150 Years Ago: Scarlet Fever Epidemic Reaches Congressman's Home

By Rudi Keller

COLUMBIA — A scarlet fever epidemic touched the home of U.S. Rep. James Rollins, striking three of his four youngest children, his wife, Mary Rollins, wrote in a letter she filled with family news and closed with an account of her sorrow at their separation.

Flora, 9, Frank, 6, and Edward, 2, all became sick as Mary Rollins was returning home from the East, she wrote.

James and Mary Rollins had 10 children. After accompanying her husband to Washington for the opening of the congressional session, she had returned, leaving her oldest daughter, Laura, 19, and sons George Bingham, 12, and Curtis, 10, with their father.

“Eddie was the first victim, and was a very sick child indeed. He was scarcely out of my arms for 10 days,” she wrote. “He is much reduced and very pale.”

She wrote she was thankful that her children would survive the dangerous illness, a major cause of child death in the 19th century. It is caused by a streptococcus bacteria easily controlled by antibiotics today.

“I ought to be thankful to have them in their present condition even while all the children in the country are dying,” Mary Rollins wrote. “Messrs. Hollis and Morgan have both lost their oldest children to this dreadful disease since I reached home and I have heard of many others dying both in town and country.”

Among the slaves kept as house servants, sickness also was rampant, she wrote. Three of the women working in the kitchen had 10 sick children between them, she wrote.

In business and family news, Mary Rollins reported to her husband that a man named Brown, who was apparently a business manager, had been home drunk from Columbia on Christmas and was taking liberties with his authority. “Brown is perfectly trifling, and contemptible, and if you leave him here long enough will steal everything on earth you have.”

In other news, she reported that the sale of household and farming goods owned by John Rollins, brother of James Rollins, had been completed and he was moving to Nathaniel Wilson’s home. The property had been auctioned to pay his debts.

When she parted from her husband and waited to go to the railroad station, she broke down, Mary Rollins wrote. “The first thing I did was to sit down and take a hearty cry in which I was soon joined by Bing and Curt. I never felt so perfectly desolate on Earth. It seemed I would die but this relief not being granted me, and the long hour of agony being over, we started for the cars, my dear little boys accompanying me.”

From: columbiatribune.com

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Psychological Health Aboard Navy Ships

From: med.navy.mil.

Needless to say, under these conditions, the psychological health of Sailors was often in question. “Give me a discharge and let me go home,” a distraught coal-heaver begged his skipper after months of duty outside of Charleston. “I am a poor, weak, miserable, nervous, half-crazy boy. Everything jarred upon my delicate nerves.” In the Civil War we begin seeing terms “nostalgia,” “melancholia,” and “irritable heart” masking conditions that would in future years be called “shell shock,” “combat fatigue” and “PTSD.”

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Medical Care, Battle Wounds, and Disease

From: civilwarhome.com

       The Civil War was fought, claimed the Union army surgeon general, "at the end of the medical Middle Ages." Little was known about what caused disease, how to stop it from spreading, or how to cure it. Surgical techniques ranged from the barbaric to the barely competent.

       A Civil War soldier's chances of not surviving the war was about one in four. These fallen men were cared for by a woefully underqualifled, understaffed, and undersupplied medical corps. Working against incredible odds, however, the medical corps increased in size, improved its techniques, and gained a greater understanding of medicine and disease every year the war was fought.

       During the period just before the Civil War, a physician received minimal training. Nearly all the older doctors served as apprentices in lieu of formal education. Even those who had attended one of the few medical schools were poorly trained. In Europe, four-year medical schools were common, laboratory training was widespread, and a greater understanding of disease and infection existed. The average medical student in the United States, on the other hand, trained for two years or less, received practically no clinical experience, and was given virtually no laboratory instruction. Harvard University, for instance, did not own a single stethoscope or microscope until after the war.

       When the war began, the Federal army had a total of about 98 medical officers, the Confederacy just 24. By 1865, some 13,000 Union doctors had served in the field and in the hospitals; in the Confederacy, about 4,000 medical officers and an unknown number of volunteers treated war casualties. in both the North and South, these men were assisted by thousands of women who donated their time and energy to help the wounded. It is estimated that more than 4,000 women served as nurses in Union hospitals; Confederate women contributed much to the effort as well.

