Surgeon in Blue: Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care by Scott McGaugh

Author:Scott McGaugh [McGaugh, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: pay_royalty_done
Amazon: B00L0M4K1W
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2013-07-02T07:00:00+00:00

8

GETTYSBURG

“I turned away and cried.”

Grit and sweat coated many of Jonathan Letterman’s surgeons as they marched with approximately 95,000 men northwest across Maryland in late June 1863. Billowing clouds of dust marked the Army of the Potomac’s path toward battle. General George Meade, pushing his men up to thirty miles a day and sometimes through the night, had to find General Lee first before he could stop his advance into the North. Exhaustion became Letterman’s enemy days before Lee’s 70,000 men opened fire.

Frederick, Maryland, would play a key role in the coming confrontation regardless of the battlefield’s precise location. Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville had demonstrated the need for reliable rail lines for pre-battle supply as well as postbattle evacuation. The quartermaster corps remained dependent on rail, while relief organizations such as the Sanitary Commission and United States Christian Commission stood ready to provide tons of needed supplies if reliable rail routes could be protected. Otherwise, delivery by wagons on rutted roads would be agonizingly slow. After two years of battle, the Army of the Potomac remained dependent on the supplies provided by these private organizations.

On June 28, on orders from Letterman, Brinton arrived in Frederick with twenty-five wagonloads of supplies. Accompanying the army’s headquarters group, Letterman had left the day before, headed for Taneytown, Maryland, approximately twenty-five miles northwest of Frederick and near the Pennsylvania border. Meanwhile, the army itself, grouped into three massive wings, moved northward toward the state border. Brinton and his wagons stayed in Frederick as the primary supply depot in support of the army’s northerly advance.

Although General Hooker had briefed Meade shortly after Meade replaced him, Meade urgently needed field intelligence in order to reposition his army to protect both Baltimore and Washington while tracking Lee in search of an opportunity to attack. The pressure became evident in a man inexperienced at commanding an army. Meade began to lose sleep, miss meals, and frequently change his mind.1 In drawing him farther and farther away from Baltimore and Washington, Lee hoped to neutralize the Army of the Potomac’s manpower and firepower superiority with an aggressive offensive strategy on a battlefield of his choosing.

On June 29, Meade sent a dispatch to General in Chief Halleck, informing him that as Meade’s army advanced toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he remained mindful of protecting routes to Washington, Baltimore, and Harrisburg. His infantry and cavalry corps were at various locations in Pennsylvania and Maryland and had not yet consolidated. As he searched for Lee, he considered Big Pipe Creek, about fifteen miles south of Gettysburg, a possible point of engagement or a fallback position.

On June 30, as more of Meade’s units crossed into Pennsylvania, an army circular ordered soldiers to draw three days’ rations. This represented the first real evidence that Meade’s chase of Lee was about to end, and possibly the first concrete indication received by the medical department of where the battle might erupt. That same day, a cavalry division led by General John Buford encountered Confederate troops near the crossroads town of Gettysburg.

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