Field hospitals, such as this one established near Mechanicsville in June, 1862, could usually be found near the battlefield. The man in the center foreground is a doctor examining the leg wound of a soldier.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Adams, George W., Doctors in Blue (1952) Cunningham, H. H., Doctors in Gray (1958) Fox, William F., Regimental Losses in the American Civil War (1898) Livermore, Thomas L., Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-1865 (1900, 1956) Phisterer, Frederick, Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States (1883)
V. NAVIES
Naval affairs were among the most critical problems facing each side in 1861. The Federal navy was woefully small and widely scattered. Moreover, the Confederate seacoast extended 3,500 miles from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mexican border. It contained hundreds of inlets, bays, and river openings. Not even a drastically enlarged Federal navy could patrol so vast a region.
Lincoln and his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, soon devised an effective plan. The North would weaken the Confederacy by blockading its chief ports—Norfolk, New Bern, Wilmington, Beaufort, Charleston, Savannah, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston.
A former Hartford, Conn., newspaper editor, Sec. of the Navy Gideon Welles was one of the more industrious and loyal members of Lincoln’s cabinet.
His Confederate counterpart, Stephen R. Mallory of Florida, was one of only two men who remained in Davis’s cabinet throughout the war.