Sallie Robbins Broadhead

Civil War Nurse and Teacher

By Maggie MacLean

Sallie Robbins Broadhead, a teacher in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, lived on the western end of Chambersburg Street in the end unit of a row house called Warren's Block with her husband Joseph and 4-year-old daughter Mary. Sallie, a thin, plain-looking young woman, kept a daily diary from mid-June to mid-July 1863, providing a graphic firsthand account of the ordeal endured that summer by the civilians of Gettysburg.

Gettysburg's residents, about 2400 in number, knew that Southern troops were not very far away. On June 21, Captain Robert Bell's local cavalry company and members of the Philadelphia City Troop had exchanged shots with Confederate pickets at Monterey, less than 20 miles from Gettysburg. The Adams Sentinel, one of Gettysburg's weekly newspapers, had reported on June 23 that sizable Confederate forces had entered nearby towns to look for supplies and horses.

On June 23, 1863, Sallie Broadhead wrote in her diary:

As I expected, the Rebels have, several times, been within two or three miles, but they have not yet reached here. Two cavalry companies are here on scouting duty, but they can be of little use, as they have never seen service. Deserters come in every little while, who report the enemy near in large force.

The townspeople had heard false alarms and conflicting stories. On June 24, Sallie Broadhead had tried to convince herself that all would be well. "We are getting used to excitement, and many think the enemy, having been so long in the vicinity – without visiting us, will not favor us with their presence," she had written in her diary.

The experiences that Sallie would never forget began on the morning of June 26, 1863. She was sound asleep when her daughter Mary cried for water. When Sallie got up, she heard a commotion and looked out the window to see a large fire, and citizens were calling out that the rebels were coming.

General Early's Raid
On that rainy Friday afternoon of June 26, Confederate Major General Jubal A. Early and his division, some 5,000 men, were marching toward Gettysburg. Seven or eight miles from the small Pennsylvania town, he heard rumors that an enemy force of unknown strength awaited him there. Early approached Gettysburg from the west, and skirmished with 750 green troops in the 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Volunteers.

Early had only planned to stop in Gettysburg long enough to collect supplies for the army. Lt. General Richard S. Ewell, commander of the 2nd Corps during Gen. Robert E. Lee's great invasion of the North, had given Early some other urgent tasks. After hurrying through Gettysburg, he was supposed to cut the Northern Central Railroad, at York, then destroy the imposing Columbia Bridge across the Susquehanna River at Wrightsville. If successful, he would help to pave the way for the capture of Harrisburg, the state capital.

From the top of a ridge about four miles outside Gettysburg, Colonel William W. Jennings, using his field glasses, eventually spotted Early's approaching troops. Attempts to raise 50,000 militia for Pennsylvania's defense had not met with much success. Jennings' outfit, the 26th Pennsylvania Militia, was one of the groups hastily thrown together to challenge the Southern invaders. Among its 743 members were young men from Pennsylvania College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary, two schools in Gettysburg.

Galloping down Chambersburg Street into town, Early's advance troops put on a performance that disgusted the Reverend Dr. Michael Jacobs, a prominent citizen. "The advance guard of the enemy, consisting of 180 to 200 cavalry, rode into Gettysburg at 3:15 PM, shouting and yelling like so many savages from the wilds of the Rocky Mountains; firing their pistols, not caring whether they killed or maimed man, woman, or child; and rushing from stable to stable in search of horses," he wrote, in an account published several months later.

From her house, at the far western end of town, Sallie Robbins Broadhead was one of the first to witness the arrival of Confederate troops on the afternoon of June 26. From her upstairs window, she watched the invaders. Her husband Joseph's job as a railroad engineer had taken him out of town.

We all stood in the doors while the cavalry passed, but when the infantry came, we closed them, for fear they would run into our houses and carry off everything we had, and went upstairs and looked out of the windows. They went along very orderly, only asking every now and then how many Yankee soldiers we had in town. I answered one that I did not know. He replied, "You are a funny woman; if I lived in town I would know that much.

Despite the potential for trouble, the evening of June 26 was relatively quiet. A Confederate band played Southern tunes, including Dixie, at the town square, annoying many residents. Most of Gettysburg's residents had little to say to their overnight guests.

