November 23, 2011 • 22 mins
As a Confederate surgeon, Dr. MacGuire's first assignment was under the command of Lieutenant General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, who became his most famous patient. Tune in to learn what McGuire's writings reveal about Stonewall's last days.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame in chalkerate boarding and I'm fared out
And we are continuing on with our look into Civil
War medicine. In the last installment of this little mini
(00:21):
series we've been working on, we examine the life of
Mary Edwards Walker, who was the only woman surgeon formally
engaged for field duty during the Civil War. She was
also the first woman to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor.
And although she'd treat anyone who needed help, Walker was
officially on the Union side. So for this podcast, we're
gonna switch things up a little bit and talk about
(00:43):
a prominent Confederate doctor, doctor Hunter Holmes McGuire, who we've
tried to be diverse with all of the Civil War episodes.
We've been balanced, yeah, showing showing different races, different sexes,
perspective sides of the war. So yeah, well, like you said,
we're gonna be talking about Dr Hunter Holmes McGuire are
today a Confederate doctor, And of course McGuire didn't have
(01:03):
any trouble actually becoming an army doctor like Mary Walker
did simply because of his gender, but he did face
some challenges that were pretty unique to doctors of the Confederacy,
and we're going to talk about that a lot more later.
But the thing that's really interesting about McGuire is that
you almost can't talk about him without discussing his most
(01:23):
famous patient, Lieutenant General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson. Yes, hence
the title of this podcast, and Jackson was of course
one of the most accomplished and revered officers of the
Confederate Army, and McGuire treated him after he received his
final battle wounds and was with him throughout his final
illness and his death because of Jackson's prominence in the
(01:46):
circumstances surrounding his final days, though many modern historians and
physicians in fact have continued to speculate about the true
cause of death involved here and have examined and really
re examined the treatment that he received. So we're going
to focus on that particular moment in Dr McGuire's career,
Jackson's death, but we're going to start by telling you
(02:07):
how McGuire became a Confederate Army doctor in the first place.
This episode really is about him so McGuire was born
October eleventh, eighteen thirty five, in Winchester, Virginia, and he
seemed to grow up with a love for and a
strong interest in medicine, largely because his father, Hugh H. McGuire,
was a physician, so it sort of ran in the family.
(02:27):
McGuire actually used to join his dad on house calls
when he was just a kid, really witnessing the profession
firsthand from a young age. And McGuire's father actually became
dean of Winchester Medical College and a professor of surgery there,
and McGuire ended up doing part of his medical training
there too. After graduating from there in eighteen fifty five,
McGuire went to Philadelphia to study medicine at both the
(02:49):
University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College, which was considered
one of the best med schools around before the war.
And when you look into it a little bit, you'll
see the different sources have slightly differing dates and opinions
about what degrees McGuire received where and to what extent
he took courses, but we don't do know that he
did go there. He soon fell ill, though, and had
(03:12):
to return to Winchester for a little while to convalesce.
He stayed around there for a couple of years and
taught as professor of anatomy at Winchester Medical College, but
still had that itch to further his medical education a
little bit, so he went back to Philadelphia by eighteen
fifty eight and attended Jefferson Medical College again. Um, but
it was well McGuire was studying there in eighteen fifty
(03:34):
nine that abolitionist John Brown rated the US Armory and
Arsenal at Harpersbury, Virginia. And UM, I know lots of
you guys suggest this topic to us, and many, uh
guess who have studied U s history are familiar with it.
But Brown was trying to get weapons to start an
armed slave revault, but his plan failed when he was caught.
(03:55):
So Brown was tried and hanged for treason. But a
lot of Northern abolitionists really saw him as a martyr
kind of a hero for the movement. So the situation
really highlighted the philosophical differences between the North and South,
and that was reflected in what was going on among
the medical students in Philadelphia. This was just to give
you an idea, like a really really big current events
(04:18):
story for them at the time. But by that December
eighteen fifty nine, the Northern medical students, because of John Brown,
because of other things going on in the country, UM
and the Southern medical students were starting to get into
confrontations with each other, and the Southern students got to
the point where they didn't really feel safe at school anymore.
(04:38):
So McGuire worked to arrange for all of the Southern
medical students who wanted to get out of Philadelphia to
transfer to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, and
the school agreed to take them on, accepted all of
their course credits for Jefferson, you know, just really smooth
transition for everybody, And several hundred students took that deal
(05:00):
that McGuire arranged, and McGuire ended up getting a degree
from Virginia Medical College as well in eighteen sixty and
he taught and did more coursework for a little while
after that, spending some time in New Orleans, but eventually
returning to Winchester when state started to secede from the Union.
