Civil War Rx

Dr. Alfred Bollet Interviews

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Tue, 14 May 2019 22:52:00 +0000

VIEW THE "CIVIL WAR MEDICINE" TRAILER HERE!

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 14:00:00 +0000

VIEW THE "CIVIL WAR MEDICINE" TRAILER HERE!

https://youtu.be/wCXmOx6C_ZU

"Civil War Medicine" Documentary Trailer Completed!

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 13:56:00 +0000

The trailer for the "Civil War Medicine" documentary series is here!

We spent months on the research, recorded the voiceovers and music live, worked with 11 different institutions for the amazing images.

If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution to completion of the four-part "Civil War Medicine" documentary series, you can use the PayPal button on this website.

We hope you enjoy the trailer! You can see it at https://youtu.be/wCXmOx6C_ZU

Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:09:00 +0000

By Michael E. Haskew, 2-13-17

All the horrors of prison life were experienced by hundreds of thousands of captives, Union and Confederate, during the Civil War.

The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. The sooner men understand this the better.” During the four-year course of the Civil War, the entire country—North and South—would come to the same grim realization. There were seemingly endless lists of thousands of soldiers killed or wounded in battle or dead of disease. Thousands more, both Union and Confederate, languished in prisoner of war camps, enduring hardships that previously it had been inconceivable for civilized people to inflict upon one another.

From 1861 to 1865, more than 150 prison camps were established by the Union and Confederate governments. Estimates of the total numbers of prisoners taken and deaths that occurred in captivity vary widely, and Confederate records are incomplete. However, the Official Records of the war cites a total of 347,000 men—220,000 Confederate and 127,000 Union—who endured the privations of being prisoners of war. These privations ranged from inadequate shelter and clothing, poor hygiene, and the monotonous passage of time to outright starvation, intentional cruelty, harsh summary justice, swarming vermin, and rampaging disease. More than 49,000 prisoners died in captivity, at least 26,440 Confederate and 22,580 Union, an overall mortality rate of 14 percent. Twelve percent of Confederate prisoners and 18 percent of Union captives never returned from incarceration.

As in all wars, the victors tend to write the history, and Confederate prisons have become notorious for a litany of horrors. But the simple truth is that neither side could fully claim the moral high ground. Neither side was prepared to accommodate the large numbers of prisoners taken during the war, which many believed would be of short duration but which dragged on for four years of incredible misery.

The Burden of Prisoners of War
From the outset, the South suffered shortages of basic commodities such as medicines, foodstuffs, and textiles due to the strangling Union blockade that stretched from the major ports of the mid-Atlantic to the Gulf coast of Texas. The war on land was fought largely in the South, soaking rich farmland with blood. Thousands of Southern farmers left home to serve in the Confederate Army, and few able-bodied men remained behind to tend whatever crops could be produced in straitened circumstances.

With threadbare Confederate soldiers serving in the field without shoes, subsisting on a handful of cornmeal or a few peanuts, the Southern government faced a virtually insurmountable task to provide adequately for thousands of Union prisoners. Nevertheless, early in the war the Confederate Congress resolved that the rations furnished prisoners of war “shall be the same in quantity and quality as those furnished to enlisted men in the army of the Confederacy.” It sounded good on paper.

In the North, more plentiful food supplies, the availability of medical care, and the relative abundance of resources should have weighed positively on the treatment of prisoners. In too many instances, however, conditions were scarcely better than the worst of the prisons in the South. Administrative indifference, ineptitude, and corruption combined with a desire to mete out the same treatment to Confederate prisoners that was rumored to exist in Southern prisons. Camp Douglas in Chicago and Elmira in upstate New York—prosperous communities both—left horrible legacies of their own.

The burden of feeding and sheltering prisoners steadily increased as the war progressed. Early in the conflict, a system of parole and exchange was utilized extensively, and thousands of soldiers were returned to their units. Patterned after a similar system that had seen widespread use in Europe, officers of equal rank were exchanged one for another, while enlisted men were exchanged on a number-by-number basis. When an even exchange was not immediately possible, officers were exchanged for a certain number of enlisted men, such as one captain for six enlisted soldiers. Parole was sometimes extended to prisoners when a timely exchange was not expected. Parole often took place within 10 days of capture, and the system worked reasonably well for a while as prisoners were returned to their respective sides and rejoined the ranks when notified that a proper exchange had occurred. At times parolees went home to await the official exchange; however, these individuals were often reluctant to return to service. Therefore, paroled prisoners were frequently kept near their units until word of an exchange was received.

The Dix-Hill Cartel
Over time, the system became increasingly untenable due to the sheer weight of numbers. With the surrender of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February 1862, nearly 12,400 Confederate prisoners were captured by Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Union forces. The Confederate commander at Fort Donelson, Maj. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, a personal friend of Grant’s, was imprisoned in Boston until he was exchanged. Another 7,000 captured soldiers were sent to the infamous Camp Douglas; the rest were scattered throughout other prisons in the North.

On July 22, 1862, the Confederate and Union governments agreed to a formalized program of exchange known as the Dix-Hill Cartel, named for its principal negotiators, Union Maj. Gen. John A. Dix and Confederate Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill. Prior attempts to formalize exchange protocol had been complicated by several factors. Since the North viewed the conflict as a civil insurrection rather than a war between two sovereign nations, Abraham Lincoln wanted to avoid any action that might legitimize the Confederate government. A formal agreement to exchange prisoners, in the eyes of many observers, particularly those in foreign governments, might do just that.

Fragile from the beginning, the Dix-Hill Cartel survived with limited interruption for only five months. On December 28, 1862, U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton suspended the exchange of commissioned officers in response to a proclamation by Confederate President Jefferson Davis that labeled Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, commander of the forces occupying New Orleans, “a felon deserving of capital punishment.” The Davis proclamation followed Butler’s execution of William B. Mumford, a civilian resident of New Orleans who reportedly had pulled down the U.S. flag that had been raised above the city’s former mint and torn the banner to shreds. A harmless act of vandalism was raised to a fatal act of treason.

By the spring of 1863, Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, general-in-chief of the Union Armies, halted all major exchanges. This action was in response to Confederate assertions that Southern soldiers captured by Grant at Vicksburg and subsequently paroled would be considered unilaterally exchanged. A May 1, 1863, joint resolution of the Confederate Congress rendered the decision to continue the exchange program absurd. The resolution asserted that captured African American soldiers who had once been slaves would be treated as runaways rather than soldiers and would be returned to their former owners if possible. It further threatened that “every white person being a commissioned officer who shall command Negroes or mulattoes in arms against the Confederate States shall be deemed as inciting servile insurrection, and shall if captured be put to death or be otherwise punished at the discretion of the Court.”

Grant’s War of Attrition
By then, the protracted war had significantly drained Southern manpower, and the exchange of prisoners was the primary method by which the Confederates replenished the depleted ranks of their field armies. An effort to revive a formal exchange system fell apart after representatives of the U.S. government refused to receive Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in Washington, D.C., under a flag of truce. Sporadic prisoner exchanges did continue as Butler negotiated with the Confederates under the watchful eye of Secretary Stanton. Butler and Confederate exchange agent Robert Ould arranged the transfer of large numbers of prisoners in the autumn of 1864, particularly those who had been held for the longest time or were in poor health and deemed unfit for further duty. Significant exchanges took place at Savannah and Charleston.

The relentless Grant recognized the fact that continued prisoner exchanges would actually prolong the war. Grant believed that the South could be subdued most efficiently through attrition, as evidenced by his continuation of the Army of the Potomac’s offensive in Virginia in the spring of 1864 despite horrendous casualties. In April of that year, Grant halted exchanges on the basis of the Vicksburg disagreement and the proposed mistreatment of black prisoners by the Confederates. Grant stated his pragmatic perspective in an August 18, 1864, dispatch to Butler, noting: “It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole or otherwise becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated.”

Although Lincoln had hesitated to authorize exchanges during the first year of the war, he had bowed to political pressure and to the rising concern of family members whose loved ones were held in Confederate prisons and allowed the Dix-Hill Cartel to become operative. Now he remained notably quiet on the topic, leaving it to Grant to publicly state that future prisoner exchanges would be suspended due to the exigencies of war.

The Horrors of Andersonville
While politicians and high-ranking military commanders debated, prisoners on both sides suffered. Escape attempts occurred with regularity and were infrequently successful. Confederate Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan and a few of his daredevil cavalrymen tunneled their way to freedom from the Ohio State Penitentiary. The largest escape of the war took place at Libby Prison in the Confederate capital of Richmond when more than 100 Union officers broke out on February 9, 1864, and 59 of them managed to elude recapture.

Within three months of Grant’s suspension order in April 1864, the population of Andersonville prison had grown to more than 20,000, twice its original capacity. At its peak in August, the stockade housed over 33,000 Union soldiers in utter squalor. In July 1864, then-Captain Henry Wirz paroled several Andersonville prisoners, who carried a petition to Washington, D.C., begging for the reinstatement of large-scale prisoner exchanges. Lincoln declined to meet with them, and no action was taken on their plea.

By far the most infamous of Civil War prisons, Andersonville, officially known as Camp Sumter, did not exist until the winter of 1863-1864. With defeats at Chattanooga and Atlanta in the West and expanding Union offensive operations in the East, the war was going badly for the Confederates. Union forces were penetrating ever farther into the heart of the Confederacy. It became necessary to construct a prison deep in Georgia to house increasing numbers of Union prisoners. A location near the town of Andersonville in Sumter County, approximately 60 miles southwest of Macon, was chosen because of its proximity to a rail line, a source of water from Sweetwater Creek that ran through camp, an abundance of pine trees for the construction of a stockade, and the availability of slave labor.

Construction began in December 1863. The original stockade occupied 16½ acres, with a pair of large gates on its western face. A fenced perimeter was set between 19 and 25 feet inside the stockade walls. This was the notorious “Dead Line,” and any prisoner crossing it would be shot immediately. On February 24, 1864, the first prisoners, 600 men transferred from Libby Prison, arrived at Andersonville. Wirz assumed command in April and was subordinate to Brig. Gen. John H. Winder, the newly appointed commissary general of Confederate prisons. The population of Andersonville swelled rapidly. In July, Wirz set the prisoners to work constructing a 10-acre expansion of the stockade. By August, starvation and disease were rampant, and the dead during that month alone totaled 2,994. The creek that ran through the compound became fetid, contributing to an epidemic-level rise in dysentery cases. Many prisoners lived in makeshift lean-to structures. Others had no shelter at all, clawing holes in the ground for whatever cover was possible. Prisoners stole from one another and fought over morsels of food. Organized gangs terrorized the camp.

Private Prescott Tracy of the 82nd New York Infantry Regiment was one of only a handful of Andersonville prisoners actually exchanged in 1864. His description of the horrors at Andersonville was later published in a propaganda pamphlet entitled Narrative of the Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Privates While Prisoners of War in the Hands of Rebel Authorities that circulated widely in the North. “The new-comers, on reaching this, would exclaim: ‘Is this hell?’ Yet they soon would become callous, and enter unmoved the horrible rottenness,” recounted Tracy. “The rations consisted of eight ounces of corn bread (the cob being ground with the kernel), and generally sour, two ounces of condemned pork, offensive in appearance and smell. Occasionally, about twice a week, two tablespoons of rice, and in place of the pork the same amount (two tablespoonfuls) of molasses were given us about twice a month. The clothing of the men was miserable in the extreme. Very few had shoes of any kind, not two thousand had coats and pants, and those were late comers. More than one-half were indecently exposed, and many were naked.”

From February 1864 through the end of the war, approximately 45,000 prisoners were held at Andersonville. A total of 12,913, roughly 28 percent, died and were buried in mass graves. The toll at Andersonville represents 57 percent of all Union prisoner deaths during the war. When the war ended, the focus of retribution against the South for the atrocities perpetrated in Confederate prisons would fall on Wirz, who former prisoners remembered brandishing a revolver when greeting them on arrival at the prison, shouting threats, and often losing his temper. The Northern propaganda machine had also been in motion for some time, and photographs of emaciated men, no more than living skeletons, fueled the rage against those who had encouraged, facilitated, or allowed such inhumane treatment to occur.

The Arrest and Prosecution of Henry Wirz
Born in 1823 in Zurich, Switzerland, Wirz immigrated to the United States in 1849 and opened a medical practice in Kentucky. He later moved to Louisiana with his wife and two stepdaughters. By the eve of the Civil War, his practice was prospering. With the outbreak of war, Wirz supposedly enlisted in Company A, 4th Battalion, Louisiana Volunteers, although there is little information to confirm this. He was further said to have held the rank of sergeant and fought in the Battle of Seven Pines, where he was wounded and lost much of the use of his right arm. Subsequently, he was promoted to the rank of captain for bravery on the field. Rendered unfit for further combat due to his debilitating wound, Wirz was assigned to Winder’s staff in Richmond and later detailed by President Jefferson Davis to serve as a courier to Confederate diplomats in Europe. Upon his return, Wirz was detailed by Winder to serve at prisons in Richmond, Tuscaloosa, and finally Andersonville.

Within days of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the war, Wirz was arrested and taken to Macon for questioning. He was briefly released and went to a nearby railroad station to return to his family at Andersonville. While waiting for the train, he was arrested again. By May 10, he was in jail in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington to await trial. Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace, later the best-selling author of the Biblically inspired novel Ben Hur, presided over the 63-day military tribunal, which lasted from August 23 to October 18.

Henry Wirz wearing his Confederate uniform in better times.
Henry Wirz wearing his Confederate uniform in better times.

Thirteen separate charges were leveled against Wirz, alleging such acts as Specification No. 11: “July 1, 1864, Henry Wirz did incite, and urge ferocious bloodhounds to pursue, attack, wound, and tear in pieces soldiers belonging to the U.S. Army, and a prisoner (unknown name) was so mortally wounded that on the sixth day he died.” Specification No. 4 noted: “On May 30th, Henry Wirz with a certain pistol did feloniously and with malice aforethought, inflict upon a soldier (unknown name) a mortal wound from which the soldier died.”

The remainder of the charges were similar, alleging that Wirz personally abused and murdered prisoners and ordered Confederate soldiers to do so as well. Interestingly, several of the other specifications accuse Wirz of crimes committed either before his arrival at Andersonville or during the month of August 1864, while he was actually ill and recovering at his home five miles from the prison. These allegations may have been false, or they may have been dated incorrectly. There may have been many other incidents that were never specified.

Most of the evidence against Wirz was circumstantial, and as the trial progressed, the validity of the charges hinged on the testimony of a single eyewitness, a former prisoner named Felix de la Baume, who claimed to be from France and a grandnephew of the great Marquis de Lafayette. De la Baume provided the name of one of Wirz’s victims and testified that he had personally witnessed the murders of two unnamed prisoners. De la Baume was praised for his “zealous testimony” at the trial. Before the proceedings were even completed, he was awarded a position in the U.S. Department of the Interior. However, soon after the trial, de la Baume’s true identity was discovered. His real name was Felix Oeser, and he was originally from the German province of Saxony and a deserter from the 7th New York Volunteer Infantry. Oeser supposedly admitted that he had committed perjury, but then his trail went cold. He was allowed to simply melt away.

On the night before his execution, Wirz was visited by his attorney, Louis Schade, who repeated an earlier offer from a highranking government official. In exchange for implicating Jefferson Davis, Wirz would escape the gallows with a commuted sentence. Wirz responded: “Mr. Schade, you know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. If I knew anything about him, I would not become a traitor against him or anybody else even to save my life.”

Prior to his execution, Wirz wrote two notable letters. One was to Schade, asking for help for his destitute family. The other was an appeal for clemency to President Andrew Johnson. “For six weary months I have been a prisoner; for six months my name has been in the mouth of every one; by thousands I am considered a monster of cruelty, a wretch that ought not to pollute the earth any longer,” he wrote. The appeal went unanswered.

A Just Conviction?
On November 10, 1865, guarded by four companies of soldiers, Wirz was led to the gallows in the yard of the Old Capitol Prison. After ascending the stairs to the platform, the condemned man commented that he was being hanged for merely following orders. With the dome of the Capitol in the background, the hangman’s noose was placed around his neck, and the trap door was sprung at 10:32 am. Wirz’s neck did not snap with the initial drop, and he slowly strangled at the end of the rope. A crowd of about 250 spectators, each issued a ticket for admittance, watched the event with ghoulish pleasure, chanting over and over: “Wirz, remember Andersonville. Wirz, remember Andersonville.”

The debate continues to the present day over whether Wirz was justly convicted or had actually done the best he could in difficult circumstances. Initially, he was only one of several individuals who ran the risk of being charged with heinous crimes against Federal prisoners, and he was certainly a lesser target than Jefferson Davis or Secretary of War James Seddon. However, establishing a direct link between the highest echelon of the Confederate government and the sanctioning of mistreatment of Union prisoners proved a difficult proposition for prosecutors. Furthermore, placing Davis on trial might well have complicated the process of assimilating the former Confederate states back into the Union. Like the much more culpable and dishonorable Japanese emperor Hirohito following World War II, Davis went unpunished for calculated political reasons.

