Shiloh photo

The Battle of Shiloh during the American Civil War was fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. Confederate troops advanced on the 1st day at the cost of the life of their commander General Albert Sidney Johnston, but were defeated by Union forces on the 2nd. Fighting in the Confederate Army was Welsh journalist and explorer Henry M. Stanley* (1841-1904), who left a firsthand account of the battle, an excerpt of which I quote from Eyewitness to History:

"After being exposed for a few seconds to this fearful downpour, we heard the order to 'Lie down, men, and continue your firing!' Before me was a prostrate tree, about fifteen inches in diameter, with a narrow strip of light between it and the ground. Behind this shelter a dozen of us flung ourselves. The security it appeared to offer restored me to my individuality. We could fight, and think, and observe, better than out in the open. But it was a terrible period! How the cannon bellowed, and their shells plunged and bounded, and flew with screeching hisses over us! Their sharp rending explosions and hurtling fragments made us shrink and cower, despite our utmost efforts to be cool and collected. I marveled, as I heard the unintermitting patter, snip, thud, and hum of the bullets, how anyone could live under this raining death. I could hear the balls beating a merciless tattoo on the outer surface of the log, pinging vivaciously as they flew off at a tangent from it, and thudding into something or other, at the rate of a hundred a second. One, here and there, found its way under the log, and buried itself in a comrade's body. One man raised his chest, as if to yawn, and jostled me. I turned to him, and saw that a bullet had gored his whole face, and penetrated into his chest. Another ball struck a man a deadly rap on the head, and he turned on his back and showed his ghastly white face to the sky." 

In the photograph (above), soldiers of the 9th Texas Infantry Regiment and the 1st Missouri Battalion stand on the Shiloh battlefield, flag in hand. But not one of these men were among the 10,699 casualties suffered by the Confederacy over these 2 days. How do we know that for sure? The photo was not taken in 1862, but at a reenactment on the 145th anniversary of the battle in 2007 by member of the 9th Texas Herb Shemwell, who used digital techniques to "age" the image. Reenactments are also the subjects of photographers like John Coffer, who specializes in the historical wetplate process.

*Of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" fame.

Angel’s Glow

In response to Wednesday's post about Civil War casualties, reader Chase sent along the link to Thursday's post on Mental Floss that I in turn want to share. After 2 days of combat in Tennessee, winning the bloody Battle of Shiloh allowed Federal troops to advance into Mississippi at great cost on both sides. Among the 65,085 Union soldiers led by Major General Ulysses S. Grant, there were 13,047 casualties, including 1,754 killed and 8,408 wounded. The Confederate Army began with 43,968 men and suffered losses of 10,699, including 1,728 killed and 8,012 wounded. Thousands lay dead and dying of bullet and bayonet wounds, with medics unable to keep up and infection spreading in the untreated injuries. Over the next 2 rainy days, soldiers noticed that "their wounds were glowing, casting a faint light into the darkness of the battlefield." After they realized that the glow had foreshadowed a better survival rate, they nicknamed it “Angel’s Glow.” Bill Martin learned of this as a teenager when he visited the Shiloh battlefield (above, battlefield today and in 1862) with his family in 2001. It just so happened that his Mom was a microbiologist with the USDA studying the luminescent bacteria Photorhabdus luminescens. "Could that have caused the glowing wounds?" he asked her, and she encouraged him to find out. He and his friend Jon Curtis researched the bacteria (learning that it lives in the guts of parasitic nematodes) and the conditions during the Battle of Shiloh (finding that low temperatures would have made the hypothermic soldiers good hosts). The students earned 1st place in team competition at the 2001 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for determining that the bacteria entered the wounds from the soil, caused the glow, helped kill off other pathogens, and were ultimately cleaned out by the soldiers' own immune systems. After the battle - 150 years ago this month - Grant wrote, "The battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, fought on Sunday and Monday, the 6th and 7th of April, 1862, has been perhaps less understood, or, to state the case more accurately, more persistently misunderstood, than any other engagement between National and Confederate troops during the entire rebellion." Now, a little less so.

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HAPPY EASTER!
(Link goes to 2009 post)

My Dad arrives today for a week-long visit, during which I will be working on an overdue Follow-ups post and an even more overdue entry to my sorely neglected Health Diary.