The hours passed slowly for Sallie Broadhead the night of June 26:

I was left entirely alone, surrounded by thousands of ugly, rude, hostile soldiers, from whom violence might be expected. Even if the neighbors were at hand, it was not pleasant, and I feared my husband would be taken prisoner before he could return, or whilst trying to reach me.

Early's soldiers left Gettysburg on the morning of June 27, on their way to York, Pennsylvania. On the evening of June 29, it was said the people of Gettysburg could see Confederate campfires flickering on the eastern slopes of South Mountain. As Gettysburg's citizens would soon discover, Early's raid had been a mild preview of war.

Many of the residents were still not convinced of the danger, but Sallie Broadhead wasn't one of them. She wrote in her diary entry for June 30:

This morning the Rebels came to the top of the hill overlooking the town on the Chambersburg Pike and looked over our place. It begins to look as though we will have a battle soon, and we are in great fear.

The men Sallie saw were from Confederate General Johnston Pettigrew's Infantry Brigade. This force had been sent forward to reconnoiter the town and search for supplies. When Pettigrew spotted General John Buford's Federal Cavalry riding into town, he withdrew to his camp at Cashtown, as per his orders not to engage.

When the people spotted Buford's troopers coming up, they gave them a warm and enthusiastic welcome. Men, women, and children lined both sides of Washington Street waving, cheering, and singing patriotic songs. Buford allowed the young boys to follow along as the horses were lead to water, and quieted the worst fears of the town's population. The citizens were unaware that two armies – numbering 170,000 – were so near their town.

As the two great armies probed each other’s movements slowly northward, neither expected to fight one of the Civil War’s most momentous battles in the crossroads Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. But during that summer, the citizens of Gettysburg had kept a wary eye on those movements, fearful that the ravages of war would disturb, and perhaps destroy, their tranquility.

The fateful day of July 1, 1863, dawned rainy and misty and by 7 am, it was cloudy and 72 degrees. As the sun rose, the fog and clouds cleared – the day was to become very hot and humid. By 8 am, the largest and most costly battle of the Civil War had erupted. The citizens would no longer need to worry about rumors.

Union General John Reynolds received orders from the recently appointed Union Commanding General George Meade at 4:00 am, instructing him to move the First and Eleventh Corps toward Gettysburg. At 5:00 am, Confederate General Henry Heth began to move his Confederate troops east towards Gettysburg. Heth's skirmishers came within sight of Union pickets at 7:30 am, July 1, 1863.

I got up early this morning to get my baking done before any fighting would begin. I had just put my bread in the pans when the cannons began to fire, and true enough the battle had begun in earnest, about two miles out on the Chambersburg Pike. What to do or where to go, I did not know. People were running here and there, screaming that the town would be shelled.

Confederate General A. P. Hill's brigades were clashing with General John Buford's Union cavalry, and Hill encountered stubborn resistance. While both sides sent couriers off for reinforcements, Buford held his ground – and the Battle of Gettysburg was under way.

Sallie wrote on July 1:

People are running here and there "screaming that the town would be shelled. No one knew where to go or what to do. My husband went to the garden and picked a mess of beans, for he declared the Rebels should not have one.

When she turned to her diary at nightfall, "the town was full of the filthy Rebels," cock-a-hoop with success: "all is quiet, but 0! how I dread tomorrow."

On July 2, shells and bullets began to hiss and whine once more; but in his Gettysburg garden Sallie Broadhead's husband doggedly "picked a mess of beans... [and] persevered until he had picked all, for he declared the Rebels should not have one."

During the first three days of July, the town and its people shook with the fury of deadly fighting. Sallie spent most of the daylight hours with her family and immediate neighbors, huddled in the safety of the large basement of the David Troxell house next door. "The time we sat in the cellar seemed long, listening to the terrific sound of the strife; more terrible never greeted human ears."

On the afternoon of July 3, after Pickett's Charge had failed, the most optimistic Southerner knew that the Confederates had lost the day. When General Robert E. Lee told General George Picket to rally his division together Picket answered "General, I have no division." He never forgave Lee for what happened to his men at Gettysburg.