According to an article by John Hanks in The American Surgeon,
(05:20):
it's not that McGuire was really pro slavery, but he
felt a very strong allegiance to his home state. So
when the war broke out in eighteen sixty one, he
offered his services to the Confederacy, and they really needed him.
According to Hanks, some estimates suggests that only twenty seven
Southern doctors had surgical experience before the war, and McGuire
was one of them, and he had something else going
(05:43):
for him to In addition to that, McGuire had a
lot of experience moving through both Southern and Northern society.
You know, he could interact with different sets of people,
and at a very young age. He was only about
twenty five or twenty six years old at this time,
he had already gotten tons of education, tons of experience.
He'd worked as a professor of surgery, so he just
(06:03):
had the best resume you could ask for for for
this position. So McGuire was commissioned as a surgeon in
May of eighteen sixty one, and his first assignment was
near Winchester with the Army of the Shenandoah, which was
under the command of Lieutenant General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson
at the time. An article by Joe D. Haynes in
America Civil War has kind of a funny description of
(06:25):
their first meeting. Apparently, the first time McGuire presented himself
to Jackson in eighteen sixty one, Jackson just kind of
stared at him and then sent him away. McGuire eventually
did get orders appointing him a surgeon in the Confederate Army,
but it was several days after that. So later on,
after the two got to know each other a little better,
McGuire asked Jackson why his appointment hadn't happened immediately, and
(06:48):
Jackson said, quote, you looked so young. I sent to
Richmond to see if there was some mistake. I wouldn't
want Stonwall Jackson to give me a cold look. I
don't think I would either. After that initial bump, though,
Jackson came to really respect McGuire as a physician, a colleague,
and some sources suggest as even a friend. I mean,
if you look at both their lives, they did seem
(07:09):
to have a few things in common. Even though Jackson,
who was born in eighteen twenty four, was many years
McGuire senior. They were both from the Virginia area, and
they both got involved in the war for similar reasons.
A desire to defend their homes, something you kind of
seen a lot of Virginians in the Civil War, that's true.
Another thing they had in common is that they were
both educators, or they had been educators before the raid
(07:30):
at Harper's Ferry. Jackson had been living this relatively quiet
life as an instructor at the Virginia Military Academy, which
I never knew before. I didn't either. I mean, you
just know the stan Wall legendary stuff, even if you
think you kind of know about him. But McGuire really
proved himself to Jackson early on after the First Battle
of Manassas, when Jackson was shot in the left middle
(07:53):
finger and the physician the general first went to wanted
to amputate the finger. Jackson managed to sort of sneak
off from that doctor and get a second opinion from McGuire,
who was able to successfully treat the wound and save
the fingers. So, you know, even if they're both from Virginia,
they have these things in common. You think that would
be a good bond to establish with your patient, and
(08:17):
it did so. Jackson was impressed, and when he took
the command of the Army of the Valley district. McGuire
became his medical director, and the general wasn't the only
one who held McGuire in really high regard. The doctor
was renowned not only for his surgical ability, but for
his logistical and organizational skills as well. According to Hanks,
McGuire was pretty much doing what the best doctors on
(08:38):
the Union side were doing, but he was doing it
with a lot less. Although the Confederate Army had ample
medical supplies when the war started, as it dragged on,
the supply really diminished. Basically, they had to rely on
seizing Union medical supplies in order to get what they
needed to It was one of the unique challenges of
being a Confederate doctor. And I think that's so interesting too,
(08:59):
sort of an added twists to work that you have
to do. Yeah, it's more than just your skill or
the training you've had, it's what do you have at
your disposal? How can you how can you make it work?
So one of McGuire's biggest challenges, however, wasn't just making
sure they could get supplies, how he could treat people.
It came in the spring of eighteen sixty three, when
Confederate troops confronted the Union Army at Chancellorsville, Virginia, and
(09:23):
prior to this, the Confederate Army had been doing pretty well.
They had had some victories at Manassas and Fredericksburg in
eighteen sixty two, and Jackson had seemed to pretty much
own the Shenandoah Valley during the first couple of years
of the war. But when the Union Army advanced on
Chancellor Bill, things didn't look very good. They outnumber the
(09:43):
Confederates two to one, and they had way more splies,
way more artillery. But amazingly, the Confederates managed to get
the upper hand when Jackson pulled off one of his
trademark flanking maneuvers and blean out that you could explain flanking,
I think I can a little bit. I'm no expert,
but flanking basically meant taking troops on a longer encircling
(10:04):
march around an enemy rather than attacking head on. Attacking
directly would have been suicide in many cases because they
had fewer men and the larger artillery on the other
side too would come into account. Exactly, so Jackson had
become known for preferring this flanking strategy to attacking directly.
