[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] History ofmedicine seminar,
one of the specialevents that we're
putting on to mark African-AmericanHistory Month.
I'm very pleased to be able tointroduce Margaret Humphreys.
She is the Josiah CharlesTrent professor
in the history of medicineat Duke University
and she is also a professorof medicine at Duke.
She received herPhD from Harvard
and she is the author ofYellow Fever and The South.
And, Malaria: PovertyRace, and Public Health
in the United States.
Books that explorethe tropical disease
environment ofthe American South
and its role in the Nationalpublic health effort.
Now in the spring of2008, Dr. Humphreys
published her latest book,Intensely Human, The Health
Of The Black Soldier InThe American Civil War.
And this is her topic for today.
She teaches history of medicine,public health, and biology
at Duke University,where she also
edits the Journal ofthe History of Medicine.
Her current researchproject concerns
the impact of the CivilWar on American medicine.
Now just beforeshe starts, I want
to mention that the nexthistory of medicine seminar
will be on WednesdayMarch, 23.
Here in the Lister Hill Auditorium.
And it's a program forWomen's History Month.
Professor Valerie Hartouni ofthe University of California,
San Diego, will speak onReproductive Technologies
and the Post HumanFuture, are we there yet.
So now please help me towelcome, Dr. Humphreys.
[Applause]
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Thank you.
Thank you, Liz.
And to Steven Greenberg whohelped organize my visit
and to whoever else may havebeen involved in planning it.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I particularly ampleased to be here
because the NationalLibrary of Medicine
has supported my research,both with grants as well
as their wonderfulcollections on the historical,
the historical collections here.
And so it's niceto give back some.
And it's also very nice to betalking during Black History
Month and talking inconjunction with the exhibit--
I've got my mic, I hope it's on.
The exhibit which you seea brief version of out
in the lobby here andthere's a Fuller version
over in thehistorical collection.
So I urge you to visit that.
That exhibition is about Blackhealth workers in the Civil
War, my talk is about the Healthof Black soldiers in the Civil
War and they cross.
But they're obviously comingat it in different ways,
whether blacks who workedas healers versus blacks
who were actually soldiers.
So, I'm talking today fromthe book as Liz mentioned.
And some people will askme where it's available.
I'm sure Amazon has it and alsoJohns Hopkins University Press
will be glad to sell you a copy.
I'm almost certain it'sstill in print with them.
And if it's not, tell themto put it out in paperback.
Anyway, so let's see now.
You got all thistechnology here.
Now I imagine that most ofyou, if you know anything
about the Black soldiersin the Civil War,
if you haven't made aspecial study of it.
Know this movie, which ofcourse, starring Matthew
Broderick, Denzel Washington,and Morgan Freeman.
called Glory, which wasabout the 54th Massachusetts
regiment and its experiencesduring the Civil War.
This movie brought thestory of the Black soldiers
to people who hadnever known there were
black troops in the Civil War.
In fact, 1/10 of uniontroops were African-American
and they were key in helpingthe union win the war.
[Movie poster]
So it's good the movieexists but it also
gives a very different imageof the kind of experiences
black troops had on average.
And I'm going to talksome about how I see that.
[Narratives about Black Soldiers slide]
To understand thekinds of things
I'm going to talk about today.
One is to point out that thehistorians of the Civil War
tend to start in 1861 goto 1865, and ignore
the rest of the 19th century.
But you can't reallyrewrite history that way.
And one of the things thathappens with the Civil War is
all sorts of discussions frombefore the war-- continue to get
transformed, get changedby the events of the war.
And so you cantrace at least three
or four narrativesabout African-Americans
through the war experience andthe black soldier experience
and some of those narrativeshave to do with health issues.
Now, the Glory narrative, ifyou will is a heroic narrative.
It's about black men fightingfor their own freedom,
it's about blackmen gaining respect
from their fellow white troops,who first denigrate them.
It's about selfliberation and black men
liberating blackslaves in the South.
And that focus on the Civil War.
You could mix in theEmancipation Proclamation,
the great stepsforward the war brings.
And that's one line whichis a very glorious line.
There's a secondnarrative though about
medical differences,Africans versus whites
that begins before the warand discussions of how slaves
or black bodies aredifferent, carries
through the war withanalysis of what
happens to the blacktroops as they come
under the view of thewhite doctors in the North
and how that warturns out for them
in terms of health and disease.
And then finally,there's something
that I label theAnxiety narrative.
It's hard to put a label on it.
[...]
One needs to be careful to see--
to think that all the peoplein the union were very pro
slaves and abolitionists,which is not true.
They were often just as racistas their Southern fellow
Americans.
And they were also quiteworried that all those slaves
were, if we liberate theslaves what's going to happen.
Are they going to move North arethey going to become citizens,
are they going to overrunus, can they really
take care of themselves.
The Southerners were sayingyou can't make citizens out
of these fourmillion black slaves
because they can'tfeed themselves.
They don't know how totake care of themselves
when they're sick etcetera, et cetera.
So there's an Anxiety narrative
about if we do thisbig change, what's
going to happen next.
All these narrativesget interwoven
during the war in talkingabout the black soldiers.
Now some of thequestions about how
blacks weredifferent than whites
that Northern elites, the kindapeople who write things down
had include, as Isaid, can he become
an independent citizenwho supports himself
and his family.
Since most slaves ofcourse didn't do this
because they weren'tallowed to do it.
Will he maintain his health,will he behave lawfully,
and vote responsibly?
Is he physically differentthan the white man,
in biologically important ways?
More prone to diseases,more or less intelligent?
Well, they knew that, theywere sure they knew that.
More able to work incertain environments?
If you make him a soldier, willhe fight or will he run away?
Some people even askare black men human
or are they a differentspecies somehow,
halfway between animaland real humans of course,
defined as white people.
What about mulattoesare they even fertile?
And this question wassincerely ask in the 1850s.
Should blacks be thoughtof as property like cows
or as people?
[Abraham Lincoln photograph]
Now just to make itclear that it wasn't only
horribly rabid racistto ask these questions,
Lincoln said in hisLincoln Douglas debates.
There is a physical differencebetween the white and black
races, which I believewill forever forbid the two
races living together onterms of social and political
equality.
So these questions, theseassumptions are pervasive even
among those you might thinkof is the most well-meaning
in Northern society.
So the American Civil Warbrings new answers and new data
to all of these questions.
OK.
Now a very brief calendar ofevents in 1862 and 1863 as it
relates to my topic.
Ignoring small otherevents like say the Battle
of Shiloh and so forth.
So in 1862, refugee slavesforced the first discussion
of Emancipation as uniontroops increasingly
invade pockets ofthe South and slaves
rushed to the union camps.
Union soldiers andunion leaders have
to do something about them.
Had to decide what theirpolicy is going to be.
And this makes itclear that if the union
does win, what are they goingto do with all these slaves,
or brings that question up.