A lesser known figure in the prison drama was General Winder, who conveniently died of a massive heart attack on February 7, 1865. Winder was reportedly heard to brag that more Union soldiers were dying at Andersonville than the Confederate armies were killing in battle. He was also said to have turned a deaf ear to pleas from Wirz for the relief of suffering prisoners. Earlier, Winder had been responsible for the prison facilities in the Richmond area, including Libby Prison, Castle Thunder, and Belle Isle, an island in the James River where Union enlisted men were held. Had he lived, it is likely that Winder would have joined Wirz on the gallows.

“Horrors of Richmond Prisons”
Among the other prisons located throughout the South, Libby was the most prominent. Consisting of three buildings, each four stories high, the warehouse complex was commandeered by Winder for use as a prison following the July 1861 Battle of Manassas. During the war, more than 50,000 men passed through Libby, and conditions became progressively more crowded, with no fewer than 1,200 Union officers held captive there at any given time. The windows were barred, and few of them had glass panes, exposing the prisoners to weather extremes ranging from boiling hot to freezing cold. Captives were not allowed to lie on their blankets during daylight hours and were banned from looking out the windows for fear that they might signal Union sympathizers outside

A story entitled “Horrors of Richmond Prisons” appeared in the November 28, 1863, edition of the New York Times. It noted that at Libby, “the prevailing diseases are diarrhea, dysentery and typhoid pneumonia. Of late the percentage of deaths has greatly increased, the result of causes that have been long at work—such as insufficient food, clothing and shelter, combined with that depression of spirits brought on so often by long confinement.” Describing his early days of captivity at Libby, Lt. Col. F.F. Cavada wrote: “Nothing but bread has, as yet, been issued to us, half a loaf twice a day per man. This must be washed down with James River water, drawn from a hydrant over the wash-trough. There are some filthy blankets hanging about the room; they have been used time and again by the many who preceded us; they are soiled, worn, and filled with vermin but we are recommended to help ourselves in time; if we do so with reluctance and profound disgust it is because we are now more particular than we will be in time.”

Bad as they were, Andersonville and Libby Prison were not alone in their records of deprivation. A camp at Salisbury, North Carolina, housed prisoners as early as 1861, after the Confederate government had paid $15,000 for a 16-acre tract there, including the three-story main building, six smaller brick buildings, and other structures that had once been used as a cotton mill. In the autumn of 1864, nearly 9,000 prisoners were held at Salisbury, considerably outnumbering the inhabitants of the nearby town. One prisoner referred to Salisbury as a “dark hole.” Private Benjamin Booth of the 22nd Iowa Infantry kept a daily log of deaths in the camp, noting that 58 men died on December 1, 1864, alone, and another 40 on January 12, 1865. More than 15,000 Union captives were held at Salisbury during the war, and approximately 5,000 of them died, a mortality rate of 33 percent that may have actually eclipsed that of Andersonville.

The Union Prison Camps
Confederate captives fared little better in Union camps. Captain Francis Marion Headley of the Confederate 8th Kentucky Mounted Infantry was captured in 1862 at Champion Hill, Mississippi, exchanged, and then captured a second time while on recruiting duty in his home state. Headley was sent to the Federal prison at Johnson’s Island, just off the coast of Lake Erie and about three miles from the city of Sandusky, Ohio. The prison opened in April 1862 and consisted of a 1.65-acre tract that included 12 two-story barracks and a hospital building enclosed by a wooden stockade with walls 15 feet high. Prisoners were allowed to receive mail and purchase food and other goods from a sutler. Some were given surplus Union uniforms to replace their worn-out clothing.

Although Johnson’s Island was intended to house only 2,500 men, the prison was regularly overcrowded and as many as 15,000 captives, most of them officers, passed through its gates during the war. The Ohio winters were harsh, and the men were subjected to sub-freezing temperatures and bitter winds that swept through their barracks off Lake Erie. Remarkably, only about 300 died. The difficult experience, however, remained with Headley for the rest of his life and contributed to his declining health.

Elsewhere in Ohio, the prisoners fared much worse. At Camp Chase, established on the outskirts of Columbus in May 1861 as a training facility for Union volunteers, 2,260 Confederate prisoners died. Three separate prisons inside the camp encompassed six acres and were intended to hold a total of 4,000 men. At its peak, the population of Camp Chase numbered from 7,000 to 10,000. Captain H.M. Lazelle, a Federal inspector who visited the camp in July 1862, noted that many of the barracks roofs leaked and that the buildings themselves were constructed so low that standing water soaked the floors for days following even moderate rain. Overcrowding, along with open latrines and cisterns, contributed to an outbreak of smallpox, and the quality of the food was so poor that the commissary officer was relieved of his post and summarily dismissed from the military.

Counting only the 2,260 noted burials and the estimated 25,000 Confederate prisoners who transited Camp Chase during its operation as a prison from the summer of 1861 through the end of the war, the mortality rate at the facility may be estimated at just under 10 percent. Camp Douglas, the most infamous of Northern prisons, opened in Chicago in 1861 as a training camp for volunteer infantry units and was permanently designated a prison camp in January 1863. At times, both Confederate prisoners and Union parolees were held there together.

Camp Douglas
During the war, more than 26,000 Confederates were imprisoned at Camp Douglas at various times, and the estimated number of deaths ranged from 4,500 to more than 6,000. Controversy surrounds the final mortality rate due to the allegation that a large number of prisoner deaths were never recorded, the bodies either buried in unmarked mass graves or simply considered unaccounted for. On the other hand, it was charged that an unscrupulous contractor simply buried a number of empty caskets to increase his payment from the U.S. government. Regardless, the generally accepted mortality rate at Camp Douglas is 17 to 23 percent.

Constructed on land previously owned by U.S. senator Stephen Douglas (hence the name), the camp was in a low-lying area where drainage was inadequate. Conditions deteriorated to such an extent that Henry W. Bellows of the U.S. Sanitary Commission wrote to Maj. Gen. William Hoffman, commissary general of prisons: “Sir, the amount of standing water, unpoliced grounds, of foul sinks, of unventilated and crowded barracks, of general disorder, of soil reeking miasmatic accretions, of rotten bones and emptying of camp kettles, is enough to drive a sanitarium to despair. I hope that no thought will be entertained of mending matters. The absolute abandonment of the spot seems to be the only judicious course. I do not believe that any amount of drainage would purge the soil loaded with accumulated filth or those barracks fetid with two stories of vermin and animal exhalations. Nothing but fire can cleanse them.”

Depending on the sources consulted, the population of Camp Douglas peaked at anywhere from 9,000 to 12,000, fell sharply later in 1862 following an exchange under the Dix-Hill Cartel, and then rose significantly by mid-1863. During the winter of 1862-1863, more than 200 prisoners were crowded into barracks measuring no more than 20 by 70 feet. Prisoners were required to stand in ranks in ankle-deep snow and ice. Temperatures dipped below zero, and up to 1,700 died during that winter alone.

A number of Illinois Militia and U.S. Army officers were in command at Camp Douglas. One of the more memorable was Colonel Charles V. DeLand, previously the commander of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters. DeLand took charge of the camp on August 18, 1863, and attempted to tighten discipline by putting the prisoners to work on an improved stockade. More than 70 escapes were attempted at Camp Douglas, and while DeLand was in command more than 150 prisoners, 26 in a single incident, broke out. DeLand was known for the severe punishment he dispensed, once having prisoners of the 8th Kentucky Cavalry remain standing at attention for a lengthy period after a tunnel was discovered under their barracks and ordering guards to shoot any of the prisoners who sat down. One was killed and two were wounded. On another occasion, three men were hung by their thumbs for an hour with their toes barely touching the ground because they allegedly threatened another prisoner who had been an informer.

“Hellmira”
As the war progressed, the Union armies took prisoners in ever-growing numbers. Of the 12,000 Confederates that inhabited the prison at Rock Island, Illinois, during the war, 2,000 died. At Point Lookout, Maryland, 50,000 prisoners passed through during the war and from 12,000 to 20,000 were housed there at any given time. Among these, an estimated 4,000 deaths occurred, for a rate of roughly eight percent. The famous Southern poet Sidney Lanier was a captive at Point Lookout and contracted tuberculosis there that dramatically shortened his life. He died at age 39.

At Fort Delaware, on Pea Patch Island in New Castle County, Delaware, the population swelled to more than 13,000 prisoners following the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 and increased to more than 30,000 by the end of the war. The prisoners suffered about 2,500 deaths. One prisoner from Georgia was starved from a healthy weight of 140 pounds to 80, while another prisoner wrote graphically, “The bacon was rusty and slimy, the soup was slop filled with white worms a half-inch long.”

In the spring of 1864, the problem of overcrowding had become so severe that a new prison was constructed on the site of a former mustering location for Union troops at Elmira, near the banks of the Chemoung River in upstate New York. Troops were detailed to convert the dilapidated camp into a prison and build a stockade. By July, 700 prisoners had been transferred from Point Lookout, and a month later the prison population swelled to more than 10,000 Confederate enlisted men. Conditions at Elmira were terrible from the beginning. The prison was below the level of the river, making drainage problematic. The barracks could hold only about half the prisoners; the rest were forced to live in tents. With the onset of winter, the men were exposed to extreme cold. Disease was widespread. By war’s end, more than 12,000 prisoners had occupied Elmira, known to many of them as “Hellmira.” Nearly 3,000 died, yielding a harvest of death approaching 25 percent and rivaling that of Andersonville.

On November 1, 1864, Dr. Eugene Sanger, the commander and camp surgeon at Elmira, wrote to U.S. Army Surgeon General Joseph Barnes: “Since August there have been 2,011 patients admitted to the hospital and 775 deaths. Have averaged daily 451 in hospital and 601 in quarters, an aggregate of 1,052 per day sick. At this rate the entire command will be admitted to hospital in less than a year and thirty-six percent die.” Elmira operated for 15 months, and on July 1, 1865, nearly three months after Lee’s surrender, 218 Confederates remained in the facility’s hospital. The last prisoner departed Elmira on September 27.

The Frugal Commissary General William Hoffman
Union Commissary General Hoffman has been both praised and vilified for his administration of the Union prisons during the Civil War. A career officer, he had been a classmate of Lee’s at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was a veteran of the Indian wars and the Mexican War. Captured in Texas at the beginning of the Civil War, he was exchanged on August 27, 1862. As commissary general, he was subordinate to Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, who instructed him that the barracks at the Rock Island prison should be “put up in the roughest and cheapest manner, mere shanties, with no fine work about them.” Meigs, who had lost a son in the war, had no sympathy to spare on Confederate prisoners.

While adequate supplies of food and clothing were available most of the time, some civilian contractors took government funds and either failed to deliver goods or dealt in such shoddy products that clothing and blankets were of such inferior quality as to be of little use. Likewise, contracted meat was delivered to prisoners already spoiled and unfit to eat. At Point Lookout, Major Allen G. Brady, the prison provost, was widely believed to have taken provisions meant for prisoners and kept them for himself.

Hoffman’s frugality became legendary. Although Congress had appropriated adequate funds for the purpose of caring for prisoners, he was reluctant to make such purchases and actually returned $2 million to the Treasury at war’s end. He once ordered a prison commander, “As long as a prisoner has clothing upon him, however much torn, you must issue nothing to him.” When a Confederate officer questioned Hoffman about his ill treatment at Camp Chase, the commissary general bluntly stated that it was “retaliation for innumerable outrages which have been committed on our people.” After the war, Hoffman was officially commended for his “faithful, meritorious, and distinguished services as Commissary-General during the Rebellion.” He retired from the army in 1870 with his permanent rank of colonel and died at the age of 77 in 1884.

The Controversy Around Civil War Prison Conditions Continues to This Day
An 1864 report by the U.S. Sanitary Commission accused the Confederates of a predetermined plan to mistreat Union prisoners. No doubt this charge, unproven then or now, influenced the desire for retribution against Rebel authorities who supposedly had perpetrated such an outrage. The debate continues to rage among historians to this day. At the very least, it appears that the Federal government endorsed a policy of retaliation for the poor treatment of Union prisoners in Confederate hands. Secretary of War Stanton went on record, writing to Hoffman: “The Secretary of War is not disposed, in view of the treatment our prisoners are receiving, to erect fine establishments for their prisoners.” That the North, largely untouched by the war, was much better able to care humanely for its prisoners than the starving South, is beyond dispute. Whether it cared to do so remains an open question—at least in the minds of pro-Union historians.

In the end, Henry Wirz, the only individual on either side to be punished for inhumane treatment of prisoners, remains the most controversial figure of the Civil War’s tragic prison legacy. One historical footnote remains. The defense that he had only followed orders failed to absolve Wirz of guilt in the mind of the court and established a precedent for the trials, 80 years later, of Nazi war criminals who made the same claim at Nuremberg following World War II. Simply acting on orders, it was judged, does not relieve an individual of his larger responsibility to humanity. It is a distinction that remains, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the government’s concomitant response to terrorism, very much in question today.

Image 1: A closer view of the squalid conditions at Andersonville, August 1864. The notorious “dead line” can be seen at the right. Anyone crossing it was shot on sight.

Image 2: The hangman places a noose around the neck of Andersonville commandant Henry Wirz prior to his execution in Washington on Nov. 10, 1865.

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com

Ann Bradford Stokes

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:09:00 +0000

From: s3.amazonaws.com

Stokes (1830-1903), an illiterate African American woman born into slavery in Tennessee, served as a “contraband” (escaped slave) nurse on the hospital ship USS Red Rover, the first Union Naval
ship, from January 1863 to October 1864. She also received regular wages of a “first-class boy.”

Notably, she was among the first women to serve as a nurse in the United States Navy and the first to serve on a U.S. military vessel. In 1890, after years of unsuccessful petitions for a pension, Stokes reapplied for a pension based on her 18 months of service in the Navy instead of as a widow of a deceased soldier. Since she was listed as a “boy” while serving on the USS Red Rover, Stokes was granted her a pension of $12 per month (the usual amount awarded to nurses at this time) by the Navy.

The Mystery of the Glow-in-the-Dark Civil War Soldiers

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:09:00 +0000

By Lauren Davis, 4-7-12

The American Civil War Battle of Shiloh left 16,000 soldiers dead and 3,000 soldiers wounded, and some of those wounded soldiers are part of an odd mystery. Some of the soldiers had eerily glowing wounds, which healed more quickly than the non-glowing wounds. So what strange battlefield science was at work?

It took two days and nights for the medics to reach all of the wounded soldiers in Shiloh, and some of the soldiers noticed that their wounds glowed in the darkness. Because the glowing wounds healed more quickly and cleanly, the mysterious force was termed "Angel's Glow."

It wasn't until 2001 that this 1862 mystery was finally solved. Seventeen-year-old Bill Martin was visiting Shiloh with his family, where he heard about the strange glow. His mother, microbiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, had studied luminescent bacteria, and Martin wondered if similar bacteria might have been at work. With his friend Jon Curtis, Martin researched Photorhabdus luminescens, a type of bacteria that lives in the guts of parasitic nematodes. When nematodes vomit up the glowing bacteria, P. luminescens kills the other microbes living in the nematoad's host.

Normally, P. luminescens couldn't live in the human body since it dies at human body temperature. But Martin and Curtis, studying the historical records and the conditions in Shiloh, realized that the nighttime temperatures were low enough for the soldiers to develop hypothermia, allowing the bacteria to thrive in their bodies, kill off competing bacteria, and perhaps save the lives of their human hosts.

For solving this decades old mystery, Curtis and Martin won first place in the 2001 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

From: io9.gizmodo.com

Ann Preston: First Woman Medical School Dean

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:09:00 +0000

By Maggie MacLean, 10-10-2012

Ann Preston (December 1, 1813–April 18, 1872) was a doctor and educator of women in Pennsylvania. One of the most notable achievements of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the 19th century was the role it played in the entrance of women into medicine. Ann Preston was one of those pioneer Quaker women doctors.

Through her leadership and her persuasive influence, Dr. Preston promoted educational, professional and social changes that eventually established the right of women to study medicine and removed the barriers which blocked the path of those women who aspired to become competent and successful physicians.

Early Years
Ann Preston was born on December 1, 1813 in West Grove, Pennsylvania, Quaker community near Philadelphia. She was the oldest daughter and second of nine children of Quaker minister Amos Preston and Margaret Smith Preston. Of their three daughters, Ann was the only one to survive to adulthood.

Ann grew up in a close knit family revolving around the West Grove Meeting. Her parents were abolitionists and supporters of women's rights. The famous Quaker minister Lucretia Mott was a friend of the Prestons and often visited them.

Ann was educated at the local Quaker school, then at a boarding school in Chester, Pennsylvania, until she had to return home to care for her family when her mother became ill. To continue her education she attended lectures of the local literary association and lyceum, where such poets as James Russell Lowell and John Greenleaf Whittier came to speak, and began to write her own essays and poetry.

