Review - "North Carolina's Confederate Hospitals 1864-1865, Volume II" by Wade Sokolosky

[North Carolina's Confederate Hospitals 1864-1865, Volume II by Wade Sokolosky (Fox Run Publishing, 2025), Hardcover, 7 maps, photos, tables, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:viii,216/263. ISBN:978-1-945602-30-6. $32.95]

By now the vast majority of significant Civil War campaigns, raids, and battles fought in the state of North Carolina, beginning with the Union captures of Forts Hatteras and Clark in August 1861 and concluding with the Confederate surrender at Bennett Place in April 1865, have received noteworthy treatment in the military history literature. However, the Confederate medical service's tall task of dealing with the human cost of those conflicts, from serious illness and disease acquired in camp or on the march to wounds received on the battlefield, has not been followed in like depth and fashion. Making enormous inroads into bridging that gap is Wade Sokolosky, who has not only contributed immensely to the documentation of the late-war campaigns in North Carolina but is now in the middle of producing a multi-volume history of the military hospital system in North Carolina. The newest installment in that project, North Carolina's Confederate Hospitals 1864-1865, Volume II, represents the middle volume of a planned trilogy.

As one might expect, Volume II closely follows the structure and style of presentation first established by the author in North Carolina's Confederate Hospitals 1861-1863, Volume I. At this late stage of the war, the bureaucratic conflicts between the Richmond government and state and local authorities that were covered so well in Volume I were largely resolved. Many other important topics and themes, however, are common to both books. Volume II continues to feature detailed profiles of every general hospital and wayside hospital in operation during the covered period, the wayside hospital being responsible for the feeding and temporary care (ex. examination and redressing of bandages) of wounded and sick soldiers in transit. Hospital location, its physical description, bed capacity, and personnel matters related to it are major features of each facility profile. Firsthand accounts gleaned from Sokolosky's deep primary source research also provide readers with keen insights into hospital operations from both staff and patient perspectives. Specific administrative issues, both internally and within the system at large, are also frequently discussed.

The tireless and highly competent leadership of Medical Director Peter Hines is commended throughout. In addition to the doctor's adept display of large-scale hospital system management skills, Hines always did his duty with an eye toward enhancing the quality of patient care. Examples cited by the author include Hines's decision, during mid-war hospital expansion, to adopt the pavilion-style designs that both sides came to favor and his establishment of specialized care destinations within the system (ex. the Greensboro location having particular expertise in treating wounds to the face). The leadership and accomplishments of many other military surgeons are also recognized, as are the contributions of lower staff and civilian nurses. While the well-known writings of, for example, volunteer nurse Kate Sperry ensure that her own viewpoints and activities are never forgotten, the author points out in both volumes that that was not the case for the many black nurses and hospital attendants for whom sources documenting their service do not exist.

A prominent theme in both books is the profound effects military campaigns, both inside and outside the state, had on hospital locations and operations. In Volume I it was primarily mounting casualties on the Virginia fighting front that drove hospital expansion, while Union raids launched from the occupied tidewater region of the state periodically threatened locations where major hospitals were situated. By 1864, expansion of the military hospital system centered around the three new pavilion-style hospitals referenced earlier, which were not entirely completed before being overtaken by events. As Sokolosky documents, the hospital system as a whole became threatened from all sides by large-scale military actions as 1864 progressed into 1865. In addition to renewed coastal incursions, the state was invaded from the south by General Sherman's unstoppable host and from the west through the mountains by increasingly daring cavalry raids (Stoneman's Raid in 1865 being the most prominent). To the north, the incessant stream of casualties from battles fought during the 1864 Overland and 1864-65 Richmond-Petersburg campaigns imposed unprecedented capacity stresses on North Carolina's hospitals. Those stresses, combined with mounting supply and material scarcities, threatened to overwhelm the entire system.

As first explained in Volume I, general hospital location, in addition to striking a delicate balance between proximity to the front and safety from enemy attack, was also driven by logistical considerations. That limiting factor made their establishment near cities and along major rail lines a practical necessity. In Volume II, Sokolosky recounts the constant struggles involved in maintaining hospital operations in the face of competing military demands for rail transport, the general breakdown in the Confederate economy, and the gradual shutting off of foreign supply sources through the blockade. Of course, the logistical hubs in and around which those hospitals were located were also prime military targets for the enemy, and Sokolosky carefully documents the constant relocation of hospitals and patients into the interior as the state's major cities rapidly fell to approaching Union forces in 1865. While reading those sections of the book, one cannot help but appreciate the administrative marvel that kept North Carolina's hospital system in some semblance of existence and order until the guns finally fell silent.

The trilogy's first two volumes are both heavily illustrated. In addition to pinpointing the shifting locations of North Carolina's general and wayside hospitals through a series of excellent maps, other visual supplements found in Volume II include images of persons and locations, useful data tables, and photographic reproductions of staff and admission-related documents from the archives.

So, with Volume II taking readers through the end of the war, what's left to cover in the final installment? As the author explains, Volume III will house a collection of additional topics, the prior integration of which would have proved too disruptive to the chronological flow maintained throughout the first two books. Being witness to the quality level thus far displayed, one looks forward to the final volume with relish as well as with a strong sense of appreciation for Wade Sokolosky's dedication in producing a definitive-scale history and reference guide to North Carolina's Civil War military hospitals.