       Although Civil War doctors were commonly referred to as "butchers" by their patients and the press, they managed to treat more than 10 million cases of injury and illness in just 48 months and most did it with as much compassion and competency as possible. Poet Walt Whitman, who served as a volunteer in Union army hospitals, had great respect for the hardworking physicians, claiming that "All but a few are excellent men...

       Approximately 620,000 men-360,000 Northerners and 260,000 Southerners-died in the four-year conflict, a figure that tops the total fatalities of all other wars in which America has fought. Of these numbers, approximately 110,000 Union and 94,000 Confederate men died of wounds received in battle. Every effort was made to treat wounded men within 48 hours; most primary care was administered at field hospitals located far behind the front lines. Those who survived were then transported by unreliable and overcrowded ambulances-two-wheeled carts or four-wheeled wagons-to army hospitals located in nearby cities and towns.

       The most common Civil War small arms ammunition was the dreadful minnie ball, which tore an enormous wound on impact: it was so heavy that an abdominal or head wound was almost always fatal, and a hit to an extremity usually shattered any bone encountered. In addition, bullets carried dirt and germs into the wound that often caused infection.

       Of the approximately 175,000 wounds to the extremities received among Federal troops, about 30,000 led to amputation; roughly the same proportion occurred in the Confederacy. One witness described a common surgeon's tent this way: "Tables about breast high had been erected upon which the screaming victims were having legs and arms cut off. The surgeons and their assistants, stripped to the waist and bespattered with blood, stood around, some holding the poor fellows while others, armed with long, bloody knives and saws, cut and sawed away with frightful rapidity, throwing the mangled limbs on a pile nearby as soon as removed."
       Contrary to popular myth, most amputees did not experience the surgery without anesthetic. Ample doses of chloroform were administered beforehand; the screams heard were usually from soldiers just informed that they would lose a limb or who were witness to the plight of other soldiers under the knife.

       Those who survived their wounds and surgeries still had another hurdle, however: the high risk of infection. While most surgeons were aware of a relationship between cleanliness and low infection rates, they did not know how to sterilize their equipment. Due to a frequent shortage of water, surgeons often went days without washing their hands or instruments, thereby passing germs from one patient to another as he treated them. The resulting vicious infections, commonly known as "surgical fevers," are believed to have been caused largely by Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes, bacterial cells which generate pus, destroy tissue, and release deadly toxins into the bloodstream. Gangrene, the rotting away of flesh caused by the obstruction of blood flow, was also common after surgery. Despite these fearful odds, nearly 75 percent of the amputees survived.

       While the average soldier believed the bullet was his most nefarious foe, disease was the biggest killer of the war. Of the Federal dead, roughly three out of five died of disease, and of the Confederate, perhaps two out of three. One of the reasons for the high rates of disease was the slipshod recruiting process that allowed under- or over-age men and those in noticeably poor health to join the armies on both sides, especially in the first year of the war. In fact, by late 1862, some 200,000 recruits originally accepted for service were judged physically unfit and discharged, either because they had fallen ill or because a routine examination revealed their frail condition.

       About half of the deaths from disease during the Civil War were caused by intestinal disorders, mainly typhoid fever, diarrhea, and dysentery. The remainder died from pneumonia and tuberculosis. Camps populated by young soldiers who had never before been exposed to a large variety of common contagious diseases were plagued by outbreaks of measles, chickenpox, mumps, and whooping cough.

       The culprit in most cases of wartime illness, however, was the shocking filth of the army camp itself. An inspector in late 1861 found most Federal camps 'littered with refuse, food, and other rubbish, sometimes in an offensive state of decomposition; slops deposited in pits within the camp limits or thrown out of broadcast; heaps of manure and offal close to the camp." As a result, bacteria and viruses spread through the camp like wildfire. Bowel disorders constituted the soldiers' most common complaint. The Union army reported that more than 995 out of every 1,000 men eventually contracted chronic diarrhea or dysentery during the war; the Confederates fared no better.

