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From Post Hospitals to General Hospitals
Before the Civil War, post
hospitals cared for seriously sick and
wounded soldiers, while those
with milder cases were simply confined
to their tents. This system
proved adequate for meeting the medical
needs of small stationary
units of armed forces. At the beginning of the
war, regimental hospitals
served the needs of the assembling troops,
and division or brigade
hospitals were created by combining regimental
facilities. The first new
military hospitals of the war—the East Street
Infirmary and the Union
Hotel—opened in Washington, D.C., in May
1861. Nearby private homes,
adapted to create wards, service, and administrative areas, provided
supplementary facilities. After Bull Run, in
July 1861, when it became
clear that the war would be long and require
large scale movement of
troops, the army had to develop a new system
quickly to receive the most
seriously wounded cases sent from the field
hospitals or left behind when
troops moved off to pursue the Confederate army. The first of many general
hospitals opened in Alexandria, Virginia, followed by hospitals in Baltimore,
at the U.S. Naval Academy at
Annapolis, and the grounds of
the Agricultural Society of Frederick,
Maryland. In June 1861, the
Christian Hospital in Philadelphia became
the most remote military
establishment of the Union army.
As the war dragged on, the
army expanded the number and locations
of military hospitals.
According to the six-volume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the
Rebellion, published serially by the Surgeon General between 1870 and 1888:
North of Philadelphia, there
were but few extemporized hospitals.
Factory buildings were
occupied in Newark, N.J. A three-story cabinet
factory contained most of the
hospital beds in Elmira, N.Y. Contracts
were made at Rochester and
Buffalo with the civil hospitals at 50 to
75 cents daily per bed. The
Mason hospital in Boston, Mass. was a
private residence, given up
rent-free by its owner.
The U.S. government set up a
few military hospitals south of Washington.
In the western states, it
created hospitals by converting or adapting
asylums, orphanages,
factories, hotels, schools, and warehouses.
By the war’s end the army had
created 192 general hospitals in its 16
military departments.
Twenty-five hospitals were in the Department of
the East, including three in
Vermont. The surgeon general’s report, so
rich in detail about the
dimensions, capacity, treatment, and facilities at
these general hospitals,
offers few dates, so it is difficult to confirm
Governor Holbrook’s claim for
the priority of the Brattleboro General
Hospital. It is clear,
however, that the context for establishing these remote
facilities was the growing
realization that preexisting arrangements
were inadequate for treating
the large number of men who came out of
battle wounded or physically
and mentally broken down, as well as the
many who contracted
debilitating and contagious illnesses in the military
camps themselves, where
sanitary conditions were poor and diseases
spread rapidly. In fact,
during the Civil War, death from disease accounted
for two-thirds of all military
fatalities, while only one-third of the
deaths were directly
attributed to battle wounds, overwhelmingly bullet
wounds. If a soldier survived
the first few days following a battle injury,
he was threatened by a host of
secondary potential killers—diseases
such as chronic diarrhea,
typhoid, and malaria—if he had been lucky
enough to escape them in
routine camp life. Thus, by the time Holbrook
and Phelps made their proposal
to Lincoln and Stanton for remote hospitals, the need for additional facilities
had become acute and the army
had already begun to
accommodate that need.
Although Holbrook’s account
claims that the Brattleboro mustering
grounds became the first remote
general hospital, the Marine Hospital
in Burlington was already
receiving sick and wounded from the war
seven months before the
governor presented his proposal to Lincoln and
Stanton.
According to the report of the
surgeon general of Vermont, the
hospital “was opened by the
State of Vermont under the direction of
Governor Holbrook” on May 5,
1862, when it received its first patients,
and “transferred to and
organized by the United States Government” on
July 1, 1862.
The physician in charge of the
facility was Dr. S. W.
Thayer, surgeon general of
Vermont.
Originally built between 1856
and 1858 with a congressional appropriation of $39,000—a political patronage
reward for Judge David
Smalley, head of the Vermont
Democratic Party—the Italianate-style
brick building with a spacious
verandah sat two miles south of the village
of Burlington on ten acres of
land off Shelburne Road. According to an
account in Abby Hemenway’s
Vermont Historical Gazetteer, the building
commanded “a fine view of the
lake and village. . . . It is 2 stories high,
with a basement; built very
thoroughly, with ample and convenient
rooms for the use intended.”
A reporter from the Burlington
Free Press
described it as “a substantial
and expensive affair. The rooms are high177
.....................
and airy, furnished with
marble mantels, with closets and bath rooms
attached to each ward on both
floors, and every convenience in the way
of store rooms, cases of
shelves and drawers, &c. for the safe and orderly keeping of the quantities
of clothing and hospital supplies in constant demand. . . . The wounded are all
within the Hospital building. A
few of the sick . . . are in a
wooden portable house, and in the tents,
which are provided with floors
and stoves, and are entirely comfortable.”
