“Wonders of Cleanliness”—The Depot Hospital at City Point

The Civil War paved the way for many medical innovations, including the general hospital system. One of the largest and finest of the Union hospitals was the Depot Hospital, located at City Point (now Hopewell), Virginia near the Appomattox River.

As the war entered its third year, the Union Army suffered an unprecedented number of casualties from Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg. In response, Surgeon Alonzo J. Phelps was tasked in June of 1864 to choose a site for the construction of a hospital complex to deal with the large influx of patients.

Layout of Depot Field Hospital at City Point, c. late 1864 (Etching from the collection of Petersburg National Battlefield, courtesy of Ted Linton)

City Point was already the site of a supply depot and had easy access to a railroad and a boat landing on the Appomattox River. William Howell Reed, in his memoir Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac described the location:

The Depot Field Hospitals were situated a mile from the landing, upon a wide plateau, extending back from the Appomattox, and were divided into the Second, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Cavalry Corps Hospitals, representing each corps of the Army of the Potomac. A branch railroad, running directly through the center of the hospital grounds, was constructed from the main military line, in order that the sick or wounded sent in from the division hospitals at the front might avoid ambulance transportation, and thus be taken directly from the cars and laid upon their hospital beds.

Hospital flag flown at City Point (NMCWM collection)

The Depot Field Hospital eventually covered 200 acres and was equipped to care for as many as 10,000 patients, both Union and Confederate, with a separate facility for African American troops. United States Christian Commission and United States Sanitary Commission workers, as well as women nurses and nearly 200 African American workers, assisted Army surgeons in running the hospital.

Throughout the Siege of Petersburg, the hospital provided excellent care, trained staff, fresh running water pumped from the Appomattox River, a steam laundry, reading rooms, and other amenities.

Reed describes the amenities the hospital provided:

Connected with each hospital were a dispensary, a commissary storehouse, general and special diet kitchens, together with the convalescents’ dining-room. The Sanitary Commission also established a station in each corps. These stations were supplied by daily requisitions from the barge, the central storehouse, and the headquarters of the Commission at this point. Each hospital had accommodations for from fifteen hundred to two thousand men. Through the summer months it was a vast encampment of tents, which were changed, as winter approached, to log barracks with boarded roofs, an even temperature being more easily maintained in them than under canvas coverings.[1]

Each patient had his own bed and wash basin, as well as fresh linens and pillows that were regularly provided. Covered walkways between the tents provided shade from the sun.

Surgeon Edward Barry Dalton, Chief Medical Officer of Depot Field Hospital at City Point (New York Academy of Medicine, Carte-de-Visite Collection)

In one of his reports, Surgeon Edward Barry Dalton, Chief Medical Officer of the hospital, wrote of the large numbers of patients he was receiving:

The capacity of the hospital was rapidly increased until it became capable of accommodating 10,000 patients. At first these were mainly wounded, but as the season advanced and the prolonged duty in the trenches told upon the men, the proportion of sick became greater. Each successive engagement would fill the beds with wounded, but these, especially the severely hurt, were sent north as rapidly as possible, while the sick, as a general rule, were removed only when the character of the case rendered a change of climate essential to recovery.[2]

Nurse Adelaide W. Smith (Library of Congress)

Nurse Adelaide W. Smith, who served at the hospital, remembered the trains bringing in the wounded:

From Petersburg front sick and wounded were daily sent to the hospital, often on rough flat sand cars, over badly laid shaking tracks, being brought as hastily as possible that they might receive proper care and help. The sight of these cars, loaded with sufferers as they lay piled like logs, waiting their turn to be carried to the wards, — powder-stained, dust-begrimed, in ragged torn and blood-stained uniforms, with here and there a half-severed limb dangling from a mutilated body, — was a gruesome, sickening one, never to be forgotten, and one which I tried not to see when unable to render assistance.[3]

Nevertheless, the hospital was well supplied, as Surgeon Dalton wrote:

The purveying department met all necessary demands with promptness and liberality. Nothing really essential to the care of the wounded was wanting. Bedsacks and blankets were supplied without stint, although for a time bedsteads were dispensed with, excepting in the severer cases, a large proportion of the patients being placed upon sacks amply filled with straw and arranged upon the ground beneath the tents. None were without shelter. Drugs and dressings in abundance, hospital stores, ice, and even delicacies were constantly issued; cooking stoves, caldrons, and portable ovens were on hand in sufficient quantity for any emergency. Requisitions received prompt and full attention at all times.[4]

Between June and October of 1864, 35, 789 woolen, 4,136 cotton, and 532 canton flannel hospital shirts were distributed to the Depot Hospital from the City Point storehouse. Another 21, 681 cotton and wool shirts came to City Point between February and April 1865. Also, tens of thousands of bottles of wine and other liquors and cordials were shipped by state relief agents and to the Sanitary and Christian Commissions during the Petersburg campaign. Wine was used as a medicinal stimulant or to be mixed with other ingredients to provide nourishment.[5]

Adelaide Smith was also impressed with the way the hospital was maintained and run:

The wards were wonders of cleanliness, considering the disadvantages of field life, and even at that time sanitation was of a high order and, to a great degree, prevented local diseases. Men nurses, soldiers unfit for active duty, took pleasure in fixing up their wards with an attempt at ornamentation, when allowed . . . They frequently conveyed some interdicted luxuries from the sutler, or extra rations, to make life more endurable and comfortable for the invalids . . . Perfect discipline and sympathy seemed to prevail.[6]

In addition to physical comforts, the patients’ mental and spiritual health were tended to by the likes of the Christian Commission and thoughtful nursing staff:

Every fanciful decoration which the ingenuity of nurses or ward-masters could suggest was carried out. Some were of most unique design, executed with taste and skill; festoons of many-colored papers covering the rough walls, arched over the beds, or hanging gracefully over windows and doors, so that there was an air of bright and cheerful cleanliness, which was always refreshing.[7]

The reputation of the hospital was such that Abraham Lincoln made sure to visit on April 8, 1865, and he shook hands with over 6,000 patients, both Union and Confederate. The Depot Hospital at City Point earned its place in history as not only one of the largest Union hospitals but also one of the most successful—of the more than 70,000 soldiers treated there during the war, fewer than three percent died while in the hospital’s care.[8]

Sources

[1] Reed, William Howell. Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac, W. B. Spencer, Boston 1881, page 93

[2] Official Records, Armies, vol. 40, pt. 1, 269-272

[3] Smith, Adelaide W. Reminiscences of an Army Nurse During the Civil War, Greaves 1911, pages 96-100

[4] Official Records, Armies, vol. 40, pt. 1, 269-272

[5] National Park Service signage. Grant’s Headquarters at City Point.

[6] Smith, Adelaide W. Reminiscences of an Army Nurse During the Civil War, Greaves 1911, pages 96-100

[7] Reed, William Howell. Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac, W. B. Spencer, Boston 1881, page 93

[8] National Park Service signage. Grant’s Headquarters at City Point.

About the Author

Tracey McIntire earned her BA in English at Rivier College in Nashua, NH. She is Lead Educator at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and an interpretive volunteer at Antietam National Battlefield. She is also an active Civil War living historian, where she portrays a woman soldier in various guises.