       Typhoid fever was even more devastating. Perhaps one-quarter of noncombat deaths in the Confederacy resulted from this disease, caused by the consumption of food or water contaminated by salmonella bacteria. Epidemics of malaria spread through camps located next to stagnant swamps teeming with anopheles mosquito. Although treatment with quinine reduced fatalities, malaria nevertheless struck approximately one quarter of all servicemen; the Union army alone reported one million cases of it during the course of the war. Poor diet and exposure to the elements only added to the burden. A simple cold often developed into pneumonia, which was the third leading killer disease of the war, after typhoid and dysentery.

       Throughout the war, both the South and the North struggled to improve the level of medical care given to their men. In many ways, their efforts assisted in the birth of modern medicine in the United States. More complete records on medical and surgical activities were kept during the war than ever before, doctors became more adept at surgery and at the use of anesthesia, and perhaps most importantly, a greater understanding of the relationship between cleanliness, diet, and disease was gained not only by the medical establishment but by the public at large. Another important advance took place in the field of nursing, where respect for the role of women in medicine rose considerably among both doctors and patients.

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The Silent Killer

From: med.navy.mil

Even the fuel that fired an ironclad’s boilers was a threat. Coal, while not a new fuel used by the Navy, had the potential of becoming a silent killer. Fossil fuels require proper ventilation and this concept was not yet adequately understood by Civil War engineers.

Untold casualties, some fatal, occurred when crewmen either loaded wet bituminous coal in below-deck bunkers or bilge water contaminated the fuel. Both the Mississippi Squadron and the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron reported a number of cases of sailors being discovered either dead or unconscious below deck. The more fortunate were revived when exposed to the fresh air. Besides unconsciousness, surgeons described their patients as being cyanotic—blueness of the skin caused by oxygen starvation with foreheads and eyelids markedly swollen.

Learn more about Civil War naval medicine at www.CivilWarRx.com

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Life and Death of a Civil War Horse (Excerpted)

From: thomaslegion.net

The American Civil War (1861-1865) soldier preferred to shoot and kill horses rather than enemy combatants, because without horses, artillery became passive objects of heavy metal and without mounts the swift cavalryman was reduced to a plodding foot soldier now powerless to rapidly scout, locate and strike the enemy and its supplies. Take away the horse, and the triune army was stripped of two of its three major components, cavalry and artillery, leaving only disadvantaged infantrymen to carry the brunt. While cavalry, consisting of the finest mounts and chargers, was considered the eyes and ears of the army, the artillery branch, appreciating the brute strength of the solid-hoofed animals, consisted of mammoth bronze and iron weapons that were capable of eliminating an overwhelming advancing army.

During the conflict it is estimated that between 1,000,000 and 3,000,000 equines died, including horses, mules, donkeys and even confiscated children’s ponies. It is estimated that the horse casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg alone, July 1 and July 3, 1863, exceeded 3,000. Diaries and letters of soldiers often mentioned the stench of dead steeds rising up from the fields of battle.

In an account of the events at Gettysburg, General Gibbons of the Union Army made this observation of the horses in Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing's 4th Artillery Brigade: One thing which forcibly occurred to me was the perfect quiet with which the horses stood in their places. Even when a shell, striking in the midst of a team, would knock over one or two of them or hurl one struggling in its death agonies to the ground, the rest would make no effort to struggle or escape but would stand stolidly by as if saying to themselves, "It is fate, it is useless to try to avoid it."

Horse and mule casualties far surpassed the total number of soldiers that died during the conflict. And was the fate of soldiers, more equines perished from disease or exhaustion than from being hit by bullets. Many died of glanders, which is a highly infectious disease that affects a horse’s nasal passages, respiration and skin. Besides battle causalities, horses had difficulty maintaining the four miles per hour pace regularly achieved by the cavalry. Horses also ate little and drank from muddied streams, and they often became gaunt and sickly.

