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Casualties of War

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The Camp Letterman Story

Richard D. L. Fulton

On July 1, 1863, a massive and deadly storm descended upon Gettysburg, with the thunder being provided by more than 600 cannons and the fierce lightning being the result of the firing of more than 140,000 rifles.

The storm was caused by the violent convergence of the Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George G. Meade, and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of General Robert E. Lee.

By the end of July 3, the fields of Gettysburg had become littered with more than 50,000 dead and wounded—the highest number of human casualties that have been sustained by American forces in a single battle before, during, or since the engagement at Gettysburg. 

Many of the wounded and dying were housed in local homes and churches, impromptu field medical tents, and at a special military medical compound known as Camp Letterman. However, in the case of the Confederate Army, its casualties who had not been abandoned or captured on the field were loaded aboard wagons to commence with their painful trek back to Virginia.

Camp Letterman was ordered to be established on July 4, the day after the battle had subsided, by Assistant Adjutant General Seth Williams. The facility was to be named Camp Letterman, in honor of Doctor Jonathan Letterman, Medical Director for the Army of the Potomac, according to Gettysburgdaily.com.

The site selected was situated along York Road, just east of Gettysburg, near the east of the site of the present Giant grocery store shopping center, and had consisted of some 80 acres in extent.

The property involved was then known as the George Wolf farm, which had been selected, according to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, because the farm was located on high ground, with “abundant spring water, and (located in) close proximity to the York Road and Gettysburg Railroad.”

The portion of the farm utilized was not yet cultivated at that time and contained a significant stand of trees, which provided an abundance of shade for the encampment. Surgeon Henry Janes served as the doctor in charge of Camp Letterman.

Further, nurse Sophronia E. Bucklin, author of In Hospital and Camp: A Woman’s Record of Thrilling Incidents Among the Wounded in the Late War, noted that there were 500 “large hospital” tents erected in the camp (of which, she wrote, had even increased in number over time)” in rows with well-trodden, dirt walkways, established to minimize the mud. Each tent could house 12 patients, as noted by Battlefields.org (American Battlefield Trust).

Torrential rain fell in the wake of the battle, adding to the misery contained within the sprawling field hospital. As an aside, Bucklin noted that during heavy rain, “muddy rivulets (flowed) through our tents, (and we were) obliged in the morning to use our parasol handles to fish our shoes from the water before we could dress.”

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) further stated on its website (civilwarmed.org) that the hospital included “a dead house, embalming tent, cemetery, cookhouse and warehouse tents.”

Some 400 individuals, consisting of military staff and volunteers (including the U.S. Sanitation Commission and the U.S. Christian Commission), served at the encampment.

Npshistory.com noted, “Doctors, nurses, hospital stewards, ward surgeons, wound dressers, and night watchmen worked dawn to dusk every day.”

The NMCWM further noted that soldiers who had improved, but were in need of additional care, were transported by rail to hospitals in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

The Gettysburg Times noted in a story they published on September 2, 1949, that Camp Letterman had treated more than 20,000 Union and Confederate casualties.

Bucklin wrote that more than half were Confederate casualties, which she had described as having been “grim, daunt, ragged men—long-haired, hollow-eyed and sallow-cheeked.”

Feeding the casualties and staff was at first a very unpleasant experience. 

Bucklin wrote that, initially, “Hunger only made edible the wretched food which was spoiled in its long-heated journey over the dusty road from Washington.” 

However, the camp was soon supplied with a new kitchen, along with ”monster” stoves and huge cauldrons.

Bucklin noted that one of the primary rules of conduct required of staff and volunteers was that the Confederate casualties were to be treated equally as those of the Union, further noting that many Union soldiers had remarked on how well they had been treated by the medical staffs in prisoner-of-war camps, in which they had found themselves in the South.

Bucklin further wrote that one individual employed for helping the wounded in the camp had been discharged because she “refused to give food or aid or drink” to any of the Confederate wounded, “regarding them as wanton murderers of her beloved husband.” 

Intolerance was not tolerated in the hospital camp.

More than 1,200 of the casualties perished at the camp, according to Michael Mahr, an education specialist at the NMCWM.

Bucklin noted that “many more of the rebels died than of our own men.” Further noting that, in one instance, “of the twenty-two rebels who were brought into my ward at one time, thirteen died, after receiving the same care that was given to our men.”

Amputations of severely damaged arms and legs were not uncommon in the camp. Emergingcivilwar.com noted on its website, “Removed limbs would either be discarded and buried on site, or sent to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., as a specimen for study.”  

Matthew Atkinson, Gettysburg National Military Park (npshistory.com), further wrote that a letter written by Union soldier Frank Stoke to his brother had stated, “Those who die in the hospital are buried in the field south of the hospital…The dead are laid in rows with a rough board placed at the head of each man… The amputated limbs are put into barrels and buried and left in the ground until they decomposed, then lifted and sent to the Medical College at Washington.”

