John C. Carter
Hospitals
Wed Jun 13 14:41:04 2001


Joseph Jones, an authority on Civil War medicine, once remarked that on the average a Civil War soldier was sick or wounded six times during the Civil War. I would say your ancestor blew the hell out of that statistic. Actually my own ancestor had a service record that looked a bit like that. He served in the 9th Alabama regiment and was in Virginia throughout the war. In Virginia there was an abundance of permanent hospitals in Richmond and in the greater Northern Virginia/Charlottesville area. They also had railroads that served them well throughout most of the war. Wagons were used locally, but it was pretty brutal going over bad roads.

If you had been sent away to a hospital, you were probably in pretty bad shape. How soon you got back depended more on how well you recuperated and if you avoided infection. If you had measles, you generally were not isolated from the other troops to avoid infection- if one had it, everyone had it or would soon have it. They were eventually sent off to recover from it. During the first year of the war, everyone in the 9th Alabama just stayed in camp until they recovered from the measles, or died. There were a lot of complaints from the soldiers about not having soup or good food to eat while they were recovering. Perhaps that was why a year later sick men were being sent to private homes to recuperate from the effects of the measles or mumps or from the basic camp illnesses- they needed quieter places, with better food and attention. I can give you an example from my own ancestor.

William McClellan wrote from Gordonsville, Va.on August 20, 1862 that "I am now at a private house 4 miles south of Gordonsville...sick with backache and diarhea, which taken together is a bitter pill...the army is up at the Rapidan (River) fronting Old (John) Pope and McClellan..." On the 26th he wrote that he hoped to be able to leave and rejoin the army within two or three days. Fortunately or unfortunately, he didn't recover fast enough to get on the road until September 9th and only got as far as Winchester by the 16th. In the letter of the 26th, he had also noted that, "This is Saturday...tomorrow John Rawlings and myself (and several others) will take up our line of march to the army, we will have to march 65 miles as the Yankees have busted up the railroad to the north of here..." After three attempts to rejoin their regiment, they turned back to Winchester on September 24th and waited for it to come to them. They had missed the battles of Second Manassas and Antietam. They were not allowed to pass beyond Winchester first because Union forces were between them and the army, and later as Lee's army was already leaving Maryland for Virginia after the battle. Lee could have used them and about 10,000 more like them. William and his companions were part of a group of 200 waiting for Lee at Winchester- there were thousands more like them throughout Virginia.

So it was possible for your ancestor to make it back to his regiment within a few weeks, and he may have had to walk to do it. I hope this helps a little with your question.


John