He and General Robert E. Lee had realized on May
(10:27):
one of that year that the Union Army had left
its western flank open, so they saw their window of
opportunity and they decided to attack from there, and by
the evening of May second, Jackson and his men were
doing just that. They caught the Union Army completely off
guard and dealt them a pretty serious blow. But Jackson
wanted to take that a step farther and cut off
(10:48):
the Union Army's retreat and try to destroy them completely.
So Stanwell rode ahead with a group of troops to
see what the situation was, kind of a recon group,
and see if cutting off the retreat would actually be possible.
But because it was dark, it was a really dangerous
time to be beyond your own lines, And sure enough,
(11:09):
the Party did end up surprising the eighteenth North Carolina Regiment,
which of course mistook them for Federal cavalry being beyond
their lines and opened fire. Jackson got shot in the
right hand and then two places on his left arm,
and it is, of course one of the most famous
friendly fire incidents of the war. And that's what we're
(11:29):
gonna be talking about for pretty much the rest of
the party. I mean, some people see it as a
real turning point. I mean, if they had actually been
able to cut off the retreat, a lot of people
think what would have happened and just losing Jackson too, Yeah, exactly.
But Jackson managed to stay on his horse, Little Sorrel,
until his aids helped him down, and the General was
then carried on a litter to a receiving area west
of the front lines. But the litter was dropped twice
(11:52):
on the way there, once because the bear got shot,
and again because a bear tripped and fell, and both
times Jackson hit the ground pretty hard from it can
celerable heights, so just adding to his injury. McGuire met
him at the receiving area right away and said, quote,
I hope you're not badly hurt, General, But he could
see right away that Jackson's clothes were soaked with blood
(12:13):
and was displaying all the classic signs of hemorrhagic shock,
cold hands, clammy skin, pale lips and face, and it
didn't look at at all. So McGuire readjusted the bandage
on Jackson's arm to try to kind of slow the bleeding,
and he gave him morphine and whiskey and they transported
him to a nearby field hospital. And here's how McGuire's
writings described Jackson's wounds. There were two wounds in his arm.
(12:38):
The first and most serious was about three inches below
the shoulder joint, the ball dividing the main artery and
fracturing the bone. The second, with several inches in length
of all, having entered the outside of the forearm and
inch below the elbow, came out upon the opposite side,
just about the wrist. So after examining him there, McGuire
realized he was going to have to amputate that left arm,
(12:59):
and he asked Jackson whether that was okay. Jackson replied, yes, certainly,
Dr McGuire, do for me whatever you think best, And
when McGuire gave him the chloroform before operating, Jackson even
said what an infinite blessing before he became unconscious. And
again in his writings, McGuire later wrote that throughout the
(13:19):
whole of the operation and until all the dressings were applied,
Jackson continued insensible and the surgery seemed to be successful,
and Jackson seemed to be doing really well the next day,
though he did complain of a pain on his right side,
So that was sort of foreshadowing things to come, as
we'll see. A major came to receive instructions from him,
(13:41):
and Jackson appeared to kind of know at this point
that he wasn't in any state of mind to give
any instructions. He said, quote, I don't know. I can't
tell say to General Stewart. He must do what he
thinks best. On May the five, General Lease sent instructions
to move Jackson to a station that was twenty six
miles away. Basically, Lee didn't want jack Since so close
to the battlefront because he was afraid federal troops might
(14:03):
capture him. According to Haynes article, Jackson said quote, I'm
not afraid of them. I've always been kind to their wounded,
so I'm sure they'll be kind to me. But Jackson
McGuire did end up making that bumpy long ride together
in an ambulance, and Jackson was taken to a place
called Chandler House, and he seemed to be doing well
initially after he was relocated. He slept well the night
(14:24):
he arrived, he was eating well, He was even cheerful
at times. So McGuire was optimistic enough so that he
actually allowed himself some sleep after being awake for about
three days straight. That second night, though, at about one
am on May seven, the Jackson woke up nauseated and
he had a pain on his right side again. By
the time McGuire woke up, he saw Jackson's condition had
(14:45):
gotten much, much worse. The McGuire diagnosed the condition as
pneumonia that had resulted from a contusion in his lung
that had been caused by the general's fault, you know,
when he was being carried back from behind enemy lines.
