[V]ermont is taking a leadership role in a new battle to preserve a Civil War historic site, this one on the spot where a Waterbury doctor ran a tent hospital to care for the wounded at Gettysburg.
Dr. Henry Janes is connected to two historic sites: his 19th century home; which now is the Waterbury municipal building; and Camp Letterman, where Janes directed treatment of about 4,000 of Gettysburg’s most seriously wounded.
The Pennsylvania camp is now slated for a new housing development and is the site of a new battle to prevent that from happening.
This past week, Vermont’s became the first legislature in the country to pass a resolution calling for the preservation of the Camp Letterman site.
The resolution says in part that “the General Assembly supports the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association’s effort to preserve the Camp Letterman hospital site and requests that S&A Homes preserve these 17 acres of historic ground. …”
S&A Homes is the company that owns the land where Camp Letterman stood. A phone message left at the company’s State College, Pennsylvania, offices on Friday was not immediately returned.
The hospital, about a mile east of the town center of Gettysburg, was named for the Union’s top doctor, Jonathan Letterman, chief medical officer of the Army of the Potomac. Janes, the Waterbury Village physician who was serving in the Army at the time, was dispatched immediately after the battle unfolded during the first three days of July 1863, and given the nightmarish task of overseeing care for the battle’s 20,000 wounded and dying.
Several field hospitals were set up; the most seriously wounded were taken to Camp Letterman. One soldier wrote home that he could hear “the shrieks of the wounded” a half-mile away, according to Civil War historian Glen Hayes of Pleasantville, New York.
Hayes said Janes insisted that Confederate and Union soldiers be given equal treatment; those who died were buried in a nearby cemetery side-by-side, he said. Camp Letterman operated just briefly, from the wake of the battle in early July to Nov. 20, 1863, one day after President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.
Hayes said people from 34 states and three foreign countries — Canada, Britain and Italy — had written to support the preservation campaign, but he and Gettysburg native Barbara Mowery, both members of the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association, said few had been as active or effective as Vermont historian Howard Coffin.
“I’m thrilled to death” at Coffin’s involvement, Mowery, the association’s president, said in an interview. “It’s so exciting to see somebody outside the state of Pennsylvania care so much about land that is part of the Battle of Gettysburg.”
Mowery said she expected Pennsylvania lawmakers to pass a resolution soon calling for the land’s preservation, but that it hadn’t happened yet.
It’s not the first go-round for Coffin — or for the Vermont Legislature, for that matter. In 2009, Vermont lawmakers approved, after lobbying by Coffin, a resolution calling for Walmart Stores Inc. to drop plans for a superstore near the Wilderness Battlefield in Virginia.
The retail giant did that two years later, just days before a scheduled court hearing in Virginia in an action brought by preservationists.
Coffin, a former aide to the late U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords, is a now a vigorous 76 and lives in Montpelier. He said Friday that Vermont soldiers played a key role during the battle of the Wilderness and at Gettysburg.
He said in the “tremendously important” battle of the Wilderness, troops began an overland campaign led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant that later saw the Union forces laying siege to the Confederate capital of Richmond.
At Gettysburg, the 2nd Vermont Brigade under the leadership of Gen. George Stannard helped turn the tide in that battle as well as in the Civil War itself by repelling Pickett’s charge.
Coffin said the Camp Letterman site has special significance for Vermont both because of Janes’ leadership role and because several Vermont soldiers were treated there, including at least one who died at the hospital.
Hayes said Frank Smith of Castleton died at Camp Letterman and his remains were sent to a cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, where they remain, apparently because someone misread the home state listed on his record as “Virginia,” rather than “Vermont.”
Hayes said he believes it’s extremely important to preserve the hospital site. “I consider it invaluable because it can still teach a lesson,” he said, chiefly that for many of its participants, the battle lasted much more than three days.
“Many of these veterans spent the rest of their lives suffering from this battle. They didn’t stop being wounded when the battle ended,” he said.
