Union Army Hospital

Union Army Hospital. Stringer’s Spring. After the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, Union Gen. William S. Rosecrans retreated to Federal-occupied Chattanooga, a strategically vital rail center, where Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg laid siege from Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant took command in October and began his efforts to break the siege. Bragg detached forces under Gen. James Longstreet to attack Knoxville as a diversion. After Gen. William T. Sherman reinforced Grant in November, the Federals attacked the heights and Bragg retreated. The Union army held the city for the rest of the war., When the Union Army of the Cumberland fell back to Chattanooga after its defeat at Chickamauga on September 19-20, 1863, the wounded quickly filled hospital facilities here. On September 21, using the pontoon bridge across the Tennessee River, the Federals erected a field hospital near here at Stringer’s Spring. Physicians and nurses only treated the seriously wounded who could not withstand transportation to a larger hospital and railhead at Bridgeport, Alabama., The Stringer’s Spring hospital consisted of tents and shelters of bowers of leaves and branches. Despite the lack of permanent facilities, the hospital treated about 2,000 patients, so that in the fall of 1863, this place was overflowing with suffering men. The wounded who improved to the point that they could be transported were placed in empty wagons and carried by Haley’s Trace (today’s Suck Creek Road) to Sequatchie Valley and then south to the Bridgeport hospital., When Confederate sharpshooters on Raccoon Mountain fired across the Tennessee River and closed Haley’s Trace, the wounded were forced to endure a torturous sixty-mile journey over Walden’s Ridge (Signal Mountain) that took four days to complete. After the Battle of Wauhatchie late in October 1863 and the opening of the supply of “cracker line”, the wounded were taken by the direct route through Lookout Valley. The Stringer’s Spring hospital operated until December 6, 1863, when a permanent facility was established in Chattanooga Valley., (sidebar) , In field hospitals such as this one, the amputation of wounded limbs was the primary method of treatment. The Civil War occurred in the era before the advent of “germ theory”, rudimentary sanitation (such as the washing of hands), or antibiotics. Many wounds became infected, and in such cases the mortality rate sometimes reached 90 percent. Amputation could lower the rate to 30 percent. Seemingly cruel by modern standards, amputation saved lives in the 19th century., (captions) , Ambulance crew at drill Courtesy Library of Congress , Union hospital of tents and bowers Courtesy Library of Congress , Convalescing wounded soldiers Courtesy Library of Congress , Methods of amputation, from A Manual of Military Surgery (Richmond, 1863)