But from that point on, the General's condition just continued
to get worse and worse. He was exhausted, his breathing
(15:07):
was labored, he was in a lot of pain, and
McGuire called in several other doctors to consult. You know,
he wasn't hogging his patient here. But no matter what
they did, Jackson just got weaker. And Jackson said to
McGuire at this point, quote, I see from the number
of physicians that you think my condition dangerous. Maybe an
attempt for a little stonewall joke here towards the end,
(15:31):
or maybe just an astute observation. But by Friday, Jackson's
wife Anna and his one month old daughter came to visit,
and there are several eyewitness accounts of how Stonewall spent
time with his little daughter, trying to hold her hand
in his injured one. And by Sunday, May Temph, his
wife was weeping and telling Jackson that the doctors had
(15:54):
said there was no hope and um. After that he
asked to see McGuire. Yeah, and Jackson asked McGuire. At
that point, he wanted to know straight up what was
going on, So he said, quote, doctor Anna informs me
that you have told her that I'm to die today,
is it so? And McGuire confirms that, yes, that's the case.
So Jackson kind of turns his eyes towards the ceiling
(16:16):
and after a couple of moments, he says, quote, very good,
very good, It is all right. Apparently he had wanted
to die on a Sunday because he was really religious,
which is another thing that I didn't know about Stonewall Jackson.
I didn't know that either. But Jackson did in fact
die that day, and at the end he seemed delirious,
and at times he would talk as if he was
somewhere else, maybe the battlefield or the mess table, and
(16:40):
the last moments of his are are pretty amazing what
was going through his head, and those have of course
been recorded so we can get a little picture of it.
They're described as thus, here's what he said, order a
p hill to prepare for action, past the infantry to
the front, rapidly tell major hawks. And that sentence was
(17:02):
left unfinished. And then in his writings, McGuire notes that
Jackson kind of smiled and this expression of relief kind
of came over his face, and then he said, quote,
let us cross over the river and rest under the
shade of the trees. And then without any sort of struggle,
he just passed away. So now comes the modern reevaluation
(17:26):
part of the podcast. As we hinted at, modern physicians
and historians have tried to reevaluate McGuire's diagnosis of Jackson's
final illness, which as we mentioned was pneumonia. Um McGuire
didn't have his original notes from that period though they
were confiscated after the war, but he did reconstruct them
three years later. However, he didn't record all the observations
(17:51):
he based his diagnosis on. That's why this is kind
of a story that's open to a little bit of speculation. Yeah,
a lot of his observations were more like a friend
would make the whole recounting of his last words and
saying things like then without pain or the least struggle,
his spirit passed from earth to the God who gave it,
I mean kind as exactly than a doctor writing. So
(18:17):
some agree with McGuire's take that pneumonia was the cause
of death, but there are certain things that make people
a little suspicious of this. Nowhere in McGuire's writings or
in the couple of other writings, there are about this
is coughing mentioned, for instance, and that would be a
sign or a symptom of pneumonia. Others, however, think that
he might have died from a pulmonary embolism or a
(18:37):
blood clot in the lung. The theory hears that the
clots developed in the stump of the left arm, dislodged
and then ended up in the pulmonary arteries. Some still
others think that there was an unspecified injury to another
organ or some other type of infection that led to
his death. Yeah, that pain on the right sign exactly.
As for McGuire, though he stayed with the Confederate Army,
(18:59):
until the end of a war, and afterward he went
to Richmond, established a medical practice there and started teaching
at the Medical College of Virginia. In eighteen sixty six,
he married a woman named Mary Stewart, and they had
nine children together. And McGuire really did a lot for
the city of Richmond over the course of his lifetime. Besides,
I mean widely recognized for his medical talents, he incidentally
(19:19):
had a large practice in obstetrics and gynecology. He also
helped establish a new medical college in Virginia, the University
College of Medicine, and he did a lot to make
sure the poor and indigent in the area had medical care.
He had a number of prestigious positions and appointments, including
the president of the American Medical Association in eighteen ninety three.
(19:39):
Don't you think it's interesting too that he got into
obstetrics and gynecology from being a military field doctor, where
that would not be in your day to day work
at all, after doing all that trauma type surgery. Yeah,
I think that's a really interesting medical about faith. But
McGuire died in Richmond September nineteen hundred, several months after
(20:01):
he'd had a stroke, and in nineteen o four, the
state of Virginia erected a statue of McGuire near one
of Jackson on the grounds of Richmond's Capital. So appropriate
there to have the doctor still tending to the general. Yes,
it is appropriate, almost appointed, I think. Um. But that's
all we have in this installment of our Civil War
(20:22):
mini series today. But if you guys want to suggest
topics for future episodes, you can definitely write to us. UM.
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(20:42):
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(21:04):
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Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame in chalkerate boarding and I'm fared out
And we are continuing on with our look into Civil
War medicine. In the last installment of this little mini
(00:21):
series we've been working on, we examine the life of
Mary Edwards Walker, who was the only woman surgeon formally
engaged for field duty during the Civil War. She was
also the first woman to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor.
