A Confederate surgeon's letters to his wife

Chapter 2: INTRODUCTION

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About This Book

A collection of personal letters from a wartime surgeon to his wife that chronicles marches, front-line engagements and major campaigns while describing medical work amid battlefield casualties, camp illnesses and shortages. Entries recount skirmishes and large battles, hospital conditions and surgical care, winter privations, strategic movements and military discipline, including executions. Alongside detailed reporting of military life, the correspondence conveys private concern for family, reflections on duty and courage, and the emotional toll of sustained conflict, giving sequential, eyewitness glimpses of the hardships faced by soldiers and those who tended them.

INTRODUCTION

Many of the letters written from the battlefield, camp, bivouac or during a halt on the march were lost. It has been necessary to condense those that were received in order to form them into a small volume. This was done by eliminating only the most uninteresting, personal matter that the letters contained and arranging them consecutively. With these exceptions, they are shown here exactly as they were written. This work was done with the greatest care possible by the surgeon’s daughter, who is President of the Daughters of the Confederacy for the State of South Carolina and is interested in preserving these letters for their historical value, as they give most vivid pictures of a soldier’s life in the Southern army.