Revisionism

It is well known among Civil War buffs and photo historians that Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) and others repositioned some of the bodies of the men killed during the bloody 19th c. American conflict (interesting case study here) before capturing their moving images of the aftermath of battles like Antietam (above) and Gettysburg. What was also thought to be well known was the tally of casualties on both sides: 360,222 Union troops and 258,000 Confederate troops, for a total of 618,222. What we didn't know until now is that this number - the greatest toll of any war in American history - has been underestimated by 20%. As revealed in the journal Civil War History and covered in Monday's New York Times, the new total stands at 750,000. The calculations were performed by demographic historian J. David Hacker* of Binghamton University,and scholars are agreeing with his conclusions. The old count was calculated in 1889 based on muster lists, battlefield reports, and pension records, with a proportional number added to account for death by disease. Hacker recalculated the mortality of 20-to-30-year-olds by comparing by comparing newly digitized and sortable data 10 years apart in the 19th c., but the total was still lacking for several reasons:

• It undercounted immigrants because the census did not differentiate between them and native-born Americans
• It assumed that the Confederate death rates from disease were the same as Union rates, but the North had better medical care, food, and shelter
• The number was based on the notorious 1870 census, which undercounted the population
• The census indicated state of residence, but that did not verify which side the male citizens fought on.

Hacker adjusted for all of this and extrapolated that 650,000 to 850,000 men died as a result of the Civil War, offering the midpoint of these brackets as his estimate. He emphasized that his methodology was far from perfect, and said of his findings, “Part of me thinks it is just a curiosity. But wars have profound economic, demographic and social costs. We’re seeing at least 37,000 more widows here, and 90,000 more orphans. That’s a profound social impact, and it’s our duty to get it right.”

*Sue brought this story to my attention and mentioned that Dave Hacker is a family friend. Having traced her genealogy centuries into the past, she notes, "Very interesting how he arrived at the new figure."

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Previous posts about the American Civil War:
Leg bones
Zouaves
Ulysses S. Grant, postmortem
Union cases and what they contain(ed)
Amputation kits
A morning's work
Tomb of the known soldier

Tomb of the known soldier

Last summer, I mentioned the collection of daguerreotypes donated to the Library of Congress by the Liljenquist Family (on-line catalog here). Many of the names of the nearly 700 Civil War soldiers depicted are unknown. Well, thanks to the wife of a descendant, one young man has his identity back. A week ago, Karen Thatcher of Martinsburg, West Virginia, recognized his photo (2nd image) as matching a crayon enlargement (see it in slideshow here) - a 19th c. technique of making a larger colored portrait from a photo - that had been handed down in the family of her husband Larry. Now that it has been pieced together, here is the soldier's story:

David M. Thatcher was just 17 when he enlisted in the Confederate Army on April 19, 1861. The War Between the States had broken out only the week before. Thatcher left his family's farm in Martinsburg to join Company B, Berkeley Troop, of the First Virginia Cavalry. Before he went to war, the teenager sat for an ambrotype. He posed proudly in his uniform, armed with a revolver and a saber. Across his chest was braided frogging and at his waist was a belt buckle bearing the Virginia state seal. Thatcher was under the command of General J.E.B. Stuart in the Battle of Buckland Mills when he was wounded Oct. 19, 1863. The Confederacy prevailed, but Thatcher died the next day. His parents collected his body from the battlefield near Warrenton, Virgina, and brought him home in a horse and wagon. They buried him in the cemetery of their local Tuscarora Presbyterian Church, where his gravemarker (1st image) still stands. "When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, be not afraid of them, for the Lord thy God is with thee," it reads.

According to Library of Congress curator Carol Johnson, Thatcher may have given the photo to his girlfriend before he left for the war and his family may have had it reproduced to hang on the wall after he was killed. The story of the young soldier - a brother of her husband’s great-grandfather - is tragic, but reuniting him with his biography is remarkable. “I’m just awestruck," exclaims the collector. "This anonymous young boy has gotten his life back.” The Thatchers add, “We’re just tickled to death...that we’re able to put a name to that face.”

Amputation kits

Surgeon's kits for the amputation of limbs - which received plenty of use during the American Civil War - do not seem to have changed much to the eye of the lay observer (compare this kit from the Revolutionary War). But the professional can easily spot the nuances (here's a set with ivory handles) and improvements over the years. Nevertheless, they did not need to be altered for use in different professions (here are kits used on sailors and coal miners). The standard 19th c. kits included a useful selection of the following instruments (see labeled images here and here):