Union General William Sherman believed in the welfare and wellness of horses and said that “Every opportunity at a halt during a march should be taken advantage of to cut grass, wheat, or oats and extraordinary care be taken of the horses upon which everything depends.” Horses were ridden by generals and cavalry, but also pulled cannons and supply wagons. They were the targets of fire, because if you killed the horses, you halted the artillery movement or the cavalry charge.

Without mounts and mules, the Civil War would have been quite different because the animals were absolutely indispensable to both sides. And they paid dearly as a result of that indispensableness, as did many farmers and noncombatants, whose horses were confiscated routinely over the course of the war by both Union and Confederate forces, leaving them without draft animals that they depended upon for their livelihood.

One cannot overstate the vital importance of both steeds and mules during the Civil War. The cavalries on both sides rode them. The materiel and supplies that each side depended upon was hauled by them. The artillery pieces and heavy guns could not be moved from battle to battle, or maneuvered during the fight, without them. While horses carried the generals and other high ranking officers into the fray, they also transported the wounded soldiers from the battlefield to the hospitals behind the lines. Whether referred to as work horses or war horses, they were, truly, the backbone of the Army.

On Sept. 19, 1862, just two days after the Battle of Antietam, Alexander Gardner, an employee of the photographer Mathew Brady, began documenting the battle’s grim aftermath. One of Gardner’s photographs, titled “Dead Horse of Confederate Colonel; both killed at Battle of Antietam,” depicted a milky-white steed lying on the field in an eerily peaceful repose. Another showed a line of bloated Confederate bodies along the Hagerstown Pike.

One who lost his horse at Antietam said, "The third shell struck and killed my horse and bursting, blew him to pieces, knocked me down, of course, and tore off my right arm..." Pvt. Ezra E. Stickley, Company A, 5th Virginia Infantry

Although by 1864 the sight of one dead horse was common place, the handsome mount was difficult and costly to replace. It was also much easier to replace a soldier than a horse. As the conflict progressed, the Union Army struggled to acquire the 500 horses it needed daily to sustain its army in the field. Sheridan himself required 150 additional steeds each day during the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. The army therefore bought and captured nearly 210,000 horses in 1864 in order to offset the mounts that had died. If the soldiers had died at that rate, plus wounded, it would have necessitated approximately 1,000,000 replacements, new recruits to be precise, to negate the shortfall for said year. A daunting if not impossible task. More than 1,000,000 horses died in the Civil War

(About) Dead Horse of Confederate Colonel; both killed at Battle of Antietam. Retouched by the writer for clarity. View center mass of the mount, and you will see a very visible circular entry wound indicating a large caliber, likely a canister ball (from cannon of course), that entered the gut of the horse killing it instantly and therefore dropping him where he once stood. A horse in battle could generally withstand several shots from small arms, but during the process it would run, unless it was tied, which was the practice of horse artillery, and as it died, including the secured horse, it would merely collapse on its side or in an otherwise unnatural position. The belief that it was canister shot is because of caliber, the immediate collapse and position of the horse, and the rider, the colonel, appears to have been hit simultaneously with his stead. September 1862 at Antietam Battlefield. Alexander Gardner. Library of Congress.

One witness at the awkward scene stated that "The number of dead horses was high. They lay, like the men, in all attitudes. One beautiful milk-white animal had died in so graceful a position that I wished for its photograph. Its legs were doubled under and its arched neck gracefully turned to one side, as if looking back to the ball-hole in its side. Until you got to it, it was hard to believe the horse was dead."  - Union General Alpheus Williams, Antietam, September 22, 1862

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Common Causes of Death in the Civil War Prison

From: thomaslegion.net

Abscess - Swollen, inflamed area in body tissues with localized collection of pus.

Anasarca - Abnormal accumulation of fluid in tissues and cavities of the body, resulting in swelling. Also known as dropsy.

Ascites - Accumulation of fluid in the abdominal cavity.

Asphyxia - Loss of consciousness due to suffocation; inadequate oxygen, and too much carbon dioxide.

Catarrh - Inflammation of mucus membranes of nose and throat causing increased flow of mucus. (Common cold).

Constipation - Condition in which feces are hard and elimination is infrequent and difficult.