Camp Letterman was dismantled in November 1863. Emergingcivilwar.com wrote on its website: “In November 1863, Camp Letterman all but vanished from the visible landscape. Union dead were exhumed and either sent to family or buried in the Gettysburg National Cemetery (except for the bodies of black Union soldiers who had died in the camp, since black soldiers were not permitted at that time to be buried in the National Cemetery).”

Today, a roadside marker denotes the general location of the medical encampment. The marker was a “wide, upstanding piece of granite with a metal tablet” and was the first “Great Rebellion”-related marker installed east of Gettysburg. The monument was placed within the woods in which the camp had been located. 

Highly recommended to the reader is Sophronia E. Bucklin’s fascinating account, published in her book, In Hospital and Camp: A Woman’s Record of Thrilling Incidents Among the Wounded in the Late War, which is accessible in its entirety online at Library of Congress website.

For a more definitive account of Camp Letterman, refer to “War is a hellish way of settling a dispute” by Matthew Atkinson, Gettysburg NMP, at npshistory.com.

Who killed jennie wade?

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Richard D. L. Fulton

For three days, from July 1 through July 4, 1863, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, engaged the Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George Meade, in and around the Borough of Gettysburg.

On July 3, General Lee ordered a massed assault on the center, which failed to break the Union line, and thereby ended Lee’s campaign of marching his army across Pennsylvania.

However, in spite of the carnage, one single death struck the hearts and souls of Americans across states and territories: the death of a 20-year-old female Gettysburg resident who had been caught in a crossfire in a home located in the heart of what had become a “no man’s land” on July 3.

WHO was Mary Virginia “Jennie” Wade?

Wade was born in Gettysburg on May 21, 1843 to parents James Wade and Mary Anne Filby Wade, and was raised in Gettysburg. She had two sisters, Georgeanna Anna Wade McClellan and Martha Margaret Wade, as well as three brothers, Harry M. Wade, Samuel Swan Wade, and John James Wade. Martha Margaret Wade passed away after having only lived for four months.

WHAT propelled her into being regarded as a national heroine?

Jennie Wade became the only civilian killed during the bloody Battle of Gettysburg. This was fostered by the claim that she was killed while baking bread for Union soldiers during the battle.

WHERE was Jennie Wade killed?

On July 2, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Confederate Army had pushed the Union troops from west of town into and through the Borough of Gettysburg and the heights that run from Culps Hill to the Rounds Tops, where the Union troops assumed a defensive “last stand” position.

Wade and her mother decided to take shelter in the home of Jennie’s sister, Georgeanna, who lived on the north side of two two-story apartments that had been created out of a house located at 548 Baltimore Street, just a short distance north of East Cemetery Hill. Jennie and her mother also felt they could assist Georgeanna with her newborn baby (Lewis Kenneth McClellan) to whom she had just given birth only a few days earlier.  Georgeanna was also alone, as her husband, John Louis McClellan, was off serving in the Union Army.

Also sheltering in the home at the same time was brother Harry M. Wade and Ike Brinkerhof (of unknown affiliation).

WHEN was Jennie Wade Killed?

It probably had become obvious by the morning of July 3 that the occupants of the house were now in a “no man’s land” that had erupted between Union-occupied East Cemetery Hill and Confederate troops trying to advance up both sides of Baltimore Street towards the Union position.

Although the house had been pelted with bullets and even had an artillery round penetrate the roof (without detonating), the group decided to remain in place within the home.

It was reported that Union snipers were posted on the second floor of the house to contest the advance of Confederates working their way up both sides of Baltimore Street.

Jennie Wade woke up early, around 8:30 a.m. on July 3 and had left the house for water and firewood. She then returned to the house and began kneading dough to make the bread, when she was struck and killed by a bullet.

HOW was Jennie Wade killed?

According to “history,” Wade was struck and killed by a bullet fired by a Confederate that penetrated two doors (the kitchen door and the bedroom door) sometime after she had returned from fetching water and firewood.

However, since the house was basically located in a crossfire, one would have to had examined the fatal bullet in order to determine its source.

WHY was Jennie Wade killed?

It should be pointed out here that Confederate soldiers had previously tried to convince the family to leave, but they chose to remain. Clearly, a fight was going to unfold as Union troops dug in on East Cemetery Hill to defend the right center of the Union line as Confederates attempted to advance and potentially capture the position.

It seems quite probable that soldiers might have mistaken the figures inside the house as enemy combatants, since it would not have made much sense to them that civilians had remained in the house after all that had been, and was still, transpiring around it.

