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”How a One-Legged Rebel Lives”: Confederate Veterans and Artificial Limbs in Virginia
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4 “How a One-Legged Rebel Lives” ConfederateVeterans and Artificial Limbs inVirginia Jennifer Davis McDaid ON 3 JUNE 1861, a cannonball tore eighteen-year-old James E. Hanger’s left leg off at the knee during a skirmish with Union troops at Philippi, the first battle of the Civil War. A student at Washington College in Lexington, he had returned home at the outset of the war and joined Confederate troops on the battlefield. Grievously wounded two days later, Hanger was taken prisoner and had his leg amputated by an Ohio surgeon. After being exchanged for a Union prisoner, the wounded veteran returned home to Augusta County, where he joined the Staunton Home Guard and applied unsuccessfully for a job with the War Department. He later worked as a jeweler and a teacher before achieving success as a manufacturer and inventor of artificial limbs. Years later, Hanger’s niece remembered that a cannonball was prominently displayed in the family parlor. It seemed to the child to be “as large as a man’s head—in reality—it was about the size of a grapefruit .” By then a prosperous businessman with a prizewinning patented limb design, Hanger claimed that the six-pound cannonball had taken his leg, making him the war’s first amputee. It was a dubious honor. Few veterans needed such a weighty souvenir to remind them of the bloody conflict. The twenty-six major battles and over four hundred smaller skirmishes fought on Virginia soil had left their mark in burned homes, empty barns, and limp sleeves.1 While the end of the war brought peace for some, many disabled veterans of the Confederacy struggled to regain physical mobility and economic stability. Using disability applications and other sources, this 119 essay documents the sometimes poignant attempts of war amputees in Virginia to survive and thrive in the postbellum years. Not all proved able to turn their misfortune into an asset as Hanger did; indeed , most found themselves in a struggle to survive comparable to the war itself. Traveling from Mechanicsville to Richmond during the war, Fannie Gaines Tinsley recoiled at the sight of dead and wounded soldiers “strewed on every side” of the road. “I had to keep my eyes shut all the way,” she recalled in 1902, “to keep from seeing the most horrible sights.” Throughout the South, the war’s cost had been immense, leaving 260,000 Confederate soldiers dead and at least as many wounded.2 The war routinely broke bodies in ways that doctors could not mend. Writing from “the stinking hole of Cold Harbor,” the New York surgeon Daniel M. Holt bitterly related the extent of his medical duties during and after the bloody battle: “dressing stinking maggoty wounds 120 JENNIFER DAVIS MCDAID FIG. 4.1. The Walker brothers of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, before and after the war. Both enlisted in the Thirteenth Regiment and each had his left leg amputated. Dr. H. J. Walker (seated on the left in both photographs) lost his leg during the retreat from Gettysburg. His brother L. J. lost his at Fredericksburg. Reproduced by permission of the Library of Virginia. [54.226.25.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:27 GMT) and taking off the mangled tagends of what was once arms, legs, &c.” Amputations, Holt and his fellow surgeons believed, were “the very worst part of the business.” Nonetheless, the procedure prevented infection and gangrene, and was often the only way to save the life of soldiers who ended up in one of the short-staffed and unsanitary field hospitals.3 Surgeons for the North and South together performed approximately sixty thousand amputations during the course of the war. The operation took only minutes in practiced hands. It was best performed by a surgeon and three assistants: one to administer chloroform, one to compress the main artery, and one to support the limb. For circular amputations , the physician cut through muscle and bone and brought skin over the resulting stump, then sewed it shut. For a flap amputation, the surgeon trimmed skin and tissue into a crescent shape, then protected the severed bone with the flaps. A patient’s chances of survival depended in large part on the location of the wound; the closer it was to the body, the more likely the occurrence of severe blood loss and secondary infection.4 Although many soldiers pragmatically accepted amputation as a lifesaving procedure, the experience was nevertheless traumatic. Surgery manuals recommended that the...