Mosquito Soldiers Read online

  MOSQUITO SOLDIERS

  MOSQUITO

  SOLDIERS

  MALARIA, YELLOW FEVER, AND THE

  COURSE of the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

  ANDREW MCILWAINE BELL

  Published by Louisiana State University Press

  Copyright © 2010 by Louisiana State University Press

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  FIRST PRINTING

  DESIGNER:Amanda McDonald Scallan

  TYPEFACE:text, Whitman; display, Mailart Rubberstamp

  PRINTER AND BINDER:Thomson-Shore, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, Andrew McIlwaine, 1970–

  Mosquito soldiers : malaria, yellow fever, and the course of the American Civil War / Andrew McIlwaine Bell.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8071-3561-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

  1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Health aspects. 2. Malaria—United States— History—19th century. 3. Yellow fever—United States—History—19th century. 4. Mosquitoes as carriers of disease—United States—History—19th century. 5. Soldiers—Diseases—United States— History—19th century. 6. Soldiers—Diseases—Confederate States of America—History—19th century. I. Title.

  E621.B54 2010

  973.7‘75—dc22

  2009027446

  The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

  For Dr. and Mrs. R. M. Bell, with filial love and gratitude

  And the lord said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.

  —EXODUS 11:1

  The subtle malaria of the rebel soil destroys and disables more Northern soldiers than all the wounds received from rebel arms.

  —EDWIN C. BIDWELL, surgeon, Thirty-first Massachusetts

  Volunteer Infantry

  Contents

  PREFACE

  Introduction

  1. Aedes, Anopheles, and the Scourges of the South

  2. The Glory of Gangrene and “Gallinippers”

  3. Mosquito Coasts

  4. “The Land of Flowers, Magnolias, and Chills”

  5. “The Pestilent Marshes of the Peninsula”

  6. “The Roughest Times Any Set of Soldiers Ever Encountered”

  7. Biological Warfare

  Epilogue

  APPENDIX 1. Incidence of MosquitoBorne Disease, 1861–1865

  APPENDIX 2. Common Diagnoses among Union Troops, 1861–1866

  APPENDIX 3. Civil War Chronology

  NOTES

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  Illustrations follow page 71

  PREFACE

  Eyewitnesses to the American Civil War wrote a great deal about disease. The volume of information on malaria and yellow fever alone that can be gleaned from government publications, journal articles, personal accounts, and other sources is truly daunting (which should say something about their importance), and I have learned over the course of this project that it is impossible to describe every single clinical case of a particular disease when trying to produce readable epidemiological history. Therefore, in order to manage such a large amount of data, I have been forced to omit a number of anecdotes and case studies that, however fascinating, were not critical to my thesis. Readers interested in learning more about mosquitoborne illness during certain battles or campaigns are encouraged to consult my notes and bibliography as well as the bibliographies of texts referenced here.

  As a medical/historical “realist,” I believe modern science can help us better understand the medical problems of the past. Not every historian agrees. In fact, those who object to this approach sometimes accuse others who employ it of “presentism” or, worse yet, cultural smugness. But for me epidemiological history, like the other subbranches of the discipline, is a lot more lively and useful when we can compare what we know now with what our forebears knew in the past. The general rise in human life expectancy over the past two centuries (thanks in part to antiseptic surgery, antibiotics, and other groundbreaking developments) has buttressed the notion that immutable scientific laws—truths that transcend time and cultural traditions—exist within the field of medicine. My thesis, that mosquitoborne illness affected minds as well as bodies during the Civil War, rests on this basic premise. In other words, I believe that modern-day medicos know more about disease and the human body than nineteenth-century physicians did.

  Of course, understanding antiquated medicine requires swallowing a healthy dose of historical context. Without it we put ourselves at risk of missing important philosophical questions and new ways of examining old practices. Bloodletting, for example, seen from the perspective of the time in which it was popular, probably cured some patients who wholeheartedly believed in its efficacy. Contemporary research on the mind’s ability to heal the body shows us how such things could have been possible. But historical context can also trap scholars who overprescribe it, resulting in a sort of postmodern paralysis. A hypothetical (and thus politically expedient) example illustrates my point: a study of slavery which presented nothing but the misguided opinions of slaveholders would offend most modern readers. Historians are required to interpret data and make value judgments based on the prevailing wisdom of their times. For scholars exploring the annals of medicine, this means referencing modern medical concepts in addition to older ones. Doing so is also a way of paying tribute to those physicians who carefully compiled detailed clinical records so that future generations might be able to figure out what was killing their patients.

  George Worthington Adams, Alfred Jay Bollet, H. H. Cunningham, Frank Freemon, Margaret Humphreys, and Paul Steiner know a great deal about what annihilated Civil War armies. I owe a debt of gratitude to these scholars—many of whom hold medical degrees—for making me comfortable with the idea of examining nineteenth-century medicine through modern scientific lenses in the first place. I encourage those interested in learning more about Union and Confederate field hospitals, surgical techniques, the health of black soldiers, the organization of the two medical departments, and diseases such as typhoid fever and dysentery to read their fascinating books.