You see the evolution ofcontraband policy, which
I'll talk about in a second.
And even a congressionalcommittee or commission
that looked at thewhole question of how
the freedmen, the beginning ofthe discussion of how freedmen
if they are broughtinto being liberated
slaves, how theyare to transform
into American citizens.
That explore questions like,do black people get married?
They just didn't know.
So what's a contraband.
In 1862, General Benjamin Butlerwas at Fort Monroe in Virginia
and they were startingto deal with slaves
who had come into the Unioncamps or into the Union sphere,
and he was asked, whatdo we do with them?
And Butler wasfrom Massachusetts,
he wasn't a fullfledged abolitionist,
but he was at least sympatheticto the cause and he said,
these men are contraband of war.
Meaning and it's notparticularly complimentary
thing to say, black menthat come into our camps
are just like if we capturedtheir mules or their horses
or their wagons or theircorn, it's contraband of war
and they're ours now.
Now realize the Fugitive Slavelaw was still on the books.
And you're supposed tosend captured slaves back,
but Butler says, no the slavesare important to the war effort
just like horses, mules,they're contraband,
and not going to be sent back.
This had a lot of resonanceamong Northern abolitionists
and anti-slavery folks.
One of the things Idid in the Civil War
is make envelopeswith old cartoons
in the corner andstationery and so forth
and so you see this cartoon.
"Come back here youblack rascal."
"Can't come back nohow massathis child's contraband."
So you see him go andnenna and inana over here
at Fortress Monroe.
Now that's 1862 as I said,this is from a very limited
perspective.
On the 1st ofJanuary 1863, Lincoln
issued his EmancipationProclamation,
freeing all the states.
To bring all the slavesin the states that
are under rebellion,namely the states
he doesn't haveany control over.
But never mind, it's atleast a major statement
that those slaves are free.
That left by the way.
Union states with slavesand slavery intact.
So there's still slaveryin Kentucky, in Maryland,
in Missouri, and Arkansas.
So he only freed themin states in rebellion.
That spring is whenthere for example,
draft riots in New York City.
The Irish are rebelling.
The poor are tiredof being called upon
to die when so manyhave already died.
And the union is starting tofeel the pressure of where
are we going to getenough troops to continue
this war, which was becomingincreasingly unpopular.
And Lincoln finally agreedto start drafting, not
drafting but enlistingblack men in large numbers.
A lot of people were doubtful,this was a good idea,
but that summer.
You see the battlesof Battery Wagner,
where the "Glory" guys die.
Milliken's Bend in Port Hudsonon the lower Mississippi-- people
start to say, yeah,they can't fight.
Yes, this is a reasonable plan.
So by the end of1863, more and more
Northerners would come to agreethat the black man properly
led, made a good soldier.
This had been in questionnow, it had been shown.
And many acceptedthe transition mantra
that you see overand over again.
We'll take slaves, willturn them into soldiers,
and they'll come outready to be citizens.
So slave to soldier to citizen.
And this comes in an era whenpeople are still talking about
whether black menare animals or not.
So this rather rudecartoon from Harper's
Weekly in January 1863.
So you have the blackgentleman there on the left.
“Ugh! Get out. I ain’t one ob you no more. I’se a Man, I is!“
There's a lot oftalk about what's
it going to take to makeAfrican-American males into men
into citizens.
[...]
So, Frederick Douglass of course,one of the great abolitionist
thinkers and writers, putsome of this into words
and then Ken Burns hadMorgan Freeman say it:
“Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S.--
[Music, The Battle Hymn of the Republic]
Let him get aneagle on his buttons
and a musket on his shoulder,bullets in his pockets.
There's no poweron Earth which can deny
that he has earnedthe right to citizenship
in the United States."
[Music ends]
I played this clip in Charlestonand before I started I said
is it legal to playthe Battle Hymn
of the republic in Charleston.
It got a laugh there too.
OK.
So this is the 24th regimentUS Colored Troops flag
and it says, you seethis the sentiment.
I don't know if youcan see it the way this
is projected, but says upthere let soldiers in war
be citizens in peace.
So some officersanyway took this
on as an important functionof their leadership
that they not only trainedthem to be soldiers
but they brought inteachers to teach them
to read in this sort of thing.
But other peoplesaid, they're really
good at being trained tobe soldiers because they're
like children, they like tomatch, and they like music,
and they've got rhythm,and all this sort of stuff,
and they're accustomedto obedience.
I just wanted tothrow this and not
everybody saw this gloriouspath to citizenship.
So now this is supposedto be about the health
of the Black soldier andwe're finally getting there.
The question that comes upis having already decided
whether the blackman has the willpower
and the mental abilityto be a good soldier,
is he physically strong enough.
Now you might think thatif you were comparing
men who could work 10 hoursin the sun of Mississippi
picking cotton to some whiteguy sitting on the veranda,
that there'd be noquestion about who's
physically stronger.
But of course, any sortof narrative that ranks
the races in themid 19th century
has to make whitepeople the strongest
and to talk aboutinherent weakness
of the African-Americans.
So they're down the list.
So there's these broad questionsabout biological differences.
And one of the ways thedebate changes during the war
is that black men die in verylarge numbers from disease.
In the contraband camps,these camps that form up
around the Union troops,they're refugee camps,
they're not runby the Union Army,
they're toleratedby the Union Army.
The mortality ratein the year tended
to be as high as 25%,men and women.
These black soldiersdied at higher rates
than white soldiers of disease.
So some notice wastaken and these results
had to be interpreted.
The probably worstregiment that we
have data for and onehistorian has very carefully
gone through every person whois enrolled in that regiment,
not me did this.
Found that the regimentenrolled just over 1,700 men
and 772 of them died of disease.
Horrific.
In this regiment saw nobattle, so you can't blame it
on battle or battle conditions.
So they didn't knowwhat this meant.
Did it mean that blackmen were physically weaker
than white men?
Were slavery's defendersright and the black man
would not thrive in freedom.
So some data, whichis lousy data.
Just to say that straight out.
And I could do a whole talk onwhy the data for Black Civil
War soldiers is so terrible,partly because they didn't care
as much about writing it down.
And we could go on and on.
But still it givesyou a ballpark figure
of what the differenceswere and people,
even if they disagreed aboutthe actual numbers talk
about the distinctions.
So about the deaths fromdisease per 1,000 men about one
in seven of theirofficial category
was US Colored Troops,USCT, about one
in seven died of diseaseduring the war and about 1
in 62 died in battle.
That's because they didn't putthe black men in battle as much
and that's a separate issue.
White volunteers 1 in 17died of disease and 1 in 29
died in battle.
So for some reason,the difference
in mortality from diseasewas markedly higher
in the Black troops.
Another way to look at it isto compare disease mortality
to battle mortality it was 8 to1 for Black troops and 2 to 1
for white troops.
So-- why?
Now you can ask why in termsof a modern perspective
or asked why in termsof what they said.
So let's start witha modern perspective.