Ann also became a member of the temperance movement and the Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society, for which she wrote petitions and lectures. After her younger brothers were old enough to care for themselves, Ann became a teacher, and in 1849 she published a book of children's rhymes, Cousin Ann's Stories.

Because girls were restricted to sedentary and indoor activities and dressed in tight clothing, Ann believed that women should know more about their own bodies. After some intense study of those subjects, she began teaching physiology and hygiene to all-female classes.

For the first half of the 19th century all medical schools uniformly refused to admit females. In 1847 Geneva College in New York made a one-time exception for Elizabeth Blackwell, and she became the first American woman doctor. But others who wanted to train were forced to study medicine in the offices of physicians and could not gain the status of 'medical doctor.'

Medical Education
Encouraged by Philadelphia Quakers who were becoming interested in medical education for women, in 1847 Ann Preston became an apprentice in the office of Dr. Nathaniel Moseley. After two years of medical training under Dr. Moseley, Preston applied to four medical colleges in Philadelphia but her applications were rejected because of her gender.

To provide opportunities for women to study medicine, a group of Quakers founded the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1850 - the first institution in the world established to train women in medicine and offer them the degree of Doctor of Medicine. The first year the faculty of the College was all male, but in 1851 Hannah Longshore was selected as a demonstrator in anatomy and was listed as a faculty member.

Preston enrolled in the first class, graduating in December 1851 at the age of 38. She returned to the college the following year for postgraduate work, then ran a series of lectures on hygiene for women. In 1853 Preston was appointed professor of physiology and hygiene at the Female Medical College, and spent the rest of her life in service of women in medicine.

Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia
In 1857, the Philadelphia Medical Society spoke out against the Female Medical College, effectively barring its women students from educational clinics and medical societies in the city. Undeterred, Dr. Ann Preston organized a board of "lady managers" to fund and run a teaching hospital to care for women, where her students could gain clinical experience.

The area around the Medical College was too crowded to add a hospital wing, and it was therefore necessary to find a new location. But to buy such a site meant raising money. The supporters of the college had already given as much as they could, while other wealthy Philadelphians objected to women doctors. In 1858 Preston began walking from door to door soliciting funds.

During this time, she began to suffer from rheumatic fever and exhaustion, and she was confined to a hospital for three months to recuperate.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Medical College was forced to close due to lack of financial support. However, Dr. Preston had raised enough money to send friend and colleague, Dr. Emmeline Horton Cleveland, to Paris to study obstetrics so that she could be the resident physician at the new hospital.

When there was still not enough money in the coffers, Preston borrowed her family's horse and buggy and began to go from farm to farm in Bucks, Montgomery and Chester Counties, calling on Quaker families and pleading her cause. Her earnestness and faith were deeply moving, and slowly the money trickled in.

In 1861, Preston and her supporters founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia to offer medical and surgical care for women by women. Its purposes were to:

"establish in the City of Philadelphia a Hospital for the treatment of diseases of women and children, and for obstetrical cases; furnishing at the same time facilities for clinical instruction to women engaged in the study of medicine, and for the practical training of nurses; the chief resident physician to be a woman."

Woman's Hospital accepted its first patient, to the "Lying In Department (maternity)," on December 16, 1861. By April of 1862, twelve patients occupied beds. The hospital grew steadily; by 1875 it housed 37 beds, treated nearly 2,000 patients at their homes (with visits carried out largely by students), and saw more than 3,000 visitors in its dispensary. Women and children were admitted "without regard to their religious belief, nationality or color."

After the Female Medical College was re-opened in 1866, student Mary Putnam Jacobi was refused a medical degree by Edwin Fussel, though she met the required qualifications. Most of the faculty, including Preston, disagreed with the decision. Fussell resigned following the incident, and Preston was appointed dean.

Dean of Woman's Medical College
Dr. Ann Preston served as dean of the college from 1866 through 1872, becoming the first woman dean of an American medical school, a position that allowed her to champion the right of women to become physicians. Under her leadership the college trained the first African American and the first Native American women doctors in the country, as well as the first women medical missionaries to Asia.

The school changed its name to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867. Soon many eminent physicians, male and female, were among its teaching staff. When many small medical colleges were forced to close because of the introduction of higher standards in medical training, the College survived. In 1863 the school began to train nurses, one of the first institutions in the United States to do so.

Some of the women who audited the courses at the college gave lectures on physiology and hygiene to women in the poorest sections of the city of Philadelphia, thus pioneering medical outreach as a branch of social work. One of these women was Sarah Mapps Douglass, an African American teacher and Quaker.

While she had achieved her goal of establishing a woman's hospital, Ann Preston believed that her female medical students deserved the right to attend the larger, all-purpose clinics and hospitals in Philadelphia so they might learn to deal with a greater variety of medical conditions. At first all the hospitals barred "lady doctors."

However, in 1868 Preston won the right for her students to attend the teaching clinics at Blockley Hospital. When the first women arrived, however, they were met by an angry demonstration. The male medical students shouted insults and threw paper, tinfoil and tobacco quids at the women. The female students remained composed and attended the clinic, but on their way out they were pelted with rocks.

Following this demonstration, the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and of Jefferson Medical College held a meeting attended by representatives of the medical staffs of all the hospitals in Philadelphia to discuss the admission of women medical students and declared themselves to be opposed to the "admixture of the sexes at clinical instruction in medicine and surgery."

Because of the publicity over the behavior of the male medical students at Blockley and Preston's protest against it, public opinion began to swing in favor of the education of women doctors. In 1869 she made a similar arrangement with the Pennsylvania Hospital. Dr. Preston accompanied her students to the first clinic and witnessed the harassment by male students firsthand.

In a letter written February 21, 1925, one of Preston's former students, Sarah Hall, recalled the events that day for the 75th anniversary of the Woman's Medical College:

"We were allowed to enter by way of the back stairs, and were greeted by the men students with hisses and paper wads, and frequently during the clinic were treated to more of the same. The Professor of Surgery came in and bowed to the men only. More hisses... We retired the same way we entered and, on reaching the outer door, found men students lined up on one side of the way, and we, to get out, had to take the road and walk to the street to the tune of 'The Rogues March.' Our students separated as soon as possible. All who could took the little antiquated horse cars in any direction they were going. The men separated also, and in groups of twos, threes and fours, followed the women."

Late Years
By this time Ann Preston was gravely ill, suffering from articular rheumatism. She continued to teach at the college, serving as professor of physiology, and to serve as consulting physician at the Woman's Hospital, but she had to restrict her private practice to office visits because she could no longer ride out to visit her patients in their homes.

Nevertheless, her spirit remained strong, and she was a constant inspiration to her students. Year after year she addressed the graduating class of the Female Medical College, urging them to continue to practice the highest standards of medical care despite opposition. In 1871 Preston suffered an attack of acute articular rheumatism, which left her in a weakened state.

Dr. Ann Preston died on April 18, 1872 and was buried near her beloved friends Lucretia and James Mott and many other Quaker abolitionists at Fair Hill burial ground in North Philadelphia. Ann left her instruments and her life savings to her beloved college for a scholarship. Six years later, her friend Dr. Emmeline Cleveland died and was buried next to Dr. Preston, as she had requested.

There is a beautiful sequel to Ann Preston's life. The Woman's Hospital that she founded flourished on North College Avenue for many years and then was moved to West Philadelphia, where the street facing it was named Preston Street. The neighborhood around it deteriorated, there was less need for a woman's hospital, and it was abandoned some years ago. However, it has now been rehabilitated by a Quaker group, Friends Rehabilitation Corporation, as housing for elderly and homeless women.

SOURCES
Wikipedia: Ann Preston
Pioneer Woman Doctor: Ann Preston
Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Ann Preston
Wikipedia: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania

From: civilwarwomenblog.com

Black Women After the Civil War: African American Women in Postbellum America

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:08:00 +0000

By Maggie MacLean 9-14-16

After the Civil War, African American women were promised a new life of freedom with the same rights provided to other American citizens. But the newly freed women in the South had little or no money, limited or no education and little access to it, and racism impacted every area of their lives. The transition from enslavement to freedom was a difficult and frightening one for most black women who emerged from enslavement knowing "that what they got wasn't what they wanted; it wasn't freedom, really."

The Civil War promised freedom to African American women, but as the Confederate Army and slaveowners fleeing from Union troops often took their male slaves with them. The women and children were left behind. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation freed African Americans in rebel states in 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all slaves wherever they were, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population.

Freedmen's Bureau
The Bureau assisted African Americans in finding jobs, land, a home, and an education, as well as obtaining clothing, food, water, and health care. It distributed 15 million rations to blacks and set up a system by which planters could borrow rations to feed freedmen they employed. Its efforts were quickly consumed with the plight of former slaves and the objective of establishing emancipation in the face of strong opposition.

In 1865, Republican congressmen founded the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, better known as the Freedmen's Bureau, to avert mass starvation and suffering of freedwomen and men. The immense social crisis that made the bureau necessary came as a direct result of the Union Army's physical destruction of the South.

The Freedmen’s Bureau, which had offices in 15 Southern states and the District of Columbia, operated from 1865 to 1872 to help manage the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of slaves.

Southern blacks now faced the difficulty Northern blacks had confronted for decades - that of a free people surrounded by hostile whites. Freedman Houston Hartsfield Holloway wrote:

"For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them."

The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, tried to find ways for whites and blacks to live together in a free society, but people in the South saw Reconstruction as a humiliating imposition.

With the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, however, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, participate in politics, purchase the land of their former owners, and seek their own employment. Opponents of this progress, however, soon rallied against the former slaves and eroded the gains for which many had shed their blood.

Nicodemus, Kansas
After the Civil War there was a general exodus of blacks from the South. Some emancipated slaves quickly fled from the neighborhood of their owners, while others became wage laborers for them. Benjamin Singleton led an exodus of African Americans from various points in the South to Kansas. Six blacks and two whites ncorporated the Nicodemus Town Company in Kansas in 1877 - the oldest of about twenty towns established predominately for blacks in the West.

Nicodemus, Kansas is located on the plains in the northwest corner of Kansas. The six founders, all from Lexington, Kentucky, named the town Nicodemus after a legendary African slave prince who had purchased his freedom. They envisioned Nicodemus as a place where its settlers would have both political freedom and economic opportunity.

Northern teachers, many of whom were white women, volunteered to provide education and training for the newly freed population. In time, schools from the elementary level through college provided a variety of opportunities, from the rudiments of reading and writing and various types of basic vocational training to classics, arts, and theology.

By 1886 Nicodemus had become a prosperous community surrounded by farms owned by blacks. The town had two newspapers, the Nicodemus Enterprise and Nicodemus Western Cyclone. There was also a drugstore, a bank, schoolhouse, three churches, and a general store, the first two story building in the town.

Kate Drumgoold
Multiple sources estimate that she was born in 1858 or 1859 near Petersburg, Virginia. While Drumgoold was still young, her mother was sold to allow her owner to pay a poor white man to go to the Civil War in his place. Drumgoold's mother left a husband, one son, and 17 daughters behind. Kate later wrote:

We did not know that she was sold until she was gone; and the saddest thought was to me to know which way she had gone and I used to go outside and look up to see if there was anything that would direct me.

When Kate's mother returned to her family after Emancipation, she found her husband remarried, her daughters scattered, and her only son, who had fought for the Confederacy, was now missing.

Kate and her mother reunited as much of the family as possible and moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Kate worked as a domestic, battled significant illnesses, and worked toward obtaining an education, which she considered essential to the advancement of African Americans. Her plans to attend school had to be put aside for a few years after she contracted smallpox, but she never wavered in her determination.

"For every time that I saw the newspaper there was some one of our race in the far South getting killed for trying to teach and I made up my mind that I would die to see my people taught."

Kate Drumgoold left Brooklyn and went to Wayland Seminary school in Washington DC and later returned. In 1878 she left again and went to Harpers Ferry for four years at school. She returned again to Brooklyn and began teaching in 1886, fulfilling her dream of teaching African Americans. Her mother passed away on February 28, 1894, but Kate continued to teach for eleven more years until her health began to fail.

On January 20, 1897 a severe illness of some sort struck Kate Drumgoold, and she was forced to quit teaching in March of 1897. Her autobiography ended abruptly soon after, as she prayed for the strength to finish her work.

Mattie J. Jackson
Mattie Jane Jackson was born in January 1847 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Westley Jackson and Ellen Turner. Despite being enslaved by different owners, her parents had three children together: Sarah Ann, Mattie Jane, and Esther J. After the birth of his youngest daughter, Westley Jackson escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad. He settled in Chicago, Illinois and became a minister, but he died before the Civil War.

Mattie Jane Jackson (1847-1910) is known for her 1866 autobiography, The Story of Mattie J. Jackson: Her Parentage, Experience of Eighteen Years in Slavery, Incidents During the War, Her Escape from Slavery: A True Story (1866). Excerpt from that book:

"Two years after my father’s departure, my mother, with her two children, my sister and myself, attempted to make her escape. After traveling two days we reached Illinois. We slept in the woods at night. I believe my mother had food to supply us but fasted herself. But the advertisement had reached there before us, and loafers were already in search of us, and as soon as we were discovered on the brink of the river one of the spies made enquiries respecting her suspicious appearance. She was aware that she was arrested, consequently she gave a true account of herself - that she was in search of her husband. We were then destitute of any articles of clothing excepting our wearing apparel. Mother had become so weary that she was compelled to leave our package of clothing on the way. We were taken back to St. Louis and committed to prison and remained there one week, after which they put us in Linch's trader's yard, where we remained about four weeks. We were then sold to William Lewis."

Six years later, Ellen Turner met and married George Brown and together they had two sons. Brown escaped to Canada around 1855. Turner tried several times to join her husband, but was repeatedly caught and beaten. Brown returned to the United States, changed his name to John G. Thompson, and became a barber in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Her owner grew tired of Turner's constant attempts to escape; he sold her and her children to the captain of a Mississippi River steamboat. When Ellen met Sam Adams and made preparations to marry, the steamboat captain kidnapped the family and sent them to Louisville, Kentucky, where they were sold to different owners.

With the help of the Underground Railroad, Mattie escaped to Indianapolis, Indiana, where her mother and brother reached her several months later. At the end of the American Civil War, Mattie and her mother and brother traveled back to St. Louis, where Turner married Sam Adams.

Shortly after the end of the war, Mattie Jackson's stepfather, who had earlier changed his name to John G. Thompson, located the family and invited Jackson and her half-brother to join him and his wife, Dr. Lucy Susan (Prophet) Schuyler Thompson, a botanical physician and antislavery activist. Mattie was nineteen when she brought her eleven-year-old half-brother to Lawrence, Massachusetts to live with his father and stepmother, Lucy Susan Prophet Schuyler Thompson, who had recently lost her only child, a Civil War soldier.

In 1866, Mattie related her life experiences as a slave to her stepmother who went by the title Dr. L.S. Thompson. also published The Story of Mattie J. Jackson to raise money for Mattie's education. Evidence shows she finished her education and moved back to St. Louis, with her mother Ellen and her third husband, Sam Adams.

In 1869, Mattie married William Reed Dyer, a native of Warrenton, Missouri, a Union Army veteran who was employed as a porter on steamboats traveling up and down the Mississippi River. They eventually moved into their own home in the city of St. Louis. Out of their eight children, four sons and a daughter reached maturity. Of their nine children, five would live to maturity. After Ellen Turner Adams' death in May 1893, the Dyers moved to Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, about thirty-five miles from St. Louis, where they lived for the rest of their lives.

SOURCES
Docsouth: Mattie J. Jackson
Wikipedia: Mattie J. Jackson
BlackPast.org: Nicodemus, Kansas
Library of Congress: African American Odyssey
A Slave Girl's Story. Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold
NWHM: Claiming Their Citizenship: African American Women, 1624-2009: The Civil War and Reconstruction Period

Image 1: A freed family on a plantation gathered for a photograph

Image 2: Image: Mustered Out. Little Rock, Arkansas, April 20, 1865. Published in Harper's Weekly, May 19, 1866.
Alfred Waud's drawing captures the exuberance of the African American women and children as the U. S. Colored Troops returned home at the end of the Civil War.

From: civilwarwomenblog.com

Documentary Production Update

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 16:15:00 +0000

Great production progress has been made on the "Civil War Medicine" documentary trailer.

We recorded all of the voiceovers at Philadelphia Post; some live in the studio; some remote. The actors were from Pennsylvania, Delaware, Oregon and Wisconsin. They all did a great job. Musicians recorded piano, fiddle, banjo and drums live.

The unusual historical images you will see onscreen were provided by many excellent American museums, libraries, National Parks--the list is quite long! These are a few shots of the Philly Post studio where we recorded. Stay tuned for the trailer's release before Labor Day!

Black Soldiers, Blue Uniforms – Blood On The Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:51:00 +0000

By John Walker, 6-3-16

Confederate survivors of the Battle of Franklin shivered in their thinly held lines outside Nashville as the Black soldiers made their advance.