Diarrhea - Frequent, loose bowel movements. Symptoms of other diseases.

Diphtheria - Acute, highly contagious disease. Characterized by abdominal pain and intense diarrhea.

Dysentery - Various intestinal inflammations characterized by abdominal pain and intense diarrhea.

Enteritis - Inflammation of intestines.

Erysipelas - Acute infectious disease of skin or mucus membranes. Characterized by local inflammation and fever.

Gastritis - Inflammation of stomach.

Hemorrhoids - Painful swelling of vein in region of the anus, often with bleeding.

Hepatitis - Inflammation of liver, often accompanied by fever and jaundice.

Hydrocele - Accumulation of fluid in the scrotum.

Icterus - Characterized by yellowish skin, eyes, and urine. Also known as jaundice.

Laryngitis - Inflammation of the larynx.

Nephritis - Acute or chronic disease of kidneys, characterized by inflammation and degeneration.

Pleurisy - Inflammation of membranes covering lungs and lining of chest cavity. Characterized by difficult and painful breathing. Also known as pleuritis.

Rubeola - Measles.

Scurvy - Disease resulting from deficiency of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), which is found in fresh fruits and vegetables. Characterized by weakness, spongy gums, and bleeding from mucus membranes. Also known as scorbutus.

Smallpox - Acute, highly contagious disease. Characterized by prolonged fever, vomiting, and pustular skin eruptions.

Tonsillitis - Inflammation of tonsils.

Typhoid - Acute infections disease, characterized by fever and diarrhea.

Ulcus - Ulcer.

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Civil War Prisons

From: thomaslegion.net

Introduction to Civil War Prisons

The exigencies of Civil War (1861-1865) applied to the soldier, the grunt on the battlefield, but it also extended to the infantryman who became the prisoner of war. Union and Confederate prisons were unimaginable horror chambers employing slow agonizing deaths to its guests. Early in the war prisoner exchanges were common, but many on both sides believed that the war would only last 90 days. As months became years, it was obvious to Union and Confederate commanders that the continued battlefield gridlock and stalemate had to cease. The once honored prisoner exchanges were now viewed by Northern politicians such as Lincoln and Stanton as merely recruiting stations and reinforcements for the dwindling Confederate military. Attrition was the answer to winning the war, was the prevailing thought of Secretary of War Stanton. The Union Army could replace soldiers, but that was not the case in the South, so halting all exchanges indicated that the Confederacy would soon be unable to field an army. While it was true that it spelled the final hurrah for the men in gray, it also meant that until the war ended the Union prisoners could no longer hold to hopes of being exchanged, but they would now have to endure prison life knowing that only their death or complete Union victory would liberate them. Although the South continued to field an army for nearly two years after the prisoner exchanges halted in the summer of 1863, it was not able to adequately feed and clothe its men on the march. Since Rebel soldiers marching into the fray lacked shoes, uniforms, medicine, and food, how would Yankee prisoners fair in the Heart of Dixie? But the Confederacy continued to plead with Washington that it was vital to resume exchanges because they could not feed nor clothe Union prisoners. For the sake of humanity, we want for medicine, we can not feed nor clothe nor shelter the prisoners, so for their lives will you not exchange them? By failing to resume large scale prisoner exchanges, several thousand Union soldiers would die in Confederate prisons.

"Captain Wirz was unjustly held responsible for the hardship and mortality of Union prisoners at Andersonville, but the Federal authorities must share the blame for these things with the Confederacy, since they well knew the inability of the Confederates to meet the reasonable wants of their prisoners of war, as they lacked a supply of their own needs, and since the Federal authorities failed to exercise a humane policy in the exchange of those captured in battle." Former Andersonville prisoner-of-war Lt. James Madison Page, Company A, 6th Michigan Cavalry. After the execution of Wirz, Page, a Union officer, who had spent seven months as a prisoner at Andersonville, leveled unprecedented allegations against Washington, including remarks that Wirz was merely a scapegoat, his trial was unconstitutional, and the court was filled with perjurers. He also said that the trial was a feeble attempt by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to divert attention away from himself, because it was Stanton's no prisoner exchange policy that killed the Union prisoners. Federal propaganda and political cover-ups wrote Page in his 1908 best seller, The True Story of Andersonville Prison: A Defense of Major Henry Wirz, were disingenuous efforts by Washington insiders for their halting all prisoner exchanges, which resulted in thousands of Union men dying needlessly in Confederate prisons. Although Page had spent seven months as a prisoner at Andersonville, his captivity and imprisonment included several months at other Confederate prisons during 1863-64.