The first thing to sayis the Massachusetts 54th
was not typical of USColored Troops that's
the Glory regiment.
Matthew Broderick,was a really nice guy
and most of the leadersof the black troops
were not really nice guys.
They were not driven byabolitionist tendencies,
they were not driven by adesire to elevate and reform
their troops, they weredriven by the desire
to get an officer'spay and they were
willing to put up withthe fact that they were
leading Black troops to get it.
We know this from a lot ofletters home and whatnot.
In general werenot led by officers
that would have beenofficers of white troops.
They were goodenough black troops,
but they weren't goodenough for white troops.
The Mass-54th was tiedto a particular state.
The governor wasinvolved, the governor
was interested in their outcome.
Most of US Colored Troopswere just federal troops.
They didn't have a state tobe tied to and with any kind
of local support.
And the Mass-54th had peoplewho could read and write.
That little guy in the moviewith the little glasses
and whatnot, he could write.
Most troops would have beenilliterate and unable to speak
for themselves andadvocate for themselves.
The 140,000 more or lessof the black troops,
they were maybe 186,000in all-- were ex slaves.
And some of them wereactually bought off
the plantations of Kentucky,in Maryland, in Missouri,
and Arkansas.
Now of course this is theslave belt, the black belt.
And you can imaginethat or you probably
know that most of theCivil War, Mississippi,
except for thecoastal on the river
Alabama, Georgia, untilSherman's March, and much
of South Carolina wereout of union hands.
But the union has a lotof contact on the coast
here, Northern Virginia,they control Kentucky,
they get West Tennessee, andMiddle Tennessee fairly early,
they control Missouriand Arkansas,
and parts of West Texas.
So they are enrolling exslaves who belong to rebels,
so therefore they'reofficially free
or they buy slaves fromloyal Kentucky slave owners.
Some of them resisted.
It's hard for me to get in themind of a Kentucky slave owner
in 1864, who's fighting sellinghis slave to the Union army,
like he doesn't get thepicture of where this is going.
But still it's not our image ofglory of a recruiting officer,
actually buyingmale slaves, which
is what he did for the army.
So why does this matter?
Well, this is just somepictures of who these guys were.
I think also the kindof lost and scared look
of some of them.
This picture and thenext one was commonly
shown to go from slave tofree man or slave to citizen.
They put to thesepictures side by side,
but it gives you someconcept of from where
they came to where they went.
Most of these ex-slaveswere illiterate.
It was illegal toteach slaves to read.
In most Southernstates they couldn't
advocate for themselves, theycouldn't write to somebody
and complain.
They arrived incamp malnourished,
diseased, poorly clothed.
They should have been exempted,but recruiting officers
didn't care thatthey had aspects
that would have kept them outif they'd been white troops
and they had no advocacy group.
They were treated assecond class soldiers.
We think of the Civil Warsoldiers as glorious person
that everybody rah-rah along,but by the middle of the war
they needed cannon fodderand these guys were it in it.
They were semi slavesin the Union Army.
They received much lower pay.
They couldn'tbecause of that pay
buy extra food to supplementthe rations the army gave them.
They receive poor qualityrations, poor quality tents,
shabby clothing, poor qualityfirearms that didn't work,
and their officers didn'tdo much to defend them.
Now I've heard people say,but yes the Union troops--
the regular troops also hadpoor tents and blah blah.
But we know that becausethey wrote letters home
and they complained andthe governor got mad
and he called the generaland something happened.
Black troops couldn't pullthat kind of influence.
So, this was also manifestedin the medical care
of the black soldiers.
There weren't enough doctors,there wasn't enough medicine,
their hospitals wereterrible, and they didn't
get the rest they needed.
OK.
So one of the problems wasjust finding enough doctors.
It's 1863.
All the doctors who wantto be in the Union Army
are already in it.
Maybe there's afew new ones who've
come through medicalschool, but most
of the guys who would havebeen in medical school
are in the army.
They've dropped outof medical school.
They're doing something else.
The doctors supplyis very scarce.
So one general who was involvedin recruiting black troops
said maybe we couldturn hospital stewards
into surgeons, because afterall these are black troops,
they don't have to be--
they don't have to have thefirst class M.D. quality
medical care.
Hospital stewards were tosome extent pharmacists, often
they were trained onthe spot by doctors.
They had some medicalknowledge, but not often they
had more than themedicine knowledge but not
the surgical knowledge.
And Lorenzo Thomascountered this idea.
He said, we shouldn't do this.
But we know from thefact that he fought it
that other commandersallowed hospital stewards
to become the medicalofficers for black regiments.
And we have another letterfrom Nathaniel Banks
who was involvedin the supervision
of the department that includesLouisiana, Southern Missouri.
Who pointed outthat, well, maybe you
might think thathospital stewards are
fine for black troops, but blacktroops it's not like they're
just all isolated andnot near white troops.
So what do you do if you haveBlack troops and white troops
in battle and here's awhite guy who's injured
and the only doctor availableis this poorly trained steward,
this isn't going to work.
So the officersremember, they have
white officers, saidwe need real doctors,
because we're like valuablepeople we're white men.
And so, again theyhad this debate.
Banks actually tried toget new medical graduates.
And he hired someguys who were students
and we know that one blacksoldier at least in Texas
didn't think muchof these students.
The doctors visits themabout three times a week
and they do more harm than good.
They poison the soldiers.
They are called doctorsbut they are not.
They're only studentswho knows nothing
about issuing medicines.
I think patients arestill complaining
about medical students,but these particularly
seem to have even ablack soldier could
tell they didn't know anything.
So one solution to thisproblem is why don't we
get black doctors forblack patients they'll take
good care of them and so forth.
Well, first of all, thereweren't very many of them.
But we know thata few guys tried
to get commissions in theUnion Army as black men
to get commissionsas black doctors.
The most famous of themis Alexander Augusta,
who surfaces duringthe Civil War,
trying to do this becomesafter the war an advocate.
One of the people who helpsstart Howard medical school
and the NationalMedical Association.
Throughout his careerhe is an advocate
for civil rights for blacks ingeneral and for black doctors.
So in January 1863, in lieu ofthe Emancipation Proclamation
has just come outhe writes Lincoln,
"I beg leave to apply toyou for an Appointment
as surgeon to some ofthe coloured regiments...
where I can be ofuse to my race."
So Lincoln gets the rightpeople to examine him,
he gets appointed as a major andsurgeon of the 7th US Colored
Infantry in April 1863.
Major is a fullfledged surgeon, he's
also a commissioned officer.
The assistantsurgeons were white.
"This is wrong, it's grave,it's unjust and humiliating."
said the white surgeons,because suddenly you
have white men beingcommanded by a black man.
This cannot stand.
"This thing of amalgamationor miscegenation in the
appointment of officersI do not believe in."
Wrote this surgeon who wouldhave been under Augusta writing
to John Sherman of Ohio,William Tecumseh's brother.