General Lee, "the saddest man in the Army of Northern Virginia," passed among his retreating, exhausted men, begging them to keep their ranks and assuring them: "It was my fault this time." Sir Arthur Fremantle found Confederate General James Longstreet sitting glumly on a fence and said tactlessly: "I wouldn't have missed this for anything." Replied the beaten general: "I would like to have missed it very much."

Sallie wrote on July 3, 1863:

We knew that with every explosion, and the scream of each shell, human beings were hurried, through excruciating pain into another world, and that many more were torn and mangled and lying in torment worse than death, and no one able to extend relief. The thought made me very sad, and feel that, if it was God's will, I would rather be taken away than remain to see the misery that would follow.

On July 4, General Lee packed up his troops and headed back to Virginia in a sudden downpour that washed the blood from the grass and pelted the wounded Confederate soldiers in the wagons heading home. The men who were too wounded to travel were brought to houses and laid side-by-side in the halls and rooms. Carpets, walls and books that were used as pillows were stained with blood.

For the townspeople, the horror did not end with the Battle of Gettysburg, it continued on through summer and into fall with the stench of death and the agony of wounded Union and Confederate troops. The town of 2400 civilians had become one gigantic hospital, staffed by shopkeepers and lawyers, by housewives and teachers, and by children whose summer vacation became a learning experience in the realities of life. The needs of 22,000 wounded men saw to that.

During the struggle, and its aftermath, Gettysburg's civilians faced almost incomprehensible situations. As the bodies of the dead quickly became infested, the battle wounds of the living also became flyblown. Maimed and wounded soldiers sometimes remained for days on the battlefield before receiving attention or being moved to a hospital. The exposed and open wounds also became prime breeding and feeding sites for carnivorous species of flies.

Sallie recorded the following incident just a few days after the battle:

I assisted in feeding some of the severely wounded, when I perceived that they were suffering on account of not having their wounds dressed. I did not know whether I could render any assistance in that way, but I thought I would try. I procured a basin and water, and went to a room where there were seven or eight, some shot in the arms, others in the legs, and one in his back, and another in the shoulder.
I asked if anyone would like to have his wounds dressed? Someone replied, "There is a man on the floor who cannot help himself, you would better see to him." Stooping over him, I asked for his wound, and he pointed to his leg. Such a horrible sight I had never seen, and hope never to see again. His leg was all covered with worms [maggots].

By July 13, the small Broadhead home housed more than a family of three:

The town is as full as ever of strangers, and the old story of the inability of a village of 2500 inhabitants overrun and eaten out by two large armies to accommodate from 10 to 12,000 visitors, is repeated almost hourly. Twenty are with us tonight, filling every bed and covering the floors.

Churches continued to be used as hospitals, causing parishioners to forgo normal services, prompting her to note in her diary, "We have had no Sundays... the churches have all been converted into hospitals." She also volunteered her services at the hospital in the Lutheran Seminary.

On July 14, Sallie made a diary entry that probably reflected the feelings of all the townspeople:

Little did I think... that I would have to record such terrible scenes as I have done. Had anyone suggested any such sights as within the bound of possibility, I would have thought it madness.

Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle in the war. About one third of those engaged were lost – the North had 23,000 casualties, but the South lost 28,000 soldiers. The Confederates couldn't afford such a loss.

Sallie Broadhead privately published her diary in 1864, as The Diary of a Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, from June 15 to July 15, 1863, in a 24-page pamphlet. It was intended solely for "the kindred and nearest friends of the writer," but it was printed as a fund-raiser for the Sanitary fairs in the Pennsylvania area.

IMAGE: Coming RainDale Gallon, Artist
Brigadier General John Buford at McPherson's Farm June 30, 1863
Buford and his brigade commanders, Devin and Gamble, discuss the impending battle.

FROM: http://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/2009/04/sallie-robbins-broadhead.html

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Carrie McGavock

Civil War Nurse at the Battle of Franklin

By Maggie MacLean

Carrie McGavock's plantation home, Carnton, on the outskirts of Franklin, Tennessee, was used as a hospital after the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864. She not only oversaw the care of the wounded in and around her house, she was responsible for making sure that nearly 1500 Confederates were reinterred in a cemetery on the McGavock property.