Overview of Civil War Prisons

When the Civil War began, neither side expected a long conflict. Although there was no formal exchange system at the beginning of the war, both armies paroled prisoners. Captured men were conditionally released on their oath of honor not to return to battle. This allowed them to return to camps of instruction as noncombatants. It also meant that neither side had to provide for the prisoners' needs. An exchange system set up in 1862 lasted less than a year. North and South found themselves with thousands of prisoners of war.

The confined soldiers suffered terribly. The most common problems confronting prisoners both North and South were overcrowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate food. Mismanagement by prison officials, as well as by the prisoners themselves, worsened matters. The end of the war saved hundreds of prisoners from an untimely death, but for many the war's end came too late. Of 194,732 Union soldiers held in Confederate prison camps, some 30,000 died while captive. Union forces held about 220,000 Confederate prisoners, nearly 26,000 of whom died. The mortality rates for some of the Civil War prison camps are shown below.

Union and Confederate Prisons and Prisoners

"We will not exchange able bodied men for skeletons. We do not propose to reinforce the Rebel army by exchanging prisoners," Union Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton
Regarding the treatment of the Prisoner of War: “For the Northern side there is no excuse; for the Southern side there is one--and but one. The Union prisoners were starved, as I have said before, because we were starving ourselves; our children were crying for bread, and our Confederate soldiers were fighting on half-rations of parched corn and peas. The North had plenty of food, clothing, and provisions, but they intentionally withheld every provision from the Confederate prisoner… And it was done with calculated cruelty that has gone unmatched in any civilized society.”

Statistics indicate that the U.S. Government exchanged and paroled 329,963 "Rebels" and the Confederacy exchanged and paroled 152,015 "Federals." Because exchanges and paroles often occurred on the battlefield, the soldiers were not subjected to the privations of prison. Once Total War was implemented, however, the exchanges halted abruptly. The North had recognized that the paroled and exchanged prisoners were merely being recycled into the Confederate army, thus prolonging what it now viewed as a war of attrition. Of 194,732 Union soldiers who were held in Confederate prison camps, some 30,000 died in prison. While Union forces detained nearly 220,000 Confederate prisoners, nearly 26,000 died. An exact number of deaths will never be known because of poorly kept and destroyed records.

While the North had no shortage of troops, the South, however, could not afford to lose a single soldier. It was now simply a war of attrition, but, on the other hand, although it favored the Union on the battlefield, it had strong ramifications for the Federal prisoners.

Grant, in his Memoirs, discusses why the Federal government, as late as 1863, paroled the enemy during the Civil War. On the Confederate capitulation at Vicksburg, Grant wrote: "The enemy surrendered this morning. The only terms allowed is their parole as prisoners of war. This I regard as a great advantage to us at this moment. It saves, probably, several days in the capture, and leaves troops and transports ready for immediate service. Sherman, with a large force, moves immediately on Johnston, to drive him from the State. I will send troops to the relief of Banks, and return the 9th army corps to Burnside."

At Vicksburg alone, 31,600 prisoners were surrendered, with 172 cannon, approximately 60,000 muskets, and a large amount of ammunition. Whole regiments were captured and paroled at Vicksburg, and most of the paroled Confederates simply reformed or mustered into their prior (paroled) units and then returned to battle.

The attitude of United States Secretary of War Stanton and of General Grant that no exchange so long as the North held the excess of prisoners was a necessity of war is best seen in their own communications on the subject. On August 8, 1864, Grant sent the following telegram to General Butler: "On the subject of exchange of prisoners, however, I differ with General Hitchcock. It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to release them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. To commence a system of exchange now, which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those already caught, they amount to no more than so many dead men. At this particular time to release Rebel prisoners would insure Sherman's defeat and compromise our safety here."