Sherman was a Senator from Ohio.Big uproar and hoop-dee-doo
and white doctors sayingwe cannot serve under black
doctors.
So the surgeon generalsends Augusta to Baltimore
to serve as a recruitingdoctor to examine recruits
so he doesn't haveanybody underneath him,
but he does leave the war witha brevet rank of Lieutenant
Colonel which makes him thehighest ranking black officer
in the American Civil War and hegoes on to these other events.
So if you go tothe exhibit, you'll
see this picture of JohnVan Surly DeGrasse, which
I stole from their website.
He's the only othercommissioned surgeon.
After all this whoopty do theystopped commissioning surgeons.
I must say DeGrasselooks very light to me.
If you looked at this pictureyou wouldn't necessarily
say he's an African-American.
And this highlightsthe fact that many
of the African-American doctorswe know about from the war
would not have been seenas black in their time,
but would have beencalled mulatto.
And perhaps got theireducation and so forth
because their whitefather was able to fund
some of their education,but that's just supposition.
At least eight men werehired as contract surgeons
meaning you avoid thecommissions during the war.
And one of theconfusions is that you
have contrabandhospitals such as one
here in DC, which tookcare of the black freedmen
as well as the blacksoldiers so you
get this mix of essentiallya quasi VA with a Freedmen's
Bureau Hospital.
And they're the black doctorswere seen as more acceptable.
There were never enough doctorsfor the Black regiments.
And that US Colored Infantrythat lost 700 and 1,700,
it'll give you anidea of why when you
look at their doctor career.
The regiment was gathered inSt. Louis in the winter of 1863,
'64.
Now a regiment issupposed to have
one surgeon, fourfledged surgeon, and two
assistant surgeons.
So surgeon 1, one yearout of medical school
appointed for surgeon January1864, developed a hernia,
he was gone by the summer.
Surgeon 2, joinedin April 1864, he
was dead one monthlater of diarrhea.
Surgeon 3 joined in August 1864,to which point you might say,
but wait a minute, they don'thave a doctor at all in July,
Yeah, well that's true.
Joined in August1864, he got sick
and he left inNovember on disability.
And then there's a guywho joins in August 1864
and lasted for a year.
So while this regiment isdying in such large numbers
of disease, theydon't have doctors.
So what?
Given mid 19th century medicalcare weren't they better off
without doctors.
And I beg to differ.
All right.
So this is the time ofso-called heroic medicine.
When doctors treatedfevers with bloodletting,
they used a lot ofmedicines we now know
as toxic such as Calomel,it's a mercury compound.
And so you might argueyou'd be better off
without a doctor giving youthese things than with one.
But there were certainthings that doctors
did in the Civil War thatdid make a difference
and made a positive difference.
They organized afield evacuation
and getting the sickoff the battlefield
so you don't die of dehydration,two days after the battle
because you can'twalk and nobody
is getting you any water, orgetting you out of there.
There were effective medicalinterventions, quarantine
being one of the major ones.
Chloroform was very helpful ifyou happen to be having surgery
and they did havechloroform and ether,
and opium which could help youwith diarrhea and with pain
or other opium compounds.
The most importanteffective interventions
was available in the hospital.
Food, warmth, hydration, rest.
And somebody tosay that man needs
food, warmth, hydration, rest.
He should not be living in thattent lying on a wet blanket,
we should get himin the hospital.
These may seemobvious, but it wasn't
until somebodyorganized, he created,
it created a clean hospital,and took care of guys.
Surgery this is a grim19th century surgery kits.
Save lives when a leg hadbeen shattered or whatnot.
And the wound ofcourse it took some too
because there was noantisepsis, but many,
many men survived theamputations in the war
and it saved their lives.
Further medical officers or whocontrolled furloughs and rest.
And a Furlough was beingallowed to go home for 30 days
or 90 days or whatnot and getover whatever is wrong with you
or just to say oflike modern day you
need a note from your doctorto get off work for three days.
The medical officers controlledthat to that if you're sick
and not diggingditches or whatnot
you're better off than if you'remade to do that kind of work
while you're ill.
So the Colored Troopsin general were
worked more in slave like ways.
And so the doctors sayingstop that was important.
The white doctors wereoften insensitive and cruel
to the black soldiers.
We have a lot ofinformation about that.
They shared southernassumptions that the black man
was lazy and proneto malingering
and had decreased empathy.
And so they were less likelyto advocate for improvement
for the guys.
So what medicalofficers they had
weren't necessarilygood ones and they
didn't serve these functions.
Now finally and we could talka lot about this epidemiology
was against them too.
All those guys whohad been slaves
had lived largely inisolated rural settings,
they never had the childhooddiseases measles, mumps,
rubella, and in thattime period smallpox.
And so when they weregathered together,
they tended to get them all,one after the other.
They also were susceptibleto things like pneumococcus
from crowding in barrackswhich they might not
have seen at all.
That exposure mattered.
And the union deliberatelyput the black troops in areas
with malariabecause they thought
they would do better therethan whites or at least
were more expendablethan whites.
So I want to talk about justa few examples of places
when things went really bador badly for black troops
and that we have someinformation about them.
The first is Bentonbarracks in St. Louis.
We know about this because ofa man named Ira Russell, who
wrote reports and sent themto the United States Sanitary
Commission, whosepapers have been saved.
And so we know aboutwhat he had to say.
This was a gatheringpoint for black recruits
from Missouri,Kentucky, and Tennessee.
We know theirhousing was terrible.
It was the middle ofwinter, they were not warm,
they got rainedon, and so forth.
And many of theseregimens as I gathered
didn't have doctors yet andthere were rampant outbreaks
of meningitis,pneumonia, smallpox,
measles with veryhigh mortality.
Amidst all these, Russellwas having trouble
getting them hospital bedsbecause the army was sure
that they had to strictlysegregate the black guys
from everybody else.
And so the black guysare waiting for beds
while there's lotsof white beds and he
couldn't get them released.
And one of the thingsRussell did is do a lot of,
he did a lot of autopsieswhich we'll talk about a bit
later, trying tounderstand why they were
dying in such high numbers.
In Port Hudson, Louisianathe aftermath of one
of their famousbattles the troops
are garrisonedmeaning they are put
there to guard now theMississippi River in this spot.
There was a highly malariousarea, the southern part
of the Mississippi River.
They thought the black troopswere better there, because they
wouldn't get as much malaria.
Some didn't even thinkthey needed quarantine
if they got sick.
They were camped in an areawith a very high water table.
They actually werecamped in an area where
men had been buriedfrom prior battles
and they weresinking their wells
through these burying groundsand dysentery was rampant.
Because the highwater table meant
the Privy and the watersupply are connected.
And they weren't allowedto do local foraging,
the Union Army wasworried about incidents
between the blacktroops and the locals,
so they didn't let them ingo out and find more food.
They didn't have enoughfood and they got scurvy.