  A brief caveat for the casual reader is in order here: mosquitoborne illness was not the only reason Civil War campaigns and operations turned out the way they did. A host of other factors determined when, where, and how the North’s and South’s armies fought each other, and I have not tried to cover all of them in this specialized study. Readers desiring a comprehensive overview of the political and military events of the war should consult one or more of the brilliant studies written by Bruce Catton, Drew Faust, Gary Gallagher, James McPherson, Allan Nevins, James Robertson, Emory Thomas, and others too numerous to list here. My monograph is intended to complement, rather than compete with or replace, the works of these award-winning historians. Those who prefer a quicker history lesson can scan the timeline of events in my appendix.

  Producing scholarship is in some ways like fighting a war; one is forced to endure long periods of loneliness and boredom, followed by brief but terrifying attacks from faceless enemies (anyone who has ever been blasted in a double-blind review knows what I mean). Along the way certain people have made the enterprise more tolerable and as such deserve my thanks and praise. Tyler Anbinder, my dissertation director at the George Washington University, agreed to oversee this project when it was still in its larval stage. His comments, fri
endship, and encouragement over the years have been invaluable to me. Elizabeth Fenn, another GW professor (now at Duke), served as an academic gadfly and stung me into action with a deft response to my suggestion that she write a book on malaria during the American Revolution. She was also kind enough to share her notes and wisdom on the pitfalls and pleasures of pursuing epidemiological history. Dale C. Smith, a talented medical historian working at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, took time out of his busy schedule to read drafts and introduce me to the murky world of nineteenth-century medicine—thank you, Dr. Smith. Stephen Greenberg and his staff at the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine are truly wonderful human beings. They pulled books off shelves, suggested sources I had not even considered, and greeted me with a smile every time I entered their domain. Terry Reimer, Kari Turner, and others at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland, were equally friendly and allowed me to comb through their collections for hours on end. Two Georgetown professors, Peter Armbruster (biology) and John McNeil (history), gave me advice and encouragement early on in my research. Janie Morris and David Strader helped me navigate Duke’s special collections library. Beverly Tetterton at the New Hanover County Public Library in North Carolina; Casey Greene at the Rosenberg Library in Galveston, Texas; Philip Montgomery at Rice University; and Jacob Crawford at the National Institutes of Health contributed their time and ideas. Dee Dee King, Genevieve Croft, and the unsung heroes at the Library of Congress and National Archives also deserve thanks. So does Stephen Bryce, the GIS genius responsible for the maps presented in this study. Richard Sommers and Michael Knapp at the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, provided funding and opened their files for my perusal. My fellow doctoral students at the George Washington University—especially Craig, Varad, and Kata (and her better half, Raul)—offered support and valuable feedback.

  And last, but certainly not least, are the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died from disease during the Civil War. Like the country as a whole, I owe them a debt I can never repay. Although their less-than-glorious cause of death meant that their names were never chiseled in stone on battlefield monuments, they too gave what Abraham Lincoln described as “the last full measure of devotion.” Thank you, gentlemen—the publication of this book proves that you have not been forgotten.

  MOSQUITO SOLDIERS

  INTRODUCTION

  MANY OF US can still remember the sense of awe we experienced the day we learned that 620,000 Americans had died during the Civil War. It may have been a high school history teacher who first mentioned the number to us, or perhaps we picked it up while reading one of the myriad military histories that have been published in the century and a half since the conflict ended. In any case it was clear that from that moment forward our understanding of this pivotal moment in our country’s past would never be the same. The number dwarfed every other war-related statistic we had encountered, making us wonder how our predecessors could have slaughtered one another at such an appalling rate in only four years’ time, especially since every other military conflict we had learned about, including the bloodbath in Europe in the mid-twentieth century, produced fewer American casualties. What was it like to be part of such a violent struggle? Our minds instinctively conjured up scenes of bayonet charges, exploding shells, and battlefields littered with corpses clad in soiled blue and gray uniforms, the same images that have been promoted by media moguls and well-intentioned instructors since the nineteenth century. But few of us were ever told that another story exists apart from the flanking maneuvers and combat heroics that have long preoccupied scholars, this one even messier, more tragic and profane, and more nauseatingly human than anything we might have imagined. For in truth the overwhelming majority of the 620,000 men who perished during the Civil War did not die from gunshot wounds or saber cuts but were victims of dangerous maladies that frequently made life for earlier generations of Americans gruesome and short.

