Further Congressional legislation followed on 17 July specifying a hospital chaplain’s pay at twelve hundred dollars a year with an additional three hundred dollars allowed for quarters. Accordingly President Lincoln asked Congress to approve the appointment of US Hospital Chaplains, a request Congress honored on. “In spring 1862, a number of Washington clergymen petitioned President Lincoln to appoint military chaplains to the city’s hospitals that were overflowing with wounded and sick soldiers. The largest hospital, however, was Chimborazo, operated by the Confederates in Richmond, with 7,000 beds.” (Dorwart) Its two largest general hospitals, Satterlee and Mower had 4,000 and 3,000 beds, respectively. Philadelphia alone had more than 14,000 beds. “The Union Army operated 16 medical departments, the top two by bed capacity being Washington City (D.C.) and Pennsylvania. Since no chaplaincy service was available in military hospitals, local ministers and church members ministered to the wounded.” (Mayniak, 183-184) For that reason, most Civil War hospitals were initially overcrowded and understaffed. Such a high incidence of disease early in the war caught the Army Medical Department unprepared. (National Archives Identifier: 524592).ĭuring the Civil War, “for every hospital bed occupied by a soldier wounded in battle, there were at least seven others filled by those with diseases such as measles, typhoid fever, malaria, and dysentery. Ward in the Carver General Hospital, Washington, D.C.
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