Crossroads of the Civil War

Find out why Frederick, Maryland is an important place in American Civil War history. From the Museum of Civil War Medicine's Executive Director George Wunderlich. To learn more about the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, visit - www.civilwarmed.or...

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Frontline Pharmacies

by Robert Hicks / Ambulance train, early 1860s. New York Public Library. A few months after the Civil War began, on July 4, 1861, a group of patriotic young volunteers stood in the shadow of the Capitol, waiting to be sworn into the Union Army on a 90-day enlistment. Among them was William W. Keen. Less than three weeks later, and with only nine months of medical training, Keen stood clueless, in his blue uniform with the green sash of a medical officer, near the battlefield at Bull Run in Virginia. “It was an exceedingly hot day, and we marched and halted in the thick dust under a broiling sun until about noon. . . . During the entire engagement,...

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The Minie Ball

Amputation was the most common surgery during the Civil War. Most amputations owed their unfortunate necessity to the minie ball. The smoothbore musket had been the standard American infantry weapon throughout the 1850s. It fired a round ball and was reliable at close range in an era when the main military tactic was the massed infantry attack. Civil War battlefields hosted a new generation of rifled weapons. Grooves inside the barrel of the gun gave the ammunition greater velocity, penetration and long-range accuracy. The ammunition of choice was the new, deadly minie ball. Designed in France by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie, the ball was...

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