The
Surgeon-General of the
Confederate States.
A biographical sketch.
Record of his services in the
U. S. And Confederate States armies.
[By Samuel E. Lewis, M. D., Washington, D. C., late Assistant Surgeon, Confederate States Army; First Vice-President of the Association of Medical Officers of the Army and Navy of the Confederate States.]
After the
Memphis reunion,
General Marcus J. Wright, of the
War Records Office,
Washington, D. C., was requested to furnish a biographical sketch of the late
Surgeon-General of the
Confederate States,
Samuel Preston Moore, M. D., and he initiated correspondence to that end; but being very much occupied with other literary work, and long aware of the interest which the writer takes in whatever relates to the medical and surgical history of the
Confederacy, 18
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and the personnel of the medical department, and considering it fitting that the sketch requested should preferably come from a medical officer, turned the accumulated correspondence over to him with the request that he take charge of the subject.
The following is mainly a digest of that correspondence, together with such other information as has been obtained from the references hereinafter given and other sources.
Owing to the lamentable fire which occurred on the night of the evacuation of
Richmond, April 2, 1865, the records of the office of the
surgeon-general were almost completely destroyed or lost; and at the same time, also, the private books and papers of the family of
Dr. Moore, which had been moved from his residence to a supposed place of safety in the district of the city afterwards burned, so that it is very difficult to obtain even a meagre account of his life prior to that time.
Birth and education.
Samuel Preston Moore, physician and surgeon, was born in
Charleston, S. C.,——, 813; the son of
Stephen West and
Eleanor Screven (
Gilbert)
Moore, and grandson of
Samuel Preston and Susanna (
Pearson)
Moore, and was the lineal descendant of
Dr. Mordecai Moore, who accompanied, as his physician, Lord Baltimore when he came to this country.
By marriage and descent he was intimately connected with the families of
Thomas Lloyd, the first Deputy Governor of
Pennsylvania under
William Penn, and in
West Virginia with the
Moore,
Jackson,
Lowndes, and
Goff families.
He had two brothers in the old
United States army—
Colonel West Moore, for many years
Adjutant-General of
Louisiana, and
Dr. Charles Lloyd Moore,
surgeon.
In June, 1845, he married
Mary Augusta Brown, one of the daughters of
Major Jacob Brown, United States army, who was killed in the
Mexican war in 1846, at the place on the
Texas side of the
Rio Grande, which has since been known, in honor of him, as
Fort Brown, or
Brownsville.
General Stewart Van Vliet, United States army, married the only other daughter (and child) of
Major Brown.
Dr. Moore was educated in
Charleston, S. C.; graduated in medicine in 1834; became assistant surgeon in the United States army, March 14, 1835; surgeon (rank of major), April 30, 1849, and resigned February 25, 1861.
From the date of his appointment as assistant surgeon he was on active duty at
Fort Leavenworth, Fort
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Des Moines,
Fort Gibson, Mo.,
Fort Coffee, Kan., and numerous forts in
Florida, until in 1843 he was stationed at camp Barrancas, Pensacola harbor, where he became acquainted with his future wife, her father being in command of a detail of the Seventh Regiment of United States Infantry, occupying the harbor defences—
Forts Pickens and
McRae.
In the August after his marriage he accompanied his command to
Aransas and
Corpus Christi, on the
Texas boundary, the
Neuces river, preparatory to the movement to the
Rio Grande, and commencement of the
Mexican war. For two years he was at Carmago, on the
Mexican side of the
Rio Grande.
Having attained his promotion as surgeon at
Jefferson Barracks, Mo., he was ordered to duty with the troops which went as advance guard across the plains before the great emigration of 1849, and was en route to, and on duty at,
Fort Laramie, Ore., now
Wyoming Territory, until August, 1851.
In January, 1852, he was again ordered to
Texas, under Division
Commander General Persifer F. Smith; remaining a few months in
San Antonio; thence to duty at
Brownsville 'till November, 1854; then to Fort Columbus,
Governor's Island, New York harbor, until July, 1855, and thence to the United States Military Academy at
West Point, where he remained 'till April, 1860; subsequent to which, 'till his resignation, he was the medical purveyor at
New Orleans, La.
Though a great lover of his country and his State, he was not a politician, and was greatly distressed in mind as to where his duty called, at the same time and in like manner with the agitation of the then
Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the United States army; but when his State seceded he determined to resign his commission.
He retired to
Little Rock, Ark., with some intention of making that place his home, but the times were not conducive to repose, and trained officers were urgently required in all departments of the army and navy.
Therefore, in response to the persistent appeals of his dearest friends, and from a high sense of duty, he concluded to answer the call made upon him as an officer of recognized merit, by
President Davis, and to accept appointment as the
surgeon-general, in June, 1861.
He immediately devoted himself with great energy, patience and ability to the enormous work which he saw before him. The medical men of that day in the
South were fully the equals in knowledge and skill of their brothers in the other parts of the country, but all were untrained in military practice.
They were physicians in civil life, unskilled in surgery and the conduct of hospitals, save to very
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limited extent.
To organize an efficient medical corps in such great emergency from unknown and scattered elements, became his first care.
In this he found much difficulty from the fact that many of the most capable of the younger physicians, in the ardor of the time and from various causes, sought distinction in the ranks, and as officers of commands, in the hope of more rapidly acquiring military fame.
And as was the case in the other departments, there was in this one, great lack of the requisite stores, raw and manufactured, for field and hospital.
