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
[
274]
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.
