Hessian John: Civil War Military Surgeon

By Colonel Donald A. Walbrecht

Continuing from Book I (Hessian John, 19th Century Military Surgeon, that ended in 1849) and Book II (Hessian John, Army Surgeon in the Pioneer West that ended in 1861), 44-year-old Mississippi plantation-owner Johann becomes a Confederate Army surgeon helping to organize the Souths medical corps and serving briefly as a Southern spy in the Unions medical headquarters in Washington. While in the Union Army, he serves as a battlefield surgeon in the opening battles of the Civil War where he is wounded, captured by his own army, and returned to Confederate service where he continues as an army surgeon until sent on a gold-collecting mission to California serving President Daviss hopes to stabilize the collapsing Confederate economy and to overcome the Souths blockaded access to European weapons and supplies. Finally, he participates in the attempted escape of President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet officials, ultimately returning to his Davis Bend plantation, Lindenbaum, where he is faced with the harsh problems of the Reconstruction Era so troubling to many Old-South landowners.

In this third of a four-book series, military surgeon John continues on a stark Civil War Journey through mid-19th-Century Southern and Western America, participating in major historical events that deeply influenced his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781426992643

Colonel Donald A. Walbrecht

Colonel Don Walbrecht (the 11th pilot of the Mach-3 SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft) served 30 years as an Air Force officer, participating in advanced-aircraft development activities, leading Pentagon operational programming and budgeting matters, and holding transpacific and transatlantic staff and command positions. He earned three graduate degrees including a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia in Norfolk, England and completed three professional military courses at the Air University in Montgomery, Alabama. He currently serves as Professor of Aviation Management for the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho where he supervises graduate-level military research projects. He is the author of two earlier books in this Hessian John series as well as a scientific-fiction poetic romaunt, On Silent Wing, and a doctoral dissertation, the Diplomatic History of U.S. Airpower in the United Kingdom.

Book preview

CHAPTER 2 –– MY WASHINGTON ASSIGNMENT

On June 15th, Colonel Smith Stansbury, the bright young Director of Intelligence and Security on General Lee’s staff, ordered me to report to his office where he raised his focus from my service record saying,

I see you’ve served with Captains Grant and McClellan at Fort Vancouver and that you’ve accompanied Majors Delafield and Mordecai, and Captain McClellan on their Crimean Tour. Like many of us, you know many new colonels and general officers in the Federal Army. I learned from our Surgeon General Smith you’d received orders from Union Surgeon General Tom Lawson to report for duty to the U.S. Army’s Medical Service in Washington. To get an inside view of staff actions in the federal camp, we want you to report for duty in their medical service and have arranged for you to enter their capital city by way of New York as if you were returning from Europe. If you accept this assignment, we’ll move you tomorrow. Are you ready?

Stansbury was a small, intense 1850 West Point graduate who, as Chief of Intelligence, held strong eye contact during my interview and now proposed details of the intelligence-gathering mission:

We want you to report to General Lawson next week to serve for a month or two with the Yankees so we can know how ready Brigadier General Irv McDowell’s 1st Corps is for a fight. If conditions are as confused there as we believe they are, we want to make a full-scale raid on the Federal City to capture Lincoln and his Cabinet, as well as key members of Congress before their army’s in a position to stop us. If it works, we’ll end this war before the Yanks’ll be able to overwhelm us.

I broke eye contact to look at the floor thinking, Is this going to be another of my big mistakes? I then looked back into Stansbury’s piercing blue eyes asking, How’ll I get the word out? [and] How’ll I get out of town without being hanged as a spy? He replied,

We’ve already worked out those issues. You’ll meet a lady who’ll serve as your conduit––when the first big fight takes place, you’ll be one of their battlefield surgeons working cleanup of the wounded where we’ll capture you. Be certain to wear a distinctive surgeon’s coat and remain as long as possible treating Yankee soldiers, many of whom we’ll capture. We also want to confiscate their new breech-loading rifles, revolving-chamber pistols, and 12-pounder Napoleon cannons. I’ll fill you in on the other stuff you’ll need to know when we meet tomorrow.

After I agreed to his scheme, Stansbury led another volunteer and me to an office in the Capitol building where we were introduced to Secretaries Leroy Walker and John Floyd, and General Beauregard. While Stansbury was telling them about what we were to do, President Davis walked in to compliment us on accepting their plan. Although I’d met Davis six times in the past two months, I was shocked at my old neighbor’s appearance. Already skinny, he looked ten pounds lighter and five years older than when we’d met at Brierfield five months before and was clearly in need of rest. He shook my hand saying, Your mission might help us win this war and get us back home to Mississippi in a year. I hope to see you back here in 60 to 90 days. Keep safe, Johannes! He then turned to the other man with similar remarks.

