July 5, 1863---The Aftermath of Gettysburg

JULY 5, 1863:   

The Aftermath of Gettysburg: 

Sally Louisa Tompkins was a Confederate Captain, a nurse, one of a group of Confederate medical personnel who chose to stay behind in Gettysburg and try to minister to the wounded men of Lee’s army. On this date she wrote in her diary:

“At the moment it is late at night. In the few minutes of rest that I have, I am sitting in a corner writing by the light of a small candle that is casting dancing shadows on the walls. I can hear the sounds of footsteps upstairs, and I know my help will be needed soon, so I will write quickly…Two days ago the battle of Gettysburg ended, but the effects of the fight still have us reeling. Nearly 28,000 Confederate Soldiers were killed and many more were injured….As a result the hospital has been overwhelmed with injured soldiers; every bed has been filled with exhausted, suffering men. New soldiers are constantly arriving, and each seems to be in a worse condition than the last…I've had to perform many surgeries recently, searching for bullets buried deeply in the flesh. It's been worse than normal because of the new rifles being used. Bullets are moving faster, burrowing further into the flesh, and making my job much harder than I would like…The coppery smell of blood hovering in the air, is a constant reminder of the mess that seems to be everywhere. I have been cleaning relentlessly, but it seems as though the stains will remain long past the end of the war; assuming that there will be an end.”

Hardly had the last horsetail of Lee’s retreating forces faded out of sight than people began arriving at Gettysburg from all over the North trying to help. Although a few at first chose only to help the Union wounded, or triaged the most minor Union wounded before the most severe Confederates, the generalized suffering soon erased all sense of Blue and Gray.  The kind and equal treatment given to the wounded, regardless of rank or uniform color, did much to ameliorate wartime animosity and speed postbellum reconciliation.

Cornelia Hancock was a 23-year-old woman from Hancock's Bridge, New Jersey, who sought to aid the war effort in some way. The battle at Gettysburg offered her the opportunity, and she made her way to the field, arriving on July 7th. She described the scene she encountered at the Union Second Corps hospital, where she served as a volunteer nurse:

“Learning that the wounded of the Third Division of the Second Corps, including the 12th Regiment of New Jersey, were in a Field Hospital about five miles outside of Gettysburg, we determined to go there early the next morning, expecting to find some familiar faces among the regiments of my native state. As we drew near our destination we began to realize that war has other horrors than the sufferings of the wounded or the desolation of the bereft. A sickening, overpowering, awful stench announced the presence of the unburied dead, on which the July sun was mercilessly shining, and at every step the air grew heavier and fouler, until it seemed to possess a palpable horrible density that could be seen and felt and cut with a knife. Not the presence of the dead bodies themselves, swollen and disfigured as they were, and lying in heaps on every side, was as awful to the spectator as that deadly, nauseating atmosphere which robbed the battlefield of its glory, the survivors of their victory, and the wounded of what little chance of life was left to them.

As we made our way to a little woods in which we were told was the Field Hospital we were seeking, the first sight that met our eyes was a collection of semi-conscious but still living human forms, all of whom had been shot through the head, and were considered hopeless. They were laid there to die and I hoped that they were indeed too near death to have consciousness. Yet many a groan came from them, and their limbs tossed and twitched. The few surgeons who were left in charge of the battlefield after the Union army had started in pursuit of Lee had begun their paralyzing task by sorting the dead from the dying, and the dying from those whose lives might be saved; hence the groups of prostrate, bleeding men laid together according to their wounds.

There was hardly a tent to be seen. Earth was the only available bed during those first hours after the battle. A long table stood in this woods and around it gathered a number of surgeons and attendants. This was the operating table, and for seven days it literally ran blood. A wagon stood near rapidly filling with amputated legs and arms; when wholly filled, this gruesome spectacle withdrew from sight and returned as soon as possible for another load. So appalling was the number of the wounded as yet unsuccored, so helpless seemed the few who were battling against tremendous odds to save life, and so overwhelming was the demand for any kind of aid that could be given quickly, that one's senses were benumbed by the awful responsibility that fell to the living. Action of a kind hitherto unknown and unheard of was needed here and existed here only.

From the pallid countenances of the sufferers, their inarticulate cries, and the many evidences of physical exhaustion which were common to all of them, it was swiftly borne in upon us that nourishment was one of the pressing needs of the moment and that here we might be of service.

Our party separated quickly, each intent on carrying out her own scheme of usefulness. No one paid the slightest attention to us, unusual as was the presence of half a dozen women on such a field; nor did anyone have time to give us orders or to answer questions. Wagons of bread and provisions were arriving and I helped myself to their stores.

I sat down with a loaf in one hand and a jar of jelly in the other: it was not hospital diet but it was food, and a dozen poor fellows lying near me turned their eyes in piteous entreaty, anxiously watching my efforts to arrange a meal.

