The South was most fortunate in having a single competent surgeon general, Samuel Preston Moore, from July 30, 1861, until the conclusion of the war. Nine days later Lincoln appointed William A. It directed that the surgeon general, assistant surgeon general, medical inspector general, and medical inspectors, immediately be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, by selection from the medical corps of the army, or from the surgeons in the volunteer service, without regard to rank, but with sole regard to qualifications. The act also rid the army of high-ranking senescent medical officers whose rank rested on seniority and not ability. Ĭongress radically changed the structure of the Medical Department of the Union Army on April 16, 1862, raising the rank of surgeon general from colonel to brigadier general, assuring his control through the Medical Department of patient care and welfare in the Union Army. Except during huge battles, such as Antietam and Gettysburg, they did not serve on the battlefield. The Union Army also employed 85 acting surgeons and 5,532 acting assistant surgeons, who served as “contract surgeons” in general hospitals. Regimental surgeons numbered 2,109, and regimental assistant surgeons 3,882. By 1865, 547 surgeons and assistant surgeons of volunteers were appointed. These officers were listed on the muster-rolls, were permanently attached to their regiment, and were not detached unless an urgent situation arose. Each regiment contained a surgeon and an assistant surgeon commissioned by the state enlisting the troops. President Lincoln’s call for suppression of the rebellion in 1861, raised large numbers of state troops (militia). This system served well an army scattered over a large territory in commands of less than regimental strength ( there were approximately1,000 men in a regiment.) They were subject to duty whenever and wherever their services were required. These officers formed part of the General Staff of the army and were not permanently attached to any regiment or command. Its Medical Department was composed of a surgeon general, with the rank of colonel thirty surgeons, with the rank of major and eighty-four assistant surgeons, with the rank for the first five years of first lieutenant, and thereafter, until promotion to surgeon, the rank of captain. Farther upriver in the Town of Halifax, another NC Civil War Trails marker stands beside the Roanoke River in the area in which the Albemarle was outfitted.To understand the structure and function of Civil War hospitals, it is necessary to know the organization of the medical department of the pre-Civil War army and its subsequent development in the Union and Confederate Armies.īefore South Carolina seceded from the United States in December 1860, the small Regular Army consisted of 1,117 commissioned officers and 11,907 enlisted men. In Southeastern Halifax County in the town of Scotland Neck, you will find the site along the Roanoke River where the CSS Ram Albermarle was constructed. There is another NC Civil War Trail marker located beside the locks at the Roanoke Canal Museum in Roanoke Rapids that explains the Roanoke Canal's significance.
The canal was used to transport goods to be loaded onto the railroads.
These railroads, the Wilmington and Weldon, the Raleigh and Gaston, the Seaboard and Roanoke and the Petersburg Railroad were the main arteries for the transportation of both troops and provisions from the South to Richmond and the Army of Northern Virginia.Īlso on the Roanoke Canal Trail, visit the stone aqueduct of the former Roanoke Navigation Canal, an archway of hand-hewn stones spanning 35-feet that carried the canal waters over Chockoyotte Creek and was defended during the Civil War. You can still see the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad trestle over the Roanoke River, which is a site on the North Carolina Civil War Trail. One of these was the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, the longest railroad in the world at that time and also known as the Lifelife of the Confederacy. The cemetery is surrounded by breastworks built to protect Weldon and the four major railroad lines that ran through the town. There is a large stone marker on site, purchased by the Roanoke Rapids Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy listing the soldiers' names. In Weldon you can visit a mass grave, located just off the Roanoke Canal Trail, where approximately 164 Confederate soldiers who died at Wayside Hospital #9, a small, wooden Methodist chapel that was outfitted as a hospital from 1861-2, were buried. Halifax County, NC is home to many sites of great significance to the Civil War.
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