In Texas, an islandcalled Brazos Santiago,
which is just Southof South Padre
Island, which of course is ahighly valuable beachfront now.
In the summer of 1865, when youmight think this was all over,
there's a huge outbreak ofscurvy among black troops.
Where they didn'thave enough water,
their officers werecompletely inept
and their doctors were busyimporting things like--
importing things fromMexico and selling them
to the local inhabitantsusing the money they had
rather than buyingthings for the men.
So you have men in thehospital for scurvy
who are being fed coffee andhardtack which is crackers.
And they didn't care.
People some like2/3 of the troops
were sick with scurvyand their officers
knew exactly how to treatscurvy and they weren't
making any effort to do it.
So you see in these casesepidemiology, the crowding,
uncaring officers.
Bad assumptions about theblack troops and their health
all can come together tocreate high mortality.
It was widelyrecognized at the time
that the black troops weredying like flies, if you will.
And it called for aninvestigation, study,
and explanations.
This built on this Northernfascination with the black body
that somehow it'sgoing to be different.
They sufferpneumonia differently
or malaria differently,what can we find out.
And one of the thingsthey do is autopsies
were very big inthat time period.
Did I see Michael [?]Sepulchers, there is.
One [?] autopsies just came.
It was one of themajor forms of research
in the mid 19thcentury and they looked
for what's the difference,black and white in these bodies.
There studying inthis in every way
they can know they haveall these black bodies
at their command.
Now this is a page from theCentury Commission papers
Ira Russell's autopsyresults from St. Louis
and the BentonBarracks and all these.
Every line hereis a guy who died
and I realize youcan't read that
but that's a fullspan of the page.
And this is the sort ofinformation he gathered.
So here's the guy'sname, his rank,
and they're all private ispretty much, he's regiment.
And the company number.
And this fascinates me.
This is what color the guyis and almost none of them
are black.
They're 1/8 white,1/4 white, 3/16 white.
I have this sense of themwith Sherwin-Williams strips,
saying know what color isthe skin, how white is he,
because they're fascinatedby the question of mulattoes.
And many of theslaves in the West,
in this area in Missouri,Kentucky, Northern Arkansas
were mixed race blacks.
The Joel Williamsonhas written about this
that a lot of the mixed raceslaves were sold in that area
to get them away fromthe wives in Virginia.
Who were mad about theexistence of these people.
Just an example.
This is the brain is one of thecategories you see it flipped.
And so you get aeffusion into the ventricle
or in the arachnoidcondition wait.
So they described it they way--there wasn't a whole lot else
they could do.
They didn't do muchmicroscopic in this.
And so spleen, intestines,stomach, left lung, right lung,
and heart.
About the only thingRussell was able to conclude
after looking at some 500 slavesor 500 black men who died.
One thing you can seeis when tuberculosis
comes into his system.
He sees his firstTB case in February
after documenting forexample, a whole bunch
of cerebral spinalmeningitis cases
and pneumonia cases in January.
So you get a pieceof information
that know these peopledidn't have TB until they
got exposed to soldiers.
The second kind of researchthey did to send out surveys.
The US Sanitary Commissionlove to send out
surveys about things.
And one of thethings they surveyed
is what is your experiencewith black guys.
And so they ask doctors,why are they weak?
What diseases arethey susceptible to?
What sort of therapies do theyget and are they different
and how they respondto those therapies?
And do you see whatthey call as mulattoes
is having these thingsdifferently than pure blacks
or pure whites.
So they gather allthat information,
which was as you mightimagine fairly conclusive.
And then finallyBenjamin Gould, who's
known for doing thesemeasurements of white soldiers.
Did measured all sorts ofthings about the bodies
of soldiers blackand white, how tall
they are, how longtheir arms were,
where their fingers touched,what their lung capacity was,
how strong they were, hetried to measure endurance
and to compare black and white.
About the only thing conclusivethat comes out of his study
is that black lungcapacity didn't seem
to be as greatas that of whites.
So they did all the study, theytalked about it, they surveyed
and what conclusionsdid they come to.
Well, this guy theProvost Marshal General,
who's one of theleaders of the war
said having lookedat the statistics.
Well, "The Negro in the conditionin which the war found him"
like it's not our fault, hewas a slave before the war.
"Was less able thanthe whites to"
"endure the exposures andannoyances of military service."
I love the thought of militaryservice having annoyances.
"It is merely suggested that itis moral rather than physical"
"that the great susceptibilityof the colored man to disease"
"rose from lack of heart,hope, and mental activity."
And that a lot ofpeople think that.
Well, actually if youlook at Fry's own data,
they didn't think that at all.
But Fry wants it to bethat the black men just
didn't have the mental strengthand this trait of endurance,
which is sort of amental characteristic
that of course whiteguys have and he doesn't
see the black guys as having.
Roberts Bartholow who wasa leading Midwest physician
said, "The negro soldieris unquestionably less
enduring than the whiteless active vigilant
and enterprising, moregiven to malingering."
Most of these are mental traits.
Enduring, active vigilantenterprising, lying.
But Ira Russell thefellow in St. Louis who
did those autopsiesand did try to advocate
for the black troops said it'sbecause they were treated bad.
"It is often said even by surgeonsin charge of colored regiments
said it is of no use todoctor a sick negro that he
will die do what you may.
I am satisfied that no greatermistake can be committed.
When I hear a surgeonmaking such a statement,
I regard it as evidenceof culpable indifference
and neglect."
"Among no class ofpatients have I
seen better resultsfrom treatment
than among colored soldierswith proper care and study
has been given to their disease."
So, Russell is oneof the lone voices
to say, it's becausethey've been mistreated
and you treat them well, theydo just as well as anybody else.
Now the only use I've seenof Russell's autopsy data
published use and Russelldoesn't publish anything
about this whichis disappointing.
[?] data, Sanford Huntwho publishes his paper
to the anthropologicalreview in 1869,
another union soldier saysthat from Ira Russell's data
that the black brain issmaller than white by 5 ounces.
And he also has blacks aremore susceptible to pneumonia,
they are equallysusceptible to malaria.
And overall there's notmuch result from this.
Old assumptions are tenacious.
One is he was surprisedto not find much TB
because Northern doctors whohad seen black men in the North
saw a lot of TB, but when youlook at black men who have not
lived in the citiesof the North there
was very little tuberculosis.
These all feeds into a later19th century discussion
about black mental powers beingdeficient, the black brain not
being as strong as whites,that supposedly grows out
of these attitudesfrom the Civil War.
So these are notbenign conclusions.
You see discussionsof late 19th century
that the black race is justgoing to dwindle and disappear
because they are unable totake care of themselves.
They die of diseasemore than whites,
they lack the mentalpowers, et cetera.
And it continues thisdiscussion about the Civil War
and draws all theseconclusions incorrectly
from what happened there.
