Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[895] Chicago, and established himself in business there. Later he was called to St. Louis, where he was put at the head of public works of that city, and where he now lives with his family deserving many years.

I had another volunteer aid in New Orleans, Capt. John Clark, who acted as assistant commissary. He had been editor, and I think proprietor, of the Boston Courier, and when I seized the Delta newspaper he and Lieutenant-Colonel Brown, of the Eighth Vermont, volunteered to keep up the publication as a Union journal. They did it with exceeding ability and success, and I have a lively and strong remembrance of the aid they gave me through that newspaper in writing truly the state of things in New Orleans. Captain Clark died soon after the war.

When I got to New Orleans I had not with me a single surgeon who had ever treated a case of yellow fever. I made an appeal to the surgeon-general to send me an army surgeon if he had one who was able to deal with what I looked upon as the most dangerous foe to my army. Through the necessary detentions and delays of official correspondence, it was many weeks before I received a reply, so that 1 had to make all my dispositions against that enemy before I got any assistance of professional skill. But when it did come it brought Dr. Charles MacCormick. He was a man very considerably advanced in years, who had been a surgeon in the United States Army for quite a long period, and had been stationed at New Orleans during the great epidemic of yellow fever which more than decimated the city in 1853, of which I have spoken. Doctor MacCormick deserves that a book should be written upon his services, for they deserve much more than the brief notice my limits will permit me here to give. He was exceedingly efficient in organizing the hospitals for which I had taken possession of some of the largest buildings in the city, notably the St. Louis Hotel. He gave me great confidence because he entirely approved of what I had done, and relieved me from the load of care and anxiety which was added my labors. He went with me to the Army of the James, and such were his exertions that we had an army in better health than any other army in the field. He continued to serve with me until his own health failed. He died in the city of New York several years after the war. He was one of the truest friends I ever had.