... It seemed as if there was no more serious problem under Heaven than the task of dividing that too well-baked loaf into portions that could be swallowed by weak and dying men. I succeeded, however, in breaking it into small pieces, and spreading jelly over each with a stick. I had the joy of seeing every morsel swallowed greedily by those whom I had prayed day and night I might be permitted to serve. An hour or so later, in another wagon, I found boxes of condensed milk and bottles of whiskey and brandy. I need not say that every hour brought an improvement in the situation, that trains from the North came pouring into Gettysburg laden with doctors, nurses, hospital supplies, tents, and all kinds of food and utensils: but that first day of my arrival, the sixth of July, and the third day after the battle, was a time that taxed the ingenuity and fortitude of the living as sorely as if we had been a party of shipwrecked mariners thrown upon a desert island.”

Many of the wounded needed limb amputations---not because medical knowledge was so limited, but because the Minie ball, slow moving, soft, and likely to deform when striking flesh, shattered bone instead of breaking it. Even modern physicians would be limited in their field surgery options faced with Minie ball injuries. As a result, huge piles of limbs would collect outside of surgical tents.

After the battle, the Gettysburg area was a tragic place. Dead horses, the bodies of soldiers, and the debris of battle littered its trampled fields. Nearly 20,000 wounded and dying soldiers occupied its public buildings and many of its houses; Union and Confederate hospitals clustered at many of its farms. Often, especially in the first two weeks after the battle, a “hospital bed” was a pallet on the floor, sometimes with a book serving as a pillow. Blood stained the walls of homes; screams filled the rooms. Many of the town’s buildings were damaged, its fences gone, and its air polluted with the odor of rotting flesh that could be smelled on the breeze afar off.

Medical authorities transferred the wounded to general hospitals in nearby cities as soon as practicable. Dr. Henry Janes, the surgeon in charge of medical activities at Gettysburg, established a general hospital along the York Pike a mile east of the town in mid-July. The last of the wounded did not leave Gettysburg until November 23—over four months after the battle.

Although the armies had hurriedly many of their dead before marching away, many bodies remained above ground, and the heavy rains that began on July 4th washed open the shallow graves of others. For months after the battle, people walking the fields might find a dismembered and maggot-eaten hand or a skull with tatters of flesh still attached, or human ribs poking out of the dirt.

Many Union dead were embalmed and sent to their homes, and survivors of a few purchased lots for them in local Evergreen Cemetery. Northern states with units in the battle sent agents to Gettysburg to look after their dead and wounded soldiers. Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania visited Gettysburg soon after the battle, saw its problems, and named David Wills, a Gettysburg attorney, as Pennsylvania's agent. Soon Wills and other agents decided that a cemetery should be established for the Union dead. With Curtin's permission, Wills soon purchased seventeen acres on the northwest slope of Cemetery Hill for a cemetery and hired the noted landscape architect William Saunders to create a cemetery plan.

Confederate dead were buried as individuals or in mass graves near the places of their deaths. After the war, the bodies of some of the known Confederate dead were exhumed and taken to home cemeteries. Most, however, remained at Gettysburg until the early 1870s, when southern Ladies Memorial Associations had the remains of 3,320 Confederate soldiers exhumed and taken south. They reburied 2,935 of them in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Virginia.

Over 72,000 horses had served at Gettysburg. More than 5,000 horses were killed outright in the battle and at least that many were put out of their misery thereafter. Many were burned but many were left to rot in the fields in the summer heat. Clouds of flies became an ordinary part of local life until the fall came. Unexploded ordnance was also a grave danger to the locals.

 

Though only one civilian, Mary Virginia “Ginnie” Wade, age 20, was killed during the battle itself (the unfortunate girl was struck by a Confederate Minie ball that came through her kitchen window and killed her while she was kneading dough) others were killed and wounded by unexploded shells after the battle.

Ginnie (usually misspelled “Jennie”) was engaged to a Union soldier from Gettysburg named Corporal Johnston “Jack” Skelly who, unknown to her, had been mortally wounded two weeks earlier in the Battle of Winchester. Private Wesley “Wes” Culp was a member of the Culp family of Gettysburg, who had chosen to fight for the Confederacy. He had gone to school with both Jack and Ginnie, and was best friends with Jack’s brother, Ed. Wes Culp came across Skelly at a Confederate field hospital where the wounded soldier gave him a note to pass on to Ginnie whenever he might see her again. Unfortunately, the note never reached her. On the same day she was killed, Culp, still carrying the message, died during fighting on his family’s farm at Culp’s Hill. Skelly lost his battle to live on July 12^th just nine days after Ginnie and Wes were killed. Today Jack Skelly and Jennie Wade rest close to each other in the Evergreen Cemetery at Gettysburg. Wesley Culp was buried somewhere on Culp’s Hill by his family who did not mark the grave since they considered him a traitor to home and family. Ginnie Wade’s grave is one of only two women’s graves (the other is Betsy Ross’) which flies an American flag 24 hours a day, year ‘round.