• bone saw - used to quickly cut through bone
• capital saw - for resection of large bones of the arm or leg
• bone chain saw - for cutting bone in tight spaces
• hey saw - to cut into the skull
• metacarpal saw - used to cut fingers and tendons
• amputation knives - often double-edged and sometimes folding, concave were for used for circular amputation, straight-edge for tissue separation
• catlin knife - a thin double-sided blade for cutting in both directions for instance when dividing flesh and vessels
• liston knife - for cutting through flesh and muscle
• scalpel - a straight blade for tissue incision
• bistoury - a curved scalpel for dissecting ligaments and tissue
• trephine or terebrum - for drilling a core of bone
• bone chisel and hammer - to trim bone
• tenaculum - for hooking arteries to pull them out enough to tie them off
• ronguer - for trimming bone fragments or finishing cuts
• forceps - for removing bullets, holding an artery while tying it off
• scissors
• tourniquet - to compress arteries above the cut during amputation
• Bone brush - to remove bone sawdust from the cutting site

These antique amputation kits are not in short supply, and many are curated by museums (such as the Rose Melnick Medical Museum and the Civil War Museum at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield). If you want to add one to your own collection, you just have to be prepared to shell out a few hundred bucks at an auction (Cowan's, WorthPoint) or antique store.

Thanks to Yvonne for the idea!

Zouaves

These exotically dressed soldiers fought in the French conquest of Algeria (1836), the Crimean War (1853-1856), the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Franco-Prussian War (1870), the Sino-French War (1881-1882), World War I (1914-1918), and the Algerian War (1954-1962). They are Zouaves, infantrymen in the French Army originally composed of Algerian troops (5th image), after whom other troops - including members of the Union Army (1st and 3rd images) - were patterned). Zouaves were distinguished by their uniforms, which featured baggy pantaloons, a sash, and a tasseled fez. But they also distinguished themselves in battle, with a reputation as fierce fighters. Soldiers in the elite Zouave regiments became the subjects of paintings by Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) in 1888 (4th image), American artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910) in 1864 (2nd image), and Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) in 1918 (6th image). The striking colors - absent in the black and white photographs of the time - were a challenge to reproduce on canvas, as Van Gogh described in a letter to his brother: "...the half-length I did of him was horribly harsh, in a blue uniform, the blue of enamel saucepans, with braids of a faded reddish-orange, and two yellow stars on his breast, an ordinary blue, and very hard to do. That bronzed, feline head of his with a red cap, I placed it against a green door and the orange bricks of a wall. So it's a savage combination of incongruous tones, not easy to manage." It was the natty dress that spelled the end of the Zouaves: they were too expensive to replace, they were supplanted by mass-produced uniforms, and they were superseded by green uniforms that would more easily camouflage the troops.

Submerged steamers

The remains of a Civil War steamship like the one pictured (top) have just been found in Florida's Jonesboro River (bottom). This is the 2nd so far:

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Scottish Chief - This wreck was found 3 weeks ago with sonar in 15' of murky water by a Florida Aquarium research team on Tuesday. It was lodged near an I-275 overpass in Tampa. After its engine had been salvaged, the 124' wooden vessel had been burned and sunk by Union troops in 1863 after repeatedly smuggling cotton and cow hides to Cuba in exchange for medicine, food, ammunition, and other supplies - including liquor and cigars. "This is a fairly major find," said chief researcher John William Morris. "It's buried up to the gunwales and the preservation factor is pretty high." He believes the hull may be fully intact.

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Kate Dale - This blockade runner, known for its speed, was found near Lowry Park in the same river last year. It had been docked to have its hull scraped of barnacles when it was attacked, burned to the water-line, and sunk in 1863.

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The remains of the Scottish Chief will not be raised, but its location will be shared with the public so divers can take a look. Another vessel, The AB Nays, was docked near the Kate Dale, but was burned by the Confederates to prevent its capture and is believed to lie 150 yards north of the Scottish Chief, where it can sometimes be seen at low tide.

Friday the 13th

This day is an occasion to highlight the best on-line calendar I have found: Wilson's Almanac. If you navigate to February 13th or click here, you will find an exhaustive list of quotes from people born on this day, ancient festivals that were held during this time, cultural traditions (this being Valentine's Day Eve), Christian saints for whom this is the feast day, international festivals and observances held today, notable people born on February 13th, and a large chronological section of events that occured on this day in history. Today's events included the execution of Henry VIII's fifth wife Catherine Howard (c. 1521-1542); the first bank robbery by American outlaw Jesse James (1847-1882), who is pictured in his coffin; the opening of King Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter (pictured); and the bombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied Forces in World War II (represented by the photo of an incinerated messenger boy). For more about the superstitions about and fear of Friday the 13th (paraskavedekatriaphobia), start here.

