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WHEN RICHMOND FELL TO THE FORCES OF ULYSSES S. GRANT ON April 2, 865, considerable destruction ensued. Among the buildings incinerated were those housing the papers of the Confederate Surgeon General’s Office. Years later a small group of doctors who had served as Confederate medical of- ficers during the Civil War were distressed that they could have no counterpart to “a very large gathering of official records and anatomical samples, in a Government Museum in Washington City.”They came to see themselves as potential primary sources who might meet “for the advancement of science, to rescue from oblivion all the important medical and surgical facts developed in the Confederate army and navy record.” In other words their goal was to replace what had been lost. They did not want Yankee medical information to be the only source available. For these doctors the Civil War was something of a “watershed ”—either propelling them further in their medical career or itself serving as the high point of that career. Therefore they valued their Civil War experiences and wanted to make sure that these were preserved and remembered. While several doctors later claimed a major role in instigating the first meeting of Confederate medical veterans,a gathering of Atlanta physicians on March 28, 874, issued the actual call.Thirty-two former Confederate medical officers, mostly Georgians, responded and met in the Senate chambers at the state capitol on May 20–2.Their temporary chairman, Samuel H. Stout, former medical director of hospitals behind the lines for the Army of Tennessee, explained the purposes of the organization.The group established a number of committees , selected persons to prepare papers on specific medical topics for their 875 “While the Participants Are Yet Alive”: The Association of Medical Officers of the Army and Navy of the Confederacy GLENNA R. SCHROEDER-LEIN 335 meeting, and elected officers, some of whom were not in attendance. These included the new president, former Confederate surgeon general Samuel P. Moore of Virginia, who had sent a letter of support while regretting that he must be absent.2 At the time some of the surgeons blamed the smaller-than-expected attendance on a lack of advertising.This certainly contributed to the problem, for a group of medical veterans in Savannah reported that they had heard about the meeting too late to send a representative. But a substantial article discussing the call for the meeting appeared in the Nashville Union and American on April 8, 874, six weeks before the event, yet no doctors came to the meeting from Tennessee. A more likely cause of mainly local attendance, though not mentioned by the doctors, was the dire economic situation in the South and in the nation as a whole in 874. Much of the southern economic infrastructure had been destroyed during the war and was slow to recover. Stout, who resigned as secretary of the association for personal financial reasons before the 875 meeting, was doubtless representative of many Confederate surgeons who had lost their wealth during the war and never really regained economic security. Travel too probably precluded others who suffered as a result of the panic of 873, which began nationally in September with the collapse of Jay Cooke’s banking enterprises and lasted for six years.3 These economic factors most likely affected the attendance at the 875 meeting in Richmond, where just six of the thirty-four attendees came from outside Virginia. Only one doctor, Edwin D. Newton of Georgia, who had served with the Army of Northern Virginia on the staff of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s medical director Lafayette Guild, attended both meetings. The veterans met in the hall of the House of Delegates on October 9–20. Because their gathering coincided with the annual meeting of the Medical Society of Virginia, which began on October 20, they probably had more physicians in attendance than they would have otherwise. Samuel P. Moore delivered his presidential address, which generally summarized the contributions of the Confederate medical service. Although several doctors had been assigned to prepare and present papers on various Civil War medical topics, none of them did.4 It appears that a conflict arose over the election of officers. Edwin D. Newton objected to selecting new officers because he understood that the group would have Moore as its permanent president and with Richmond as its permanent headquarters in association with the Southern Historical Society . Other...

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