And although she'd treat anyone who needed help, Walker was
officially on the Union side. So for this podcast, we're
gonna switch things up a little bit and talk about
(00:43):
a prominent Confederate doctor, doctor Hunter Holmes McGuire, who we've
tried to be diverse with all of the Civil War episodes.
We've been balanced, yeah, showing showing different races, different sexes,
perspective sides of the war. So yeah, well, like you said,
we're gonna be talking about Dr Hunter Holmes McGuire are
today a Confederate doctor, And of course McGuire didn't have
(01:03):
any trouble actually becoming an army doctor like Mary Walker
did simply because of his gender, but he did face
some challenges that were pretty unique to doctors of the Confederacy,
and we're going to talk about that a lot more later.
But the thing that's really interesting about McGuire is that
you almost can't talk about him without discussing his most
(01:23):
famous patient, Lieutenant General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson. Yes, hence
the title of this podcast, and Jackson was of course
one of the most accomplished and revered officers of the
Confederate Army, and McGuire treated him after he received his
final battle wounds and was with him throughout his final
illness and his death because of Jackson's prominence in the
(01:46):
circumstances surrounding his final days, though many modern historians and
physicians in fact have continued to speculate about the true
cause of death involved here and have examined and really
re examined the treatment that he received. So we're going
to focus on that particular moment in Dr McGuire's career,
Jackson's death, but we're going to start by telling you
(02:07):
how McGuire became a Confederate Army doctor in the first place.
This episode really is about him so McGuire was born
October eleventh, eighteen thirty five, in Winchester, Virginia, and he
seemed to grow up with a love for and a
strong interest in medicine, largely because his father, Hugh H. McGuire,
was a physician, so it sort of ran in the family.
(02:27):
McGuire actually used to join his dad on house calls
when he was just a kid, really witnessing the profession
firsthand from a young age. And McGuire's father actually became
dean of Winchester Medical College and a professor of surgery there,
and McGuire ended up doing part of his medical training
there too. After graduating from there in eighteen fifty five,
McGuire went to Philadelphia to study medicine at both the
(02:49):
University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College, which was considered
one of the best med schools around before the war.
And when you look into it a little bit, you'll
see the different sources have slightly differing dates and opinions
about what degrees McGuire received where and to what extent
he took courses, but we don't do know that he
did go there. He soon fell ill, though, and had
(03:12):
to return to Winchester for a little while to convalesce.
He stayed around there for a couple of years and
taught as professor of anatomy at Winchester Medical College, but
still had that itch to further his medical education a
little bit, so he went back to Philadelphia by eighteen
fifty eight and attended Jefferson Medical College again. Um, but
it was well McGuire was studying there in eighteen fifty
(03:34):
nine that abolitionist John Brown rated the US Armory and
Arsenal at Harpersbury, Virginia. And UM, I know lots of
you guys suggest this topic to us, and many, uh
guess who have studied U s history are familiar with it.
But Brown was trying to get weapons to start an
armed slave revault, but his plan failed when he was caught.
(03:55):
So Brown was tried and hanged for treason. But a
lot of Northern abolitionists really saw him as a martyr
kind of a hero for the movement. So the situation
really highlighted the philosophical differences between the North and South,
and that was reflected in what was going on among
the medical students in Philadelphia. This was just to give
you an idea, like a really really big current events
(04:18):
story for them at the time. But by that December
eighteen fifty nine, the Northern medical students, because of John Brown,
because of other things going on in the country, UM
and the Southern medical students were starting to get into
confrontations with each other, and the Southern students got to
the point where they didn't really feel safe at school anymore.
(04:38):
So McGuire worked to arrange for all of the Southern
medical students who wanted to get out of Philadelphia to
transfer to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, and
the school agreed to take them on, accepted all of
their course credits for Jefferson, you know, just really smooth
transition for everybody, And several hundred students took that deal
(05:00):
that McGuire arranged, and McGuire ended up getting a degree
from Virginia Medical College as well in eighteen sixty and
he taught and did more coursework for a little while
after that, spending some time in New Orleans, but eventually
returning to Winchester when state started to secede from the Union.
According to an article by John Hanks in The American Surgeon,
(05:20):
it's not that McGuire was really pro slavery, but he
felt a very strong allegiance to his home state. So
when the war broke out in eighteen sixty one, he
offered his services to the Confederacy, and they really needed him.
According to Hanks, some estimates suggests that only twenty seven
Southern doctors had surgical experience before the war, and McGuire
was one of them, and he had something else going
(05:43):
for him to In addition to that, McGuire had a
lot of experience moving through both Southern and Northern society.
You know, he could interact with different sets of people,
and at a very young age. He was only about
twenty five or twenty six years old at this time,
he had already gotten tons of education, tons of experience.
