Episode Details

In 1861 a wounded soldier could lie in the mud for days while quartermaster wagons rolled past carrying rations and powder. Jonathan Letterman, born in Pennsylvania in 1824 and a graduate of Jefferson Medical College in 1849, spent more than a decade as an Army surgeon in Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico and California learning how supply lines fail. After the Seven Days Battles left the wounded stranded in 1862, Surgeon General William Hammond made him medical director of the Army of the Potomac, and George McClellan gave him authority to rebuild the system.

Letterman created forward aid stations with triage by severity, mobile division and corps hospitals, and an Ambulance Corps answering only to the medical department. The system was working by Antietam and handled 12,000 casualties at Fredericksburg. After Gettysburg he built Camp Letterman on the George Wolf Farm. Generals still cut his supply wagons, Hammond was court-martialed after banning calomel, and Letterman resigned in December 1864. He later served as San Francisco coroner and died in 1872 at 47, after Congress had made his methods law for all U.S. armies.

• Mortality in the Army of the Potomac fell from 33 percent during the Peninsula Campaign to 2 percent after Gettysburg, a drop credited to faster evacuation.
• Major John McNulty of the 12th Corps defied orders to leave his medical wagons behind and finished all major surgeries within 24 hours.
• An oil venture for railroad magnate Thomas A. Scott in San Francisco failed after about a year.
• His wife Mary Digges Lee died at 38, and he fell into a severe depression.
• The Army hospital at the Presidio was named Letterman Army Hospital in 1911.