As the fight subsided, Union soldiers, probably the sharpshooters that had been posted, removed her body to the basement via knocking a hole through the second-floor wall, carrying her body into the neighboring apartment and down to the neighbor’s side of the home into their basement, where her body remained until after the battle when she was buried in her sister’s garden.

A Confederate officer had been killed on the front porch of the McClellan side, and his fellow soldiers subsequently attempted to bring up a casket to carry the body off in, but Union fire forced them to abandon the effort. After the fighting had ceased, the casket was salvaged and was used for Wade’s burial. 

So, that’s the story… but is it the real story?

The problem is, the physical evidence does not support how she was killed, and circumstantial evidence does seem to question whether someone from the North or South had killed her. And, then there was the sudden change of a “death by friendly fire” to “death by enemy fire” that took place when her mother applied for a pension, which could not be paid unless the death was deemed due to enemy fire.

Problematic issues began with the two doors, through which the fatal bullet was alleged to have traveled, especially based on the “bullet hole” in the front door. Forget examining the front door. Photos taken over the decades, beginning soon after the war, reveal that the door was replaced three or more times with another door, and that the original door had four panes of glass (two over two) in the upper portion of the door.

It has been stated that the fatal bullet came from the Confederate-occupied, west side of Baltimore Pike, but the angle would not be right from any location on the west side to strike the door and penetrate it, along with penetrating a second door, to hit anyone in the house.

It has also been suggested that the fatal shot came from the Confederate-occupied Tannery on the east side of Baltimore Street, except that there were intervening houses located between the Tannery and the McClellan house.

The only thing the period media accounts disagreed on (they all agreed it was friendly fire) was if the fatal shot went through the door or a window. Knowing that the front door had glass windowpanes at the time, they both could have been right.  Although, for the bullets to have been fired through the upper door window at an angle to kill someone inside means that the shooter had to be on a second-floor side porch of the house adjacent to the McClellan house on the same side of the street.

Another account stated that Wade was struck by the same “volley” of bullets that killed the Confederate officer on the front porch of the McClellan house. This points to Wade having been killed by Union gunfire.

There is one final tidbit that appeared in 2007, in the form of a small package sent to the late Kenneth Rohrbaugh, then manager of the Jennie Wade House and Museum. The small package contained a bullet that had been kept by a Union soldier, found within the casket containing Wade’s body when it was being examined, before being removed to the Evergreen Cemetery.

As it turned out, the soldier himself had not removed the bullet. It was actually a family member who had examined the body (preparatory to presenting his findings before Congress) who found the loose bullet.

The author of this article—a former Civil War relic dealer—was asked by Rohrbaugh to examine the bullet and identify it. It was a .577 caliber Union Minie’ ball that had lost its velocity, but still had enough force that the imprint of Wade’s muslin-clothing was still embedded in its nose.

Not only had the bullet established the source of the gunfire but had also established that Wade had been struck by two bullets, one spent round and the fatal one.

The tell-tale bullet, one of two that struck Jennie Wade. (Photo by and from the personal collection of R.D.L. Fulton. Initially published in The Gettysburg Times, August 11, 2007)

A 1904 view of the McClellan side of the home where Wade was killed.

Note the four glass panes at the top of the door.

THE HOUSE THAT WASN’T THERE

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The Johns Farmhouse Story

Richard D. L. Fulton

Among the mass of paranormal photographs taken over the decades, one occasionally encounters a photograph that includes a house or structure that no longer exists, or a plantation-like stairway with Victorian inhabitants apparently standing upon it that never existed.

But how about a farmhouse that appears in a Civil War picture 16 years before the farmhouse was built? As strange as that may sound, there is actually a rational explanation for the strange “apparitions.”

On July 1 through July 3. 1863, a ‘terrible storm’ swept through Gettysburg as the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac collided on the fields and hills in and surrounding the quiet country borough of Adams County.

The battle that raged for three days ultimately climaxed with the so-called “Pickett’s Charge,” which failed in the final attempt of Confederate General Robert E, Lee to break through the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge under the command of Union General George A. Meade.

The cataclysmic charge and the defense of the Union line was commemorated in a painting known as the Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama, which has been on display at the various incarnations of the Gettysburg Battlefield Park’s Cyclorama for decades (including initially at a building at the entrance to the national cemetery).

In the 1880s, French artist Paul Philippoteaux painted four versions of his “Pickett’s Charge” cycloramas, including one which went on display in Boston in 1884. In 1913, the Boston version was purchased and displayed in Gettysburg for the 50th Anniversary of the battle and was displayed in a building near the entrance of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery.

Philippoteau’s painting was ultimately purchased by the National Park Service in 1942 and was moved to its first NPS home, a building within the park. In 1963, the painting was moved into a new visitor center, and again in 2005, the painting was moved to the current visitor center.

