February 24, 2016
African American Surgeons and Medical Infrastructure
in Civil War America
Heather Butts
Faculty Associate, Columbia University
African American Surgeons and Medical Infrastructure
in Civil War America
Heather Butts
Faculty Associate, Columbia University
BF Graham, Introducer, and Heather Butts, Speaker
Minutes of the 21st Meeting of the 4th Year
The 21st Meeting of the Old Guard’s 74th year was called to order by President Owen Leach with 71 in attendance. Roland Miller led the invocation. Bill Wakefield read the minutes of the previous meeting. Brown Elmes, BF Graham, Roland Machold and Stephen Schreiber introduced guests. Mr. Elmes’ guest, Knud Christian, is a prospective member of the Old Guard. Mr. Schreiber dryly commented, to appreciative laughter by meeting attendees, that his guest, the retired Princeton professor Jim McPherson, had an ongoing interest in the Civil War.
BF Graham introduced the speaker, Heather Butts. A 1994 graduate of Princeton University, Ms. Butts majored in history, with a concentration in African and American studies. She then received a law degree from St. Johns University in 1997, Master’s Degrees in Public Health from Harvard in 1998 and in Education from Columbia in 2005. A faculty associate at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia, and an adjunct professor at St. John’s School of Law, she is also active in organizations focusing on child development and outreach to underserved youths, and is a founder of an online training and education company.
Ms. Butts began by noting that as a teenager she read books by Professor McPherson and had taken a course he taught at Princeton, both inspirations for the interests she subsequently pursued. She said that researching and writing the two books she has authored, “Healing the Capital During the Civil War Era,” and “Alexander Thomas Augusta, Physician, Teacher and Human Rights Activist,” had been a 20-year process along with her other activities.
Her presentation included photos of individuals involved with the Union Army during the Civil War, and in the medical care received by African-American soldiers. She spoke of President Abraham Lincoln, Union Army Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the African-American physicians Alexander Augusta, Martin Delaney and Anderson Abbott, the caregivers Sojourner Truth and the poet Walt Whitman, and Col. Robert Gould Shaw, leader of the Massachusetts 54th, the all African-American regiment featured in the movie “Glory.”
Ms. Butts quoted several individuals who had commented on African-American soldiers and the medical care received by the soldiers when they were patients.
Whitman, who served as a nurse[1] during the Civil War, said: “There are getting to be many black troops. There is one very good regiment here … They … Have the regular uniform …Others are constantly forming. It is getting to be [a] common sight.”
The author Stephen Oates said of Clara Barton, a nurse during the Civil War, “As Clara moved from bed to bed she showed a special concern for the black patients, touching their cheeks and soothing them.” Barton later founded the American Red Cross.
In her book “Hospital Sketches,” Louisa May Alcott, the author who served as a nurse during the Civil War, wrote, “The next hospital I enter will, I hope, be one for the colored regiments as they seem to be providing their right to … admiration … [and are owed a debt] I shall be so proud to pay.”
Other individuals mentioned as caregivers included Susie King Taylor, Harriet Tubman, Maria Toliver and Jane Isabella Saunders.
Ms. Butts then focused on Dr. Augusta as human rights activist and important provider of medical care to African-American soldiers and to the black community in Washington, DC. Born in Norfolk, Va., he moved to Baltimore, Md., to study medicine with private tutors, applied, but was denied admittance, to the University of Pennsylvania, then completed his medical education and opened a private medical practice in Toronto, Canada. Following the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1893, Dr. Augusta wrote to President Lincoln offering his services, and subsequently received a commission as a physician in the Union Army.
A year later, while on his way to testify in a court-martial, he was detained because he was “obstructed” in his attempt to board the 14th Street trolley car. He wrote about this to the judge advocate and to the assistant secretary of war. Subsequently, trolley car discrimination was banned in the District of Columbia. In the mid-1860s, Dr. Augusta was appointed director of the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington.[2] Later he was appointed a faculty member at Howard University, becoming the first African-American faculty member at a medical school in the United States. Many years later Freedmen’ Hospital became Howard University Hospital.
After Dr. Augusta and several colleagues were denied membership in the American Medical Association and in the Medical Society of the District of Columba, he was one of the founding members of the Medical Chirurgical Society, the first African-American Medical Society in the United States. He is also credited as helping to found the National Medical Association.
A lively Question and Answer period followed Ms. Butts’s presentation.
Some examples:
Q: Did African-American physicians and nurses serve in the Confederate States Army?
A: I have not found any.
Q: Where did black physicians in the Union Army get their training?
A: Dr. Augusta was trained at Yale. Drs. Delaney and Abbott went to Harvard. Dr. Delaney left because other students were not comfortable. Most African-American physicians were trained outside the country or had apprenticeship training.
Q: Were there physical health differences between white and black Civil War soldiers?
A: Black soldiers had nutrition issues when entering the Army and in general were not as healthy as their entering white counterparts. White regiments ate different food and had access to alcohol.
Q: How many African-American physicians served in the army during the Civil War?
A: Fourteen in the entire country, not just in the Washington, area.
Q: What kinds of service did African-American physicians provide, to whom, and were they accepted?
A: They did whatever they were allowed to do. Some white counterparts didn’t want to serve with them.
