Camp Letterman

For four months in 1863 the largest tent hospital of the war stood in a field beside the York Pike, a mile and a half east of Gettysburg. The armies marched away in early July and left about twenty one thousand wounded men behind them, scattered through barns, churches and farmhouses for miles in every direction. Camp Letterman was the answer to that: one general hospital on George Wolf's farm, sited for its high ground, its spring water and its position beside both the York Road and the railroad that could carry men out. Construction ran from 10 to 22 July 1863 and the first patients arrived on the twentieth, while the carpenters were still working. It took its name from Jonathan Letterman, medical director of the Army of the Potomac, who had spent the previous year building the system that made such a place possible: forward dressing stations, a dedicated ambulance corps, then evacuation to a general hospital in the rear. Gettysburg was the largest test that system ever faced. Tents held twelve patients each, laid out in rows with a cookhouse, a dead house and an embalming tent, and both the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission ran operations alongside. The hospital closed on 20 November 1863, the day after Lincoln dedicated the Soldiers' National Cemetery nearly two miles away. Most of the ground it stood on is now a shopping centre, though about eight acres have been preserved and carry interpretive plaques, which is more than almost anyone driving the Lincoln Highway past it realises is there.