Carrie Winder and John McGavock were married in December 1848. They had five children during the subsequent years, three of whom died at young ages: Martha (1849-1862), Mary Elizabeth (1851-1858) and John Randal (1854). The surviving children, Winder (1857-1907) and Hattie (1855-1932), witnessed the carnage at their home.

Carnton Plantation
The first construction on the property took place in 1815 by John's father Randal McGavock, a prominent local politician who was friends with two future U.S. presidents, James K. Polk  and Andrew Jackson, who stayed in the McGavock home on more than one occasion. McGavock named the property Carnton, which was derived from the Gaelic word cairn which means a pile of stones marking a grave.

Carnton was a working plantation of 1,400 acres of which 500 acres was used to raise wheat, corn, oats, hay and potatoes. After his father died in 1843, John McGavock took possession of the property and continued to farm it until his death. Under his direction, Carnton grew to become one of the premier farms in Williamson County, Tennessee. He started renovating the home in the late 1840s, adding a two-story Greek Revival porch onto the rear of the home.

Prelude to Battle
In late July 1864 General John Bell Hood assumed command of the 30,000-man Confederate Army of Tennessee while the Confederates were pinned inside Atlanta by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. Hood made a series of desperate attacks against Sherman but finally relinquished the city on September 1, 1864. No longer able to wage an offensive against the massive Federal force, Hood retreated into Alabama to regroup.

In early November, Hood moved north into Tennessee, hoping to draw Sherman out of the Deep South by threatening his supply base at Nashville. Sherman did not take the bait. He sent General John Schofield's Army of the Ohio, 30,000 strong, to deal with Hood's threat while he took the rest of the force on his famous March to the Sea, during which his men destroyed most of central Georgia.

Hood knew that there were already 25,000 Union soldiers under General George Thomas entrenched in Nashville, and he hoped to defeat Schofield before the two forces joined. After a month of sparring along the Tennessee and the Duck Rivers, on November 28 Hood surrounded half of Schofield's army in the town of Columbia, Tennessee, where they skirmished with Hood's cavalry under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but soon withdrew north across the Duck River.

As Schofield continued to retreat, Hood missed a golden opportunity at Spring Hill to trap the other half of Schofield's army on the south side of the river. In the dark of night the Yankees passed within earshot of the Rebels camped along the road. This movement was noticed by some Confederates, but no effort was made to block it. By morning, Schofield had successfully extricated his entire force from Spring Hill and was en route to Franklin.

Realizing that he had missed a chance to attack the Union force, Hood was incensed, blaming his officers for the failure to block Schofield's advance. Hood immediately ordered a pursuit to Franklin, where he would have one more chance to crush Schofield before he could join General Thomas' force at Nashville.

Arriving at Franklin at 6:00 a.m. on November 30, the lead Union troops began preparing arc-shaped fortifications along the southern edge of Franklin. The Union rear was protected by the Harpeth River. The bridges across the river had to be repaired before the bulk of his forces could cross, so Schofield decided to make a stand. While the bridge work commenced, his soldiers began shoring up the earthworks, which were complete by noon.

Hood's columns reached Winstead Hill, two miles south of Franklin, around 1:00 p.m. Hood ordered his commanders to prepare for a frontal assault on the formidable Union defenses. However, Hood was at a disadvantage because one of his three divisions and much of his artillery had not yet arrived. His subordinates attempted to talk him into calling off the attack, but he would not relent.

Battle of Franklin
At 4 p.m. on November 30, 1864, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War began when Hood recklessly attacked the entrenched Federal army in a massive frontal assault larger than Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg - the last great charge of the war. The Rebel lines moved in nearly perfect unison across two miles of open ground, and were immediately torn by scores of Union cannon; Hood had only one battery positioned to counter the enemy fire.