Renamed the General Hospital
in April 1863 then Baxter General Hospital in September 1864, in honor of
Vermont Congressman
U.S. General Hospital,
Burlington. The photograph, from a stereoscopic view, shows the original building,
known as the Marine Hospital. The building dimly visible to the right may be
one of the hospital
wards built during the Civil
War. Date unknown. Courtesy of Special
Collections, Bailey/Howe
Library, University of Vermont.
Portus Baxter, the facility treated
a total of 2,406 men before the U.S.
Army closed it in July 1865
and transferred its remaining patients to a
temporary post hospital
elsewhere in Burlington or to Sloan General
Hospital in Montpelier.
Vermont’s third military
hospital opened in Montpelier in June 1864.
Named in honor of W. J. Sloan,
U.S. medical inspector for the Department of the East, the facility
accommodated 500 patients, hospital staff,
and a company of Vermont
Reserve Corps, who served as hospital
guards. On April 25, 1864,
Governor Smith turned over the buildings
to the U.S. War Department and
in mid-June the first 300 patients arrived.
10
The Architectural Design of
Civil War Hospitals
Sloan General Hospital was a
fully developed example of the pavilion
principle of hospital design,
which employed many small, connected
buildings instead of a single
massive structure. This approach to hospital
design and construction
derived from the work of Florence Nightingale,
who exposed the poor
conditions in British military hospitals during the
Crimean War (1853–1856) and
became an internationally renowned advocate for improved sanitation and care in
hospitals. Attributing poor
recovery rates of injured
soldiers to “bad air”
11
and crowded conditions,
she recommended treating
patients in smaller wards, with improved
ventilation. More windows
would let in sunlight and air, provide light
for reading, and offer views
for enhancing good morale. The pavilion
system proposed by Nightingale
as an organizational principle for hospital construction and operation called
for smaller treatment wards in
detached buildings with
centrally located administrative and support
spaces. Pavilions could be
arranged parallel to each other, or in line.
The U.S. military tested,
refined, and revised the pavilion design as it
erected large new hospitals in
rapid succession throughout the eastern
states. The hospital complexes
functioned as discreet, self-contained
communities, providing for the
physical and social needs of the hundreds of patients, medical personnel, and
support staff who lived there.
Tents often supplemented the
wooden buildings of a facility. The hospitals bore a resemblance to forts or
prisons—often contained within a
high fence, although most
typically of a picket type that only symbolically protected the complex from
invasion or escape. Point Lookout
(1862) in Maryland combined a
prison and a hospital. The hospital
there used the spoke-and-wheel
plan, perhaps the first example of a design that would later be used at
Montpelier.
The converted barracks
buildings that became the wards at Smith
General Hospital in
Brattleboro lacked sufficient windows for air and
light. Barracks were typically
constructed directly on the ground, exposed
Birdseye view of Hamming
General Hospital and U.S. Prison, Point Lookout, Maryland. Courtesy of the
National Library of Medicine,
History of Medicine Division, Prints & Photographs Collection.
to damp and odors, termed by
one observer as “unwholesome exhalation
from the confined soil
beneath.”
By contrast, the
pavilion-style hospitals
constructed by the U.S. Army
consisted of one-story wards raised off the
ground, with clear-span
interiors open to the roof ridge.
As the prescription for good air
and lots of it became an essential part
of medical treatment, the army
began improving ventilation in the
pavilion model. Florence
Nightingale noted that a patient gave off three
pints of moisture in each
twenty-four-hour period.
Contemporary accounts of
hospital facilities measured quality in terms of the cubic feet
of fresh air available per
patient bed. Early examples providing 500–
600 cubic feet of air space
per bed proved inadequate and “unhealthy,”
and the goal moved toward 800,
1,000, and 1,200 cubic feet/bed. Using
these criteria the army
designed wards with an abundance of windows
and placed two beds between
adjacent windows so that each patient
was next to one. Ridge
ventilators penetrated the roofs to draw air
through the wards. Some
pavilion wards included shafts that in winter
could be opened periodically
to funnel air under the floor to an opening
beneath a stove, where the air
would be warmed as it entered the ward.
Schematic drawing of
ventilation plan for U.S. general hospitals, from
U.S. army specifications.
Medical and Surgical History of the War of
the Rebellion (1861–1865),
Part III (1888), 945.181
.....................
Separating ward buildings also
became a concern. Closely spaced
wards were thought to stifle
good air circulation, and the distance between adjacent pavilions grew to forty
feet and more. Similarly, wards
should be free of taller
surrounding structures that could cut off
breezes. Topographic elevation
became a desirable specification for
new hospital sites.
