acting assistant steward at Dumbarton Street Hospital in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Beal explained to his father in a letter dated Jan. 1, 1863, that he had resigned his assistant’s position and applied for a hospital stewardship in the regular army. He said the position was very difficult to obtain and he had gathered recommendations from three surgeons in preparation for his application.

Woodward’s Manual suggested that candidates be “18-35 years old, able-bodied, free of disease, honest and upright,” of “good intelligence, having a knowledge of English, able to spell and write correctly,” and “industrious, patient, and good tempered.” There was a competitive exam to be taken. Stewards were screened for previous medicinal experience. A history of having worked as a druggist, chemist, or apothecary clerk in civilian life added a huge plus.

Previous experience even as a medical student was greatly beneficial. After the exam, interviews, and a review of references, the Secretary of War had to approve the appointment. With the process successfully completed, the hospital steward became a non-commissioned officer. Woodward explained that the position was equal to an ordnance sergeant and next in rank after first sergeant. The appointment was permanent for the duration of the war and the steward could not be returned to regular duty—they were part of the Medical Department or Hospital Department. This certainly benefited the hospital’s medical staff, as the men who gained experience would be retained, unlike male nurses.

Woodward’s Manual also described the uniform and symbols of the position and rank. The insignia, color code, and uniform were distinctive and certainly distinguished this position, then and in images viewed today, from the rest of the medical staff:

1. The distinctive cloth insignia was the half chevron of caduceus and snakes worn on the upper sleeves, not to be confused with the nurse which according to Woodward was to wear the same chevron on the lower left sleeve.
2. The dress or ceremonial sword was the non-commissioned officer’s sword, not the medical staff sword carried by surgeons.
3. The dress sash was to be of red worsted wool, not the red or crimson silk sash of the artillery branch and not the green silk sash of the surgeons.
4. Dress hats could be adorned with a feather or plume, an eagle pin on the right side, a gold laurel wreath on the front with a silver US, and a green and buff hat cord. The pin was to be US, not MS, which was reserved for medical staff use only.
5. The undress uniform, for fatigue purposes or hospital work, included the blouse or sack coat with the same half chevron on the upper sleeves. The pants were sky blue enlisted infantry trousers with a one-and-a-half inch wide crimson stripe down the outer seams. The red/crimson stripe (and wool sash) signaled the wearer was a non-commissioned officer, not a member of the artillery branch. A three-quarter inch wide crimson stripe would also designate a non-commissioned officer, but represented a corporal. A hospital steward would never hold this rank.
6. The undress cap was the enlisted man’s regulation forage cap.

The roles and responsibilities of the hospital steward varied depending on his duty location. In the hospital and acting as the pharmacist, he compounded (measured, weighed, mixed, rolled, cut, polished) prescriptions as written in the prescription book by the surgeons, rather than just filling them from a bulk supply. He also verified that the medication was actually administered although he was usually not the person who gave it. A nurse usually performed that duty, although Mary Gillett in The Army Medical Department 1818-1865 observed “…the Hospital Steward who before the war often added the role of nurse to his other duties…”

As hospital administrator, the hospital steward was responsible for inventory and ordering of medical supplies, hospital supplies, record keeping, and overall hospital administration. His inventory of records was never ending. It included the Steward’s Weekly Report, an enormous spread sheet. The number of beds, linen, clothes, dishes, and even spittoons, were counted and recorded on a weekly basis. In the field and on the march, the dispensary had to stay mobile, and required quick assembly and disassembly. Much of his time was spent in packing precious glass bottles of medications. Dr. Jonathan Letterman, Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, even specified that the hospital steward should carry the hospital knapsack for the surgeon when on the march.

The Manual also contained chapters that discussed hospital attendants and nurses. Woodward explained that the hospital steward supervised male nurses but not the female nurses. He stated: “Enlisted men are under the orders of the surgeon…look up to [him] as their commanding officer… [and] are also under the orders of the hospital steward, to all whose lawful commands they must yield prompt obedience.” The supervisory role similarly echoed in the South, where the regulations for the Confederate Medical Department noted that “the cooks and nurses are under the orders of the stewards.” While the term nurse did not specifically pertain to males or females, one must remember that the South was slow to accept female nurses during the war. In contrast, regarding the female nurses, Woodward added, “she should heartily co-operate with the steward, and strictly obey the orders of the medical officers.” It would appear from this wording that while all Union female nurses were under the orders of the surgeon (and for some also the supervision of Dix) they did not necessarily answer to the hospital steward. His leadership and supervision were reserved for the male nurses. Nevertheless, the hospital steward proved an invaluable asset to the hospital staff with his many varied roles and responsibilities.”

