First Day at Chancellorsville

First Day at Chancellorsville. Absalom McGee House. , They tore up five of our sheets and about 12 dresses and undergarments into strips for bandage. , Harriet McGee, Union Surgeon John Shaw Billings moved his field hospital to the relative safety of Absalom McGee's house, which stood on this rise. McGee's family took shelter in the cellar as Union wounded filled the rest of the house. The medical team tore down McGee's stair rail to better reach the upper rooms, and removed his doors and used them as operating tables., Before and after the Battle of Chancellorsville, Absalom McGee's Unionist stance was a burden for his family. He regularly hid in the woods and stealthily slipped into his house at night, but Absalom was still imprisoned by Southerners on three occasions. According to his wife, Frances, "The rebels first took Mr. McGee in the night when I had just given birth to a child. They threatened to kill my husband at the time they took him which so excited me that I came very near dying and my child died in consequence.", (captions) , (lower left) Surgeon John Shaw Billings managed the Federal field hospitals here. After the war he assembled the library that would become the National Library of Medicine. Courtesy National Library of Medicine , (right) Zouave soldiers were photographed staging an ambulance drill in Virginia. The scene at Absalom McGee's house on May 1 was not nearly so calm and orderly. , Courtesy Library of Congress ,