Yet the line continued to sweep forward and quickly overwhelmed two brigades of Yankees in the outer trenches, half a mile in front of the main line. Charging and yelling, the Confederates in the center crossed the last half mile of their assault largely unopposed; the riflemen behind the breastworks were unwilling to shoot into the swirl of men in their front, which now included their friends in the outer trenches.

The Confederates slammed into the Union center with full momentum and splintered the defenders around the Carter House. Thousands of men now surged together in the Carter gardens.
After a long period of brutal hand-to-hand combat, the Yankees were able to close the breach and throw back the Confederates. Despite the heavy casualties, Hood believed that the Union center had been badly damaged.

Swept by musketry and artillery fire, the Rebels pressed on until they reached the tall abatis of the main fortifications. They had no choice but to try to claw their way through the strong branches while muskets were discharged literally in their faces. Union soldiers would later write about the sight of twisted and contorted corpses amidst the timber.

Darkness fell early that winter evening, and the majority of the combat occurred in the dark and at close quarters. Parts of the Union's outer trenches fell to Hood's men, but they did not penetrate any further and suffered significant casualties. The Confederates retreated, reformed, and renewed the attack several times, but could not break through the Union lines.

Unwilling to accept defeat, Hood continued to throw uncoordinated attacks against Schofield's works. Around 7:00 p.m. Hood's third corps arrived on the field, and he sent his left wing to lead another assault. Storming forward, these Confederate units failed to reach the Union line and became pinned down. For two hours an intense firefight ensued until Confederate troops were able to fall back in the darkness.

The Battle of Franklin had lasted barely five hours during which some 9,500 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or listed as missing. Nearly 7,000 of that number were Confederate troops. The losses among the Confederate leadership were disastrous: six generals killed, including Patrick Cleburne, one of the army's finest division commanders; another five wounded, one captured, and sixty regimental commanders killed or wounded.

With the Confederate assault defeated, Schofield's men began crossing the Harpeth around 11:00 p.m. and reached the fortifications at Nashville the following day. Despite the defeat, Hood continued to move against Schofield and Thomas. Just two weeks later, he hurled the remnants of his army against the Yankees at Nashville with equally disastrous results.

Carnton is a Field Hospital
Carnton was less than a mile from the eastern Union flank. Since most of the battle took place after dark, the McGavocks witnessed the fire and explosion of guns and muskets that permeated the sky over Franklin. After the battle, many Franklin homes were converted into temporary hospitals, but Carnton was by far the largest field hospital, where hundreds of wounded and dying Confederate soldiers were treated.

That cold winter night, John and Carrie McGavock were at Carnton with their two surviving children when hundreds of wounded and dying Confederates began to stream into the shelter of the grove of trees near the house. Soon big fires were built to give the suffering some warmth, and all the farm outbuildings were filled with wounded.

Many were taken into the two-story brick McGavock home, where surgeons worked at improvised tables to amputate mangled arms and legs and bind wounds. The floors of the home are still stained with the blood of the men who were treated here. About 150 wounded soldiers died in the house during the night. As their bodies were removed, their places were quickly filled by other wounded men.

Hundreds of Confederate wounded and dying were tended by Carrie McGavock and her family. Her two children, Hattie (age nine) and son Winder (age seven), probably provided some basic assistance to the surgeons as well. Some estimates say that as many as 300 Confederate soldiers were cared for inside Carnton alone. Scores, if not hundreds more, were spread out through the rest of the property, including in the slave cabins.

John and Carrie McGavock described the scene at Carnton after the Battle of Franklin:

Every room was filled, every bed had two poor, bleeding fellows, every spare space, niche, and corner under the stairs, in the hall, everywhere. And when the noble old house could hold no more, the yard was appropriated until the wounded and dead filled that. Our doctors were deficient in bandages and [Carrie] began by giving her old linen, then her towels and napkins, then her sheets and tableclothes, then her husband's shirts and her own undergarments.

On the morning of December 1, 1864 the residents of Franklin faced an unimaginable scene: over 2,500 dead soldiers, including 1,750 Confederates. Witnesses say Carrie McGavock's dress was soaked with blood at the hem that morning. The bodies of three Confederate generals killed during the fighting were laid out on Carnton's back porch: Patrick Cleburne, Hiram Granbury and Otho Strahl.