Note: Online at archive.org/details/medicalsurgical32barnrich you can find The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion Part III Volume II Surgical History. The copy was gifted to the University of California from the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office in June, 1883. Here are tables with names of soldiers, such as “Amputations in the Continuity of the Leg of Uncertain Date and Without Indication of the Seat of Operation.” The work is a six volume set going for $1,400 on ebay if you’re inclined, or on biblio.com, for $2,250 (30-day return guarantee if you read fast or photograph it). Honestly, what I’m looking for is the O.R., all 128 volumes. Anyone out there got a spare set? Please, please. Please. Where I would put them, I don’t know. But to have them to hold, read, & hover close.

See: Matchless Organization: The Confederate Army Medical Department, by Guy R. Hasegawa (2021)

Of Hardtack and Coffee: Or the Unwritten Story of Army Life (1887) John D. Billings P. 125-126

Note: Billings had been in the 10^th Massachusetts Volunteer Light Artillery Battery.

“When the army was in settled camp, company cooks generally prepared the rations. These cooks were men selected from the company, who had a taste or an ambition for the business. If there were none such, turns were taken at it; but this did not often happen, as the office excused men from all other duty.

When company cooks prepared the food, the soldiers, at the bugle signal, formed single file at the cook-house door, in winter, or the cook’s open fire, in summer, where, with a long-handled dipper, he filled each man’s tin with coffee from the mess kettles, and dispensed to him such other food as was to be given out at that meal.”

Note: One year from today:

March 26, 1863 Lincoln

To Andrew Johnson

Private

Hon. Andrew Johnson

Executive Mansion,

“My dear Sir: Washington,

March 26, 1863.

I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability, and position, to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave-state, and himself a slave-holder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavIailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight, if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it please do not dismiss the thought. Yours truly A. LINCOLN”

Note: Governor Johnson apparently never answered. Imagine the conceptually incoherent double-tongued white devils who said African-Americans can’t fight, are too lazy, not intelligent enough, yet at the same time were terrified of an insurrection. Can’t have it both ways.

Note: This is the same Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), 17^th President, who claims the South will rise again (rise again from what?) & holds the smile, placing Rebels right back in their positions– political & otherwise– across the South like fangs fastened in a throat the minute Lincoln is executed, & Appomattox becomes like something shot between the eyes at close range. By 1874 it wasn’t what we thought. The water’s already turning. Democrats have taken back the House. 3/4 of a million square miles the Yankees came for, & another administration takes it all down again. Check out the Battle of Liberty Place, 1874, New Orleans, when the White League—mainly Confederates, 5000 of ’em—went against the State of Louisiana in an attempted coup d’etat, holding state offices for 3 days. General McDowell issued orders, gunboats were launched, & the feds had to remain in place until 1877. As late as 1875, the 13^th Regiment had to forcibly eject unelected Democrats from the legislature. The towering obelisk, Battle of Liberty Place Monument, erected in 1891, was subject to plaque revisions over the years, being moved, or had context plaques put in its vicinity, then eventually removed under police escort in 2017. See P. 169 on, in In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu for discussion of this monument, & the battle to remove “public nuisance” monuments in New Orleans, but stay for the “mean chill,” death threats, construction workers donning bullet-proof vests, torched sports cars, & the ever-present SWAT teams.

The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War Bruce Catton P. 201

“….and a man in the 12^th Wisconsin wrote that “it looked hard* to see six or eight poor fellows piled into an ambulance about the size of Jones’s meat wagon and hustled over the rough roads as fast as the mules could trot and to see the blood running out of the carts in streams almost.”

*Ephraim & Hotchkiss (as well as the man in the 12^th Wisconsin above) all use the word “hard” today. Old English hearde “firmly, severely,” from hard (adj.). Meaning “with effort or energy, with difficulty,” from the late 14^th Century. Common expression in that era to describe something distressing to see, an era when they didn’t even know malaria came from mosquitos, that lice (called “graybacks,” which loved those wool uniforms) caused typhus. Keep in mind they didn’t know about bacteria, the cause of scurvy, or hygiene’s role during surgery. Daily, they were faced with maggots moving wounds around, just writhing, feeding, waiting to get to be flies. That’s what the men knew. In the end, you gave the laudanum & they either lived or they didn’t. “Hard” is the same now, though not often used in Ephraim’s construction, “It looks hard to see….”