"General Grant is a great general. I know him well. He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk; and now, sir, we stand by each other always." Words of General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1864 regarding his successful March to the Sea

To Exchange or Not to Exchange Prisoners of War

Grant states in his Memoirs that "the exchanged Confederate was equal on the defensive to three Union soldiers attacking." In other words, an exchanged Confederate soldier would divert and engage three Union soldiers. Grant simply did not want to allow and permit the South that luxury.
Stanton's words are well known: "We will not exchange able bodied men for skeletons. We do not propose to reenforce the Rebel army by exchanging prisoners."

In a letter from Washington September 30, 1864, H. W. Halleck, major general and chief of staff, says to Major General Foster, in charge of exchange of prisoners at Hilton Head, S C.: "Hereafter no exchange of prisoners shall be entertained except on the field when captured."

General Grant in a telegram August 21, 1864, to Secretary Stanton says: "Please inform General Foster that under no circumstances will he be authorized to make an exchange of prisoners of war. Exchange simply reenforces the enemy at once, while we do not get the benefit for two or three months, and lose the majority entirely. I telegraph this from just hearing that some five or six hundred prisoners have been sent to General Foster."

Skeletons For Soldiers, No Thank You

On one occasion, when General Ould had effected arrangements with General Butler for an exchange at Fortress Monroe, Grant's order that no able bodied man should be exchanged without his consent came into effect. (General Butler stated on the floor of Congress that after he had arranged with the Confederate authorities for an exchange of prisoners on his own terms, the whole plan was defeated by the intercession of Mr. Stanton and General Grant. They claimed that by such an exchange Lee would get thirty thousand fresh troops, and that Grant's position at Petersburg would be endangered and the war prolonged.) A little later Grant telegraphed to Butler to take all the sick and wounded the Confederates would send him, but to return no more in exchange therefor.

At one time President Davis ordered General Lee to go under a flag of truce to Grant and ask in the name of humanity that exchange of prisoners be granted, showing him how proper care of the captives was beyond control of the South. Grant did not allow the interview, and treated everything with a deaf ear. On Lee's testimony before the Congressional Reconstruction Committee he said: "I made several efforts to exchange the prisoners after the cartel was suspended." When his attempts at exchange had met only with failure, General Lee reported to President Davis: "We have done everything in our power to mitigate the suffering of prisoners, and there is no just cause for a sense of further responsibility on our part."

Approximately 13,000 Union prisoners died at the Confederate's Andersonville Prison, Georgia, because of starvation, malnutrition, diarrhea, and disease. Meanwhile, Prisoner of War Camp Douglas in Chicago was considered the “Andersonville of the North,” because of similar conditions that resulted in nearly 6,000 Confederate deaths.

Regarding prisoner exchange, during Union General Stoneman's Raid in North Carolina in 1865, General Gillem, commanding the cavalry division, appropriated and sacked the house of Mr. Albert Hagler. Gillem, furthermore, was especially impertinent to Mrs. Hagler, an accomplished young lady, though she parried his attacks with the civility of a lady. On one occasion he said to her rudely, "I know you are a rebel from the way you move--an't you a rebel?" She replied, "General Gillem, did you ever hear the story of the tailor's wife and the scissors?" "Yes." "Then I am a rebel as high as I can reach." Coarseness, however, can not always be met playfully, and Mrs. Hagler incurred his anger to its fullest extent when, in reply to his violent denunciation of the Confederates for starving their prisoners, she ventured to suggest that the Federal authorities might have saved all this suffering had they agreed to [prisoner] exchange and take them North, where provisions were plenty. The General's reply to this was the giving his men tacit license to plunder and destroy the houses of Mrs. Howard's daughter (Mrs. Hartley) and niece (Mrs. Clark), who both lived near her. No houses in the place suffered more severely than theirs. The house of her daughter, Mrs. Hartley, was pillaged from top to bottom. Barrels of sorghum were broken and poured over the wheat in the granary, and over the floors of the house. Furniture and crockery were smashed, and what was not broken up was defiled in a manner so disgusting as to be unfit for use. Mrs. Clark, the niece, was driven out of her house by the brutality of her plunderers.