As the exhausted Confederate survivors of the Battle of Franklin shivered in their thinly held lines outside Nashville, Union General George H. Thomas prepared to launch a devastating, if much delayed, frontal assault.

Although several overzealous Union Army field commanders organized African Americans into ad hoc militia units early in 1862 and several black regiments were mustered into service later that year, it wasn’t until after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, that the federal government began actively recruiting and enlisting black soldiers and sailors.

Emancipation as a Military Strategy
In late 1862, after battlefield reverses slowed white enlistments to a trickle, Lincoln was convinced that emancipation and enlistment of blacks were crucial to winning the war. He initiated one of his most controversial and revolutionary policy directives: slaves in areas still in rebellion would be liberated, free blacks in the North and occupied South would be enlisted, and, eventually, blacks in loyal slave-holding and border states would be enlisted as well. All would serve exclusively under white officers.

The president was treading on extremely sensitive ground—widespread racial discrimination was rampant in the North, and many senior Army officers and large numbers of their men strongly opposed the idea of blacks in uniform. Even after Lincoln made it clear that he expected his generals to comply with his new enlistment policies, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, overall commander in the vast western theater, blatantly hindered recruiting efforts there. Like many Union officers, Sherman was willing to utilize blacks in menial positions such as laborers, teamsters, railroad guards, and cooks, but he steadfastly refused to deploy black regiments alongside white units.

Free blacks in the North had thronged to enlistment offices after the war began but were turned away. Federal law made it illegal for them to serve in the army or in state militias. In May 1861, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, commander at Fortress Monroe, Louisiana, declared escaped slaves “contraband of war” and refused to return them to their owners, instead putting them to work in support roles. Lincoln let Butler’s policy stand. Three months later, Congress passed the First Confiscation Act, which was designed, in effect, to deprive the Confederacy of its huge black labor force.

When Butler assumed command of Union forces in Louisiana, he faced an imminent attack and appealed to blacks to join his forces. The first units of Butler’s “Corps d’Afrique” were two 500-man regiments—the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, free blacks with black officers and a white commander, and the 3rd Louisiana Native Guards, former slaves with an all-white officer corps. Butler’s acceptance of the 1st Regiment with its black officers intact was unprecedented.

The men who joined the 1st Regiment were the elite of New Orleans black society: doctors, craftsmen, educators, and landowners, some of whom owned slaves themselves. Their ancestors had fought alongside Andrew Jackson against the British. Now, with their city occupied, and after first offering their services to the Confederacy, they joined Butler. On September 27, 1862, he mustered in the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, the first unit of black soldiers officially accepted into the U.S. Army. Butler would be replaced by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks later that year; Banks strongly opposed the idea of black officers and relegated the Guards to garrison duty while he began purging the units of their black officers by any means he could devise.

Confederate survivors of the Battle of Franklin shivered in their thinly held lines outside Nashville as the Black soldiers made their advance.

In 1862, U.S. Senator Jim Lane resigned to accept a commission as a brigadier general and recruiter in his home state of Kansas. Without waiting for authorization, he raised a regiment of blacks, cavalierly assuming that the War Department would approve. Ordered twice to abandon the project, he refused. In January 1863 Lane’s stubbornness paid off when Federal authorities, who had by now passed the Second Confiscation Act and the Militia Act authorizing the president to employ blacks as he deemed necessary, accepted his units into service.

Performance in Battle
The performance of black soldiers in three battles over a two-month period in 1863 erased any lingering doubts as to their worthiness for combat roles and hastened a massive surge in recruitment and enlistment of African Americans. In late May, the 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards advanced as part of Banks’s XIX Corps on the Confederate bastion at Port Hudson, Louisiana. On May 27, they launched an ill-advised frontal assault against the fortified works. Against overwhelming odds, the two regiments mounted several heroic but futile attacks. Their ranks shredded by sustained artillery and musket fire, the black regiments withdrew after suffering horrendous casualties.

Two weeks later, three regiments of raw, virtually untrained blacks, most of whom were runaway slaves who had been laboring in the fields of Mississippi and Louisiana a few weeks earlier, distinguished themselves in the defense of Union positions at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana. Attacked by a numerically superior Confederate force, the blacks fought back ferociously; the battle escalated into a savage hand-to-hand melee that turned into one of the bloodiest small engagements of the war. The three regiments, one of which was issued outmoded muskets just the day before the attack, fought the Confederates but suffered appalling casualties.

On July 18, a state regiment of black volunteers, the 54th Massachusetts, led a Union assault on Battery Wagner in South Carolina, another heavily fortified Rebel outpost. Although the attack failed and the 54th suffered heavy losses, the unit’s bravery in the face of terrible odds was unquestioned.

The conduct of the black soldiers on three separate battlefields did much to change racial stereotypes rampant in the North. People who had ridiculed the idea of putting blacks in uniform now endorsed it. Eight months after Fort Wagner, the 20th U.S. Colored Infantry, raised entirely within the state of New York, paraded through New York City and was cheered by whites and blacks alike. It had been only eight months since the infamous draft riots there.

Fighting for their Freedom
By August 1863, 14 regiments of U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) were in the field. The surge in enlistments helped fill the ranks of depleted Union units. By the critical summer of 1864, more than 100,000 blacks were under arms. Unfortunately, the blacks who flocked to the uniform had to deal with limited opportunities for advancement to the officer corps, inadequate training, substandard equipment, lower pay, and inferior medical care. About one in five blacks died from disease, compared with one in 12 whites.

Almost 180,000 African Americans served in the Union Army by war’s end, a little over half coming from the 11 seceded states; 7,122 whites served as officers in USCT units. Black units fought in 449 engagements. On December 15-16, 1864, two black brigades took part in the decisive battle of Nashville, which effectively ended the war in the western theater and was the only major Union victory in which colored units participated.

What had begun as a war to preserve the Union was transformed, in large part owing to military expediency, into a war for black liberation. African American men joined the Union ranks to escape slavery, destroy the Confederacy, prove their loyalty to the United States, and pursue their dreams of freedom and citizenship for themselves and future generations of black Americans.

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com

Terrible Virus, Fascinating History In "Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus" by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:50:00 +0000

By NPR Staff, 7-19-12

Here's your vocabulary word for the week: zoonosis. It describes an infection that is transmitted between species. For example, the disease that the husband and wife team of Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy have written about in their new book, "Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus".

Wasik is a journalist; his wife is a veterinarian, so the rabies virus seems like a natural topic for conversation. "Veterinarians spend a lot of time thinking about rabies, even though in this country, we hardly ever see it," Murphy tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "So I've been bringing home stories about rabies from my education and from my reading for a long long time."

Murphy's stories about rabies intrigued her husband. "I started to think about all the cultural resonances of that and even just of the word 'rabid,' " Wasik says. "So we realized that it would be fun for us to work on a book together about it."

Rabies is a terrible virus, causing immense suffering before it kills. "It's a really awful way to go," Wasik says, "but if you take a step back, you sort of have to admire it because it is one of those pathogens that actually compels the host to spread it."

The virus attacks the limbic system, which Murphy describes as the seat of anger, fear and desire. "The rabies virus creates a pretty effective rabies-spreading machine," she says, as maddened, infected animals bite and spread the disease through their saliva.

That idea of the infected bite that spreads madness and death is at the heart of many great modern horror narratives: Wasik says tales of vampires, werewolves and even zombies have some rabies in their DNA.

Rabies also, chillingly, blurs the line between human and animal. "I feel like that is the reason why we've always feared rabies more than is necessarily warranted by the number of people that it kills," he says. "The very disease itself is like a transfer of an animal essence to a human being ... the fear and the biting ... it is an animal aggression, transferred to us."

But rabies is rarely seen in this country; Murphy didn't see a rabid dog in person until she traveled to Indonesia during an outbreak. There were limited measures in place to control the spread of rabies; mostly, people shot the sick dogs. "Despite the large-scale culling efforts, the virus continued to spread around the island and many people died, so it's good that eventually the government came around to vaccination," she says.

That vaccine was originally developed by the French scientist Louis Pasteur in the 19th century; in fact, it was the first modern vaccine developed in the laboratory. Pasteur's work becomes even more remarkable when you consider the fact that he didn't really know what was causing rabies; he called the infectious agent a virus, but at the time, no one had ever seen a virus.

"I think that was Pasteur's great achievement," Murphy says, "that he adhered so fervently to the belief that for any infectious disease, there will be an infectious organism behind it ... that even when he couldn't see it under the microscope, he still went after it."

From: npr.org

Production Update: We're Doing Research at The Library Company of Philadelphia

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Mon, 08 May 2017 23:52:00 +0000

By Carole Adrienne

We've been selecting more images for the documentary series and trailer at one of my favorite research facilities.

The Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, is an independent research library concentrating on American society and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Free and open to the public, the Library Company houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs, and works of art.
This place is heaven for the serious researcher. The staff is brilliant and enthusiastic, the facility is comfortable, beautiful and accessible.

I always let them know what we're looking for when making an appointment, and they never disappoint! There are always exquisite treasures laid out on the tables when we arrive.

Check them out at librarycompany.org

How a Government Worker Discovered Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:27:00 +0000

By Matt Blitz, 11-13-15

On the day before Thanksgiving 1996, General Services Administration carpenter Richard Lyons was conducting a final review of a decrepit building at 437 Seventh Street, Northwest, that had recently fallen into government possession and was now set for demolition. Coming in from the cold rain, he entered the dusty old building alone. On the first floor (which was once a shoe store), he checked for infrastructure damage, trash, and whether anybody had made it their temporary home. Then, he moved to the second floor and did a similar sweep. He moved to third floor. “There were no lights… it was dark,” Lyons tells Washingtonian, “Then, I heard this noise, but saw nothing.” Lyons heard a noise again, so he walked back and forth, stopping at the window. “I was at the window and it felt like somebody tapped me on the shoulder… when I turned around, I spotted an envelope between the ceiling and the wall.”

He got out a ladder and reached for it. The envelope was addressed to a “Edward Shaw, Washington City.” Curious, he pulled himself through a small hole leading to the attic. That’s where he found an assortment of artifacts—utensils, clothing, Civil War-era newspapers, a bayonet and one small sign written in gold and black lettering. It read “Missing Soldiers. Office. 3rd. Story. Room 9. Miss Clara Barton.”

The sign Lyons found. Photograph courtesy the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
Clara Barton was born into a military and abolitionist-leaning Massachusetts family in 1821. Her father was a militia captain and founder of the community’s Universalist church, one that held progressive views on abolition. At 18, she began her professional career as a teacher in Oxford, Massachusetts. In 1854, she moved to Washington to become a recording clerk at the United States Patent Office. She was so impressive, both in her skills and confidence, that she was paid the same salary as her male co-workers, which was nearly unheard of at the time. Unfortunately, the job only lasted three years: When Democrat James Buchanan became president, the vocal Republican and abolitionist was let go. When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, she got hired again, but to the position of copyist—not nearly as prestigious or well-paying a job. When war broke out in 1861, Barton volunteered at the Washington Infirmary. As the conflict dragged on, more brutal than many had anticipated, Barton made her way to the front lines, determined to help those fighting for the cause she believed in.

Barton wasn’t a trained nurse, but her ability to organize supplies, help, and treatment was immensely needed during a war that injured and maimed thousands. She became a welcome and morale-boosting sight whenever she showed up at a Union hospital. Frequently written about in newspapers across the country, Barton became a well-known figure to Americans. Due to this and her proximity to soldiers, Barton received scores of letters from families asking whether their loved ones were alive or dead, and if dead where they were buried. Unable to answer every letter, she hired several assistants and ordered stationery. She named her new mobile venture “The Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army.”

In late 1864, with the war finally winding down, Barton moved back to the nation’s capital to gather supplies. It was at this time that Edward Shaw, a friend and co-worker from the patent office, offered Barton a chance to move into his boarding house at 488 1/2 7th Street—437 7th Street today. She took him up on it and also convinced him to rent her half of the third floor for an office. Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office was born.

Over a period of about four years, Barton and her staff handled over 60,000 pieces of correspondence, helping to give peace of mind to a country scarred by war. She placed ads in newspapers, wrote letters to her military contacts, and urged soldiers to tell her about final resting places of their fellow comrades. She went on to establish the American Red Cross 12 years later.
After his discovery, Richard Lyons became so infatuated with Barton and the Missing Soldiers Office story that he spent a year researching and reading everything he could. “I would go home, walk the dog, then go to the Library of Congress and stayed there until closing time every night,” says Lyons. With the help of the National Park Service, the GSA, and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, many of the found artifacts have been archived–including a blouse with a hole in its sleeve.

“While doing research, I read that (Barton) was at Antietam giving soldiers water,” Lyons says. “She wrote in her diary that a bullet went through her sleeve and hit a soldier in the head, killing him … under that she wrote, ‘I never bothered to mend it.'” Lyons believes it’s the same blouse–“Why else would a hole like that be in a sleeve?” he says.

Today, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine operates the DC building’s first and third floor as a museum and monument to the achievements, heroism, and willpower of Clara Barton. Lyons still volunteers there on occasion, giving tours and telling people about the historic trove he found. When asked if he thought, perhaps, it was the spirit of Clara Barton that lightly tapped him on the shoulder that cold, rainy November night nearly two decades ago, Lyons responds,“I don’t know what it was, but it felt real to me.”

From: washingtonian.com

Field Hospital Flag Exhibited in Atlanta Aided Stretcher-Bearers, Witnessed War's Horrors

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:27:00 +0000

By Phil Gast, 5-23-16

(Photographs courtesy of Atlanta History Center)

Before he became a renowned landscape and marine painter, Harrison Bird Brown created signs and banners. During the Civil War, his business in Portland, Maine, produced a U.S. Army field hospital flag that had a distinctive yellow background and contrasting green “H” for hospital (style specified in January 1864 Army regulations). One of Brown’s flags is among only a dozen such banners believed to have survived the Civil War.

Gordon Jones
The flag was donated last year to the Atlanta History Center, where it is displayed near the “Agonies of the Wounded” case at the center’s “Turning Point: The American Civil War” permanent exhibition. The Picket asked AHC senior military historian Gordon Jones about the donation from John and Joyce Shmale of Mahomet, Ill. (Jones first wrote about the gift in Civil War News). His responses have been edited.

Q. Any clue in which theater it was used?

A. None. It was made in Maine, so you have to think Eastern Theater, but you never know.

Q. Why did the Schmales (who each have worked in the medical field) donate it specifically to the AHC? Have they done so previously?

A. No, this was their first donation to us, but not their first donation to a museum. They were looking for a good home, not to sell it, and decided on the AHC due to a recommendation from their appraiser. On our end, we were thrilled beyond words. The DuBoses (an Atlanta father and son who amassed thousands of items) collected for 35 years and never found one – and this is not something you find every day, or something you can just buy from the antique store. We probably would have never had one had it not been for this donation. And it really helps our interpretation of medical treatment during the Civil War, which we cover in “Turning Point,” and is included on all the tours, especially for school groups.

Q. On the conservation of the 63-by-46-inch wool bunting flag by Kate R. Daniels, how much was involved in it? What shape was the flag beforehand?

A. The flag was in good shape beforehand and needed very little cleaning. The main thing Kate did was prepare the mount: a backboard to which is attached layers of soft cotton batting covered by plain-cotton cloth, then she lightly stitched the flag to the cloth. Then we had a local framer who prepares the frame – powder-coat aluminum frame with U/V-protected plexiglass front and cleats on the back for securing to the wall. This frame has to be precisely matched to the measurements of the backboard (everything has to be custom-made). The idea is that once the mount is placed in the frame, the flag is “sandwiched” securely between the cotton cloth and the plex front, preventing it from sliding around, stretching fibers, etc. It’s the safest way to treat a flat textile item like this. And, of course, we wanted the flag on display as soon as possible.

Q. Any general thoughts on the flag's significance? Why are they so rare?

A. It’s like a lot of other Civil War artifacts: That which was most common shall be least common. In other words, what was ordinary back then was not considered worthy of saving and was discarded, hence making it incredibly rare today. That is why enlisted soldier’s uniforms are so much rarer than fancy officer’s uniforms. Our artifact storage area is filled with wedding dresses and tuxedos. but no blue jeans – that sort of thing.

Q. Did a yellow or red field hospital flag prove effective in deterring enemy fire on the sites?

A. It was probably not about deterring enemy fire as much as being recognizable to one’s own stretcher-bearers in the smoke and confusion of battle. The field hospitals should have been far enough from the front lines to avoid direct fire, but they had to be easy to find in order to bring in the wounded quickly. The same type of flags, but larger, were used to designate buildings used as more permanent hospitals in towns and cities -- so again, to make sure everybody knew this was a medical facility. It was a way of making medical care more timely and efficient. If you recall how unprepared and overwhelmed the medical services on both sides were early in the war – hence the terrible suffering of the wounded -- you know why this was so important. (About 30,000 emergency amputations were conducted by U.S. Army surgeons during the war.)