While the painting had to be restored (it had actually been cut into pieces before it was purchased in 1913), no one caught onto, or covered-over the farmhouse that didn’t exist.

The farmhouse in question appears at the left flank of Pickett’s Charge, essentially in the background. As it turns out, the farmhouse was constructed in 1879 by Samuel Bushman (now commonly referred to as being the William Johns farmhouse).

So how did it end up in a Civil War painting? According to Mike Tallent and Ron Frenette, who purchased the old farmhouse in 2014, Philippoteau never left France to view the battlefield, but instead, he had hired photographers to take photographs of the areas to be painted. The photographs were taken in the very early 1880s (before the paintings were executed), after the farmhouse had been built.

Thus, unaware of the unintended anachronism, Philippoteau included the 1879 Bushman home in his “Pickett’s Charge” painting.

Well, at least the land the farmhouse sits upon—which stands on the corner of Johns Avenue and Culp Street—did see plenty of fire and fury on July 4, 1863, as can be testified to by the voluminous number of bullets, shells fragments—even unexploded artillery rounds—that have been collected on the farmhouse property, and those of the neighboring properties that now comprise the Colt Park development.

The property and those surrounding the farmhouse turned up more than just relics. The front of the Johns farmhouse all the way from Culp’s Street to King Street was a temporary Confederate mass grave (the bodies were subsequently removed). In 1882, a trench was dug 300 yards from the farmhouse wherein 15 Confederate bodies were found. Again, in 1914, two more bodies were recovered near the barn, next to the farmhouse.

 Civil War history aside, in 1913, Gettysburg served as the host to the Civil War Veterans’ Reunion, and the sprawling encampment all but encircled the farmhouse property. In 1918, Camp Colt (where the War Department trained the U.S. Army’s first tank unit) was established and basically encompassed the same ground as did the 1913 veterans’ reunion. More than 150 troops encamped in Camp Colt died from the Spanish Flu in 1918.

The Johns farmhouse and the land it was built upon didn’t get much of a break when it came to being witness to tragic events.

In 1922, during the Marine maneuvers at Gettysburg, death came precariously close to landing in the front yard of the old farmhouse when a warplane fell from the sky, killing the pilot and his passenger.

Highly-decorated World War I Marine infantryman Captain George Wallis Hamilton—turned Marine aviator in the aftermath of the war—was piloting a de Havilland DH-4B dive-bomber on June 26, along with passenger, Gunnery Sergeant George Russell Martin, at the head of the Marine column as the column approached the Gettysburg Battlefield.

The more than 5,000 Marines had marched from Quantico to hold their Civil War-theme summer maneuvers and battle reenactment in Gettysburg, and squadrons of bi-wing airplanes flew overhead, as if patrolling the skies during the Marines’ advance.

Hamilton was in command of the lead squadron as it approached the battlefield. The squadron was in the process of preparing to land at an impromptu airfield the Marines had constructed on the Culp Farm near the intersection of Old Emmitsburg Road and Long Lane.

As Hamilton’s squadron circled to position themselves to land, the other pilots, as well as other witnesses on the ground, stated that the captain’s “DH-4B airplane #6157 went into a tailspin from a left turn from which it did not recover, and crashed to the ground,” according to the crash investigatory Record of Proceedings.

The crash occurred in the area of Johns Avenue and Culp Street, just missing a carnival that had been set up along Steinwehr Avenue, precariously close to the front yard of the Johns farmhouse.

Hamilton was found deceased in the wreckage, but Martin was still alive. He was transported to the Warren Hospital (Gettysburg Hospital), where he expired a short time later. Because both were engaged in Marine activities at the time of the crash, they then both became the last line-of-duty deaths to have taken place on the old Civil War battlefield since 1863.

Today, the site of the crash is marked by a memorial wayside dedicated to the two aviators who had perished on June 26, 1922. The memorial was created by a consortium of area residents, members of the Gettysburg and Emmitsburg Marine Corps Leagues, and the Gettysburg Heritage Center.

A photograph of the Johns farmhouse was included in the wayside, as it was the only nearby structure that had existed in that area at the time of the crash. Johns farmhouse owners Mike Tallent and Ron Frenette played instrumental roles in not only raising the funds to erect the memorial and designing it, but also in helping to create the subsequent dedication ceremony when the memorial wayside was unveiled.

The memorial wayside dedication was held on June 26, 2018. Members of the US Marine Corps Historical Company, Marines from Fort Meade, and a Marine bugler from Marine Base Quantico participated in the dedication ceremony.

Frenette stated at the ceremony that the book, The Last to Fall: The 1922 March, Battles, & Deaths of U.S. Marines at Gettysburg by Richard D. L. Fulton and James Rada, Jr., had inspired the effort to create the memorial to the two aviators.