Burying the Dead
According to George Cowan's History of McGavock Confederate Cemetery, all of the Confederate dead were buried as nearly as possible by state, and wooden headboards were placed at each grave with the name, company and regiment painted or written on them. Many of the soldiers had been buried on the battlefield in Franklin where they fell, mostly on property belonging to Fountain Branch Carter and James McNutt.

Over the next eighteen months (all of 1865 through the first half of 1866) many of the wooden grave markers either rotted or were used for firewood, and the writing on the existing boards was disappearing. John and Carrie McGavock donated two acres of land adjacent to their family cemetery behind Carnton for the McGavock Confederate Cemetery, where the Confederate dead could be re-interred together.

Image: McGavock Confederate Cemetery
Franklin, Tennessee
Carnton is in the background

The citizens of Franklin raised the money and a team of men led by George Cuppett took responsibility for the reburial operation in the spring of 1866. By June, some ten weeks later, the last Confederate soldier was laid to rest. Some 1,481 Rebel soldiers from every state in the Confederacy, except Virginia, were now at peace. Cuppett recorded the names and identities of the soldiers in a record book, which he then turned over to the McGavocks.

In 1896, the John McEwen Bivouac veterans' organization raised funds to replace the wooden headboards in the cemetery with granite markers. Carrie McGavock maintained the cemetery with African-American workers until her death in 1905. The original cemetery book is on display upstairs in the Carnton mansion.

Later, an iron fence was built around the graveyard. It was the idea of Mary Ann Harris Gay of Macon, Georgia, who traveled to Franklin to visit the grave of her beloved half brother, Lt. Tom Stokes of the 10th Texas. As she looked at the neat rows of wooden markers, she was appalled to see free range cows trampling the graves. She realized the graves needed protection and launched a fund-raising drive to add the iron fence around the graveyard. Most of the money came from Texas.

A prayer by Reverend John Hanner which mentions Carrie McGavock was quoted in Confederate Veteran magazine in 1905:

We thank thee for the... feeble knees she lifted up, for the many hearts she comforted, the needy ones she supplied, the sick she ministered unto, and the boys she found in abject want and mothered and reared into worthy manhood. In the last day they will rise up and call her blessed. Today she is not, because thou hast taken her; and we are left to sorrow for the Good Samaritan of Williamson County, a name richly merited by her.

Today, the McGavock Confederate Cemetery is a lasting memorial honoring those fallen soldiers and the Battle of Franklin. It is the largest privately owned military cemetery in the nation. The McGavock family owned Carnton until 1911 when it was sold by the widow of Winder McGavock.

Every year, Carnton receives visitors from all over the world. The site is maintained and managed by the Battle of Franklin Trust, a non-profit organization which also manages another historic Battle of Franklin home, the Carter House. The property consists of 48 of the original 1,400 acres and includes the restored antebellum home, a recreated one-acre 1847 garden, slave quarters, smokehouse, springhouse, and the adjacent Confederate Cemetery.

FROM: http://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/2013/04/carrie-mcgavock.html

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Civil War Wheelchairs

The wheelchair has helped people to move more freely for centuries. The oldest known example is depicted in carved stone on a 6^th century Chinese sarcophagus.

The 1700’s produced the first wheelchair of a similar design to those used today. A long-lived model known as the “Bath Chair” was offered in 1783 by inventor John Dawson of Bath, England. The chair had two large front wheels and one small rear one. The Bath Chair outsold all others through the early 1800’s.

The Civil War is the first recorded instance of wheelchair use in America. The Bath Chair design continued to be popular until 1867 when inventors began to improve upon the somewhat uncomfortable device, adding hollow rubber wheels and “push rims” for self-propelling the chair.

IMAGE: Civil War era wheelchair of oak and caning

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Confederate Hospital Trains

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.

The Confederate Medical Department also used trains whenever possible, although the Southern railroad lines were much less developed than those in the North. They did not build special ambulance cars for their trains; the dearth of rolling stock and manufacturing facilities precluded it. Boxcars on trains brought supplies to the troops and returned carrying wounded and sick soldiers, usually with some straw thrown on the floor, water, food, and when possible, some nursing and medical personnel to accompany them.