From: civil-war-picket.blogspot.com

Quirky Places: Last Casualty of the Civil War

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:27:00 +0000

By Ryan Whirty

That and other stories haunt the Alexandria National Cemetery

In March 1864, a 21-year-old man from Jay County, Ind. – the small town of Portland, to be specific – enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the 34th Indiana Regiment, also known as the Morton Rifles, Company B. That’s how young John Jefferson Williams, a blacksmith by trade, began his service in the Civil War.

Now, nearly a century and a half later, that Indiana boy rests under the ground in Pineville, one of thousands of Union troops buried at Alexandria National Cemetery. Williams holds the distinction of being the last soldier killed in the War Between the States.
So how did a youthful Hoosier end up interred in the Pelican State, roughly 850 miles from his home in Indiana? Why is Williams’ final resting place located in an 8.2-acre national cemetery in Pineville, in section B, grave 797, under a simple white headstone nestled in a grassy field with hundreds of other similar cemetery plots?

After transferring through several sections of the Union Army, the 34th Indiana served with distinction under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the crucial Vicksburg campaign. The Morton Rifles were then ordered to help in the defense of New Orleans.
From there, the 34th was assigned to the Department of Texas and shipped to Brownsville, Texas, in May 1865.

There, they joined a small Union force that also consisted of two regiments of famed Buffalo Soldiers, black troops who volunteered to defend the Union.

It was then, on May 13, that the 34th Indiana took part in the Battle of Palmito Ranch (alternately called Palmetto Ranch), the final skirmish of the Civil War. The clash near Brownsville came more than a month after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The Palmito Ranch skirmish occurred despite an earlier agreement between both sides to cease hostilities in south Texas.

The clash ended with a Confederate victory, and according to Jeffrey W. Hunt’s The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch, the 34th Indiana suffered most of the Union casualties. Out of the 114 Union soldiers lost during the battle, 76 of them came from the Hoosier regiment.

That unfortunately included John J. Williams, who was mortally wounded by a Confederate bullet during the skirmish. According to Hunt, Williams’ body was left on the battlefield, where Confederate soldiers, in dire need of essentials, took his shoes, socks, pants and hat. The $45 in Williams’ pocket was recovered by Union troops and made its way back to his widow in Indiana.
The last soldier of either side to die in the Civil War was then buried with thousands of his comrades in a national cemetery in Brownsville, Texas, near Fort Brown.

However, the Army eventually abandoned the fort in 1909, forcing the disinterment and relocation of about 3,800 Union officers and soldiers – including John J. Williams from Portland, Ind. – from the Mexican War, the Civil War and a yellow fever epidemic in the mid-1880s.

The July 19, 1911, edition of The Beaumont Journal announced on its front page that the Union bodies began their journey the day before. The disinterment and removal contract was given to N.E. Rendall, who submitted a successful bid to the Federal government. The remains were shipped to Pineville. The moved bodies were reinterred over a period of several months. That included Williams, whose eternal claim to fame as the final man killed in the bloody War Between the States remains intact.

Williams and thousands of peers now rest in Pineville. In 1867, the town became the home of Alexandria National Cemetery.

The cemetery currently holds the bodies of more than 10,000 veterans. In addition to Williams and other casualties of the Union’s invasion of Texas, Alexandria contains the final resting places of numerous Buffalo soldiers, as well as casualties of the Civil War’s Red River campaign.

While Williams is perhaps the most prominent transfer from the closed Brownsville cemetery, there are also many soldiers who, in death, have no names – one grave at Pineville includes the remains of more than 1,500 unknown soldiers transferred from Texas.

Many elements of Alexandria National Cemetery’s infrastructure – such as the utility building, main gate, rostrum and the one-story Colonial Revival superintendent’s lodge – date back to 1930s. The cemetery’s brick perimeter wall was erected in 1878.

Within that wall rests the remains of John Jefferson Williams, a man barely into his 20s, the last soldier killed in the Civil War, a casualty of the Battle of Palmito Ranch.

From: myneworleans.com

The Gatling Gun: A Civil War Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:26:00 +0000

By A.B. Feuer, 12-16-15

“If war was made more terrible, it would have a tendency to keep peace among the nations of the earth.” - Richard Gatling, Inventor of the Gatling Gun

Richard Gatling was born in Hertford County, NC, on December 12, 1818. His father was a prosperous farmer and inventor, and the son was destined to inherit the “invention bug.”

After three of his sisters died at a young age from disease, Richard Gatling decided to study medicine, and graduated from the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati in 1850. He moved to Indianapolis the same year, and in 1854 married the daughter of a prominent local physician. There is no evidence that Richard Gatling ever practiced medicine after leaving medical school, but he was always referred to as “doctor.”

Gatling was a born inventor. Between 1857 and 1860 he patented a steam plow, a rotary plow, a seed planter, a lath-making machine, a hemp rake, and a rubber washer for tightening gears. One day in 1861, with the Civil War only a few months old, Dr. Gatling’s inventive fervor suffered a shock that would turn his mind from machines of peace to machines of war. From his Indianapolis office window, Gatling watched in horror as wounded and maimed soldiers were unloaded from a train—casualties from the southern killing fields.

The doctor was aware that the conflict was being waged in Napoleonic fashion. Men faced each other in solid ranks—aimed, fired, reloaded—and, on command, charged headlong into the blazing guns of the enemy. For several nights Richard Gatling could not sleep. A single idea occupied his thoughts. What if a few soldiers could duplicate the firepower of a hundred men? Troops would no longer be able to stand still and shoot at each other. And the running charge would be impossible, because the attacking force would be mowed down like tall grass.

Gatling reasoned that if he were able to invent a machine that could plant seeds swiftly, accurately, and in precise rows, he should be able to devise a mechanical gun that would spray bullets like water from a garden hose.

Invention of the Gatling Gun
Within a few weeks, the doctor had completed the drawings for his innovative weapon, the “Gatling gun,” and took the sketches to a machinist to manufacture.

The first Gatling gun consisted of a cluster of six rifle barrels, without stocks, arranged around a center rod. Each barrel had its own bolt, and the entire cluster could be made to revolve by turning a crank. The bolts were covered by a brass case at the breech. Cartridges were fed into a hopper, and as the cluster revolved, each barrel was fired at its lowest point, and then reloaded when the revolution was completed.

The gun was mounted upon a wheeled carriage. Two men were required to operate the weapon—one to sight the target and turn the crank, the other to load the ammunition.

A working model was completed within six months, and a public demonstration was held across Graveyard Pond in Indianapolis. The abrupt, rapid noise of gunfire could be heard for five miles and, at 200 rounds per minute, the bullets cut a 10-inch tree in half in less than 30 seconds.

Dr. Gatling patented his gun on November 4, 1862, but he had a difficult time selling it to the Army. General James Wolfe Ripley, chief of ordnance, was not impressed with the weapon and remarked: “You can kill a man just as dead with a cap-n’-ball smooth-bore.”

Gatling was unperturbed, however, and took his diagrams to a manufacturing company in Cincinnati. Twelve of the Gatling guns were built, and a few of them were sold to General Benjamin Butler for $1,000 each. Butler later used the Gatlings to hold a bridgehead against Confederate cavalry at the James River.

In early trials of the Gatling gun, it was regarded by the military as a supplement to artillery. The tests that were conducted compared the range and accuracy of the machine gun with the range and accuracy of grapeshot fired by artillery pieces.

Richard Gatling continued to modify and improve the weapon, and in 1865 patented a model that was capable of firing 350 rounds per minute. A demonstration was held at Fortress Monroe. This time the ordnance department was impressed and ordered a hundred guns. The Gatling gun was officially adopted by the U.S. Army on August 24, 1866. It was first manufactured by Cooper Arms in Philadelphia, and later by the Colt Arms Company of Hartford, Conn.

Europe and Abroad
Dr. Gatling traveled throughout Europe selling his weapon, and new models were continually being designed. A short-barrel variety was purchased by the British and mounted on camels. This so-called “camel gun” was also used by the U.S. Army and Navy.

As settlers moved west after the Civil War, Army garrisons in forts along the frontier housed Gatling guns. Gatlings were also attached to cavalry expeditions. A Gatling detachment under Lieutenant James W. Pope accompanied General Nelson A. Miles’s campaign into west Texas. On August 30, as an advance party of Army scouts entered a trail that led between two high bluffs, about three hundred Indians charged down the cliffs. At the sound of gunfire, Pope quickly brought up his Gatling guns. The rapid, withering fire scattered the attacking warriors, and they fled in confusion.

During the same year, a battalion of 8th Cavalry, commanded by Major William R. Price, was ordered out to suppress an uprising by several Indian tribes, including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa. Price was able to successfully fight off several surprise attacks by hostile bands with two Gatling guns.

“If war was made more terrible, it would have a tendency to keep peace among the nations of the earth.” - Richard Gatling, Inventor of the Gatling Gun

But in the most famous battle of the Indian Wars, the Gatling was strangely absent. On June 22, 1876, Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry rode out from their Powder River camp and headed for the Little Big Horn River. Custer had been offered three Gatling guns but refused them. He felt that the Gatlings—mounted on horse-drawn carriages—would slow his cavalry troop down in rough country. Custer also believed that the use of such a devastating weapon would cause him to “lose face” with the Indians. Whether or not the Gatlings could have saved Custer and his 200 men is questionable. Some accounts report the column of Indians that retreated after the battle as being three miles long and a half-mile wide.

During the next few years, the Gatling gun participated in a number of battles, including those with the Nez Perce. The warriors under Chief Joseph fought 13 engagements against the U.S. Army, many of which were standoffs. Finally, on September 30, 1877, in the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana, General Nelson Miles, with 600 men and a Gatling gun, attacked Chief Joseph’s camp. After four days of bitter fighting, Chief Joseph could hold out no longer. As he surrendered his rifle to Miles, the valiant Indian leader said, “My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

The Gatling Gun In Africa
During the latter part of the 19th century, Gatling guns became more and more popular, and were used in the many wars that flared during the 1880s and 1890s. The 1879 war between England and the African Zulu tribes was the first major land action in which the Gatling gun proved to be a deciding factor. A small British army, commanded by Lord Chelmsford, defeated a much larger Zulu force under King Cetywayo. In one encounter, a single Gatling mowed down more than 400 tribesmen in only a few minutes.

After his victorious campaign, Lord Chelmsford wrote: “They [Gatling guns] should be considered essentially as infantry weapons. They can be used effectively, not only in defense, but also in covering the last stage of an infantry attack upon a position—where the soldiers must cease firing and charge with the bayonet.”

By the time Dr. Gatling died in 1903, the automatic machine gun had arrived on the scene. It was powered by the discharging gases of its fired cartridges, and was simpler and more economical to use than the manually operated guns. In 1911, the U.S. Army declared the Gatling gun obsolete.

But Richard Gatling’s legacy did not die with him. In September 1956, the General Electric Company unveiled its 6-barrel aerial cannon called the Vulcan. For several years, General Electric had made a detailed study of every rapid-fire gun, and its engineers had found that Dr. Gatling’s original patents offered the most promise for the development of firepower necessary for fast jet fighter aircraft. The Vulcan was also put to use on attack helicopters and gunships.

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com

Civil War Alcohol Abuse: Forty-rod, Blue Ruin & Oh Be Joyful

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:26:00 +0000

By David A. Norris, 9-20-15

With a plethora of colorful nicknames, alcohol was widely abused in both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

Union General Benjamin Butler was baffled. Every night a picket guard went to an outpost 1½ miles from Fort Monroe, Virginia. The soldiers departed for their shift perfectly sober, yet when they returned to the post the next morning they caused trouble “on account of being drunk.”

Investigations failed to reveal the source of their whiskey. Searches of canteens and gear turned up nothing suspicious. But there was one odd thing about the detachment: someone in Butler’s command noticed that the men always held their muskets straight up in a peculiar manner. The mystery unraveled when their muskets were examined. “Every gun barrel,” wrote Butler, “was found to be filled with whiskey.”

Excessive drinking was a constant problem in both armies during the Civil War. “No one evil agent so much obstructs this army as the degrading vice of drunkenness,” wrote Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan in February 1862. “It is the cause of by far the greatest part of the disorders which are examined by court-martial.” The complete abolition of alcohol, he believed, “would be worth fifty thousand men to the armies of the United States.” And across the Mason-Dixon Line, the Norfolk Day-Book complained that Confederate enlisted men and officers in the vicinity were drinking whiskey “in quantities which would astonish the nerves of a cast-iron lamp-post, and of a quality which would destroy the digestive organs of an ostrich.”

Whiskey the Drink of Choice for Most Soldiers
Many if not most soldiers were already well acquainted with alcohol from the antebellum era. Whiskey was far and away the most popular drink in 1861. Often made from corn instead of grain, it was distilled at countless locations across the country. Popular nondistilled drinks included cider and beer. Cider, made from apples, was more common, but beer was quickly growing in favor, its rise fueled by the steady German immigration into Northern states.

With a plethora of colorful nicknames, alcohol was widely abused in both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

Low-grade whiskey carried with it the threat of poisoning the drinker, so makers might start with clear alcohol, water it down, and then doctor the mixture to simulate the color and flavor of the real thing. Chewing tobacco, for example, helped approximate the amber tint of whiskey or brandy. Harsher ingredients added the bite that drinkers expected in their whiskey. An 1860 inspection of liquor samples in Cincinnati found whiskey containing sulfuric acid, red pepper, caustic, soda, potassium, and strychnine. It was no wonder that “rotgut” was the most prevalent nickname for cheap liquor during the era.

Countering the growth of alcohol consumption was the temperance movement, which sought to make all forms of alcoholic beverages illegal. Maine enacted a prohibition law in 1851. Several other states or territories passed dry laws in the following years. In most cases, these laws were repealed or overturned within a short time. Per capita consumption peaked in 1830 at an equivalent of 7.1 gallons of alcohol annually. A swift decline followed, with the annual per capita figure dropping to 2.53 gallons by 1860.

“Spirit Rations” Abolished
Alcohol still had an official presence in the U.S. Army in 1861. A daily spirit ration for American soldiers had been abolished in 1832, but officers were permitted to issue special servings of whiskey to relieve fatigue and exposure. Soldiers, naturally, had countless sneaky ways to obtain whiskey. While diligent officers could restrict the flow of whiskey into camp, soldiers could still drink when they received a pass to leave camp. In the Confederate Army, the phrase “running the blockade” meant slipping in and out of camp for illicit purposes, usually involving alcohol.

On February 27, 1862, the Confederate Congress passed a law allowing President Jefferson Davis to suspend habeas corpus and declare martial law in areas threatened by the enemy. Immediately, martial law was declared in Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia, followed by Richmond on March 1. Richmond came under control of the provost guards commanded by Brig. Gen. John H. Winder, who prohibited the manufacture of liquor and closed the city’s saloons. By then liquor sales had caused so much trouble and crime among Confederate soldiers and civilian that many in Richmond welcomed martial law. Winder also barred rail shipments of whiskey into the Confederate capital. Apothecaries were allowed to dispense liquor only with a doctor’s prescription.

Martial law did not stop the distribution of whiskey, but merely drove it underground. There were still countless cases of drunk and disorderly behavior, as well as arrests for illegal sales of alcohol. Corruption flourished among the provost guards, some of whom forged prescriptions for alcohol. After obtaining the liquor, they then arrested the apothecaries who had dispensed it, thus adding insult to injury.

A ‘Creature Comfort’ Care Package From Home
A great deal of whiskey was sent to army camps on both sides by well-meaning relatives back home. It was a common practice, especially among the Union soldiers, for families to send their loved ones packages of fresh, canned, or smoked food and other small creature comforts. Commanding officers quickly realized that a great deal of whiskey was also being smuggled into camp inside these care packages. General Butler later testified before Congress that a search of an Adams Express Company depot yielded 150 different packages of liquor in crates and boxes on their way to his command.

Every parcel intended for a soldier had to be opened and inspected by officers of his regiment or brigade. Union Private John D. Billings, in his classic memoir Hardtack and Coffee, recalled, “There was many a growl uttered by men who lost their little pint or quart bottle of some choice stimulating beverage, which had been confiscated from a box as contraband of war.” Billings noted some ingenious ways that innocent-looking gifts concealed whiskey. One favorite ruse was hiding a bottle of whiskey inside a well-roasted turkey. Whiskey bottles also came into Billings’ camp in tin cans of small cakes or in loaves of bread with holes cut in the bottom.

Smuggling whiskey in legitimate-looking containers with false labels was a common practice. A helpful sutler showed Butler several little bottles that supposedly contained hair oil packaged by a New York City firm. Instead, each bottle contained half a pint of whiskey, with a little olive oil on top. The bottles were sold wholesale at eight cents each, but soldiers paid 25 cents for them in camp. The distributor claimed to have sold thousands of such bottles at Fort Monroe.

