Today, I’d like to offer a couple of entries from the diary of a Civil War Doctor in 1863:
Feb. 16th Quite pleasant today. Instruct the Doctor in his duty. Man stabbed in neck in the 3rd Regt. Go to see him.
In the afternoon [an] orderly came riding in speed from the right of the picket, saying Dr. Grant was about and I was wanted at his station without delay. Mounted his horse and rode off. Found a man accidentally shot. Balls had passed through his face sweeping one half the teeth from the lower jaw and the inferior maxillary broken twice in two. Bullet had also removed the fore part of the tongue. Lieut. Penrose had washed away the blood. It took long to sew [up] the arteries of the tongue, wire up bone . . . . Nearly 2 hours or more before completing. Drs. Grant & Hale came up. Could not use chloroform. So gave him morphine. . . .
April 23rd . . . . A boy 16 years old in company E, 14th Infantry was recently brought into my hospital with pneumonia, (slight). Examining I found a malformation of chest by which right lung is badly compressed. An imperfect physical development of chest, also of entire frame. The boy is from the guard house, having been tried by Court Martial for the offense of “Sleeping on post,” and is now waiting sentence. I, in consideration of his physical unfitness for service, wrote a letter recommending the mitigation or entire remission of any punishment that may have been awarded him. This the commanding officer forwarded. I think it will save the boy and I feel bad to see a delicate boy like him punished because he was not able to endure fatigue. The boy should be discharged from the service. His offence is a grave one. In time of war the punishment, except the mercy of the court is declared by some mitigation, is death. . . .
From the Michigan History, Arts and Libraries web site.
I love diaries as primary sources for historical information. They are, of course, limited in what they can tell us; the social scientist suggests that diaries are nearly useless, except in two cases:
- The diary records raw historical data (the number of men wounded in a battle, for example), or
- When there are many diaries from the same sample group that can be analyzed, and statistical trends can be developed.
No wonder so many people are bored by History. After reading today’s excerpt, you cannot help but be moved, and feel a connection with the writer. This connection is something that has little to do with academics. It is existential, and it is a part of the shared human experience. And it is why I fell in love with history to begin with.
The thought of a sixteen year-old boy facing a court martial, possibly hanging, for not being physically able to stand a post is disturbing. It uncovers something about the human experience that just isn’t right, or natural. This great cause, the restoration of the Union, the abolition of slavery, all likely meant little to this boy. He just wanted to go home, to be in his own bed. It forces us to ask important questions about how we fight wars, and about how we treat our soldiers in and out of the service.
As if this weren’t enough, the description of surgery in the first entry is truly amazing, and can offer more than just human insight. It offers insight into the technology available at the time, and demonstrates to us how far medical science has come since that time. It also shows the amazing tenacity and efficiency of this particular doctor: it would take at least two hours to repair the damage he describes in a modern emergency room.
Can this journal tell us how many died in the Civil War? Nope. Does the journal tell the fate of the 16 year-old boy, or tell us in general how courts martial were handled? Of course not. But it can tell us how those men died, and more importantly how they lived. Yes, it does this through the perspective of one doctor from Michigan, so we go in remembering that our perception is limited to his; Yet, we can still experience something fascinating, something deep, an important part of our National heritage and identity.
Keep your census statistics, your birth and death records, your property deeds. I do appreciate your research, and will on occasion rely on your data (when I need to be published). But I will keep my diaries, my letters, and my personal journals. To me, those are the things that makes history worth studying. Those are the things that, far from just telling us names and dates and times and giving us numbers, gives us a true perspective.
If you teach history, do you want your students to soak up data, or do you want them to share your passion? You’re more likely to bring them along with you if you provide these sorts of windows into the past than you are if you tell them how many courts martial occurred in the Grand Army of the Potomac in 1863. Talk about this one, and let the rest of them sort themselves out.
