‘ [233] Sheridan, who had been captured by some of our troops in the Valley of Virginia. When, among others, I was captured at Waynesboro, General Sheridan sent for me and after a short talk released me from prison on parole on the same terms that I had accorded to his medical officers. The fact of the release of the Federal surgeons at Winchester in May, 1862, was noticed by the Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal and by the different newspapers of that period. Soon after the release of these Federal surgeons, and I believe in consequence of their parole, a number of Confederate surgeons, then in Northern prisons, were sent home.’ From the Confederate War Journal of General Marcus J. Wright, Lexington, Ky., and New York, 1893-5, Vol. 2, p. 124, I glean the following as worthy of mention relating to the operations at that time as reported by Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson from headquarters Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia, April 10, 1863, to Brigadier-General R. H. Chilton, Acting Adjutant-General and Inspector-General, Headquarters Department of North Virginia:
The public property captured in this expedition (1862) at Front Royal, Winchester, Martinsburg and Charleston was of great value. The medical stores, which filled one of the largest storehouses in Virginia, were fortunately saved. Most of the instruments and some of the medicines, urgently needed at the time by the command, were issued to the surgeons; the residue was sent to Charlottesville and turned over to a medical purveyor. Two large and well furnished hospitals, capable of accommodating some seven hundred patients, were found in the town and left undisturbed, with all their stores, for the use of the sick and wounded of the enemy. There were found in the hospitals at Winchester about 700 sick and wounded of the enemy. * * * Those left in the hospitals were paroled. Eight Federal surgeons, attending the sick and wounded at Winchester, were at first held as prisoners of war, though paroled, and the next day unconditionally released. * * * Dr. H. Black, Acting Medical Director, discharged his duties well.The following extract will be found of interest from a letter to Dr. Kent Black, Blacksburg, Va., son of Surgeon Harvey Black, dated Marion, Va., December 26, 1898, from Dr. John S. Apperson, formerly Hospital Steward to Surgeon Harvey Black from Harper's Ferry, Va., when the old Stonewall Brigade was organized up to the surrender at Appomattox.