So instead of seeingthe disease mortality
of black soldiersin the Civil War
as an indictment of theirtreatment by the Union Army,
most contemporaryobservers concluded
the black man was intrinsicallyweaker than the white.
This argumentpresaged assumptions
about racial degenerationthat would follow later
in the century.
But there was onedissent which is
what gives my paper itstitle in my book its title.
These two officerswere in the scenes
of South Carolina amongthe earliest places
where black troopswere recruited,
they're bothMassachusetts people
of abolitionist tendencies.
And they got the UScentury commission
survey about how blacksare different from whites.
And "General Saxton,examining with some
impatience a longlist of questions
from some philanthropiccommission at the North
respecting the traits andhabits of the freedmen.
bade some staff-officeranswer them all in two words,
"Intensely human."
We all admitted that was astriking and comprehensive
description.
So thanks to the NationalLibrary Medicine.
ACLS, National HumanitiesCenter, the Trent Family,
and Duke University.
So I'll be glad toanswer your question.
[Applause]
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] Don't go away.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] I'm not.
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] We have time forquestions, comments.
You which should havea mike in front of you.
If you press the littlebutton, the red light comes on
and then everybody shouldbe able to hear you.
Yes.
[Audience:] Hi.
That was fascinating.
Thank you.
Was Hikinson a friendof Emily Dickinson
and was he part of theQuaker group up in Amherst,
I seem to remember that.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] I think so.
I'd say about 85%, yes.
Somebody could probablyGoogle and by the time
I'm done talking.
But that sounds familiar.
I read his memoirs quite afew years ago and he certainly
of that ilk and I'mpretty sure you're
right that he ispart of that group.
[Audience:] Because I come atit from totally not being
a historian, but I justwrote a book called--
it's somethingabout Hummingbird's.
And there's a group ofpoets, Emily Dickinson
and a group in Amherst who wereall abolitionists and worked
together and use the symbolof hummingbirds for freedom.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:]That's interesting.
[Audience:] A summerof hummingbirds.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:]Summer of hummingbirds.
OK.
Thanks.
[Silence]
Others?
Yes.
[Jill:] I think I've asked youthis question once before,
but I'm going to ask you again.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Hi.
[Jill:] Hi.
Do you think that the healthand care of black soldiers
might have beendifferent if there
were more black physiciansthat were surgeons
tending to those troops inthe field, or in the hospitals
also?
[...]
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] I can'thelp but think so.
Ira Russell in St. Louis hadheard this claim that you can't,
just can't treat a black guy.
He gets sick, he turns hisface to the wall and he dies.
They don't have the willto live blah, blah, blah.
And what Russell hadwho was sympathetic
to the black soldier.
He had one ward of a doctorwho provided what he saw
as good care, attentive care.
He doesn't go into detailhe just characterizes it
as the doctors paying attention.
And another ward where theguys were dying more than
in the first ward.
And the second ward, the highmortality ward the doctor
said, well you justcan't treat black guys
or my black guys aresicker than the other one
or it's not my fault.So Russell switched them
and found that the mortalityswitched with them,
that it did make a difference.
It seems to me the mostimportant things are not
actually things that doctors, perse have that much to do with.
But it's keeping thepatient clean, fed,
hydrated, dealing with pain,changing the dressings,
that sort of thing.
And if you just think aboutif you attended people
in the hospital whoare not very able
and the person bringingin the tray just
slops it down on thetable, near the door
where the person in thebed can't even reach it.
And it sits therefor three hours
and then the tray is takenaway, versus a situation where
a family member puts thetray after the person
and does one spoonful at a time.
That sort of thingmakes a difference.
I don't think thatin the Civil War
the specific qualificationsprobably mattered
that much for thedoctors, so much
is attentiveness and caring.
So if the black doctors weremore attentive in caring,
then yes, I think it wouldhave made a difference.
You want to follow up on that.
I can't prove it,it's a counterfeit.
[Jill:] I can't prove it either.
I think the black surgeons someof them cared more than others
just like anybody.
And I think there's someevidence that some of them
were accused ofneglecting their patients
and others clearly gavetheir patients good care.
But I would think that mostof the surgeons that I know of
went in becausethey wanted to be
part of the fightfor freedom and they
wanted to serve their race.
So they were going in there witha different intent that maybe
some of the surgeons thatwere looking for promotions
or advancement or something.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Right.
I agree.
There's a fair numberof surgeons white
mostly, because most of themare white who were drunks
and who took advantageof the access
to narcotics andall the rest of it.
You have to factor that in.
I do think it's likelythat the common,
particularly those who go inwith the sense of a cause would
have worked harderthan those who didn't.
[...]
Yes.
[Audience:] Dr. Margaret, is thereany data or historical writing
about the medical care thatfreed black communities perhaps
in the North, how their healthwas in the same time period
to compare the warexperience-- to civilians?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:]I understand.
There were partsof the major cities
of the NorthPhiladelphia, Boston, New
York that were black, freeblacks, obviously there
in the northern communities.
These people wouldhave been, of course
more prone to be impoverished.
And lack access to health carebecause of the impoverishment
and to live in verycrowded conditions.
The Robert Bartholow whowrote the recruiting manual
for white troops inthe North, the doctor--
I'm sorry, the doctor doing theexams at recruiting stations
said about, once they starteddoing black soldiers he
added a sectionon black soldiers
and said that it was very commonfor them to have tuberculosis.
Now we know that particularlyfrom Benton Barracks
that the ex-slavesdidn't have much TB.
But the blacks livingin northern towns
probably did, becausetuberculosis was extremely
common in northern urban areas.
In that era and we knowfrom Samuel Roberts' work.
After the Civil War that TBfor example, in Baltimore
was a huge problem.
So what diseases, whatparticularly were the problems.
I suspect tuberculosis was amajor problem in those areas.
We know that forjust about everybody
the diseases of poor watersupply in urban areas
were, the fecal oral spreaddiseases were very common,
half the kids bornin Chicago in 1980
die before they'refive years old.
And I'm standing up herewith some trepidation
because Liz knows moreabout Northern public health
than I do.
So it might be hard toseparate out black health
from poor urban health.
[Audience:] What Iwas hearing you,
you were talkingabout economics.
You were talkingabout impoverishment,
so health has alwaysbeen a problem for people
who can't afford medical care.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Right.
And people who can't afford tolive in a decent part of town.
And all the things thatgo with that better food.
[Audience:] Even into today.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Absolutely.
But I don't havea sense that there
was enough of a force, enoughof a recognition of "black health"
problems before the war in theNorth to create any knowledge.
Liz, can you think of any.
I can't think of anydiscussion of that.
That most of the discussions ofblack health-- antebellum
were about slaves orabout southern cities.
And I don't have asense in the North.
That the North theconversation starts more
toward 1880s, the 1890s.
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] We have a questionthere at the end of the road.
[Audience:] Yes.
Did these men also makecomments about black women
who served in the CivilWar as nurses and cooks?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] OK.
A couple of pointsto make about that.
