A Federal Surgeon at Sharpsburg

A FEDERAL SURGEON AT SHARPSBURG Edited by James I. Robertson, Jr. Much has been written ofthe bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War. Scores of personal narratives and critical studies have recounted in hourby -hourfashion the September17,1862, struggle waged along the banks of Antietam Creek, and such names as East Wood, Dunker Church, Bloody Lane, and Burnside's Bridge are familiar to every student of the 1861-1865 conflict. Yet the following account of that engagement is unique in that it was written by a Federal physician who saw war not as a contestforthisparticular clump oftrees or that desecratedfield, but rather as a mass maiming ofhuman beings in a chess game waged by officers . The author of the diary from which these recollections were taken was Dr. Theodore Dimon, Acting Surgeon, 2nd Maryland (U.S.) Regiment . Born in Fairfield, Connecticut, September 19, 1816, he was the grandson of Lieutenant Colonel David Dimon, who served with distinction in the Revolutionary War as a member of the Sixth Regiment, Connecticut Line. Another grandparent, Captain Elisha Hihman, commanded the frigate "Alfred" in that war. The future physician was the youngest member of the Yale graduating class of 1835. Receiving his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838, he then set up practices first in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and later in Utica, New York. In 1841 he married Sarah Watson Williams, daughter of a Utica magistrate. Two of three sons were born in that city before Dr. Dimonmovedto Auburn, New York, to become resident physician at the Auburn State Prison, where, with the exception of three years spent in the California gold fields, he remained until the outbreak of war. In April, 1861, the forty-five-year-old doctor volunteered as surgeon in the 19th New York Infantry (which later became the 3rd New York Artillery). He servedwith theunit in North Carolina through June, 1862, when he was transferred to the 2nd Maryland, where he served through the campaigns of Second Manassas, Chantilly, South Mountain, and Sharpsburg. In October, 1862, he rejoined his New York battery. He was mustered out of service shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg, yet he 134 answered the call for physicians and spent weeks caring for the human debris of that three-day engagement. A lack of suitable burial places for the dead moved Dr. Dimon to suggest a soldiers cemetery for New York troops at Gettysburg; with the aid of several officers and government officiah, he obtained approval of the undertaking from Governors Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania and Horatio Seymour of New York. He then acted as volunteer agent in the Relief Service until the end of the war. In this capacity he visited hospitals at Portsmouth, Fortress Monroe, and Norfolk, Virginia, giving what care he could to incapacitated Federals. He returned to Auburn in 1865, resumed his medical practice, and in 1869 was reappointed surgeon of the State Prison. A decade later, he was named superintendent of the Asylum for Insane Criminals. He retired from this post in 1882 and died in Auburn, July 22, 1889, atthe age ofseventy-two. * * * The following excerpt from Dr. Dimon's diary recounts the action around Burnside's Bridge in the early afternoon of that bloody Wednesday . Early that morning Burnside had been ordered by General George B. McClellan, commanding the Army of the Potomac, to launch his attack at once in order to relieve the pressure exerted by Confederate defendersontheoppositeendofthefield . Butforalmostfourhoursthejolly Rhode Islander vacillated, despite the fact that his Ninth Army Corps contained four of the best divisions in the Federal army. Unknown to Burnside at the time, the Confederates he saw massed on the commanding ridge across Antietam Creek and in front of the arched stone bridge were nothing more thanthe skeleton regimentsofRobertToombs's Georgia brigade. Instead of hunching a full-scale attack across the stream, Burnside resigned himself to a series of feelers. In mid-morning General George Crook's brigade moved down hill and attempted to storm the bridge under the support of General Samuel D. Sturgis' entrenched division . When a concentrated fire from the hill beyond drove back Crook's men, Sturgis dispatched a brigade, including the 2nd Maryland, to try...