He'd worked as a professor of surgery, so he just
(06:03):
had the best resume you could ask for for for
this position. So McGuire was commissioned as a surgeon in
May of eighteen sixty one, and his first assignment was
near Winchester with the Army of the Shenandoah, which was
under the command of Lieutenant General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson
at the time. An article by Joe D. Haynes in
America Civil War has kind of a funny description of
(06:25):
their first meeting. Apparently, the first time McGuire presented himself
to Jackson in eighteen sixty one, Jackson just kind of
stared at him and then sent him away. McGuire eventually
did get orders appointing him a surgeon in the Confederate Army,
but it was several days after that. So later on,
after the two got to know each other a little better,
McGuire asked Jackson why his appointment hadn't happened immediately, and
(06:48):
Jackson said, quote, you looked so young. I sent to
Richmond to see if there was some mistake. I wouldn't
want Stonwall Jackson to give me a cold look. I
don't think I would either. After that initial bump, though,
Jackson came to really respect McGuire as a physician, a colleague,
and some sources suggest as even a friend. I mean,
if you look at both their lives, they did seem
(07:09):
to have a few things in common. Even though Jackson,
who was born in eighteen twenty four, was many years
McGuire senior. They were both from the Virginia area, and
they both got involved in the war for similar reasons.
A desire to defend their homes, something you kind of
seen a lot of Virginians in the Civil War, that's true.
Another thing they had in common is that they were
both educators, or they had been educators before the raid
(07:30):
at Harper's Ferry. Jackson had been living this relatively quiet
life as an instructor at the Virginia Military Academy, which
I never knew before. I didn't either. I mean, you
just know the stan Wall legendary stuff, even if you
think you kind of know about him. But McGuire really
proved himself to Jackson early on after the First Battle
of Manassas, when Jackson was shot in the left middle
(07:53):
finger and the physician the general first went to wanted
to amputate the finger. Jackson managed to sort of sneak
off from that doctor and get a second opinion from McGuire,
who was able to successfully treat the wound and save
the fingers. So, you know, even if they're both from Virginia,
they have these things in common. You think that would
be a good bond to establish with your patient, and
(08:17):
it did so. Jackson was impressed, and when he took
the command of the Army of the Valley district. McGuire
became his medical director, and the general wasn't the only
one who held McGuire in really high regard. The doctor
was renowned not only for his surgical ability, but for
his logistical and organizational skills as well. According to Hanks,
McGuire was pretty much doing what the best doctors on
(08:38):
the Union side were doing, but he was doing it
with a lot less. Although the Confederate Army had ample
medical supplies when the war started, as it dragged on,
the supply really diminished. Basically, they had to rely on
seizing Union medical supplies in order to get what they
needed to It was one of the unique challenges of
being a Confederate doctor. And I think that's so interesting too,
(08:59):
sort of an added twists to work that you have
to do. Yeah, it's more than just your skill or
the training you've had, it's what do you have at
your disposal? How can you how can you make it work?
So one of McGuire's biggest challenges, however, wasn't just making
sure they could get supplies, how he could treat people.
It came in the spring of eighteen sixty three, when
Confederate troops confronted the Union Army at Chancellorsville, Virginia, and
(09:23):
prior to this, the Confederate Army had been doing pretty well.
They had had some victories at Manassas and Fredericksburg in
eighteen sixty two, and Jackson had seemed to pretty much
own the Shenandoah Valley during the first couple of years
of the war. But when the Union Army advanced on
Chancellor Bill, things didn't look very good. They outnumber the
(09:43):
Confederates two to one, and they had way more splies,
way more artillery. But amazingly, the Confederates managed to get
the upper hand when Jackson pulled off one of his
trademark flanking maneuvers and blean out that you could explain flanking,
I think I can a little bit. I'm no expert,
but flanking basically meant taking troops on a longer encircling
(10:04):
march around an enemy rather than attacking head on. Attacking
directly would have been suicide in many cases because they
had fewer men and the larger artillery on the other
side too would come into account. Exactly, so Jackson had
become known for preferring this flanking strategy to attacking directly.
He and General Robert E. Lee had realized on May
(10:27):
one of that year that the Union Army had left
its western flank open, so they saw their window of
opportunity and they decided to attack from there, and by
the evening of May second, Jackson and his men were
doing just that. They caught the Union Army completely off
guard and dealt them a pretty serious blow. But Jackson
wanted to take that a step farther and cut off
(10:48):
the Union Army's retreat and try to destroy them completely.
So Stanwell rode ahead with a group of troops to
see what the situation was, kind of a recon group,
and see if cutting off the retreat would actually be possible.