The army constructed its first
ridge-vented hospital wards in Parkersburg, Virginia, with pavilions measuring
130 feet long by 25 feet wide
by 14 feet to the eaves. That
general size became a standard dimension
for subsequent pavilion-style
military hospitals, although length could
vary considerably. In southern
hospitals, the ventilators ran continuously along the roof ridge and remained
open or, when necessary, could
be covered by side shutters.
This design proved impractical for colder
climates, where only sections
of the ridge were vented. Sloan General
Hospital in Montpelier had
only two small ridge vents per ward, which
like little barn cupolas,
vented moisture and encouraged air circulation.
The U.S. Sanitary Commission,
founded in June 1861 to advocate for
improved medical treatment of
wounded and sick soldiers, promoted
use of the pavilion principle
and urged the construction of new hospital
facilities. Two such hospitals
in Washington, D.C., Judiciary Square
and Mount Pleasant, were ready
for occupancy by April 1862. For administrative convenience, the pavilion wards
at these sites, which measured 84 feet by 28 feet by 12 feet, were laid out on
both sides of and
perpendicular to a central
connecting corridor, staggered in alternating
fashion along its length to promote
air circulation.
Critics were quick to point
out two major flaws in the design as executed in these early experiments. By
joining all the pavilions to a single
enclosed corridor, the
hospital interior and the “atmosphere” within it
became one space, whereas the
goal was to separate pavilions and
thereby control the spread of
airborne diseases. The second error was
the placement of the water
closets in the corridor, instead of at the free
end of the pavilions. Later
hospitals avoided both problems.
At Baxter General Hospital in
Burlington the army hastily constructed
a row of seven (or
nine—reports differ on the number) parallel pavilions
to supplement the original
brick building.
14
An open porch connected
the pavilions at the end
nearest the complex of administrative offices,
kitchen, and dining
facilities. Separated from each other by forty-eight
feet of open space, the new
pavilions had six-over-six sash windows every
ten feet along their length
and privies entirely detached from the wards.
Saterlee Hospital in
Philadelphia opened a month after Baxter began
operation, and utilized
parallel open corridors facing a central elongated courtyard. The pavilion
wards joined the outside face of the corri-182
.....................
Birdseye view of Saterlee U.S.
Army General Hospital, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of the
National
Library of Medicine, History
of Medicine Division, Prints & Photographs Collection.183
.....................
dors. From that rectangular
configuration, hospital layout progressed
first to an elongated ellipse,
and finally to an oblong or circular corridor
with radiating pavilions. In
December 1862, Mower Hospital in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, opened with fifty
wards arranged on an elliptical
plan. The Jefferson Hospital
in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which opened in
September 1863, featured a
2,000-foot long enclosed corridor encircling a central open area 600 feet in
diameter. Designers also experimented with the “en echelon” plan. At Lincoln
Hospital in Washington,
D.C., the pavilions were
arranged in the V-plan, with administrative
buildings sited at the apex.
To increase the freedom of air flow, enclosed
corridors, which had become de
facto dining halls and cut off air circulation at the ends of the pavilions,
soon gave way to open, covered
walkways.
By July 1864, the U.S. Army
had refined hospital design to a series
of specifications for sites and
buildings. Although finished just before
the army published its design
pamphlet, Sloan General Hospital in
Montpelier represented a model
of good hospital design. Vermont’s
Surgeon General, Samuel
Thayer, Jr., selected the site, located about a
mile east of the State House
on a plateau of land that served formerly as
a fairground. It possessed the
desired qualities of altitude (650 feet
above sea level, or by local
measure, 85 feet above the Winooski River),
access to fresh spring water,
and access to the Central Vermont Railroad
(which was owned by Governor
Smith), for convenient transportation
of wounded troops and
supplies.
Built on the pavilion
principle, with detached buildings for various
purposes, Sloan Hospital was
arranged around an almost circular covered walkway. The wards, administrative
offices, kitchen, and dining
halls were attached at one end
to the walkway. Other buildings, located
outside the circle but within
the fence marking the perimeter of the hospital grounds, included a chapel that
could seat 300 to 400 people,
morgue, laundry, Reserves
Corps barracks, ice house, and a large elevated water tank measuring 22 feet in
diameter and 13 feet high.
Sloan’s 496 beds were
distributed among twelve wards, in pavilion
buildings most of which were
108 feet long, 24 feet wide, and 12 feet
high—somewhat shorter in
length and height than the army’s final published specifications of 187 feet by
24 feet by 14 feet. The dimensions
made practical sense for
Vermont according to the Vermont surgeon
general, who, referring to a
similar practice in the construction of wards
at Baxter Hospital, noted that
in the local market, lumber mills cut
boards in twelve-foot lengths.