Alcohol Restrictions Lead to Officer Impersonation
In February 1863, the Union guard boat Jacob Bell searched the supply schooner Mail at Alexandria, Virginia. Aboard the schooner were 428 dozen cans labeled “milk drink” packaged by Numsen, Carroll & Company, a Baltimore firm. Upon closer inspection, Lt. Cmdr. E.P. McCrea learned that the milk drink was actually “villainous eggnog.” Commodore Andrew Harwood noted that the cans were not soldered in the usual way. The top and bottom had been heated with a resinous substance and the edges bent over so that the cover at either end could be removed to convert the can into a drinking cup. Harwood issued orders to the Potomac Flotilla to seize any vessel caught smuggling alcohol.

Sutlers were in a good position to profit from liquor sales. Regulations prohibited them from selling liquor to enlisted personnel, but many of the officially licensed merchants evaded the rules. Sutlers could openly stock whiskey because they were still allowed to sell it to officers. Brassy enlisted men frequently borrowed a pair of officers’ shoulder straps and purchased whiskey in the shops. Others stole bottles from sutler huts, wagons, or tents.

With a plethora of colorful nicknames, alcohol was widely abused in both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

Impersonating an officer was only one of the many ways that Union and Confederate soldiers managed to get around the rules restricting their drinking. Assignment to guard duty also provided opportunities for mischief. In eastern North Carolina in April 1862, several men in the 51st Pennsylvania were ordered to guard the commissary tent in which a newly arrived shipment of whiskey barrels was stored. One night the guards took the barrels off their muskets. After unscrewing the breech plugs, each soldier had a long iron straw, which he inserted into the bung-hole of a whiskey cask and sucked himself into intoxication.

Among the busiest routes for smuggling alcohol to the Union Army was the Long Bridge, which crossed the Potomac River, linking Washington, D.C., to Virginia. On November 23, 1863, all contraband liquor seized on the bridge was turned over to the Army Medical Museum, located not far from the Washington end of the bridge. At the time, tissue specimens saved for the museum were wrapped in cloth and preserved in a keg of alcohol or whiskey. Each specimen was identified by a small wooden block, with a description written on it in pencil so that the alcohol would not dissolve the writing. Confiscated liquor was distilled again by the museum into uniform grade 70 percent alcohol, which was deemed perfect for preserving specimens.

Liquor Smuggling Gets More Sophisticated
Surgeon John H. Brinton recalled that ground around the museum was piled high with “kegs, bottles, demijohns, and cases, to say nothing of an infinite variety of tins, made so as to fit unperceived on the body, and thus permit the wearer to smuggle alcohol into camp.” Another medical officer, Acting Assistant Surgeon Ralph S.L. Walsh, marveled at the ingenuity of liquor smugglers. Goods confiscated for the museum, ranging from blackberry wine to straight alcohol, were packed in many peculiar vessels. Frequently women were arrested with belts under their skirts to which were fastened tin cans holding between a quart and a gallon of whiskey. In a number of cases the women sported false breasts, each holding a quart or more of contraband liquor. Guards seized so much alcohol at Long Bridge during the war that the Army Medical Museum had enough alcohol for its specimens until 1876.

In many camps sutlers were allowed to sell patent medicines. Often these remedies were nothing more than liquor flavored and tinted with herbal concoctions. Countless posters and newspapers touted the healing power of bitters, liquor strongly flavored with herbs. Some medicinal bitters were served as drinks in saloons. The highly advertised Drake’s Plantation Bitters, which blended herbs with St. Croix rum, was enormously popular at sutler tents.

“Snake Smuggling”?
Lieutenant Luther Tracy Townshend, the adjutant of the 16th Vermont, was also the president of the regimental temperance society. Once, in the absence of the regiment’s sutler, it fell to Townshend to order a shipment of necessities and luxuries for the troops. Some of the men persuaded Townshend to order several cases of Hostetter’s Bitters to help soldiers who were suffering from chills. The merchandise soon arrived in their camp in Louisiana. As Townshend reported, “Some of the men, who were more chilly than the others, took overdoses and in consequence became staggeringly drunk.” Only then did the mortified adjutant learn that Hostetter’s Bitters was almost pure whiskey.

An exception to the ban on sutler sales of alcohol to enlisted personnel existed in some German units of the Union Army. Brig. Gen. Louis Blenker, for one, ordered sutlers to sell beer to the soldiers of his brigade, who were predominantly German immigrants, to keep up their morale. His orders caused resentment among non-German units, although this was mollified by sutlers selling beer to soldiers outside the brigade.

Perhaps the most creative dodge was used by a soldier of the 11th Ohio, who killed a snake and, in the words of a marveling comrade, “carefully dissecting the varmint obtained a long, white cartilage, which he carefully cleaned and coiled up. Proceeding to the hospital, he politely requested a small quantity of spirits in which to preserve the curiosity (which he represented as a tape worm). The surgeon not only agreed, but complimented the man highly for the interest he manifested in natural science!”

Whiskey abuse was not confined to land-based armies. Both Union and Confederate navies faced abuses of their own. In the 18th century the British Royal Navy routinely issued a ration of spirits, usually rum, to enlisted personnel. Originally the ration was eight ounces of distilled spirits per day. Naval rum was diluted with water, resulting in the traditional drink called grog. The practice was associated with Admiral Edward Vernon, a famed officer of the mid-1700s whose service nickname was “Old Grog” because he wore a coat made of grogham cloth. (Laurence Washington, George Washington’s older brother, served with Vernon. When Laurence died, George inherited his plantation Mount Vernon, which had been named for the admiral.)

Alcohol Smuggling in the Continental Navy
The Continental Navy, as well as the early U.S. Navy, adopted the British ration of half a pint of grog per day. Before the War of 1812, imported rum from Britain’s Caribbean colonies was dropped in favor of American-made whiskey. Despite the switch, sailors and the general public continued calling the naval ration grog. On land, lower class saloons were called grog-shops or groggeries. Aboard ship, the crew’s barrels of whiskey and the officers’ private stores of liquors and wines were kept locked up in the “spirit room.” At the captain’s discretion, extra rations of spirits were doled out before and after action, or even during a battle. During the long fight with CSS Virginia, the crew of USS Monitor was braced by a special issue of two ounces of whiskey per crewman.

With a plethora of colorful nicknames, alcohol was widely abused in both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

Captains also issued extra liquor as a reward for hard work such as the tedious and backbreaking job of loading coal aboard steam warships. Confederate sailors outfitting Sea King, which was secretly being converted at sea into CSS Shenandoah, received a serving of grog every two hours. Mariners saw the spirit ration as well-deserved compensation for their long months of hard work and isolation at sea. With some reason, temperance advocates saw it instead as a severe problem and focused considerable effort on luring sailors away from the bottle. In 1832 reformers persuaded Congress to cut the naval ration to one gill, or four ounces, daily. Sailors under the age of 21 and anyone who chose not to draw a spirit ration received instead a small cash commutation, which had risen to five cents a day by 1861.

After reducing the naval grog ration, Congress debated but did not act further on the temperance movement’s demands for tighter restrictions. A chance to end the grog ration arose again when Southern members of Congress left the nation’s capital after the beginning of the war. Northern representatives and senators were more sympathetic to the temperance cause, and with Southern seats now vacant, there were enough Northern votes to abolish the naval spirit rations. A July 14, 1862, act of Congress set August 31 of that same year as the last day for the grog ration. A correspondent aboard an unnamed vessel wrote to the Philadelphia Press that Congress had made a great mistake. He warned that ending the spirit ration would drive all the old seamen out of the service. Aboard the receiving ship North Carolina in New York City harbor, the men met the restriction with muttered growls, but no signs of incipient mutiny were readily apparent.

Kegs Auctioned Off & Turned In To Medical Staff
Spirit kegs remained under lock and key until naval vessels returned to port. About 3,000 kegs were auctioned off and others were turned over to the naval medical service for hospital use. Excess whiskey in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron was stored aboard the aptly named ship Brandywine. As compensation for the loss of the spirit ration, the Navy added five cents per day to sailors’ pay, a raise of between 8 and 10 percent. Despite the banning of grog, there was still some alcohol aboard Union naval vessels. “Distilled spirituous liquors” were allowed on board ship as medical stores. And officers, trusted by Congress more than common sailors, were still allowed to have private stores of liquors and wines.

Grog was served in the Confederate Navy as well. Rebel tars were entitled to one gill of spirits or half a pint of wine per day. As in the Union Navy, a small cash commutation was paid to sailors not taking their spirit ration. Confederate Navy officials had considerable trouble obtaining enough spirituous liquor for rations and hospital use. Naval requirements clashed with state regulations that reserved corn and grain for food rather than distillation of spirits. Eventually a distillery was set up in Augusta, Georgia, to produce whiskey for naval use. Despite the trouble in obtaining liquor, the Confederate Navy never got around to banning its spirit ration, and it remained on the books until the war ended in 1865.

Illicit alcohol resulted in a number of embarrassing incidents at sea. Midshipman James Morris Morgan, in his memoir Recollections of a Rebel Reefer, wrote about an alcohol-fueled riot on the cruiser CSS Georgia in October 1863. Sailors slipped into a coal bunker and bored through a thin bulkhead separating the coal from the spirit room. Then they drilled a hole into the head of a barrel of liquor and inserted a lead pipe. The pilfered grog was distributed among the crew, said Morgan, “and soon there was a battle royal going on the berth deck which the master-at-arms was unable to stop.” Georgia’s first lieutenant went below and induced most of the men to give themselves up for punishment. One holdout defied the officers, but Morgan tackled him and the master-at-arms handcuffed him. Several crewmen were placed in irons and sentenced to a spell in the brig on bread and water.

Whiskey As Spoils of War
The British blockade-running schooner Sting Ray, under the command of a Captain McCloskey, was captured in the Gulf of Mexico by USS Kineo on May 22, 1864. An acting ensign with a prize crew of seven men took charge of the vessel and followed in Kineo’s wake. McCloskey produced a stash of whiskey and offered it to the prize crew. By the time Acting Ensign Paul Borner realized what had happened his men were so drunk that they were unable to get back on deck without assistance.

Borner locked the hatch to keep the men from getting any more whiskey, but McCloskey and his crew jumped Borner, took his pistol, and reclaimed the ship. Union sailor William Morgan fell overboard, and McCloskey tossed a spar into the sea as an improvised life preserver. Another man jumped into a ship’s boat, cut the painter, and escaped. The Confederates followed Kineo for a time before changing course and making a dash for shore. Seeing Sting Ray change course, Lt. Cmdr. John Watters of Kineo opened fire with a 20-pounder gun. McCloskey managed to beach the vessel after dodging several Union shells. Borner and five of his sailors were captured by the 13th Texas. Only two of Borner’s crew avoided capture and were picked up later by Kineo. Morgan, according to Watters, was “in a beastly state of intoxication, crazy drunk and howling.”

Doctors at the time incorrectly believed that alcohol was a stimulant, so they prescribed it to treat sick or wounded soldiers. Some drugs were soluble in alcohol, and patients received them in doses with whiskey or brandy. One treatment for diphtheria was a dose of brandy mixed with ammonia. Alcohol itself was seen as having curative powers for some illnesses. Laudanum, a mixture of alcohol and opium, was a widely prescribed painkiller. Ether was made by distilling alcohol and sulfuric acid, called “spirits of nitre.” A purer form of alcohol called alcohol fortius was used to make ether and to dissolve various compounds.

A Prized Commodity in Medical Treatment
Whiskey or brandy, either alone or mixed with other ingredients, were routinely used to treat patients suffering from wounds or illnesses. Usually whiskey was prescribed in frequent but small doses, perhaps one ounce or one tablespoon every few hours. Sometimes it was administered by itself, but it might also be mixed in eggnog or milk punch. One example concerned the case of Private Augustus C. Falls of the 1st New York Heavy Artillery. Falls was admitted to Douglas Hospital in Washington with diarrhea on August 5, 1864. A surgeon prescribed 11/2 ounces of whiskey each day at dinner. Three days later the dosage was raised to two ounces of whiskey three times a day. On September 29, the dosage was again increased to three ounces of whiskey every four hours. Despite the special treatment, Falls died on October 5.

With a plethora of colorful nicknames, alcohol was widely abused in both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

One of the few effective drugs of the era, quinine, could prevent malaria or ease symptoms for patients who already had the disease. Soldiers often balked at taking their malaria medicine, though, because of its markedly bitter taste. To cajole soldiers into taking quinine, some surgeons mixed it with whiskey. This created the opposite problem; some soldiers enjoyed the quinine-whiskey dose so much that they sneaked through the line for a second prescription. While stationed at New Bern, North Carolina, the men of the 44th Massachusetts found that their medical officers took precautions to limit the soldiers to one dose each. Instead of serving quinine in whiskey, the drug came blended with medical alcohol, water, and cayenne pepper. “No soldier,” wrote a veteran of the regiment, “is known to have acquired a dangerous hankering for the mixture.”

Guilty on Charges of Drunkenness
Southern medical officers struggled to obtain sufficient quantities of medicinal alcohol. Surgeon General Samuel P. Moore established distilleries in Montgomery, Columbia, Salisbury, and Macon to produce medicinal alcohol. Volunteer committees gathered food, clothing, medicines, and creature comforts from civilians and shipped them to military hospitals. On November 22, 1861, the Charleston Mercury highlighted the first quarterly report of the city’s Ladies’ Christian Association. Among numerous shipments sent by the association to hospitals in Virginia were 34 boxes or crates of alcoholic beverages, including wine, brandy, blackberry brandy, claret, Madeira, port, whiskey, ale, bay rum, and additional alcohol in the form of medicines and bitters.

Drunkenness could be overlooked if it occurred when a soldier was off duty and did not compound his offense with other crimes. Court-martial of officers charged with drunkenness was handled differently from those of enlisted men. Officers found guilty could be cashiered with forfeiture of pay. In addition to dismissal, a Confederate law of 1862 allowed a public reprimand of officers convicted of drunkenness. An officer dismissed from the Confederate service could also be conscripted back into the ranks as an enlisted man. Enlisted personnel found guilty of drunkenness usually faced some form of confinement, corporal punishment, or public shaming. Penalties varied depending on the degree of the soldier’s offense and the policies of his commanding officer. Common punishments for drunken enlisted men included confinement in a guard tent or guardhouse, wearing a barrel with a placard noting that the culprit was a drunk, extra duty, or a spell carrying a log or marching with a knapsack filled with rocks.

Generals were not immune from abusing alcohol. Indeed, their vast responsibilities encouraged such abuse. Most notoriously, rumors of alcoholism dogged Union General Ulysses S. Grant. After Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, several gentlemen warned President Lincoln that Grant drank to excess. Lincoln was said to have asked what sort of whiskey Grant drank, because “if it makes him win victories like this Vicksburg, I will send a demijohn of the same kind to every general in the army.”

Generals Just As Guilty As Their Soldiers
A serious instance of generals drinking on duty contributed to the Union defeat at the Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864. After successfully detonating a huge explosion in a tunnel dug under the Confederate lines outside Petersburg, Union forces moved in to exploit the break in the Rebel defenses. Brig. Gens. James H. Ledlie and Edward Ferrero remained behind the lines drinking liquor in a bombproof while their neglected divisions floundered without guidance from their commanders. The attack, which had the potential of taking Petersburg and shortening the war, bogged down, and the Union regiments were devastated by Confederate counterattacks. After investigations into their drinking and dereliction of duty, Ledlie was allowed to resign from the army, but Ferrero escaped serious penalty. He even managed to be brevetted to major general before the end of the war.

Offenses were not limited to line officers. Confederate hospital matron Phoebe Yates Pember wrote of one case in which a drunken surgeon treated a patient whose ankle had been crushed by a train. After the injuries were set and bandaged, the soldier remained in excruciating pain and his condition worsened. Checking the patient, Pember found that the bandaged leg was perfectly healthy, while the other leg was “swollen, inflamed, and purple.” The attending surgeon had been so drunk that he set the wrong leg. Fever set in and the patient died at the hospital.

Plagued with food shortages, inflation, and transportation problems, Southern soldiers and civilians dealt with severe shortages of alcohol caused by state legislatures restricting the use of grain, corn and foodstuffs for distilled liquor. Private distilling took a blow after the Federal capture of Chattanooga in September 1863 and advancing Union forces captured copper mines desperately needed by the South. Not only did their loss crimp production of brass artillery pieces, it also threatened the manufacture of percussion caps and artillery friction primers. The Confederate Ordnance Bureau confiscated scores of copper whiskey stills in western North Carolina. Metal from the stills went into many of the South’s percussion caps made during the remainder of the war.

Persimmon Brandy & Other Homemade Recipes
Southern blockade runners brought wine, whiskey, brandy and other potables from Europe. Less popular than wine and brandy, but still showing up in blockade runner holds, were rum, gin, Scotch whisky, champagne, ale, porter, and schnapps. Occasionally one might even find imported cut glass decanters to serve the imported liquors. Pure alcohol, intended as medical supplies, also passed through the blockade. Blockade-run liquor was beyond the financial means of most Confederates, forcing many people to turn to home-made substitutes. Despite wartime laws, some corn and grain found their way into whiskey. When these standard ingredients were not available, distillers turned to sweet potatoes, rice, sorghum seeds, and persimmons.