Severed in every direction from the rest of the world of supplies by powerful armies and fleets, and by the early proclamations of the enemy declaring all medicines and
surgical instruments, books and appliances contraband of war, the medical department was constrained to seek in its own forests and fields such substitutes as could be found for the more reliable medicines, and to build and establish laboratories for converting them into
pharmaceutical preparations in large quantities, and arrange them in convenient packages for wide distribution and use; to improvise and manufacture by unskilled artisans, and the scanty means at hand, such
surgical instruments and appliances as their necessity required and ingenuity could invent, which could not be procured from the so-called underground railroad of the time, the occasional blockade runners, and the success of our brave soldiers in the field in capturing stores from the enemy, and to select appropriate sites and organize hospitals, etc. Such, in part, were the problems which fell to him to solve.
The Confederate Surgeon.
It has been reliably stated that there were in the scantily-clothed and foorly-fed Confederate army and navy about 1,000 surgeons and 2,000
assistant surgeons, without proper medicines and
surgical instruments and appliances to care for an army consisting, from first to last, of 600,000 troops, in deadly warfare with 2,859,132 troops of the United States army, supplied with the most modern equipments and arms, the most abundant clothing and food, and all that science and art could furnish in medicine and surgery.
It is estimated that more than 3,000,000 cases of wounds and disease was cared for by the medical corps of the Confederate army and navy during the war. It is also reliably stated that the whole number of Federal prisoners captured by the
Confederates and held in southern prisons from the first to the last was in round numbers 270,000; while the whole number of Confederates captured and held
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in the
Federal prisons was in like round numbers but 220,000; that of the former there were 22,570 deaths, and of the latter 26,436 deaths; a difference in favor of the
Confederates of 3,866, notwithstanding the 50,000 excess in our hands.
Thus the percentage of deaths in Confederate prisons was about 8 3-10, while that in the
Federal prisons was 12, a difference of about 37-10 per cent. in favor of the
Confederates.
Such, in brief, was the work to which
Dr. Moore gave anxious thought and ceaseless labor, and developed and conducted under the most embarrassing and discouraging circumstances to marvelous discipline, efficiency, and resourcefulness.
Association formed.
Under the auspices of the
surgeon-general, in August, 1863, a large number of surgeons assembled in the Medical College of
Virginia, at
Richmond, and organized the ‘Association of Army and Navy
Surgeons of the
Confederate States,’ by the adoption of a constitution and the election of the following officers:
Samuel P. Moore, M. D., president;
J. B. McCaw, M. D., first
vice-president;
D. Conrad, M. D.,
Confederate States navy, second
vice-president;
W. A. Davis, M. D., first recording secretary;
W. A. Thom, M. D., second recording secretary;
M. Michel, M. D., first corresponding secretary;
S. Jenkins, M. D., second corresponding secretary, and
J. S. Wilson, M. D., treasurer.
It was also through his aid and encouragement that the most excellent ‘
Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal’ came into existence, and was conducted to the end of the war; and he directed the preparation of a collection of papers entitled ‘A Manual of Military Surgery,’ intended more especially for officers in the field, and to treat of but few of the diseases incident to the camp and hospital, reserving only such as are more intimately connected with gunshot wounds and operations, as Shock, Tetanus, Hospital Gangrene, Pyaemia, etc. It is accompanied by a careful selection of lithographs of amputations, ligations, resections, etc.
He continued to reside in
Richmond after the war, not actively engaged in the practice of his profession, but giving the benefit of his extensive knowledge and experience to educational and other institutions, having the welfare of the community in view.
He was a member of the
R. E. Lee Camp of Confederate Veterans, of
Richmond; of the
Executive Board of the
Virginia Agricultural
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Society, and of the
Richmond School Board; was chosen president of the Association of Medical and Surgical Officers of the Army and Navy of the
Confederate States, at
Atlanta, Ga., May 25, 1874, and was elected one of the
vice-presidents of the Section of Military and Naval Surgery in the ninth International Congress, 1887.
He died at his residence, No. 202 West Grace street,
Richmond, Va., May 31, 1889, and was buried in Hollywood cemetery.
In person he was above medium stature well formed, erect, and of soldierly bearing; regular, handsome features, not austere, but subdued by thought and studious habits.
With acquaintances he was genial, having a pleasant brightness and a keen, but harmless, wit. In official life a strict disciplinarian, but appreciative of faithful service.
He was always extremely modest in referring to his own work, and only alluded to it at comparatively long intervals and upon the most intimate occasions.
That he spared not himself the best testimony is the high renown he won for himself and his faithful corps with the medical world, which has justified the wisdom of his selection for the duties imposed upon him, and also by the loving regard felt for him in recognition and appreciation of his services, by all the people of his beloved Southland.
His family.
His widow,
Mary Augusta (
Brown)
Moore, survives him, residing (June 17, 1901) with her son-in-law,
Howard R. Bayne, a prominent counsellor at law, in New York city.
The children are as follows:
Preston Brown Moore (deceased) married
Maria Pendleton Steger, of
Richmond, Va. Issue:
I. Mary Preston Moore, married
Galloupe Morton (deceased); issue:
Charles I. Morton.
Issue II:
Dr. Charles Lloyd Moore, unmarried.
Lizzie Strong
Moore, married (April 27, 1886)
Howard R. Bayne, Issue:
I. Samuel Preston Moore Bayne, died October 7, 1887; II.
Mary Ashby Moore Bayne; III.
Lloyd Moore Bayne.
references.—The reports of the
surgeon-generals of the
United Confederate Veterans—viz:
Joseph Jones, M. D., of
New Orleans, La., and
C. H. Tebault, M. D., of
New Orleans, La.; the
Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol.
II, page 125; Vol.
XVII, page 12; Vol.
XX, page 109; the
Medical and Surgical Journal of the Con-
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federate States; the
Rise and fall of the Confederate States Government, Vol.
I, page 310; the Richmond
Dispatch, June 1, 1889; the
Surgeon-General's office,
Washington, D. C. 