15
A twelve-foot height used one
board,
and a length of 108 feet
required 9 boards. Each ward had approximately forty beds arranged in two rows
along the walls of the pavilion.184
.....................
Birdseye view of Mower U.S.
Army General Hospital, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia (1865). Courtesy of the
National
Library of Medicine, History
of Medicine Division, Prints & Photographs Collection.185
.....................
Air space per bed measured
1,000 cubic feet. Pavilions stood elevated
above grade, insulated with
“double-floors” as a concession to Vermont’s cold climate. A wardmaster’s room
and lavatory room were partitioned off at the free ends. Privies located behind
each ward emptied
into a wooden sewer pipe.
The two-story administration
building, officers’ quarters, and laundry
also housed in the upper floors
the staff who worked below. Although
the Army specification for
laundry buildings called for a flat roof with
clotheslines, at Montpelier
builders used the snow-shedding gable roof
design. The morgue or “dead
house” stood behind the chapel, out of
sight of the wards.
Clapboards sheathed the
exteriors of the buildings. Inside the walls
were plastered and painted
white. Store receipts from the time indicate
that the hospital used large
quantities of brown pigment, either as
brown paint or mixed with
white pigment to make tan.
16
Six-over-six
sash windows were used
throughout, except for some Gothic, pointed
arch windows in the chapel. The
eaves were simply detailed, without
the cornice returns typical of
Greek Revival design of the period.
Birdseye view of Lincoln U.S.
Army General Hospital, Washington,
D.C. Courtesy of the National
Library of Medicine, History of Medicine
Division, Prints &
Photographs Collection.186
.....................
Photograph of Sloan U.S.
General Hospital, Montpelier. No date [1864–1865?]. The view is from the south
looking
north. From Henry Janes,
Medical Notebook, p. 367. Special Collections, Bailey/Howe Library, University
of Vermont.
Courtesy of Special
Collections, Bailey/Howe Library, University of Vermont. 187
.....................
The architectural plans for
Sloan General Hospital, from the National Archives and
Records Administration,
Washington, D.C. The spoke-and-wheel design of Sloan Hospital was
connected at the hub by a
continuous porch. Wards and other service and administrative buildings radiated
out
from the porch. Some buildings
were freestanding, outside the circle, but within the picket fence that snaked
across
the landscape. To compare the
photograph and plans note the hospital’s ice house (SW corner—lower left),
octagonal water tank (center of the south fence), laundry building (SE
corner—lower right); the large chapel on the upper right (NE), and a small
house and barn on the upper left (NW corner, still standing on what is now East
State
Street). The photograph
reveals which structures rose to two stories. Beyond the hospital, Upper Main
Street heads
out of town toward Towne Hill
Road. The hospital occupied the former fair grounds, where the Vermont College
green is today.188
.....................
Operation and Daily Life in
the Hospitals
For most of its term of
operation Sloan General Hospital was commanded by Waterbury physician Henry
Janes, who already had three
years experience with wartime
medical practice when he took over as
surgeon-in-charge on October
15, 1864. Janes enlisted in 1861 as surgeon of the Vermont Third Regiment,
supervised the operation of the
military hospital at
Frederick, Maryland, following the battle at Antietam, and was in charge of the
medical corps treating the wounded at
Gettysburg, where he reformed
battlefield medicine by convincing the
250 surgeons under his command
to reduce the number of amputations.
17
A major in the army when he
took command of Sloan General
Hospital, Janes brought to his
new post a commitment to rehabilitating
wounded soldiers. He followed
personally the progress of many of the
gunshot patients and, like
some other surgeons, used the new technology of photography to record wounds
and treatment. Janes commanded
Hospital photograph
(2½" [1]
4") of Lyman
Hulett of Shaftsbury, Vt.,
Co. A, 2nd Vermont
Regiment. 189
.....................
On the reverse of the
photograph shown at the left is a full medical
report of Hulett’s wound,
treatment, and partial recovery.190
.....................
the Montpelier hospital until
its decommissioning in December 1865,
then returned to private
practice in Waterbury and kept most of his Civil
War papers, which provide
detailed information about the day-to-day
operations of Sloan General
Hospital.
Like every other general
hospital, those in Vermont operated under
military rules and
regulations. Each hospital was run by a surgeon-incharge, who had full military
command over the persons and property
connected with the hospital.
The Vermont surgeons-in-charge were assisted by executive officers, who did some
of the administrative work,
including the routine but
burdensome tasks of compiling and filing a
myriad of bureaucratic forms:
daily and weekly reports to the medical
director of the Department of
the East; monthly reports to the surgeon
general and adjutant general of
the United States; bimonthly muster and
payroll reports to the
adjutant general and paymaster; quarterly reports
of property purchased with
hospital funds and annual inventories of
medicine and hospital stores
to the surgeon general of the United
States; and inventories of
camp and garrison equipment to the quartermaster general of the U.S. Army.