But because it was dark, it was a really dangerous
time to be beyond your own lines, And sure enough,
(11:09):
the Party did end up surprising the eighteenth North Carolina Regiment,
which of course mistook them for Federal cavalry being beyond
their lines and opened fire. Jackson got shot in the
right hand and then two places on his left arm,
and it is, of course one of the most famous
friendly fire incidents of the war. And that's what we're
(11:29):
gonna be talking about for pretty much the rest of
the party. I mean, some people see it as a
real turning point. I mean, if they had actually been
able to cut off the retreat, a lot of people
think what would have happened and just losing Jackson too, Yeah, exactly.
But Jackson managed to stay on his horse, Little Sorrel,
until his aids helped him down, and the General was
then carried on a litter to a receiving area west
of the front lines. But the litter was dropped twice
(11:52):
on the way there, once because the bear got shot,
and again because a bear tripped and fell, and both
times Jackson hit the ground pretty hard from it can
celerable heights, so just adding to his injury. McGuire met
him at the receiving area right away and said, quote,
I hope you're not badly hurt, General, But he could
see right away that Jackson's clothes were soaked with blood
(12:13):
and was displaying all the classic signs of hemorrhagic shock,
cold hands, clammy skin, pale lips and face, and it
didn't look at at all. So McGuire readjusted the bandage
on Jackson's arm to try to kind of slow the bleeding,
and he gave him morphine and whiskey and they transported
him to a nearby field hospital. And here's how McGuire's
writings described Jackson's wounds. There were two wounds in his arm.
(12:38):
The first and most serious was about three inches below
the shoulder joint, the ball dividing the main artery and
fracturing the bone. The second, with several inches in length
of all, having entered the outside of the forearm and
inch below the elbow, came out upon the opposite side,
just about the wrist. So after examining him there, McGuire
realized he was going to have to amputate that left arm,
(12:59):
and he asked Jackson whether that was okay. Jackson replied, yes, certainly,
Dr McGuire, do for me whatever you think best, And
when McGuire gave him the chloroform before operating, Jackson even
said what an infinite blessing before he became unconscious. And
again in his writings, McGuire later wrote that throughout the
(13:19):
whole of the operation and until all the dressings were applied,
Jackson continued insensible and the surgery seemed to be successful,
and Jackson seemed to be doing really well the next day,
though he did complain of a pain on his right side,
So that was sort of foreshadowing things to come, as
we'll see. A major came to receive instructions from him,
(13:41):
and Jackson appeared to kind of know at this point
that he wasn't in any state of mind to give
any instructions. He said, quote, I don't know. I can't
tell say to General Stewart. He must do what he
thinks best. On May the five, General Lease sent instructions
to move Jackson to a station that was twenty six
miles away. Basically, Lee didn't want jack Since so close
to the battlefront because he was afraid federal troops might
(14:03):
capture him. According to Haynes article, Jackson said quote, I'm
not afraid of them. I've always been kind to their wounded,
so I'm sure they'll be kind to me. But Jackson
McGuire did end up making that bumpy long ride together
in an ambulance, and Jackson was taken to a place
called Chandler House, and he seemed to be doing well
initially after he was relocated. He slept well the night
(14:24):
he arrived, he was eating well, He was even cheerful
at times. So McGuire was optimistic enough so that he
actually allowed himself some sleep after being awake for about
three days straight. That second night, though, at about one
am on May seven, the Jackson woke up nauseated and
he had a pain on his right side again. By
the time McGuire woke up, he saw Jackson's condition had
(14:45):
gotten much, much worse. The McGuire diagnosed the condition as
pneumonia that had resulted from a contusion in his lung
that had been caused by the general's fault, you know,
when he was being carried back from behind enemy lines.
But from that point on, the General's condition just continued
to get worse and worse. He was exhausted, his breathing
(15:07):
was labored, he was in a lot of pain, and
McGuire called in several other doctors to consult. You know,
he wasn't hogging his patient here. But no matter what
they did, Jackson just got weaker. And Jackson said to
McGuire at this point, quote, I see from the number
of physicians that you think my condition dangerous. Maybe an
attempt for a little stonewall joke here towards the end,
(15:31):
or maybe just an astute observation. But by Friday, Jackson's
wife Anna and his one month old daughter came to visit,
and there are several eyewitness accounts of how Stonewall spent
time with his little daughter, trying to hold her hand
in his injured one. And by Sunday, May Temph, his
wife was weeping and telling Jackson that the doctors had
(15:54):
said there was no hope and um. After that he
asked to see McGuire. Yeah, and Jackson asked McGuire. At
that point, he wanted to know straight up what was
going on, So he said, quote, doctor Anna informs me
that you have told her that I'm to die today,
is it so? And McGuire confirms that, yes, that's the case.