Respectfully Submitted,
Richard I. Bergman
[1] During the Civil War medical caregivers were called nurses. For example see “Walt Whitman Civil War Poet and Caregiver” on the National Portrait Gallery website.
[2] Freedmen's Hospital began during the Civil War after the start of the Freedmen's Bureau, a social service system. Many freed slaves poured into Washington, D.C., in hopes that their needs would be supplied. Because of these circumstances, the War Department decided to establish a Freedmen's Bureau to create an emergency facility to care for the sick and destitute. Source: aaregistry.org.
BF Graham introduced the speaker, Heather Butts. A 1994 graduate of Princeton University, Ms. Butts majored in history, with a concentration in African and American studies. She then received a law degree from St. Johns University in 1997, Master’s Degrees in Public Health from Harvard in 1998 and in Education from Columbia in 2005. A faculty associate at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia, and an adjunct professor at St. John’s School of Law, she is also active in organizations focusing on child development and outreach to underserved youths, and is a founder of an online training and education company.
Ms. Butts began by noting that as a teenager she read books by Professor McPherson and had taken a course he taught at Princeton, both inspirations for the interests she subsequently pursued. She said that researching and writing the two books she has authored, “Healing the Capital During the Civil War Era,” and “Alexander Thomas Augusta, Physician, Teacher and Human Rights Activist,” had been a 20-year process along with her other activities.
Her presentation included photos of individuals involved with the Union Army during the Civil War, and in the medical care received by African-American soldiers. She spoke of President Abraham Lincoln, Union Army Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the African-American physicians Alexander Augusta, Martin Delaney and Anderson Abbott, the caregivers Sojourner Truth and the poet Walt Whitman, and Col. Robert Gould Shaw, leader of the Massachusetts 54th, the all African-American regiment featured in the movie “Glory.”
Ms. Butts quoted several individuals who had commented on African-American soldiers and the medical care received by the soldiers when they were patients.
Whitman, who served as a nurse[1] during the Civil War, said: “There are getting to be many black troops. There is one very good regiment here … They … Have the regular uniform …Others are constantly forming. It is getting to be [a] common sight.”
The author Stephen Oates said of Clara Barton, a nurse during the Civil War, “As Clara moved from bed to bed she showed a special concern for the black patients, touching their cheeks and soothing them.” Barton later founded the American Red Cross.
In her book “Hospital Sketches,” Louisa May Alcott, the author who served as a nurse during the Civil War, wrote, “The next hospital I enter will, I hope, be one for the colored regiments as they seem to be providing their right to … admiration … [and are owed a debt] I shall be so proud to pay.”
Other individuals mentioned as caregivers included Susie King Taylor, Harriet Tubman, Maria Toliver and Jane Isabella Saunders.
Ms. Butts then focused on Dr. Augusta as human rights activist and important provider of medical care to African-American soldiers and to the black community in Washington, DC. Born in Norfolk, Va., he moved to Baltimore, Md., to study medicine with private tutors, applied, but was denied admittance, to the University of Pennsylvania, then completed his medical education and opened a private medical practice in Toronto, Canada. Following the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1893, Dr. Augusta wrote to President Lincoln offering his services, and subsequently received a commission as a physician in the Union Army.
A year later, while on his way to testify in a court-martial, he was detained because he was “obstructed” in his attempt to board the 14th Street trolley car. He wrote about this to the judge advocate and to the assistant secretary of war. Subsequently, trolley car discrimination was banned in the District of Columbia. In the mid-1860s, Dr. Augusta was appointed director of the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington.[2] Later he was appointed a faculty member at Howard University, becoming the first African-American faculty member at a medical school in the United States. Many years later Freedmen’ Hospital became Howard University Hospital.
After Dr. Augusta and several colleagues were denied membership in the American Medical Association and in the Medical Society of the District of Columba, he was one of the founding members of the Medical Chirurgical Society, the first African-American Medical Society in the United States. He is also credited as helping to found the National Medical Association.
A lively Question and Answer period followed Ms. Butts’s presentation.
Some examples:
Q: Did African-American physicians and nurses serve in the Confederate States Army?
A: I have not found any.
Q: Where did black physicians in the Union Army get their training?
A: Dr. Augusta was trained at Yale. Drs. Delaney and Abbott went to Harvard. Dr. Delaney left because other students were not comfortable. Most African-American physicians were trained outside the country or had apprenticeship training.
Q: Were there physical health differences between white and black Civil War soldiers?
A: Black soldiers had nutrition issues when entering the Army and in general were not as healthy as their entering white counterparts. White regiments ate different food and had access to alcohol.
Q: How many African-American physicians served in the army during the Civil War?
A: Fourteen in the entire country, not just in the Washington, area.
Q: What kinds of service did African-American physicians provide, to whom, and were they accepted?
A: They did whatever they were allowed to do. Some white counterparts didn’t want to serve with them.
Respectfully Submitted,
Richard I. Bergman
[1] During the Civil War medical caregivers were called nurses. For example see “Walt Whitman Civil War Poet and Caregiver” on the National Portrait Gallery website.
[2] Freedmen's Hospital began during the Civil War after the start of the Freedmen's Bureau, a social service system. Many freed slaves poured into Washington, D.C., in hopes that their needs would be supplied. Because of these circumstances, the War Department decided to establish a Freedmen's Bureau to create an emergency facility to care for the sick and destitute. Source: aaregistry.org.