The surgeon-in-charge also had
responsibility for keeping records of
admissions; alphabetical
registers and registers by state of sick and
wounded; records of casualties,
deaths, discharges, transfers, and relations with local government officials;
accounts of hospital fund property;
and miscellaneous
correspondence. Most important, but perhaps often
buried under the bureaucratic
requirements of the job, the surgeon-incharge established some medical
practices and policies at his hospital.
A corps of ward physicians
served under the surgeon-in-charge, in
theory one doctor for every
seventy-five patients at the hospital. At the
beginning of 1865, when Sloan
General Hospital had 399 patients, it
was staffed by a total of five
medical officers, including Dr. Janes. The
ward physicians provided
medical and surgical treatment of the patients
in their ward and had general
responsibility for its condition. Each ward
physician also served in turn
a twenty-four-hour rotation as medical of-
ficer of the day. In addition
to his regular duties, the medical officer of
the day toured all the wards,
inspected the hospital kitchens, enforced
lights out, supervised guard
duty and discipline, submitted a daily report
on the condition of the
hospital, and had authority to act in emergencies. The ward physicians were
assisted by the wardmaster, who supervised the nursing staff, oversaw the
physical condition and supplies of
the ward, and supervised the
medical cadets, young men (frequently
medical students) who served
as clerks and wound dressers.
The non-medical staff of the
hospital was led by a group of three or
four hospital stewards, who
ran the dispensary and had charge of the191
.....................
hospital’s medical property,
served as quartermaster for the installation,
and coordinated the
subsistence for patients and staff. The hospital
stewards handled significant
amounts of money and large quantities of
physical resources. It is not
too surprising, therefore, to find an example
of peculation and abuse of
power among these officers. Early in 1865
Dr. Janes received several
letters charging Hospital Steward Lt. G. A.
Lee with abuse of power,
including allowing his family to send their
clothes to be washed at the
hospital while forbidding other stewards
from doing the same, diverting
to his family articles of clothing given to
the hospital for patients
(even altering some shirts to fit one of Lee’s
young children), diverting
food from the hospital storerooms for his
and his family’s personal use,
and selling for his own profit 270 barrels
of swill and grease from the
hospital kitchens. An investigation revealed more offenses and on February 13,
1865, charges were brought
against Lt. Lee for
misappropriation of government property, getting
drunk on stimulants taken from
the hospital dispensary, appropriating
clothing for his family,
destroying accounts of hospital funds, and neglect of duty.
18
Other nonmedical personnel at
the hospitals included a chaplain;
male and female nurses—in
January 1865 there were twenty-four male
nurses at Sloan General
Hospital, the records show no female nurses—
cooks, bakers, and kitchen
assistants; laundry workers; a blacksmith,
carpenter, painter, and shop
and stable hands; attendants in the knapsack house (which held the patients’
personal property), dispensary,
quartermaster’s and hospital
store rooms; workers in the dead house;
and clerks for various
administrative duties. A large hospital could have
a staff of up to 200
employees, although the Janes papers do not suggest
that Sloan General Hospital
had so large a staff. Civilians, whom the
army considered unreliable,
subject to military draft, and likely to make
a sudden departure, held few
if any of these positions.
Each hospital received
medicines, equipment, and standard rations
through army contracts, but
also maintained a hospital fund for special
purchases, most often additional
food. Some hospitals supplemented
their rations with produce
from their own gardens. The hospitals were
also allowed to set up a fund
derived from the sale of nonconsumable
and waste items such as paper
and barrels of grease and swill like those
Lieutenant Lee sold on the
side. The surgeon-in-charge exercised discretionary use of this fund.
In his discussion with Lincoln
and Stanton about the hospitals, Governor Holbrook accurately assessed their
virtues and risks. He argued
that soldiers sick with malaria,
swamp fever, and a variety of illnesses
bred by close and unsanitary
conditions in the camps and field hospitals192
.....................
would recover better and
sooner if removed to a healthier climate. Hospital records at the National
Archives show that of the 8,574 patients
admitted to the Vermont
hospitals (including Burlington’s post hospital)
from May 1862 to December
1865, only 175 died while under treatment. About 66 percent returned to duty.
This compared quite favorably
with the 25 percent rate of
return to duty from the Washington, D.C.,
and Philadelphia hospitals.
19
The majority of patients sent
north for
treatment were diagnosed upon
admission with dysentery (“chronic diarrhea” in the record books), high fever,
or one of several diseases associated with overcrowding and poor sanitation.