New York to Washington

As planned, I mounted a light steamer on June 17th that took me north into New York harbor where I hurried through the port of entry showing my U.S. passport with faked French, Spanish, and Azorean exit stamps from 30, 17, and 12 days before. On the 20th, I rode an overloaded B&O train through Baltimore filled with a regiment of brightly uniformed New York Zouave-uniformed men on their way to Washington. Arriving early the next morning, I spent part of the day looking for a place to stay before I reported to the War Department to find that the U.S. Army’s Medical Service had expanded its offices into nearby annexes where activities like our’s in Richmond were underway––identifying surgeons, requisitioning medical supplies, and ordering hospital and field equipment for the new regular army regiments and state militias.

I made an effort to call on General Lawson, but found his position occupied by Surgeon General Clement Finley whom I remembered as Medical Director for General Zachary Taylor’s army in Mexico, and who’d returned north early in the war because of sickness. Since General Finley was busy with administrative and congressional matters, I presented my orders to a familiar-looking orderly, Sergeant Milton Stokes, who read the personal note to me penned by General Lawson. Looking up at me, Stokes asked, "Hadn’t you heard? ‘Big Tom Lawson’ died of apoplexy a month ago in Norfolk. He was 72 years old, in poor health, and held Virginia sympathies; nevertheless, he’d been eager to take on the great load of medical war planning for our army."

I replied, I’m shocked to hear of his death––I’d been hoping to end our old feud to bury his grudge over harsh comments I’d made 14 years ago about the poor qualifications of his contract surgeons. When Stokes asked me, Have you a preference of assignments? I replied, Battlefield surgery! He was surprised remarking, Battlefield doctoring is the least desirable duty––probing for bullets, amputating limbs, and watching lives expire." He looked me over announcing,

We’ll assign you as a fully qualified surgeon with the rank of major in a new regiment in Colonel Bill Sherman‘s brigade in General Dan Tyler’s 1st Division or in Colonel Bill Franklin’s brigade in Colonel Sam Heintzleman’s 3rd Division, Meanwhile, go find yourself a bunk across the street in our big K-Street hospital tent up by 17th Avenue, and I’ll get you an appointment to meet Surgeon General Finley here tomorrow or Friday.

That evening I drifted through three saloons near the Willard Hotel where I’d been instructed to watch for a fair-looking English woman named Mildred Watts who’d be my information conduit on the buildup now taking place in and around Washington. Since the Willard was the center of social activities in the city, the bars were filled in the evenings with officers and money-class soldiers from Northern cities, with most commanders unconcerned that their troops were out looking for companionship.

Small-town Washington, that I’d first seen 14 years before with about 15,000 people, had swelled to 60,000 and was expected to grow to 150,000 by the end of ’61. Ladies of every description, who’d come to find clerical work in the expanding departments, had filled all the boarding houses near the government buildings. Less attractive ones were making themselves available to service the great numbers of soldiers posted here to protect the city. I thought to myself, How can I find Miss Watts among these many after-hours women?

Colonel Stansbury had instructed me to look for a 30-year-old, 5-foot-2 woman who’d be wearing a hand-carved Italian seashell cameo choker snugged to her throat by a sky-blue ribbon. If I said Capri? she’d answer, No, Florence. On my second evening in town, I found the cherubic, well-formed lady who spoke like a Welch or Irish lassie whene’er she chose, saying, I’m a transcribin’ secretary to a rankin’ civil servant and ‘ave lived ‘ere fer two years, Luv. In our professional conversations she could lose her Liverpudlian dialect and be especially well informed on military matters in and around the city. After an hour’s conversation, I asked what information I should bring to our next meetings, to which she replied, none until you move around a bit more.

At a meeting two days later, I asked about her associates. Of course, she wouldn’t reveal her connections to sympathizer groups that abounded in the city or in nearby Maryland. She provided a list of items of interest about the Fed’s readiness to fight. Since Washington was the strategic capital sandwiched between two slave states in the midst of what would become the Eastern Theater of War, it held important strategic, political, and moral significance for both sides. Strategically, it was the greatest military target and the political prize for Confederate armies. What I reported seemed too obvious:

A ring of new forts are being built around this bustling city of 63,000 people that is expected to double soon. It’ll soon be overwhelmed by 100,000 volunteers and draftees who’re moving in and around the city to protect the government from attacks expected to come from Northern Virginia where they know our army is readying a raid.

Newspaper correspondents from across the U.S. and Europe, and foreign military observers are already here or will be arriving soon. Thousands of tourists are crammed into hotels and boarding houses, and despite the threat of war, most are seeking entertainment in music halls and saloons. People with money are competing for space; I see opportunists, prostitutes, and counter-spy rings hanging around the Willard