On October 21, 1863, the Charleston Courier published a recipe for persimmon brandy. Mashed by a pestle or simply with one’s hands, persimmons were mixed with warm water and left to ferment for five or six days. Then the mash was ready for distillation. In thrifty fashion, the writer suggested saving the persimmon seeds. They could be used for buttons, or parched and mixed with dried sweet potatoes to make a coffee substitute. Beer and wine were simpler to make at home than whiskey, as they needed no distilling apparatus. Newspapers published numerous recipes for persimmon beer. Wine and brandy were made from any kind of available fruit, including peaches, pears, cherries, blackberries, plums, and even watermelons.

With a plethora of colorful nicknames, alcohol was widely abused in both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

F.P. Porcher’s 1863 work Resources of Southern Fields and Forests listed uses for hundreds of plants that grew in the Confederacy. He gave recipes for making beer from corn, persimmons, and boiled sassafras shoots. Blackberries could also be used to make wine, and with the addition of spices and whiskey, a healthy cordial could be concocted. Porcher also mentioned dozens of medicines that could be prepared from native herbs added to whiskey, wine, or brandy. Another way of coping with the lack of alcohol was to make a joke of it. By early 1864, “starvation parties” were becoming a fad in Richmond. Attendees wore the best finery they could manage. Unlike antebellum parties, there were no imported wines or liquors. The fine punchbowls and glassware remaining from the days before the war held only water from the James River.

Robert E. Lee once remarked that it was not possible to have an army without music. He might just as well have said that it was not possible to have an army without whiskey. Whether serving as an innocent aid to relaxation, medication to treat wounds or disease, or a lure to the evils of vice and desertion, whiskey and other types of alcoholic beverages were firmly rooted in the armies of the 1860s. The many creative ways alcohol found its way to soldiers and sailors, and the methods used to control its influence, are intertwined with the story of battles, generals, regiments, and ships of war.

Offenses were not limited to line officers. Confederate hospital matron Phoebe Yates Pember wrote of one case in which a drunken surgeon treated a patient whose ankle had been crushed by a train. After the injuries were set and bandaged, the soldier remained in excruciating pain and his condition worsened. Checking the patient, Pember found that the bandaged leg was perfectly healthy, while the other leg was “swollen, inflamed, and purple.” The attending surgeon had been so drunk that he set the wrong leg. Fever set in and the patient died at the hospital.

For Some, Private Distilling Filled the Gap
Plagued with food shortages, inflation, and transportation problems, Southern soldiers and civilians dealt with severe shortages of alcohol caused by state legislatures restricting the use of grain, corn and foodstuffs for distilled liquor. Private distilling took a blow after the Federal capture of Chattanooga in September 1863 and advancing Union forces captured copper mines desperately needed by the South. Not only did their loss crimp production of brass artillery pieces, it also threatened the manufacture of percussion caps and artillery friction primers. The Confederate Ordnance Bureau confiscated scores of copper whiskey stills in western North Carolina. Metal from the stills went into many of the South’s percussion caps made during the remainder of the war.

Southern blockade runners brought wine, whiskey, brandy and other potables from Europe. Less popular than wine and brandy, but still showing up in blockade runner holds, were rum, gin, Scotch whisky, champagne, ale, porter, and schnapps. Occasionally one might even find imported cut glass decanters to serve the imported liquors. Pure alcohol, intended as medical supplies, also passed through the blockade. Blockade-run liquor was beyond the financial means of most Confederates, forcing many people to turn to home-made substitutes. Despite wartime laws, some corn and grain found their way into whiskey. When these standard ingredients were not available, distillers turned to sweet potatoes, rice, sorghum seeds, and persimmons.

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com

Columbus and Coca-Cola (excerpted)

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:26:00 +0000

From: americancivilwarstory.com

John Stith Pemberton was injured during the Battle of Columbus. He received a saber slash across his chest during the struggle for the 14th Street bridge. Like many other wounded veterans, he became addicted to the morphine that was used for a pain-killer.

Pemberton was a pharmacist and decided to work on a medicine that would help relieve his addiction. Eventually he came up with a formula which was basically a wine infused with coca (cocaine), kola nut (caffeine), and damiana (purported aphrodisiac). This was essentially an imitation of a very successful French medicinal wine called Vin Mariani, but Vin Mariani used only coca not Pemberton's other two ingredients. He called his new medicine, "Pemberton's French Wine Coca," and began selling in several drugstores in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1886 he ran into a problem. Temperance legislation was enacted in Atlanta and Fulton County. This forced him to try to come up with a new, non-alcoholic formula for his drink.

With the help of a druggist named Willis Venable, he came up with a recipe to blend his base syrup with carbonated water. This way it could be sold as a fountain drink. A man named Frank Mason Robinson came up with a catchy new name for the drink, and on May 8, 1886, the first Coca-Cola was sold at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.

So, if the Battle of Columbus hadn't happened, John Pemberton would not have been injured. If he had not been injured, he would not have gotten addicted to morphine. Without an addiction he would not have searched for a cure, and if he had not been searching for a cure, we would never have gotten Coke!

Suffering Veterans - The American Civil War and PTSD

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:26:00 +0000

By Emma Walton

Much has been written about the lives and deeds of Civil War soldiers, but little has been said about their mental state. This is in part because the practice of psychiatry was not established by the cessation of hostilities, and attitudes to mental illness were then very different to those we hold today. However, there is significant evidence of disturbed behavior from Civil War veterans to support a theory that many were irreversibly damaged by their experiences during the war. Many undoubtedly suffered from what is today referred to as 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder'

The History of PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a term covering a range of symptoms and behaviors which can be traced back to mental and emotional damage caused by traumatic experiences. These symptoms include, but are not limited to, an increase in aggression, an inability to connect with the world, flashbacks to the traumatic events, sudden and seemingly unprovoked violence, panic attacks, hallucinations, great stress, depression, shaking, ‘hysterical’ physical symptoms (i.e. apparent bodily problems induced by the mind rather than any more physical cause), substance abuse, mood swings, and suicide. The condition was first properly recognized during the First World War, when hundreds if not thousands of soldiers suffered irreparable emotional damage by what was then termed ‘shell shock’. However, it has almost certainly existed ever since human consciousness first developed – and has featured in the battle accounts of many ancient cultures. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs have been found which depict the stories of soldiers suffering from battle-induced mental trauma, while the Ancient Greek historian Heroditus eloquently records the tales of several fighters which most modern medical professionals would not hesitate to diagnose with PTSD. In one, a young man is afflicted with blindness for which there is no apparent physical cause after witnessing his fellow soldier shot down by an arrow next to him. In another, a soldier is withdrawn from the front lines due to incessant trembling. He leads a listless, haunted life – which he ultimately takes. Clearly, therefore, PTSD has been affecting humans for millennia, making it a fairly certain bet that many of those who participated in the American Civil War would have been affected in like manner.

Haunted By Their Experiences

PTSD can be brought on by any traumatic event – childhood abuse is a common cause – but its strongest causative correlation comes with wartime events. Given that civil wars are among the most mentally and emotionally distressing of combat situations, it should come as little surprise to find that a great many accounts record ex-soldiers who were thoroughly unable to reintegrate with peaceful life. Many found that they simply could not cope with civilian existence and opted out of society. The years following the Civil War saw an increase in vagrancy, with veterans making up the vast majority of these new wanderers. Some attributed this to a lack of economic opportunity for ex-soldiers, but others acknowledged that most of these people had been rendered mentally and emotionally incapable of taking any opportunities offered to them. In his book ‘To Appomattox and Beyond’, Larry Logue speaks of a veteran named ‘Len’. Len took up a nomadic lifestyle, drifting from place to place, and completely unable to speak of his experiences. When taken in by the police, he seemed unable to remember any personal details – but perusal of his effects and a little detective work revealed that this apparently deranged hobo had once been a prosperous man, happily settled into family life and with a contracted lawyer to boot. His experiences during the war had damaged him beyond repair. If he ever returned to his family, he swiftly absented himself from them, driven to the roads by the horrors within his own head. Many others did likewise.

Inadequate Treatment

Those who did return to their families often fared little better. It takes a strong and loving family indeed to cope with a PTSD sufferer. Logue tells of Polly McColley, who wrote letters about her son, whom she described as ‘Out of his mind’ when he returned from the war. Many recognized that their loved ones were ill, and called in the professionals – but with little effect. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder would not be recognized as a condition for several decades, and treatments would take even longer to arrive. Nowadays, although there is still no definitive ‘cure’ for the condition, avenues do exist which can be of great help to sufferers. Treatment centers like The Refuge have a much greater understanding of the condition and how to treat those suffering from it. Not so after the Civil War. Those who seemed depressed were diagnosed with ‘melancholy’ or ‘nostalgia’, and their families were advised to raise their spirits. Others were simply passed as physically sound and told they needed to ‘pull their socks up’. The protests of wives and parents that their sons and husbands were ‘not themselves’ or ‘being strange’ were considered too nebulous to act upon, and frequently dismissed as feminine silliness or oversensitivity. Besides which, the violence which commonly accompanies PTSD was rarely spoken of in a domestic context – and not considered a great problem even when it was. Where behavior was clearly disturbed, disturbing, or dangerous, sufferers would be throw into lunatic asylums - where they received treatment which was often brutal and very rarely (if ever) effective. Those who evaded this often acquired lengthy criminal records, and many ended up in jail.

The 'Old Soldier' Problem

Old soldiers have always been something of an awkwardness for peacetime society – which frequently wishes to brush the horrors and atrocities of wartime beneath the carpet and forget about them. Veterans expecting a hero’s welcome when they return home after the cessation of hostilities are thus more often than not disappointed. A pervasive disillusionment has been observed to take hold of many veteran populations after major armed conflicts – and this phenomenon was attributed to the general surliness, disengagement, and ‘oddness’ of many post-Civil War veterans. However, the behavior of many would now be recognized as far too extreme to stem from simple discontentment with society. That they had experienced wartime horrors, and been mentally scarred by them, seems a near certainty. While the war brought out a great deal of heroism and produced legends which would last generations, it also continued to deal out human suffering long after the killing had ended. The mental torment of those soldiers who returned with PTSD should not be forgotten. The condition continues to affect combatants to this day – although, thankfully, diagnostic procedures now exist to spot and attempt to remedy it in vulnerable soldiers.

From: nycivilwar.us

Angel’s Glow: Bioluminescence Uncovered on the Battlefield

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:25:00 +0000

By Radhika Ganeshan, 7-16-14

If battlegrounds could speak they would have many stories to tell. In some cases the microbes found in those soils have lived on to separate fact from fiction. One such story has its origins in the Battle of Shiloh, which went down in history as one of the bloodiest battles fought during the American Civil War. As the soldiers lay mortally wounded on the cold, hard grounds of Shiloh waiting for medical aid, they noticed a very strange phenomenon. Some of the wounds actually appeared to be glowing in the dark casting a faint light into the darkness of the battlefield. And the legend goes that soldiers with the glowing wounds had a better chance at survival and recovery from infections than their fellow brothers-in-arms whose wounds were not similarly luminescent. The seemingly protective effect of the mysterious light earned it the moniker “Angel’s Glow.”

Fast forward to the 21st century.

A high school student, named Bill Martin, was visiting the battlefield in Shiloh in the year 2001 and was intrigued by this story. Luckily for him, his mom was a microbiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service. He was familiar with his mom’s work on luminescent bacteria that lived in the soil. They made the connection that the glowing wounds could in fact have been caused by the same microorganism that his mom was studying; Photorhabdus luminescens. Being a scientist herself, she encouraged her son to investigate this further. What he uncovered was a remarkable explanation behind a story that was long regarded to be little more than a legend.

Martin and his friend, Jon Curtis, probed both the bacteria and the conditions during the Battle of Shiloh. They discovered that Photorhabdus luminescens, the bacteria that Martin’s mom studied and the one he thought might have something to do with the glowing wounds, shared a symbiotic life cycle with parasitic worms called nematodes. Nematodes are predators that burrow into insect larvae residing in the soil or on plant surfaces and take up residence in their blood vessels. There, the worms regurgitate the P. luminescens bacteria living inside their guts producing a soft blue light. The bacteria then release a cocktail of toxins that kill the insect host and suppress the growth of other microorganisms that might decompose the larval corpse. This allows P. luminescens and their nematode partner to feast on their prey’s carcass uninterrupted. When they are done devouring the insect host, the bacteria re-colonize the nematode’s guts and piggy-back with the worm as it bursts forth from the corpse in search of a new host. And what’s more – the glow emanated by the parasitized insect is thought to lure in other insect prey.

Was it possible that the chemicals released by P. luminescens were responsible for helping the soldiers survive their horrific wounds? Based on the evidence that P. luminescens was present at Shiloh and the reports of the strange glow from the soldier wounds, Martin and Curtis hypothesized that the glowing bacteria invaded the soldiers’ wounds when nematodes preyed on insect larva who are naturally attracted to such injuries. The resulting infestation could have wiped out any competing, pathogenic bacteria found in wounds besides bathing them in a surreal glow.

The only caveat with the hypothesis was that P. luminescens cannot survive at human body temperatures. The young scientists had to come up with a novel explanation to fit this piece of the puzzle. The clue lay in the harsh conditions of the battlefield itself. The battle was fought in early April when temperatures were low and the grounds were wet with rain. The injured soldiers were left to the elements of nature and suffered from hypothermia. This would provide a perfect environment for P. luminescens to overtake and kill off harmful bacteria. Then, when the soldiers were transported to a warmer environment, their bodies would have naturally killed off the bug. For once, hypothermia was a good thing.

Often, a bacterial infection in an open wound would herald a fatal outcome. But this was an instance where the right bacterium at the right time was actually instrumental in saving lives. The soldiers at Shiloh should have been thanking their microbial buddies. But who knew back then that angels came in microscopic sizes? As for Martin and Curtis, they went on to win first place in team competition at the 2001 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Personally, I used this story as an example to my own children of how simple curiosity leads to solving bigger problems.

Image: 1888 Chromolithograph of the Battle of Shiloh, American Civil War, produced by L. Prang & Co.

From: promegaconnections.com

Production Update: The U.S. Army War College's MOLLUS Collection

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:45:00 +0000

By Carole Adrienne

The Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, (MOLLUS), is an American patriotic order formed on April 15, 1865 by military officers of the United States who had "aided in maintaining the honor, integrity, and supremacy of the national movement" during the Civil War.

This venerable organization collected and preserved thousands of photographs and documents from the war. The U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center Library in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, counts these among their vast holdings.

The original images have been photocopied and placed in more than 140 binders. The originals are stored in their temperature and humidity-controlled archives. We are working with these albums to select hundreds of photographs for use in our documentary series, "Civil War Medicine".

In these photocopies, you can see the elegant presentation of the original pictures, with hand-drawn embellishment on most pages. Many of the portraits include the subject's "autograph" or signature, pasted into a box drawn onto the page.

Visit more libraries, archives and museums with us as production continues on this unique documentary series. You can also make a tax-deductible contribution to the "Civil War Medicine" project on our website, www.CivilWarRx.com. Thank you!

Mary Putnam Jacobi: Pioneer for Women in the Medical Professions

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:45:00 +0000

By Maggie MacLean, 6-26-15

Mary Putnam Jacobi was a prominent physician, author, scientist, activist, educator, and perhaps most importantly, a staunch advocate of women's right to seek medical education and training. Men in medicine claimed that a medical education would make women physically ill, and that women physicians endangered their profession. Jacobi worked to prove them wrong and argued that it was social restrictions that threatened female health.

Jacobi was the most significant woman physician of her era and an outspoken advocate for women's rights, rising to national prominence in the 1870s. She was a harsh critic of the exclusion of women from the professions, and a social reformer dedicated to the expansion of educational opportunities for women, labor reform, and suffrage - the most important women's rights issues of her day. She supported her arguments for the rights of women with scientific proof.

Early Years
Mary Corinna Putnam was born August 31, 1842 in London, England, daughter of American parents, George Palmer Putnam and Victorine Haven Putnam, and the oldest of eleven children. Her family had been living in London since the previous year, while her father established a branch office for his New York City publishing firm, Wiley & Putnam. The Putnam family returned to the United States in 1848, and she spent her childhood and adolescence in Staten Island, Yonkers, and Morrisania, New York.

Mary received her early education from her mother at home, at a private school in Yonkers, and then at a new public school for girls in Manhattan, where she graduated in 1859. She published a story, "Found and Lost," in the April 1860 issue of Atlantic Monthly. Throughout her life she wrote political essays and fiction, and more than 120 scientific articles and 9 books.

Medical Education
After her 1859 graduation, she decided she wanted to become a doctor. Her father thought medicine was a repulsive profession, especially for a woman, but he ultimately supported her decision. No medical school in New York admitted women, so she studied medicine privately with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell [link], the first woman in American to earn a medical degree (1849), and attended pharmacy school, graduating from the New York College of Pharmacy in 1863, while the Civil War was being fought.