Aside from altitude,
fresh water, and less
crowding, little could be done to cure the effects of
dysentery, and hospital
records for Brattleboro and Burlington show far
more deaths from this than
from any other cause.
Following the Wilderness
campaign in May 1864, the hospitals received many patients suffering from
“general debility”—battle fatigue
and nervous breakdowns. Sloan
General Hospital opened just in time to
receive casualties from Cold
Harbor (May 23–June 12, 1864), and here
for the first time a far
greater number of patients arrived with gunshot
wounds than those suffering
from illness or disease. Following the Battle
of Cedar Creek on October 19,
1864, the admissions records in Brattleboro also show a higher proportion of
gunshot wounds. In almost all
these cases, however, the
wounds were not critical and usually not fatal.
Clearly, battlefield hospital
surgeons had adopted a system of “triage”
and sent north those with
illness, disease, and gunshot wounds to their
hands and feet—in other words,
those whose prospects for recovery
were highest. Surgeons’
reports for the hospitals also show a higher
proportion of “excisions” than
amputations and consequently a high
survival rate among patients
admitted for gunshot wounds. Physicians
and the all-important state
agents, who roamed the wards of field hospitals and the general hospitals
closest to the front looking for patients
from their state, resolved
Lincoln’s and Stanton’s concerns about the
feasibility of moving wounded
soldiers by moving mostly those who
could bear the trip.
Roger Hovey of Worcester, a
corporal in Company A of the Vermont
Eighth Regiment, is a case in
point. Wounded in the left shoulder by a
minié ball early in the battle
of Winchester, Virginia, on September 19,
1864, he was transported by
baggage wagon to Harpers Ferry—a
fifteen-hour trip over poor
roads—then transferred to Baltimore, and
sent on to Saterlee Hospital
in West Philadelphia, where he arrived on
September 25. In a letter to
his sister, Martha, Hovey initially described
his wound as “slight as no
bones were broken and my arm is not stiff”;
but it healed slowly.
20
In mid-October the army judged
him fit to make193
.....................
the four-day trip to the
General Hospital in Brattleboro, where he
stayed—despite his repeated
requests for a transfer to Sloan General
Hospital—from October 21 until
January 7, 1865.
Lincoln and Stanton also
worried about desertion. Hospital records
show that there was some cause
for concern, but that it was not a serious problem. Of the 8,574 patients
admitted, 481 were recorded as
having deserted—slightly over
5 percent. Emendations to the hospital
records show that many of the
charges of desertion were later dropped.
21
These figures can be
interpreted in several ways. A substantial number
of the patients arrived in
Vermont on their way to hospitals in their
home states of New Hampshire,
Maine, Massachusetts, and upstate
New York. Facing an uncertain
future, they may have taken the opportunity to visit their families before
being officially transferred, discharged from the hospital, or sent back into
combat. Some, healthy
enough to be mobile but
restless, lonely, close to home, and denied furloughs by nervous army doctors
who feared the very behavior they provoked, left the hospitals without leave or
passes, then returned. Some, it
appears, deserted and
reenlisted to obtain a second bounty payment
from the government or from a
town eager to fill its quota. And some
doubtless did desert. These
men had suffered through some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The prospect
of recovering only to be thrust
back into battle constituted a
severe test of patriotism and nerve.
Moreover, life in the hospital
was neither luxurious nor always restful
and conducive to recovery.
Hovey wrote of loneliness and boredom, constantly beseeching his sister for
letters. In Brattleboro, he complained of
Dr. Phelps’s refusal to grant
furloughs, writing to Martha, “I believe it is
more than meat and drink to
that man to torment, aggravate, and abuse
the soldiers under his
charge.”
22
In December 1864, Hovey wrote
that
several men had complained by
letter to Governor Smith, who sent Lieutenant Governor Paul Dillingham to
inspect the hospital. “Since then we
have lived much better,” he
noted, but added that Dr. Phelps took his revenge by denying requests for
transfers to Sloan General Hospital in
Montpelier.
23
Frustrated in his efforts to
obtain a transfer to Sloan, Hovey
eventually wrote to President
Lincoln for a transfer for himself and a
comrade. Surprisingly, Lincoln
replied with an order to Phelps either to
discharge the two soldiers or
transfer them. A furious Phelps confronted
Hovey, threatened to send him
back into active duty, but finally agreed to
transfer him to Sloan. Phelps
failed to take action before the army transferred him from Brattleboro, but
Hovey eventually obtained his transfer
to Sloan, where he could be
close to his family and sweetheart.
Late in his stay at Sloan,
Hovey reported that Surgeon-in-Charge
Janes arranged to have classes
in bookkeeping, grammar, arithmetic,194
.....................
writing, and “declamation”
offered to the patients.
