STONEWALL'S SURGEON
Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson was one of the casualties of the very first battle between Union and Confederate forces at Manasses, Virginia at the very start of the Civil War.
The former college professor from V.M.I. in Lexington,Virginia -Thomas Jonathan Jackson – suffered a hand wound and a lanky, young doctor, who have only recently joined his staff applied the necessary splint and bandages to the wounded center finger.
The twenty-four year old Doctor, who had completed Medical College at age twenty-one, had enlisted as a private recruit from New Orleans, La. To become a member of Company F, of the 2nd Virginia Infantry. He did so promptly after Fort Sumter and chose to return to his home state and town - Winchester, Virginia. Like so many men of that era, he had a strong affinity with the affairs home state and patriotism called him to join the fighting forces.
It did not take long for his true identity to be discovered and his medical training and experience placed him where he was most needed - as surgeon - Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire. He is one of those men, I feel, who deserves a far more honored place among our American heroes than current versions of history have allowed him to receive
The young man who was to become the Medical Director of the famed Second Corps, was instructed to report to General Jackson at Harper's Ferry. He did so and when General saw the six foot, four-inches tall , thin and somewhat haggard man he did two things: one talked with the Doctor and urged him get about find in his quarters and , the second action – Jackson wired Richmond to try to determine who had made the mistake of sending him a tall, scrawny boy doctor who, obviously, needed medical attention worse than he did. McGuire had been fighting a severe illness and was just recovering from it when Fort Sumter changed his life so completely.
McGuire were on. He served with General Richard C . Ewell, them, with his passing, General Jubal Early. Then, there was Gettysburg and the resulting horrors associated with that stunning defeat.
In l864 Hunter McGuire had also fallen in love. His choice was a Mary Stuart of Staunton, Virginia. They agreed to stay engaged until the war ended. They were married in 1867. They had ten children so his heritage is, today, a large and varied one.
His career is a treasury of medical history and time of great discovery. He is also to be remembered also as a writer, orator, teacher and hospital administrator.
We sometimes forget that the Civil War was, of all wars, the most costly in human like and limb. The injuries which occurred to soldiers in that conflict were quite different and far worse than those know prior to the time. Medical facilities were, at best, primitive. We forget that Civil War doctors had no concept of the germ and antiseptic until years later. “Civil war surgeons worked with bloody hands, with bloody tools, and on blood-soaked tables.” War machines had changed radically and the new types of bullets were in common use known as Minie or Enfield balls. They were conical in shape and had a tendency to expand and hit a surface flattened and with a far wider field of serious damage. Cannons previously fired round balls of metal, but Civil War cannons fired hollow shells filled with shrapnel and explosives which burst in the air or on contact. The chances of being killed or injured skyrocketed with every such change in military methods of operation. McGuire and other doctors of that time had to deal as best they could with unprecedented injuries under the worst possible conditions.
Among the many innovations set forth by Dr. Hunter McGuire was the unheard act of releasing all doctors captured and returned to the enemy side. Hunter McGuire was captured at Waynesboro in 1865, quickly pardoned by U. S. General Sheridan was present at Appomattox,. Va. when Lee
surrendered in April of that same year.
Read up on the life and times of Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, and see if you, too, are not led to believe that we do not honor this man as we should. One of our own, he speaks to us over the years and especially at this time when the clouds of war darken our horizons of Hope so often.
A.L.M. November 23, 2004 [c747wds]