The railroads were most useful to the Confederates in Virginia, where good service existed from Manassas Junction south to Gordonsville, and then on to Richmond. There was good east-west service from Richmond across the mountains to the Shenandoah Valley. From Staunton, in the Valley, there was service to Tennessee at Knoxville and then on to Chattanooga, but that segment was often cut and service was irregular. After the battles fought in northern Virginia, such as First and Second Manassas, the wounded were transported quickly by rail to Gordonsville and then to hospitals in Richmond or Charlottesville.

After Antietam and Gettysburg, wounded were taken by ambulance to Winchester and then down the Valley Turnpike (which had a macadam surface) to Staunton; once there, they could be sent south to Lynchburg or east to Charlottesville, Gordonsville, and Richmond, Depot hospitals, known as "receiving and forwarding hospitals", were set up at key points, such as Gordonsville and Staunton, to provide care en route and to serve as distribution centers.

Excerpted from: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs by Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.

IMAGE: From Confederate States $50 bill

See more about Civil War hospital trains at www.CivilWarRx.com.

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Northern Hospital Trains

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.

Before the war, no thought had been given to using trains as ambulances. However, during the war, both sides relied on the recently developed railroad system to move men and material, including their sick and wounded soldiers, whenever possible.

Later in the war, hospital cars were specifically designed for use in ambulance trains. The Sanitary Commission's official history describes these improvements:

"A very slight description of these hospital cards will give some idea of the increased comfort provided for the patients conveyed in them. The ordinary field and hospital litter or stretcher was used in loading, unloading, and carrying the patients. These simple litter-beds, with pillows, mattresses, and comforts attached, were then ingeniously and securely swung, in tiers three high, and end to end upon light stanchions, and there suspended by stout tugs of India rubber, which gave sufficient elasticity to obviate all jar to the bed and its patient.

"Thirty of these beds were thus swung along the side of each Hospital car. A number of invalid chairs and a broad couch filled the remainder of the available space. A pantry furnished with medicines, utensils, beverages, and substantial food, ready for serving to the patients hot or cold, made up the sum of creature comforts, while nurses, abundantly provided with towels, socks, blankets, sponges, etc., kept every man clear and warm, however long the trip of stormy the weather. All the usual appliances and skill of a well-regulated Hospital were at hand."

In addition to the hospital cars, these trains included cars for cooking and dining and for use as sleeping quarters for medical staff assigned to accompany the wounded. The trains were clearly identified by a bight red smokestack, engine, and tender and by the markings "U.S. HOSPITAL TRAIN" in enormous red letters, and they carried three red lanterns at night. There is no record that enemy forces ever molested any hospital train.

Excerpted from: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs by Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.

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Hannah Ropes, Civil War Nurse

From the American Association for the History of Nursing, Inc.

Hannah Anderson was born in New Gloucester, Maine to a family of early New England settlers. She married educator William H. Ropes at the age of twenty five; they lived in Waltham, Massachusetts and had four children, two of which lived to adulthood.

When her husband abandoned her she was left to raise her children and Hannah bloomed in a new found self reliance. When her son was eighteen in 1855, he became a homesteader in the Kansas Territory. Increasingly interested in the abolitionist movement and the westward expansion, she and her daughter also moved to Kansas. But the political turmoil over the slavery issue caused Hannah's return to Massachusetts.

During this period she was increasingly politically active and well connected. She wrote a novel, Cranston House and also published Six Months in Kansas. Like other women of the time, she was called upon to nurse sick friends. A nephew had sent her a copy of Florence Nightingale's newly published Notes on Nursing and Hannah Ropes must have been deeply influenced by Nightingale's writing.

When her son Edward served in the Civil War, she volunteered to serve as a nurse. She was assigned as head matron of the Union Hotel Hospital in Washington D.C., where she worked with Louisa May Alcott. She actively decried the appalling conditions - both the lack of sanitation and the indifference and even cruel treatment of the soldiers - and was pro-active in making change. For Hannah Ropes and other women "nurses" this meant butting heads with the military and physicians who resented the presence of women in the makeshift hospitals.