It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan Jerri Bell and Tracy Crow P. 37-38

“Union doctor Mary Edwards Walker wrote in the unpublished “Incidents Connected with the Army”:

There were cases where (soldiers) had been wounded in the arm or leg, and in the most pitiful manner that made it very difficult for me to suppress my emotions, they would ask me if that leg would have to come off, if that arm would have to come off, telling me that the ward surgeon said it would have to come off, and that they would rather die than lose a leg or lose an arm, whichever the case happened to be. I did not wish to be unprofessional and say anything to any other medical officer’s patients that would seem like giving advice outside of a council; but as I had little experience and observation regarding the inability of some of the ward surgeons to diagnose properly, and truthfully I considered that I had a higher duty than came under the head of medical etiquette.

I had assisted in an operation where there was amputation of an arm where it was no more necessary than to amputate anybody’s arm that had never been injured. The two surgeons in the world ward who had decided to have that arm amputated when there had been only a slight flesh wound, seemed to me to take this opportunity to amputate for the purpose of their own practice, which was utterly cruel: but knowing that if I gave my opinion against amputating that I would be debarred from entering one of the largest hospitals in Washington, I gave antiseptics and the arm was removed.

I then made up my mind that it was the last case that would ever occur if I was in my power to prevent such cruel loss of limbs, therefore I made it my business, when visiting hospitals, whenever I found that there were contemplated operations, and a complaint from a soldier that a decision had been made to remove a limb, I casually asked to see it, and in almost every instance I saw amputation was not only unnecessary, but to me it seemed wickedly cruel, I would then swear the soldier not to repeat anything that I told him, and then I would tell him that no one was obliged to submit to an amputation unless he chose to do so, that his limbs belonged to himself. I then instructed him to protest against amputation, and that if the physicians insisted upon it that if he had never used swearing words to swear and declare that if they forced him to have an operation that he would never rest after his recovery until he shot them dead. I need not say that secrecy regarding what I had told to the soldier was kept and that my advice was followed and that many a man today has for it the perfect good use of his limbs who would not have had but for my advice, to say nothing about the millions of dollars in pensions that would have been paid without all the suffering, had I not decided it my solemn duty to the soldiers instead of carrying out etiquette towards my medical and surgical brothers. [This is confirmed after the war by written testimony of several soldiers whose arms and legs were saved as a result of Walker’s advice. Because the mortality rate after amputation was so high—up to 60 percent in amputations below the knee and 80 percent in cases of amputation at the hip—Walker probably also saved lives as well as limbs.]”

Note: More about Walker (mentioned earlier): After the war Walker wrote and lectured on women’s rights, petitioned Congress to secure military pensions for Civil War nurses, and ran a tuberculosis sanitarium. She received a pension half that of her male peers. In 1917 the War Department changed the criteria for the Medal of Honor and rescinded her award, along with those awarded to William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and 909 other men. She refused to return the medal, and wore it until her death two years later. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter restored Walker’s award, citing her “distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex.” To date, she remains the only woman so recognized. She wore men’s clothes, including pants under her hoop skirt when she got married.

Note: Three years from today:

Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 399-401

“On March 25, 1865, Lee made one last attempt to break Grant’s siege line, with a predawn attack on Fort Stedman, near Petersburg. The assault was a bloody and heartbreaking one for the Confederates. With death and desertion eating away at the tattered remnants of Lee’s army, public anxiety in Richmond crested and measures were taken to prepare for the evacuation of its inhabitants. The hammer soon fell: in the wake of the Fort Stedman fiasco, Grant counterpunched with a forceful blow at Lee’s right flank. Grant intended this action to cut the last functioning railroad out of Petersburg and to prevent Lee’s army from escaping to the west. On April 1, Federal soldiers smashed the Confederate-entrenched position at Five Forks, which Lee had ordered General Pickett to hold “at all hazards.” Despite spirited Confederate resistance, the line gave way, and by nightfall Five Forks was in Union hands. This final major clash of the long siege was the beginning of the end of the Confederacy. On the night of April 1-2, Grant unleashed an artillery bombardment, hammering Lee’s position from the Appomattox River to Five Forks with the heaviest barrage of the entire war, shaking the very ground beneath the rebel capital. The morning of Sunday, April 2 brought a massive Federal attack that encircled Petersburg and forced Lee to recommend to the War Department that both Petersburg and Richmond be abandoned. Jefferson Davis was attending services at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond when he received the grim news of the collapse of Lee’s army. The Confederate president left his fellow parishioners to their prayers and promptly assembled his cabinet for its last session. He directed government to prepare to depart Richmond for Danville, to the southwest, via the last working rail line; Davis himself would leave the beleaguered capital a little before midnight. With Confederate statesmen on the run, control over the city devolved to the municipal authorities. Federal forces entered Petersburg in the pre-dawn hours of April 3, raising an American flag above the courthouse there and preparing the way for Abraham Lincoln’s triumphant visit to the newly occupied city later that day.