First of all, blackfemale mortality
during the warparticularly contraband,
camps for womenwho were associated
with the black troops who weretheir spouses and so forth,
was very high.
Perhaps even higher thanthe black male mortality.
My colleague, [?]at Duke University
has tried to capture some ofthat horrific mortality, which
is not very well documented.
So that's one side of it.
And the exhibit doesthis better probably
than I'm going to beable to do here now.
There were a lot of places thatblack women served in a health
role during the war.
First of all in the South,slaves or free blacks
were conscriptedinto the hospitals
and did a lot of the work there.
But that's probablynot what you're
particularly interestedin or at least
we could talk about that more.
In the North theblack women were
brought in to nurse in theblack wards of the hospitals
or in the contrabandhospitals, which were often
a mix of black soldiers.
[...]
The freed blacks...
The contraband hospitalsbecome the
Freedmen's Bureauhospitals.
There's this evolution.
Some places we knowthat in St. Louis,
Ira Russell set up a trainingprogram for black nurses,
for his black wards.
Whether that happened elsewhere.
I don't know.
Did you find other?
[Jill:] That didn't really.
Jill has looked atthis more than I have.
[Jill:] Yeah.
As far as trainingI have in most
of the nurses thatI came across,
they were former slaves.
Especially here in Washington,they came to Washington,
they were sick theywent to the hospitals
and then they werehired as nurses.
So a lot of it I think wasjust on the job training.
And whatever skillsthat came with.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] And it'simportant to realize that there
were no formal nurse trainingprograms in the United States
until after the war that,the war is a transition
point in the professionalizationof nursing and the concept
the hospital shouldhave trained nurses.
So the most of the nursingskills that were needed
were the kinds ofskills that a servant
would have whether a slave orpaid wage or a mother, a sister
would have.
It was more a matterof professionalization
in terms of being able toaccept the gore, accept the smell,
do distasteful task, all theseare kind of behavioral training
things.
[...]
And if Jane Schultzwas here, who's
written about womenhealth workers in the war,
she knows more about blackwomen nurses than I do.
So I'll just yield at that.
In the very back.
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] Right here andthen the next one.
[Audience:] My question kindof piggybacks on Cynthia's,
but I was thinking alongthe same lines about camp
followers.
We know that there'sdocumentation
of wives going with theirhusbands to war and sisters
or whomever to helpwith the nursing duties.
And I wasn't sure ifthe black soldiers
had something that wasequivalent especially,
since a lot of them I guesswere slaves who were bought
by the union and most probablytheir wives or whomever were
not-- Simultaneously bought.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Let's see.
A couple of thingsto say about that.
Most of the time I think it'sfair to say that wives did not
hang around theregiments just when they
were in the field or whatnot.
But might well show upat the hospital if--
this is white wives, if theirrelative is in the hospital
to come help with the nursing.
Black women, more than whitetried to stay with their men.
Say, there wereinstances in Kentucky,
where the slaveshad been gathered
into some regiment orsome mustering and spot
and the women followedthem and they're camping
outside the gate with theirchildren it's they're starving.
They have no means of support.
Maybe their slave ownerhas thrown them out
because their husbandhas left or chose to go
when the owner didn't want it.
And the Union Armysaid to they ended up
driving those women away.
They didn't wantto support them,
they couldn't support themthey need to take that regiment
and go someplace else.
And so the womenwere abandoned, which
is one of the reasons whyyou get such high mortality.
Did they end up in St.. Louisto become some of those nurses
that Russell was tryingto train? Probably,
although St. Louis was arefugee center in general.
It was very hard forilliterate slave women
to figure out where theirmen were because they
couldn't write them.
The husband couldn't writethem and say I'm here,
I've gone there.
And so of course, one of thebig things after the war was
getting those people reunited.
But it was harderfor them to know
what hospital their man was inif he didn't know the hospital.
[...]
You need to turnyours off Steve,
I think so shewould turn hers on.
Now try.
Maybe not.
[Audience:] OK.
So I found it interestingthat the Union Army didn't
care about the black soldiersas far as their health
knowing that they neededthem in their army
to fight in the Civil War.
So was there any researchto suggest a decrease
in the mortality rateafter Russell came out
with his findings?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] I'd say no.
Russell tried and he also got--
Russell was fromMassachusetts and there's
a Massachusetts theme hereof decent people trying
to do the right thing.
Russell talked to hisstate sen... the Senator
from Massachusetts, Henry Wilsonabout the situation in St.
Louis and how badly,thought they weren't
being given hospital beds.
And Wilson said on the floor ofthe Senate what was going on,
which got some people riled up.
So he tried andI think you could
argue that the unionshould have treated
the black men better just froma purely practical point of view
because they needed thebodies, but the same argument
has been made about slavery.
Slaveholders should havetreated their possessions better
because it cost so much money,but we know they didn't.
And we know for example howsmall slave children were
and how poorly fedthey were and how
mount the bones we havefrom slave cemeteries,
how malnourished they were.
My general argumentabout this is
that soldiers who can selfadvocate who can write home,
who can get theirstate Senator involved,
can get improvedconditions, but those
who are not tied in any wayreally can become helpless.
And the worst case thiswas in Texas, where
they were completely isolated.
And only because of aSanitary Commission guy,
seeing what's going on, dowe know anything about it.
Much less was therean intervention.
We tend to think of soldiersas this rah, rah great thing
that the countryadmires, perhaps,
but there's also the view ofsoldiers as just hired hands.
The way the British for example,looked upon the Hessians,
that they didn't care about.
They just hired the bodies.
[...]
I think in this case, thefact that they basically
bought slaves toput them in the army
is going to really denigratetheir value in their eyes
in terms of beinghuman beings who
deserve to be treated properly.
[...]
[Stephen Greenberg:] Two things.
First of all as akind of a shameless
plug, Jane Schultz willbe our speaker in May.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] OK.
[Stephen Greenberg:] Rememberyour question.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Can I justsay to Jane Schultz is then.
Jane Schultz has written a bookabout nursing in the Civil War
and continues to work onmedicine in the Civil War.
She's at Indiana University,Purdue University, Indianapolis
and she's a very good scholar.
So good.
She's coming in.
OK.
[Stephen Greenberg:] As a Civil Warwent on and the Union Army
went from a volunteerforce to a conscript force,
did the help ofthe white soldiers
also decrease since they werenot getting, I'm healthy,
I'm going to volunteer fora good course as opposed
to well what's thebounty if I join now?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:]Stephen points out
the first couple ofyears of the war,
the white union soldierswere volunteers.
And I think it's March1863, don't hold me to that.
But I think that's when thedraft law goes into effect.
That men becomesusceptible to the draft.
And they get forcedinto the army.
Now were those men necessarilyof more or less good health?
I'm not sure necessarilythat the conscripts were
of lower health perse, because they might
have several characteristics.
One is that they are somehowless patriotic, or less
willing to serve, or perhapsmore successful financially.