24
Whether this program was
unique to Sloan Hospital is uncertain. Possibly Janes initiated
it to relieve his patients’
boredom and thereby forestall potential discipline problems. Possibly, too, he
understood and acknowledged that
these men from farms and rural
areas, disabled by their wounds, would
need new skills in order to
find new employment when they left the
hospital or when the war
ended.
Another patient at Sloan
General Hospital, Norman William Johnson
of East Montpelier (Company F,
Second Vermont Regiment), kept a
diary of his recovery from
wounds to the right side and wrist received at
Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864.
25
Struck down in the morning, he
arrived at the field hospital by 4:00 P.M. The next day he was moved to
Lincoln Hospital in
Washington, D.C. On May 29 he wrote, “the Vermont State Agent came through to
transfer us to Burlington.” Johnson
left Washington by train on
June 2, arrived in Philadelphia at daybreak,
June 3, in time for breakfast,
and reached New York City at 9:00 P.M. At
midnight the train pulled out,
headed for New Haven, Connecticut,
where it arrived at 7:00
A.M. on June 4. Three hours later Johnson
boarded another train headed
north, arrived at Brattleboro at 10:00
A.M., June 5, and was admitted
to the general hospital. He recorded on
June 8: “Had a comfortable
night. Very cold. Seventy new cases came
in last night.” On June 12 he
recorded having his wounds burned with
caustic to prevent gangrene.
“There is a caravan and exhibits near here.
I did not go up.” A week later
Johnson’s wife visited him and he obtained an overnight pass. His wife stayed
in Brattleboro through June
20 and he received day and
evening passes into town to be with her. On
July 2 Johnson got a furlough
to return to East Montpelier for fortyeight days. Back in the Brattleboro
hospital on August 18 he wrote that
breakfast consisted of beans,
bread, applesauce, and hash. On August
22, Johnson noted the arrival
of 114 new patients. Later that week, the
process began for transferring
him to Sloan General Hospital, where he
arrived on September 10.
Almost immediately he received a four-day
pass to be with his family
again in East Montpelier. On September 26
he participated in a lottery
for clothes and equipment, probably donated
by the Christian or Sanitary
Commission. He “drawed two pairs of
drawers and one haversack.”
Johnson’s entry for September
30 shows us that discipline and security
at the hospital were ongoing
issues. “Five men picked up downtown, three
of them put to bed and clothes
taken away. No passes given today.” Security remained a persistent problem at
all the hospitals. Janes complained
upon his arrival at Sloan
General Hospital that “The grounds are open on
all sides, and consequently, I
can neither keep soldiers in nor civilians out195
.....................
of the Hospital. I find vendors
of pies and peddlers of various sorts circulating about to the detriment of the
sick and the injury of the others.”
26
He
quickly erected a fence around
the hospital grounds, and was allocated a
contingent of Veterans Reserve
Corps troops to serve as guards.
Late in his stay in the
military hospitals, now back in Brattleboro,
Johnson himself was assigned
to guard duty, one way the army used recovering patients, thereby releasing
more able-bodied men for active
duty on the front, where they
were desperately needed.
The experiences of Hovey and
Johnson show that hospital administrators used furloughs to alleviate
overcrowding and as rewards, and
withheld them as punishments.
They may also have used them in hopeless cases, so that men could die at home
with their families. At least
twenty men died on furlough,
according to hospital records. One of
them was Private John Piper of
Company K, Tenth Vermont Regiment.
Admitted to the Baxter General
Hospital at Burlington on February 13,
1864, at the age of forty-two,
he received a furlough on March 14 and
died at home on April 16.
Under “remarks” in the hospital register, the
clerk wrote, “He left this
vain world without a fear[,] without a struggle
or a tear to mingle with the
dead, His relatives so well pleased that they
did not notify the hospital of
his death until May 27, 1864.”
27
For
others who died on furlough
the clerks noted more laconically the receipt of death certificates, and for
those who died in the hospital, they
noted the cause, date of
death, and when the family of the deceased
claimed his body or
possessions.
After the War: New Uses for
Discarded Buildings
Within a year of the end of
the war all three military hospitals shut
down. Brattleboro Hospital was
first to close. The Agricultural Society
of Brattleboro purchased the
buildings at a public auction on January
24, 1866, for $3,200, which
according to the Free Press was “within a
few hundred dollars of the
estimated value of the material.”
28
The society also bought the
land at a separate auction. The buildings were eventually razed and the site is
now occupied by the Brattleboro high
school. On July 17, 1866, the
government sold the Burlington hospital
buildings for $7,000 to the
Home for Destitute Children. Eventually
those buildings, too, were
razed to make room for a shopping mall on
Shelburne Road.