So Jackson kind of turns his eyes towards the ceiling
(16:16):
and after a couple of moments, he says, quote, very good,
very good, It is all right. Apparently he had wanted
to die on a Sunday because he was really religious,
which is another thing that I didn't know about Stonewall Jackson.
I didn't know that either. But Jackson did in fact
die that day, and at the end he seemed delirious,
and at times he would talk as if he was
somewhere else, maybe the battlefield or the mess table, and
(16:40):
the last moments of his are are pretty amazing what
was going through his head, and those have of course
been recorded so we can get a little picture of it.
They're described as thus, here's what he said, order a
p hill to prepare for action, past the infantry to
the front, rapidly tell major hawks. And that sentence was
(17:02):
left unfinished. And then in his writings, McGuire notes that
Jackson kind of smiled and this expression of relief kind
of came over his face, and then he said, quote,
let us cross over the river and rest under the
shade of the trees. And then without any sort of struggle,
he just passed away. So now comes the modern reevaluation
(17:26):
part of the podcast. As we hinted at, modern physicians
and historians have tried to reevaluate McGuire's diagnosis of Jackson's
final illness, which as we mentioned was pneumonia. Um McGuire
didn't have his original notes from that period though they
were confiscated after the war, but he did reconstruct them
three years later. However, he didn't record all the observations
(17:51):
he based his diagnosis on. That's why this is kind
of a story that's open to a little bit of speculation. Yeah,
a lot of his observations were more like a friend
would make the whole recounting of his last words and
saying things like then without pain or the least struggle,
his spirit passed from earth to the God who gave it,
I mean kind as exactly than a doctor writing. So
(18:17):
some agree with McGuire's take that pneumonia was the cause
of death, but there are certain things that make people
a little suspicious of this. Nowhere in McGuire's writings or
in the couple of other writings, there are about this
is coughing mentioned, for instance, and that would be a
sign or a symptom of pneumonia. Others, however, think that
he might have died from a pulmonary embolism or a
(18:37):
blood clot in the lung. The theory hears that the
clots developed in the stump of the left arm, dislodged
and then ended up in the pulmonary arteries. Some still
others think that there was an unspecified injury to another
organ or some other type of infection that led to
his death. Yeah, that pain on the right sign exactly.
As for McGuire, though he stayed with the Confederate Army,
(18:59):
until the end of a war, and afterward he went
to Richmond, established a medical practice there and started teaching
at the Medical College of Virginia. In eighteen sixty six,
he married a woman named Mary Stewart, and they had
nine children together. And McGuire really did a lot for
the city of Richmond over the course of his lifetime. Besides,
I mean widely recognized for his medical talents, he incidentally
(19:19):
had a large practice in obstetrics and gynecology. He also
helped establish a new medical college in Virginia, the University
College of Medicine, and he did a lot to make
sure the poor and indigent in the area had medical care.
He had a number of prestigious positions and appointments, including
the president of the American Medical Association in eighteen ninety three.
(19:39):
Don't you think it's interesting too that he got into
obstetrics and gynecology from being a military field doctor, where
that would not be in your day to day work
at all, after doing all that trauma type surgery. Yeah,
I think that's a really interesting medical about faith. But
McGuire died in Richmond September nineteen hundred, several months after
(20:01):
he'd had a stroke, and in nineteen o four, the
state of Virginia erected a statue of McGuire near one
of Jackson on the grounds of Richmond's Capital. So appropriate
there to have the doctor still tending to the general. Yes,
it is appropriate, almost appointed, I think. Um. But that's
all we have in this installment of our Civil War
(20:22):
mini series today. But if you guys want to suggest
topics for future episodes, you can definitely write to us. UM.
We know you guys communicate with this a lot, and
we have to thank you for something else that you've
done for us recently, which is a vote for us
in the podcast a War we won. We won the
first place in the education category and we were up
(20:42):
against them really impressive competition. So yeah, I mean, I
hate to say I'm surprised, but I was a little
bit surprised. So yeah, we are super thrilled. First that
you guys nominated us, um, and then that you went
out and voted for us. We are really excited. When
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we had one. Yeah, we need to celebrate. I think
(21:04):
sometimes we definitely will. Maybe we'll take pictures and and
post them of our celebration or maybe not, depending how
it turns out. But please keep sending us awesome ideas.
So we have wonderful things to podcast on Where History
podcast at how stuff works dot com or you can
look us up on Facebook or we're on Twitter at
this industry. And if you want to learn a little
bit more about the Civil War, or rather test your
(21:25):
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Civil War at www dot how stuff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
(21:47):
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