The fall of Richmond, the subject of so many stirring eyewitness reports, is one of the most dramatic scenes in all of American history. For Confederates, the long-dreaded event was nothing less than an apocalypse, one shot through with searing irony, as it was the conduct of Confederate officials rather than of the occupying Union army that brought about the city’s destruction. Following through on a plan that has been in place since the fall of Savannah that winter, the Confederate army set fire to a wide range of resources to prevent their capture by the Federals: tobacco warehouses and flour mills, arsenals and ironclads, bridges and depots, all came under the torch, giving rise, as the winds kicked up at night, to an uncontrolled and rapidly spreading conflagration. To make matters worse, the Richmond city council put into effect its own ill-considered decision to destroy all the liquor in the city, hoping to prevent the intoxication of either the armies or civilians. Unfortunately, the plan utterly backfired; alcohol released from storehouses ran through the gutters of the burning city, becoming a conduit for the streaming flames, to the dismay of desperate soldiers and civilians who sought to lap up the liquor and save it for their own use.

By the morning of April 3, the Richmond Whig reported, the city “presented a spectacle that we hope never to witness again… The air was lurid with the smoke and flame of hundreds of houses sweltering in a sea of fire.” Law and order had ceased to exist. As one Confederate captain tells it, a “mob of men, women, and children, to the number of several thousands,” descended upon the now unguarded government commissary depots and threw open the doors, unleashing a “demonical struggle for the countless barrels of ham, bacon, whisky, flour, sugar, coffee, etc. etc.” For Sallie Brock, who had been such a careful chronicler of the Confederate spirit, the destruction of Richmond spoke of millennial judgment: “All the horrors of the final conflagration, when the earth shall be wrapt in flames and melt with fervent heat, were, it seemed to us, prefigured in our capital.” Union troops under the command of General Godfrey Weitzel began to enter the city at around 8:00 a.m.; when they reached Capitol Square, they raised the American flag to the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was a requiem for buried hopes,” Brock wrote of hearing that sound for the first time in four long years.”

**Lincoln: “Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South’s two halves together.” Note too: Vicksburg fell, in part, due to mosquitoes (malaria). Apparently at the Fall of Vicksburg, when the men filed past, no victory shouts happened, unlike at Gettysburg, other places. See April 9, coming up, Appomattox, the code to not cheer the men decided on.

they have gone to their long homes too….

They are a traveling carnival. They are a ghost brought in here from somewhere else. They have to carry everything on their back as they went forward without turning back as they went no matter how the world just ended. They place sticks of wood against fences to stop the barrage. The lines that are left get broken up like tsunami debris. They burn the lot. They ask whether you can divide by zero when you have zero left. They are just one bullet away from one another. Like an incomplete etymology. Fall in, fall out. Shot & reloaded & shot again the gaping hole where his face was, the black faces after they bit off the cartridge caps, held palm & finger to meet at the base of the thumb, & fire. $13.93 a gun, yet it cost just $9.75 to bury a body, including coffin. They fled forward then fell. They are a creature trying to warn off an impending disaster, writing last letters home; they’ll enter the blackness in a few hours then die like something ended mid-sentence. Or they’ll try & find a pulse with the first two fingers of the right hand, fatalistically. The Civil War, a masterpiece of messianic expectations & depraved recklessness. It is unparalleled. A Springfield can fetch 3k at auction now.

But there is more. And there is less. What it is when the whole of sky tears apart with detached heads, a head, any head, severed fly-bys, missing limbs, missing fingers & toes & a reason by whatever name & however explained, bone-on-bone, bark projectiles flying off trees, something striking you in the face leaving it wet, dripping. Pieces of what went where. Insides out & outsides in so that over time the person dies, or soon the person dies, or immediately in time the person dies. A person can only take so much.

Some stories you can’t tell. Some stories’ll eat you alive.

It does something to you. Something like that. Part of the soul retreats to an unknown corner of the body.

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