29
Sloan General Hospital, the
last of the Vermont military hospitals to close its doors, ceased operation on
December 12,
1865, by which time it had
treated 1,670 patients.
On August 7, 1866, with
approval from the Vermont legislature, the
state sold the Sloan Hospital
grounds and buildings for $15,500 to the
Vermont Conference Seminary
and Female College, which was relocat-196
.....................
ing from Norwich, where it had
been known as the Newbury Seminary.
The seminary, later known as
the Montpelier Methodist Seminary and
Female College and eventually
as Vermont College, moved and reused
many of the former hospital
buildings for dormitories, faculty housing,
recitation rooms, and society
rooms. The core of the old hospital
grounds became the campus
green.
30
College Hall, the heart of the
Vermont College campus today, was constructed on the green in 1872. The
seminary continued to use the
hospital chapel at its original location,
which in the original plan of
the complex was set back from the circle
of other hospital buildings,
but in the new campus plan was sited opposite the northeast corner of the
green. It was torn down to make way for
Alumni Hall, a gymnasium
constructed in 1936. The hospital water
tank also continued in use
into the early twentieth century.
The seminary moved several
ward buildings, setting them above new
first stories to create a large
2½-story main dormitory facing the east
side of the green. The front
was apparently made from one of the
longer, twelve-bay wards; two
ells, extending to the rear, were adapted
from nine-bay wards. A
one-story middle ell completed an “E” formaBirdseye view of Montpelier,
Vermont, 1884, showing the area of the
Vermont Methodist Conference
Seminary and Female College—formerly
the location of Sloan U.S.
General Hospital. The view shows the hospital chapel in place across from the
northeast corner of the college
green, and the E-shaped main
dormitory complex, made from former
ward buildings, on the east
side of Seminary Avenue.197
.....................
Main dormitory complex,
Vermont Seminary, Montpelier. Stereoscopic
view by C. H. Freeman,
Montpelier, Vt., no date.
tion and was used as the
kitchen and dining hall for the complex. The
main dormitory was taken down
to make way for new residence halls in
the 1950s.
Many of the other original
hospital buildings remain, however. Most
of the wards were cut into
shorter lengths, usually thirds, removed to
nearby lots, and sold for
houses. Deed restrictions promoted what the
seminary hoped would be “a
good opportunity to establish a community, noted for morality, refinement and
religion in close proximity to
[the] Seminary.”
31
Many of the deeds for these
“hospital houses” direct
that “no intoxicating liquors
shall ever be sold on said premises, and
that no business or amusements
shall ever be carried on or permitted on
said premises that are
contrary, or which shall be contrary, to good
morals, or that are injurious
to the community.”
32
The deeds claim that a
property shall revert to the
grantor if the conditions are ever violated.
The “hospital houses” are
recognizable by their 1½ story height,198
.....................
open eaves without cornice
returns, high kneewall between the tops of
the windows and the eaves,
six-over-six sash windows, and characteristic peaked window lintel trim. On
their long eaves side, the buildings
are generally three bays wide,
with a central door substituted for what
was formerly a middle window.
The gable ends may display the original central door typical of the ward
sections closest to the circular walkway. If the house came from the rear
section of a ward, it may retain all
the windows or a side door
from the original building together with one
new gable-end wall. Houses
created out of the middle section of a ward
have two new gable ends.
Some of the other hospital
buildings also became houses. In all, fifteen reported “hospital houses” still
exist today in the vicinity of the
Vermont College green and more
may be identified.
33
They represent a
unique legacy of Civil War
history.
The proliferation of military
hospitals throughout the nation during
the war served many purposes.
Not least of these was alleviating the
overcrowded conditions at
hospitals in and around Washington, D.C.
More significant was promoting
a high rate of recovery among soldiers
who were sick or wounded but
not maimed or permanently disabled by
their injuries. As the war
dragged on and recruitment of new soldiers
A private home on Emmons
Street in Montpelier, near the former site of
Sloan General Hospital. This
house is one of several in the College
Street area that display
characteristics of former hospital buildings.199
.....................
became increasingly difficult
and encountered increasing resistance and
resentment, the successful
treatment and return to active duty of some
of the military force became
increasingly important. It is clear that
Governor Holbrook’s
“experiment” helped launch significant changes
in the U.S. Army’s planning
and use of medical facilities. In contrast
with medical practices in the
field that with rare exceptions remained
primitive, dangerous, and
largely ineffective throughout the war, the
rapid development of the design
and operation of the army general hospitals contributed significantly to their
success in treating patients.
What Lincoln and Stanton
originally dismissed as an inexpedient, impracticable, and “unmilitary
innovation” doubtless helped them win the
war and doubtless saved the
lives of many New England soldiers.