Female Medical College of Pennsylvania
In 1864 she earned a M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (founded in 1850), the first medical institution in the world established to train women in medicine and offer them the M.D. degree. The college legally changed its name to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867.

A group of Quaker women, particularly Ann Preston [link], founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia in 1861 to provide clinical experience for Female Medical College students, and to:

"... establish in the City of Philadelphia a Hospital for the treatment of diseases of women and children, and for obstetrical cases; furnishing at the same time facilities for clinical instruction to women engaged in the study of medicine, and for the practical training of nurses; the chief resident physician to be a woman."

This teaching hospital could provide many patients gathered in one place for some time, who could be examined while the course of their diseases were observed.

Jacobi convinced the faculty to allow her to sit for her exams early, and in protest over the special allowances made for her, Dean Edwin Fussell resigned after her graduation. Ann Preston, who had argued for Putnam's early examination, took over his post as America's first woman dean of a medical school.

She received her Doctor of Medicine degree at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1864 and moved to Boston to study clinical medicine at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, founded in 1862 by fellow graduate, Marie Zakrzewska [link]. After a few months, Jacobi realized that she needed more education before practicing medicine. At that point she began to support co-education for men and women, arguing that women's medical schools could not provide the same training and clinical practice as at established universities affiliated with large hospitals.

Medical Education in Europe
Jacobi decided in 1866 to seek further training in Paris, France. There she attended clinics, lectures, and a class at the Ecole Pratique, and then decided to seek admission to the L'Ecole de Medecine of the University of Paris, which refused to admit women. She remained in Paris studying in less well-known schools and contributing letters, articles, and stories to American journals and newspapers, including the Medical Record, Putnam’s Magazine, the New York Evening Post, and Scribner’s Monthly.

In January 1868 a directive from the minister of education forced the faculty to admit her as the first woman student. Her course was a distinguished one, and she graduated in July 1871 with a prizewinning thesis, the second woman to get a degree at the prestigious L'Ecole de Medecine.

Career in Medicine
After returning to the United States in the fall of 1871, she established a medical practice in New York City and became lecturer of materia medica (medicines) from 1871, and professor of materia medica and therapeutics from 1873 to 1889 at the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary, just opened by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and her surgeon sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell [link]. Jacobi also practiced medicine among the poor in the slums while working there.

Her mentor Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell viewed medicine as a means for social and moral reform, while Jacobi focused on curing disease. On a deeper level, Blackwell believed women would succeed in medicine because of their humane female values, but Jacobi believed that women should participate as the equals of men in all medical specialties.

The quality of her own education demonstrated to her the poor training available to most American women who wanted a career in medicine. In 1872 she organized the Association for the Advancement of the Medical Education of Women to improve that situation; she served as president of the association from 1874 to 1903. Her teaching at the Medical College often exceeded what her students were prepared to learn and led to her resignation from the Medical College in 1888.

Marriage and Family
When Mary applied for membership in the Medical Society of the County of New York, Abraham Jacobi was president. In 1873, Mary Putnam married Dr. Jacobi, who is often referred to as the "father of American pediatrics." They had three children, though their first daughter died at birth and their only son died at age seven. Their third child, Marjorie Jacobi McAneny, survived to adulthood, and Mary educated her daughter according to her own educational standards.

In the same year (1873), Dr. Jacobi began a children's dispensary service at Mount Sinai Hospital. From 1882 to 1885 she lectured on diseases of children at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School. As an attending and consulting physician, Dr. Jacobi opened a children's ward at the New York Infirmary in 1886. Her ability to diagnose and her insistence on the highest standards ranked her among America's great physicians. In addition to clinical work and teaching, she continued to find time to write.

Dr. Jacobi became a member of several medical associations, including the New York Pathological Society; memberships in these organizations were vital to securing jobs and the respect of her colleagues. She was admitted to the prestigious New York Academy of Medicine by one vote, making her the society's first female member. She was the second woman member of the Medical Society of the County of New York and was admitted to the American Medical Association.

In 1891 she contributed a paper on the history of women physicians in the United States to Women's Work in America (1891). Entitled "Women in Medicine," this is an excerpt from that paper:

When people first began to think of educating women in medicine, a general dread seemed to exist that, if any tests of capacity were applied, all women would be excluded. The profound skepticism felt about women's abilities, was thus as much manifest in the action of the friends to their education as in that of its opponents.

But by 1882, the friends dared to call upon those who believe in the higher education of women, to help to set the highest possible standard for their medical education; and upon those who do not believe in such higher education to help in making such requirements as shall turn aside the incompetent, not by an exercise of arbitrary power, but by a demonstration of incapacity, which is the only logical, manly reason for refusing to allow women to pursue an honorable calling in an honorable way.

A career is open to women in the medical profession, a career in which they may earn a livelihood; a career in which they may do missionary work among the poor of our own country, and among their own sex in foreign lands; a career that is practical, that is useful, that is scientific.

Late Years
Jacobi's work with reformers and suffragists made her a leading spokesperson for women's health. As a leading feminist, she rejected the traditional wisdom about the weaknesses of women. This excerpt from her book, Common Sense Applied to Woman Suffrage (1894), illustrates her dissatisfaction with women's place in American society, especially the lack of suffrage:

No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitute a political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.

Over the course of her career, Jacobi wrote more than 100 medical papers. So it should come as no surprise to learn that she wrote a detailed account of her own fatal illness, a meningeal brain tumor: "Description of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Compressing the Cerebellum. From Which the Writer Died. Written by Herself."

Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi died June 10, 1906 in New York City at age 63, and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Many prominent physicians, including Dr. Emily Blackwell, honored her at her funeral.

SOURCES
Wikipedia: Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi
Encyclopedia Britannica: Mary Putnam Jacobi
Wikipedia: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania
Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

From: civilwarwomenblog.com

Glowing Wounds at the Battle of Shiloh: The Strange Facts Behind the Legend of the Angel’s Glow

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:45:00 +0000

By Mark Weaver, 3-15-14

Wars breed blood and death on a massive scale. They also breed their share of strange stories. The American Civil War was no exception to this rule. Whether it was the governor who wanted to arm his troops with pikes on battlefields dominated by rifles and artillery, or the doctor who plotted to use biowarfare on Northern cities, the War Between States had its fair share of strange factual stories.

But another thing that warfare breeds is folklore. These apocryphal stories seem too good to be true. Once such bit of folklore that was largely dismissed as wishful thinking came from the Battle of Shiloh, which took place on April 6-7, 1862. The bloodiest battle up to that point in the war, two days of fighting produced 23,000 casualties on both sides. The battlefield itself was a boggy, mud soaked hellhole. Medical services on both Confederate and Union sides were woefully unprepared for the scale of the slaughter, and many wounded were left to fend for themselves among the watery morass.

When help finally managed to reach those poor souls, their rescuers noticed something odd. Their wounds gave off a faint glow in the night! Furthermore, the wounded whose injuries glowed had a better survival rate than their peers whose wounds did not. At a loss to explain what was happening, the flummoxed soldiers dubbed the strange phenomena “Angel’s Glow,” because it truly did seem to be the work of angels.

For a long while, the story was regarded as little more than folklore. That is, until seventeen year old Bill Martin heard the story, and asked his mother, Phyllis Martin, who is a microbiologist, if the bioluminescent soil bacteria she was studying, photorhabdus luminecens, might be responsible for the strange tale. She encouraged her son and his friend, John Curtis, to do further research and experiment to uncover the answer (because that’s what happens when mom is a scientist.) What they found was a remarkable explanation behind a story that was long regarded to be little more than a legend.

P. luminescens is an unlikely saviour. The bacteria hangs out in the guts of various nematode worm species, living in an odd symbiosis. The nematodes are predators of the soil, hunting down insect larva which they devour with P. luminescens’ help. The nematodes burrow into the unfortunate larva’s bloodstream, where they puke out their bacterial payload. P. luminescens releases toxins that kill the bug in short order, giving the nematode quick access to an insect buffet. These toxins also inhibit the growth of bacteria that would decompose the insect corpse, letting the germ and the worm have plenty of time to feast and multiply in their prey’s carcass.

It is this toxin that was likely responsible for helping the soldiers survive their horrific wounds. The hypothesis that Martin and Curtis developed claimed that the glowing bacteria entered soldier’s wounds when nematodes attacked the insect larva who are naturally attracted to such injuries. The resulting infestation would wipe out any of the normal, disease causing bacteria found in wounds.

The only problem with the hypothesis was that P. luminescens cannot survive at human body temperatures. The teenage scientists came up with a novel way to approach this problem.

For once, hypothermia was a good thing

Their answer lay in the muddy battlefield itself. The battle took place in early April, when temperatures were relatively low. Adding to the misery, it rained on and off throughout the battle. Injured men were left exposed to the elements for two days in some cases. By that time, hypothermia would have set in. That would have given P. luminescens time to take hold and kill off harmful bacteria. Then, when the soldiers were taken in and warmed back up, their bodies would have naturally killed off the bug. For once, hypothermia was a good thing.

With that, the teenagers managed to present a plausible explanation for the Angel’s Glow, a phenomena that was long thought to be little more than fanciful thinking by desperate men. The exact nature of the toxin the bacteria uses to perform its medical miracles has yet to be identified, but the duo are working to isolate it. Perhaps the bacteria that saved lives 150 years ago might be able to save even more today.

Sources:
“Glowing Wounds.” sciencenetlinks.com. AAAS ScienceNetLinks. March 15, 2014. <http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/glowing-wounds/>

Byme, James. “Photorhabdus luminescens: The Angel’s Glow.” TheNakedScientists.com. February 25, 2011. The Naked Scientists. March 15, 2014. <http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/angel-glow/>

“Shiloh.” CivilWar.Org. Civil War Trust. March 15, 2014. <http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/shiloh.html>

Image: A false color micrograph of a soybean cyst nematode and an egg. The species that lived symbiotically with P. luminescens would have looked similar.

From: oddlyhistorical.com

Walt Whitman: Civil War Missionary

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:45:00 +0000

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com, 4-11-14

After his brother was wounded in battle, Whitman volunteered many hours helping wounded soldiers in Washington D.C.

In late December 1862, national poet Walt Whitman arrived in Washington D.C., intending to stay for just a few days. He ended up staying for the next ten years; for the first three, he was a regular visitor at the various military hospitals in and around the nation’s capital.

In “The Soldiers’ Missionary,” Roy Morris Jr.’s in-depth feature in the Spring 2014 issue of Civil War Quarterly Magazine, you’ll get to read all about Whitman’s interactions with the wounded soldiers.

Whitman’s time in Washington actually began with the wounding of his brother George at the Battle of Fredericksburg in late December 1862. At home in Brooklyn with his mother, they received unexpected news that his brother was on a list of regimental casualties published by the New York Tribune. Fearing the worst, Whitman and his mother threw together some belongings and hurried south to Washington.

While visiting his brother, Whitman was immediately struck by how many soldiers were hospitalized. “The mass of our men in our army are young,” he wrote in an article published in the New York Times. “It is an impressive sight to me to see the countless numbers of youths and boys, many of them already with the experiences of the oldest veterans.”

Mrs. Keckley, “Contraband” and The Lincolns

noreply@blogger.com (Carole Adrienne) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:45:00 +0000

By Feather Schwartz Foster, 10-19-15

The Civil War brought out great bitterness. It also brought out great generosity.

Shortly after the Civil war began, runaway slaves were give a unique new name: “Contraband of War.”

Fortress Monroe, near Norfolk, VA, was a crucial center for the Union, since it commanded the Chesapeake Bay, its trade, commerce and defensive position. General Benjamin Butler, a “political” general and Massachusetts lawyer, was in command of Union forces in that area, which was a magnet for the runaways. Technically, they “could not” be freed and “should” be returned to their masters, but Butler, an abolitionist, was not about to permit it. He declared the runaways as “contraband of war”, giving quasi immunity and a sense of growing pride and importance to the once-enslaved.

The Sanitary Commission

Early in the war, the Sanitary Commission was formed in the North. As a precursor to the Red Cross, the organization was devoted to provide money, goods and services for Union soldiers, particularly the wounded.

The idea caught on like wildfire, and hardly a Northern town was without a chapter. (In the South, there was no structured organization; everyone pitched in however they could.)

Men had organized the Sanitary Commission, but it fell to the women to organize many of their activities: fairs and bazaars, knitting and sewing circles, assembling mess kits and sundries.

Huge sums were raised. Thousands upon thousands of articles – from fully-equipped ambulance wagons to socks and pajamas – were provided to army hospitals.

Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907) was born in Petersburg, VA, a mulatto slave. At a young age, she discovered a rare talent for sewing and designing ladies fashions and eventually became so adept that she earned enough money ($1200) to purchase her freedom.

As a free woman, she moved to Washington in 1860 and opened a shop, making gowns for the capital’s elite. She had come highly recommended to Mary Lincoln, and began working with the new First Lady the day the Lincolns entered the White House.

“Lizzie” Keckley became an indispensable part of the Lincoln White House.

The relationship between Elizabeth Keckley and Mary Lincoln would steadily deepen. Mrs. K. would not only be engaged as her modiste and personal dresser, but helped nurse Willie and Tad when they were sick, and tended to an ailing (and grieving) Mrs. Lincoln as well. From time to time she even combed the President’s thick and unruly hair. In short, she became indispensable, and the close confidante and companion to the First Lady.

Elizabeth Keckley and Contraband

Free Negroes and former slaves came to Washington in droves during the Civil War. They were usually “disappointed” by freedom.

While the North and South actively supported their wounded, “Contraband” were given little assistance. Where were these poor souls to go? How would they find work and avoid starvation? They were being ignored and neglected.

Mrs. Keckley had become a prominent figure among the free Negro citizens of Washington, well respected by her community. After witnessing a fund-raising fair in Washington to help wounded Union soldiers, she approached the pastor of her church about forming a society to assist all those “contraband” who needed food, clothing, medical attention and shelter. An organization was formed to collect money and goods, and to distribute them where they could. They named it the Contraband Relief Association. Once Negroes were accepted as soldiers in the Union Army, it became The Ladies’ Freedmen and Soldiers Relief Association.

It was one of the first organizations established for Negroes to provide care for their own, and set a standard for subsequent charitable groups, uniting assistance among the capital’s Black Churches. They organized their own fairs and bazaars, lectures and dances.

President and Mrs. Lincoln Contribute

President Lincoln approved a generous personal donation to the Contraband Relief Association.

Lizzie Keckley had had a very brutal upbringing. Her “masters” were cruel; she was subject to beatings, rape and humiliation, yet she rose above it and was proud and self-sufficient. She was not given to beg for favors. Her prominence as dressmaker to the First Lady, and the genuine kindness she received at the Lincolns’ hands was sufficient.

Mary Lincoln was a generous supporter to the Contraband Relief Association.

However, a month after the Contraband Relief Association was formed, she accompanied Mrs. Lincoln on a trip to New York, and took advantage of that time to tell her about her new “organization.” Mrs. L. was delighted to lead off the fund raising drive, and after requesting support from the President, pledged $200 (which would be far more than $2500 today). Mrs. Lincoln’s influence also brought Lizzie in contact with many prominent Northerners who also contributed generously. Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass were included among the subscribers, and even gave lectures on its behalf.

Both Lincolns would make subsequent contributions from time to time.

Mrs. Keckley: A Fall From Grace

“Behind the Scenes” has been reprinted many times – but it was unsuccessful when it was written. It is said that Robert Lincoln arranged to purchase every existing copy to prevent his mother’s embarrassment.

The rupture of the close friendship between the First Lady and her dressmaker began basically over money. After Lincoln’s assassination, Mary Lincoln needed Mrs. Keckley’s near-constant companionship and nurturing, but she could no longer afford to pay her. Mrs. Keckley needed the money. Devoting all her time to the demanding former First Lady left her no time to tend to her business. She lost her customer base.

Elizabeth Keckley lived a long life, but it was mostly in poverty, relying on assistance from some of the charitable organizations she helped to found.

In a effort to support herself, she penned an autobiographical book with a ghost-writer, called Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. In it, she presented an intimate portrait of the Lincolns including private letters from Mrs. Lincoln. This was a total breach of trust and privacy and Victorian morality, and the relationship between the two women was severed. Mrs. Lincoln never spoke of her again except to refer to her as the “Negro historian.” Mrs. Keckley had not intended to harm or humiliate the former First Lady, and indeed was devastated by the broken relationship.

Elizabeth Keckley later spent time as a dressmaking instructor at Wilberforce University, but eventually died at age 89 in poverty, at a Home for Destitute Colored Women, one of the offshoots of the Contraband Relief Association.

Sources:

Fleischer, Jennifer – Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley – Broadway Books, 2003

Keckley, Elizabeth – Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House – Important Books, 2013

About Feather Schwartz Foster
Feather Schwartz Foster is an author-historian who has made more than 500 appearances discussing presidential history. She teaches adult education at the Christopher Wren Association (affiliated with William and; Mary College), and adult Education programs at Christopher Newport University. She has been a guest on the C-SPAN "First Ladies" program. She has written five books.

From: featherfoster.wordpress.com