Apr 12, 2018 - Sale 2473

Sale 2473 - Lot 69

Price Realized: $ 1,875
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
DETAILING A MASSACRE OF WOUNDED NEGRO PRISONERS BY CONFEDERATES (CIVIL WAR--MEDICINE.) Order and letter book kept by the surgeons of an Iowa regiment. [96], 121-147 manuscript pages, plus several pages in the rear used for penmanship exercises after the war. Folio, 12 1/4 x 8 inches, original 1/2 calf, worn, with gilt-stamped label of the U.S.A. Medical Department; contents worn, with first 96 pages bound in from another volume, some leaves torn or missing. Vp, 22 December 1862 to 15 July 1865
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This volume was kept by the surgeons of the 29th Iowa Infantry, mostly William Stewart Grimes (1835-1889) and his assistant William L. Nicholson (1832-1890). They recorded the orders they received and their outgoing correspondence to superiors, reporting on their activities. A harrowing 6 July 1864 report by Nicholson describes his capture by the Confederates at the Battle of Jenkins Ferry and the massacre of wounded African-American troops.
In the battle Nicholson found that a lack of medical personnel left many wounded soldiers abandoned on the field. "While endeavoring to place them under shelter and relieve the suffering of those in the temporary hospitals . . . I was taken prisoner by the advance of the rebel cavalry, who appeared soon after the ground was vacated by our troops. . . . Protection was promised but three wounded Negroes were shot in the hospital and all of the same kind who displayed any signs of life on the field were immediately dispatched. . . . Soon after reaching Princeton, six Negroes who had escaped the previous massacre were shot through their heads by a Confederate soldier who entered the hospital for that purpose." Beyond this intensely dramatic passage is a broader picture of the daily challenges facing the regimental surgeon.