She contracted typhoid pneumonia at that hospital and died at the age of 54. She had kept a diary which was only recently published. Between her diary and correspondence, a different perspective of the Civil War and the emergence of nursing has been gained. Thus while Hannah Ropes was barely known during her own lifetime, her significant work is available for study and admiration today.

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Stethoscopes and the Civil War

By Dr. A. Jay Bollet

The evidence that army physicians during the Civil War knew how to use a stethoscope can be found in numerous reports in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. They are brief summaries, but with enough detail to know that physicians were skilled at physical examination.

 

Some examples:

"Case 4, Regimental Register, 28th Mass. April 11, 1863...dullness over left nipple; crepitant râles distinct...14th: rubbing sound heard over upper part of left thorax, râles below and dulness overall...17th...no rubbing sound, dullness less marked...26th...Sent to general hospital to-day."

"Case 9, from Third Division Hospital, Alexandria, VA: "Diminished resonance over right side anteriorly with subcrepitant ronchus [sic] below...""Case 10, Ladies' Home Hospital, New York City:...dullness posterior over the upper portion of the lower lobe of the left lung with feeble respiratory murmur and moist bronchial râles..

 

The stethoscope is needed to hear rales and rhonchi, and to detect a 'feeble respiratory murmur'. Notably, the findings were used to determine the specific location of the pathology in the lung and it is described in many of these case reports. In fatal cases the findings on physical examination were verified by the autopsy findings. Today physicians would rarely try to define the anatomic location of lung pathology without first seeing a chest x-ray. In other cases, the description of the examination of the heart mentions murmurs and friction rubs, which are heard only with the stethoscope. Note also in the cases listed above that the use of the stethoscope and other techniques of the physical examination which originated in Europe was widespread among the military units; it is documented in regimental and divisional field hospitals, as well as general hospitals.

 

The regimental surgeons in the field thus were skilled in the use of the stethoscope, not only specialists in the cities. Ladies' Home Hospital was a general hospital of 263 beds (according to the Surgeon General's annual report of 1862) and would be expected to have specialists in New York City functioning as contract physicians. It was on Lexington Avenue at the corner of 51st Street; initially all soldiers from the NYC area who needed trusses were sent there. This hospital was sometimes called the "Soldier's Home."The use of percussion, another component of the technique of physical examination, is documented by the descriptions of dullness and diminished resonance in these case reports. A statement attributed to General Robert E. Lee when he had the first of several illnesses during the war, describes what it felt like to be examined by percussion. His physicians, he said, were "tapping me all over like an old steam-boiler before condemning it." 

Excerpted from: The Society of Civil War Surgeons

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"Soldier's Heart"

Heart Disease in Civil War Soldiers

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.

Heart symptoms often accompany anxiety, but the physical stresses of a soldier's life can also reveal underlying heart abnormalities. Given the limited diagnostic tools available (no electrocardiograms or radiographs) during the Civil War, the true cause of many soldiers' cardiac ailments baffled their physicians.

Dr. Jacob DaCosta, who also worked at Turner's Lane Hospital in Philadelphia, is credited with the first description of "soldier's heart" or "stress heart", a form of what i today considered psychogenic heart disease." Of the 300 cases DaCosta studied, most men had episodes of palpitation and shortness of breath, and some developed evidence of cardiac hypertrophy but not dilatation. DaCosta considered the findings a "functional disorder" and attributed then to "cardiac muscular exhaustion" Other physicians agreed, noting that the excitement of battle and "double quick" marching caused the syndrome of irritable heart.

During the war, 10,516 white and 100 black soldiers were discharged due to heart disease. Discharges due to valvular disease or "soldier's heart" were not separated out, but available records show that physicians did recognize various types of cardiac pathology. Valvular heart disease was diagnosed in 3,574 whites and 325 blacks; most undoubtedly resulted from rheumatic fever. Civil War physicians clearly were skilled at using a stethoscope to detect this form of heart disease.

Excerpted From: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs by Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.

IMAGE: Civil War era monaural stethoscope

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