  It is indeed startling to realize that troops on both sides were more than twice as likely to be killed by deadly microorganisms as enemy fire. In the U.S. Army alone disease accounted for 66 percent of total wartime fatalities; Confederate numbers were comparable. And of the various maladies that plagued both armies, few were more pervasive than malaria. Between 1861 and 1866 over a million white soldiers serving in the Union army were diagnosed with the disease, along with 152,141 of their black comrades in arms. The ailment was a problem for northern troops in every Union military department (repeat infections pushed the average annual incidence rate beyond 100 percent in some areas) and was responsible for every seventh case of sickness among Confederate soldiers stationed east of the Mississippi River in 1861 and 1862. It also created medical complications for men who were suffering from one or more of the various other diseases that plagued Civil War armies, including chronic diarrhea, the biggest pathologic killer of the war. After Appomattox Federal medical officials correctly concluded that northern soldiers suffering with diarrhea and malaria at the same time had succumbed to death more readily than those who were suffering from a gastrointestinal ailment alone. Dysentery (frequently characterized by blood in the stool) and diarrhea together were responsible for more than 40,000 Union deaths.1

  Because unhealthy armies inevitably affect military planning, it should come as no surprise to learn that the ubiquity of malarial infections among northern and southern troops helped shape the events of the Civil War. The disease was one of the main contributors to the South’s annual “sickly season”—the time of year, usually in the summer and fall months, when the region’s insects, parasites, and bacteria were most active and made life unbearable for all but the hardiest of souls. Skittish about risking the health of their troops, military commanders, especially northern ones, routinely avoided operations during this period. For many of them the season was similar to winter, the time of year when armies traditionally withdrew from active campaigning to await the return of better weather.

  Malaria and the sickly season the disease helped create offered the South advantages over its enemies. Primarily fighting a defensive war, southern military planners realized that their Union counterparts were unlikely to launch major offensives in certain areas of the Confederacy during the unhealthiest months of the year. Armed with this knowledge, they transferred troops from sickly districts to other more threatened fronts or reinforced armies tasked with taking the war into the northern states.

  But malaria was not the only ailment that contributed to the South’s reputation for dangerous diseases. Yellow fever outbreaks in Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, Norfolk, Savannah, and other southern cities during the 1850s killed thousands of people and shaped outsiders’ perceptions of the region as an unhealthy place to live and do business. When war came, southerners expressed hope that the dreaded disease would aid their cause, and occasionally their wishes were fulfilled. Actual cases of yellow fever as well as the trepidation the malady caused among northern and southern commanders (equally important from a military standpoint) affected operations in a number of the South’s coastal areas. In the wake of the Confederacy’s collapse, however, federal officials largely dismissed the importance of these incidents and the urgent concerns they had produced during the war. In his magnum opus, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (prepared under the supervision of the surgeon general’s office and first published in the 1870s), Joseph Janvier Woodward downplayed the significance of yellow fever. Gathering reports from army surgeons stationed in various departments across the South, Woodward determined that there had been only 1,355 cases of yellow fever and 436 deaths from the disease among Union troops.

  Yet these figures do not include the hundreds of Union seamen, southern civilians, and Confederate soldiers who also contracted the virus while the fighting lasted. Nor do they reveal the psychological impact the disease had on nervous officers who were assigned to areas with a
history of epidemics and were justifiably worried about their health and that of the men under their command. For them yellow fever was a terrifying and mysterious southern disease that could appear out of thin air at any moment and wipe out an unacclimated brigade, division, or crew in a matter of weeks. They had no way of knowing— as the military-medical establishment did later, with the benefit of hindsight—that yellow fever would kill fewer men during the war than gastrointestinal ailments or typhoid fever. The disease struck fear into the hearts of the men and women who witnessed America’s sectional conflict because they knew all too well that it had annihilated huge numbers of people living in southern cities during the first half of the nineteenth century. Epidemics flared up and then ended almost as quickly as they began, leaving behind ghastly scenes of death and devastation. In order to subdue the South, Union soldiers would need to occupy these sites. Confederates were delighted that their enemies would be battling “yellow jack” as well as southern armies, but they quickly realized that the disease could work against their own forces as well. Outbreaks appeared during the war which snuffed out the lives of Rebel soldiers and civilians alike. Yellow fever, like malaria, was a threat primarily during the summer and autumn months.

  Unbeknownst to the Civil War generation, both of these diseases were being transmitted by the swarms of mosquitoes that inhabited nearly every region of the South in the nineteenth century. Soldiers on both sides frequently complained about these annoying insects that fed on their blood, buzzed in their ears, invaded their tents, and generally contributed to the misery of army life. Little did they suspect that these pests were also helping to shape the larger political and military events of the era. Throughout the war the South’s large mosquito population operated as a sort of mercenary force, a third army, one that could work for or against either side depending on the circumstances. It is for this reason, and because the average enlisted man in the Civil War encountered the insects almost everywhere he went, that this work is entitled “Mosquito Soldiers.”