The US Capitol building is in the distance. Unfortunately their pleas often came too late.” (Mayniak, 183-184)Ĭhapel and other buildings of Armory Square Hospital, which was located at 6th and B Streets, SW. “Several of the stories from the hospital chaplains are pitiful because young soldiers regularly pled with their doctors to let them go home one last time. Some, like Chaplain Amos Billingsley of the 101 st Pennsylvania Infantry, saw an opportunity for preaching evangelistic sermons to encourage soldiers to repent and receive God’s grace quickly lest their wounds prove fatal. Many of their reports reveal innovative ministries to entertain and educate their patients as well as to offer pastoral support. “Hospital chaplains made regular reports to the chief surgeon each week or month as required.

These did not include the regimental chaplains who were assigned temporary hospital duty while on campaign. Eventually more than two hundred Union chaplains served in hospital ministries. “From 1862 to the end of 1864, President Lincoln appointed many chaplains personally to US Army hospitals. Further Congressional legislation followed on 17 July specifying a hospital chaplain’s pay at twelve hundred dollars a year with an additional three hundred dollars allowed for quarters. Accordingly President Lincoln asked Congress to approve the appointment of US Hospital Chaplains, a request Congress honored on. “In spring 1862, a number of Washington clergymen petitioned President Lincoln to appoint military chaplains to the city’s hospitals that were overflowing with wounded and sick soldiers. The largest hospital, however, was Chimborazo, operated by the Confederates in Richmond, with 7,000 beds.” (Dorwart) Its two largest general hospitals, Satterlee and Mower had 4,000 and 3,000 beds, respectively. Philadelphia alone had more than 14,000 beds. “The Union Army operated 16 medical departments, the top two by bed capacity being Washington City (D.C.) and Pennsylvania. Since no chaplaincy service was available in military hospitals, local ministers and church members ministered to the wounded.” (Mayniak, 183-184)

For that reason, most Civil War hospitals were initially overcrowded and understaffed. Such a high incidence of disease early in the war caught the Army Medical Department unprepared. (National Archives Identifier: 524592).ĭuring the Civil War, “for every hospital bed occupied by a soldier wounded in battle, there were at least seven others filled by those with diseases such as measles, typhoid fever, malaria, and dysentery. Ward in the Carver General Hospital, Washington, D.C.

Civil war hospital fiels