Aftermath

General Grant in his "Memoirs" bluntly but honestly gives the reason for not exchanging prisoners. It seems that it was decided at Washington that exchange meant the reinforcement of the rebel army, and he goes on to explain that the exchanged rebel soldier behind barricades and fortifications fighting on the defensive was equivalent to three Union soldiers attacking him. This was the Stanton policy, and if this atrocious and inhuman doctrine is anyway meritorious, the "War Secretary" is entitled to the credit.

"The Government held a large excess of prisoners, and the rebels were anxious to exchange man for man; but our authorities acted upon the coldblooded theory of the Secretary of War, that we could not afford to give well-fed, rugged men for invalids and skeletons. Those 5,000 loyal graves at Salisbury, North Carolina, will ever remain fitting monuments of rebel cruelty and the atrocious inhumanity of Edwin M. Stanton, who steadfastly refused to exchange prisoners. The war office at Washington preferred to let us die rather than exchange us! The refusal upon the part of our government to exchange prisoners was now an assured fact. The sick lost hope and died. Those in better condition physically became disheartened and sick. It is no wonder that during August, 1864, nearly 3,000 prisoners died at Andersonville." Lieut. James Madison Page, Company A, 6th Michigan Cavalry, after spending seven months at Andersonville.

In December 1865, the New York News printed a contrarian story that sent shockwaves across the Northern states. "Stanton wanted to treat the populace at the North to a bloody spectacle; they believed he wanted to divert attention from his own barbarous and persistent refusal to exchange prisoners of war; they believed he deliberately resolved to make poor Wirz the scapegoat of the iniquities of his own Government and of himself, and to this end he violated the spirit and the letter of the military convention between Johnston and Sherman as well as the fundamental law of the land. They believed, moreover, that the military commission before which Wirz was tried, setting aside all decency and catching at the spirit of the Secretary of War, was overbearing and dictatorial, and that he did not have a fair trial. And, finally, they believed the war minister of the Government, taking counsel of his passions, his prejudices, and his hatreds, sought by the conviction and execution of Wirz to write a false chapter in the history of the war and to infamize the South. The revulsion of feeling in the North over the unjust execution of poor Wirz was too strong even for "the great War Secretary" to face, and Jefferson Davis, Alex. H. Stephens, General Cobb, Josiah H. White, R. R. Stevenson, W. J. W. Kerr, Captain Reed, and last but not least, Colonel Ould, the "Confederate Commissioner of Exchange," were never brought to trial. Therefore, poor ill-fated Wirz must have "conspired" single-handed and alone to starve and murder Union prisoners."

Image: "The 100." When A.J. Riddle took this photograph on August 17, 1864, there were nearly 33,000 Union prisoners confined within Andersonville's 26-1/2 acres. In May of '64, 708 prisoners died, but while scorching temperatures loomed during August, approximately 3,000 died -- an average of 100 prisoners per day.

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New York Hospital and the Civil War: Regimental Surgeons

By Elizabeth M. Shepard on May 31, 2013

When the war broke out, each state began forming volunteer regiments. Most of the New York Hospital doctors who served in the war began their service as volunteer surgeons in the regiments from New York State. Often doctors who were recruited for these regiments were small town physicians who had no training in military medicine and were ill prepared to treat wounded soldiers or perform amputations. Surgeons had to pass an exam and be approved by the war department. Their first task was to conduct the exams for the enlisted men and officers. These surgeons were responsible for treating the soldiers in the camps or after the battles in makeshift field hospitals. In the first year of the war, surgeons got some of their medical supplies from their states as well as the Medical Department.

Starting in 1862, the supplies were distributed by brigade surgeons to the regiment surgeons. Regimental physicians were furnished with medicine chests designed to be carried on horseback. Orderlies carried knapsacks with essential bandages, instruments, and medicines. Each surgeon had four sets of surgical instruments: major, minor, pocket case, and field case.

From: weill.cornell.edu

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