Edward C. Johnson

"Christine? This is Mr. Johnson." That's how our telephone conversations would start, and I miss them. I'm not sure who put me in touch with this extraordinary man, but he offered an amazing amount of information and feedback when I was writing The Corpse: A History and Modern Mummies: The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century. And no one was more qualified. Mr. Johnson was 80 when I met him and had been an embalmer from an early age. He practiced restorative art, passed his skills on to students, and researched its history. I sent him cookies in the mail; he sent me articles from his files, annotated in his distinctive handwriting. I was happy to have spent a day with him in Chicago, visiting the Egyptian mummies at the Field Museum, and glad that a retrospective article about his life appeared in The American Funeral Director before he died. The brief biography below is taken from that two-part article - "The Life & Times of Edward C. Johnson: America's Embalmer Emeritus and Dean of American Funeral Service History" by Mac McCormick (American Funeral Director, August and September 1999) - and from his obituaries.


Edward C. Johnson (1914-2000) first apprenticed at a funeral home (Turnbull and Merager in Spokane) at the age of 20, having already enlisted in the National Guard. He pursued a degree in mortuary science at Worsham College in Chicago and graduated as class president and valedictorian in 1936. He worked at another firm (Chicago's Smith and Maginot), embalming people in their homes and nuns in their convent. While working next at the John Pederson Funeral Home in Chicago, he helped grade mortuary service exams.

Serving in World War II, Mr. Johnson traveled the world and demonstrated embalming in Australia. Discharged in 1942, he returned to Worsham College to instruct more than 10,000 students in restorative art, embalming, and the history of American funeral service. It was the latter that gave him the most pleasure: "Although I have embalmed at least 20,000 bodies, the achievement that I am the proudest of is the fact that I introduced a course in history to this field. Before that time, we had so many legends and false ideas that it was ridiculous. [With a history,] you have an idea who you are, and where you fit in. You know who your professional ancestors are."

Mr. Johnson opened his own funeral home in Chicago in 1947, operating the Johnson Mortuary until the mid-1980s. He was dean and instructor at the Post-Graduate Institute of Restorative Art from 1948 to 1958 (and is pictured with his pipe and his students in the above photo). The institute merged with Worsham College, where he continued to teach until 1973. Ten years later, he joined the faculty of Malcolm X Chicago City College, where he taught embalming history, theory, and practice until 1995.

During his lifelong career, Mr. Johnson wrote hundreds of historical and professional articles; was a major contributor to the books Funeral Customs the World Over and The History of American Funeral Directing, published by the National Funeral Directors Association; and in 1997 published a book about the Civil War (in which his maternal grandfather fought), entitled All Were Not Heroes: A Study of "The List of U. S. Soldiers Executed by U. S. Military Authorities During the Late War."

Mr. Johnson served as an expert witness in many civil court cases, and consulted with the major airlines about the problems of transporting bodies. With his wife of 46 years, Gail (a licensed embalmer and funeral director who died in 1995), and later his daughter Melissa Johnson Williams (practicing embalmer and executive director of the American Society of Embalmers), he taught funeral service seminars around the world and contributed to Embalming: History, Theory, and Practice by long-time friend and colleague Robert G. Mayer.

Some of Mr. Johnson's other awards and accomplishments are listed below:

1942: His major revision to the Embalming section of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published.

1948: Commissioned as a captain in the Quartermaster Corps in the Graves Registration Division of the U.S. Army Reserves.

1961: Appointed as the first chief of mortuary operations for the United Nations.

1963: The government of Italy presented him with the Order of the Cavalier and Medal of Merit for his recovery and embalming of 13 Italian soldiers killed in the Congo.

1988: Fifty-year citation from the Illinois Funeral Directors Association.

1995: Received an honorary doctorate from the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science, and the U.S. Army Outstanding Civilian Service medal for his work in the Congo.

1998: Received the NFDA Resolution Honoring his Professionalism and Contribution to Funeral Service and Humanity.

Mr. Johnson died on Christmas, concerned till the end about his clients. Says his daughter Melissa, "My father...lived and breathed funeral service his entire life." May he continue to rest in peace, knowing how many people he touched, literally and figuratively.

A Morning's Work

Bear with me as I blog about amputations again... You may be aware of the Burns Archive, a collection of vintage photographs - most of them medical or death-related. Collector Stanley B. Burns, M.D., has amassed more than 700,000 images, which he licenses. He has also published some remarkable books, including a volume of postmortem photos, Sleeping Beauty: The History of Memorial Photography in America, and a compilation of medical images, A Morning's Work: Medical Photographs from the Burns Archive & Collection, 1843-1939. The photograph above is from the latter collection and provided its title.

The 6" x 4 1/2" albumen print was made in 1865 by Dr. Reed Brockway Bontecou (1824-1907). Dr. Bontecou was an avid proponent of photography and documented his cases for inclusion in the newly established Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine). He labeled this photo "A Morning's Work" because it reflects the typical number of amputations he performed in a single morning...