In other words, they're runningtheir dry goods store or whatever
and they don't want to go.
Many of them wouldhave been immigrants,
the Irish immigrants thatare continuing to come in.
And so maybe theywere of course help.
On the other hand, they mayhave been living in the slums
in New York andthus exposed to--
the bad news is they're livingin the slums of New York,
the good news is they've alreadyhad smallpox, and measles,
and mumps, and rubella.
Compared to farm boysfrom Indiana in 1862
who then had all those diseasesthese are the white soldiers
now.
So you get a lot ofinvalided in the first year.
The first nine monthsof soldiers and it
becomes malaria, he maywell be pretty useless.
But then another countervailingthing to all that
is that as the army gets moreand more desperate for men,
the recruitingofficers are pushed
to look less and less closelyat the guys they're examining.
And we know that probablyseveral hundred women
served in the Union Armyin the Civil War as men.
So obviously they didn't geta very thorough physical exam
when they were brought in.
I don't know.
The union, you start to see aseasoning effect in the troops.
And the problem is if youlook at regiment by regiment,
a regiment will shrink and thenthey'll bring in 200 new guys,
but it's stillthe same regiment.
And unless you gocard by card to know
how long person A his serviceis person B, I don't know.
I don't remember seeinga comment on that,
but there may wellbe information.
That's a good question.
Actually, it's nota good question
since I don't know the answer.
So it makes you look bad.
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee: ]Any otherquestion, comments.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Yes, ma'am.
[Audience:] Yes.
I was curious.
Is there any indication ofwhat Abraham Lincoln thought
about this disparityeither for humane reasons
or because of the detrimentaleffect on the war?
[...]
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] I do notremember seeing any comment
from Lincoln about this.
I just have to say that.
There's I don't know how manyvolumes of Lincoln papers
and stuff and haveI looked for it.
No.
Lincoln does notget very involved
in health issues in general,he didn't see the point
of the Sanitary Commission.
He gets involved in the fightsover the surgeon general,
but it's very top level stuff.
It's political stuff notmuch concern or awareness
of the health of soldiers.
[...]
I can't remember him goingto a hospital or something.
He does do that?
OK.
So he does do that.
But I don't know theanswer to that question.
Sorry.
Stephen.
[Stephen Greenberg:] We have diariesof the nurses saying
"Mr. Lincoln came by today."Jill what's the hospital,
he's always walking past.
Armory Square?
[Jill:] I thinkArmory Square.
Also there is someevidence of him going
past on, his way tothe soldiers home
stopping at the contrabandcamp and hospital.
[Stephen Greenberg:] But he's doing itmore as a it bothers him
that these people hadbeen injured in the war.
I don't think he madeany distinction is
to someone who had beenshot or someone who had
quite some sort of camp fever.
If I can draw a distinctionbetween the health
of the soldiers and theinjuries to the soldiers,
he cared very deeplyabout their injuries,
but he may not havecared about their health
as an institutional--
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Why?
[Stephen Greenberg:] That's the fine line.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] I get it.
[Audience:] Just one more quickquestion about mental health.
Was there any attentionpaid to mental health,
either during or afterthe war like for example,
the equivalent ofpost-traumatic stress disorder,
I think it was calleddisordered action of the heart.
Was there a differencebetween the blacks and whites?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] OK.
There has been a fairbit written about that.
One of the SanitaryCommission questions
on their questionnairewas about that.
And one of their assumptionswas that in order to have this,
they call it nostalgia inpart regret for missing home,
if you will.
They said slaves andex-slaves didn't get nostalgic
because what are theygoing to be nostalgic for,
the plantation?
They also though talkedabout mental weakness
and just deciding not to live.
As I said just turning theirhead to the wall and dying.
So they see a lack of mentalpower, but they don't see that.
It seems to me necessarilyas a result of the battle
experience or thewar experiences
just the generic weakness.
There is this irritableheart of soldiers
that there's a fellownamed Jacob DaCosta
who wrote about it.
He studied it in Philadelphia.
And his irritable heart weresymptoms of palpitations,
or heart racing, orwhatever and it's
one of the symptoms of atotally stressed out person.
And Da Costafocused on the heart
but he also saw themental correlates of it.
But I don't think Da Costasaw black soldiers in that.
My guess would bethat if you ask him
he would say that blackmen aren't sensitive enough
to get this.
That you have tohave the higher tone,
reaches of mentalcapacity of the white man
to acquire thisdamage to your nerves.
[...]
There were some cases ofblack men going completely
off the railsmentally, that they
talked about but they sawthat as just insanity rather
than PTSD.
And of course, when you add in--
No.
Never known.
I was going to sayadded syphilis,
but that wouldn't-- tertiarysyphilis wouldn't have been
active during the war,but might be later.
We don't find it much inthe pension records later
that there was any muchdiscussion of syphilis,
but that's a wholeother question.
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] We'll take theone last question.
[Audience:] How much was writtenby the blacks themselves
in comparison to the whites?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:]Precious little.
I think I have it all.
There are a few lettersfrom black soldiers
to the couple ofblack newspapers.
And sometimes like that thingI quoted about the students who
don't know what they're doing.
That came from oneof those letters.
There's a couple ofliterate black soldiers
who write abouttheir experiences
or have diaries or letters home,but it's frustratingly little.
You can't depend on peoplelike Ira Russell who
are sympathetic, whosometimes quote them,
but we don't have them.
[Audience:] And none of theblack doctors wrote anything?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] WellAugusta wrote a lot
of letters and kinda public things.
Let me ask Jill.
Talk about your sourcesfrom the back there.
She's one of the organizersof the exhibit by the way.
[Jill:] You're correct.
Augusta did writeletters to newspapers
as did some of the soldiers fromthe regiments that could write.
But again there is verylittle personal accounts
from surgeons, blacksurgeons, and even fewer
from black nurses.
Some wrote lettersto family members.
Like John Rapier was this wasan African-American surgeon
and he wrote letters.
And Moran Spingarn hasthe Rapier Thomas records
because other family memberswere political figures.
But it's reallyfew and far between
to find them actuallywriting letters and talking
about their experiences.
The letters that I found thathad been the most helpful
are the ones that arein the Christian Recorder
or other newspapers wheresoldiers and surgeons might
write letters and talkabout their experiences.
[...]
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] Those whostill have questions
are welcome tocome down the front
to talk a littlemore to Margaret
or go out and buy their book.
[Laughter]
You get a look more of this.
Really clap for Margaret.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Thank you.
[Applause]
Thanks.
[...]
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys off mike]
I gave a version of this talkat the College of Physicians
in Philadelphia andthey were black
reenactors lined up against the--
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:]There were what?
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:]black reenactors--
lined up against theback wall in uniform.
I better get this right.
[Dr. Elizabeth Fee:] Thank you.
[Dr. Margaret Humphreys:] Anatomy was important, right?
[NLM seal 1836]