“The Most Hated Man in Clarksburg”; historical Civil War fiction

So how could someone be called or become the most hated man in a small town like Clarksburg Virginia? What could cause a man from Philadelphia, a doctor, a newspaper editor, and a friend of Abraham Lincoln to be so reviled in a small town?

The answer to this question is to be found in my book of the same title, “The Most Hated Man in Clarksburg”.

The gentleman in question was one of the most interesting characters that I think I have ever found. While the book is written as historical fiction it involves a real-life character.

I ran into this gentleman when I was writing my book, “A Civil War History of Harrison County West Virginia 1861 to 1865”. This book is available through Amazon.com. Since you are already reading my blog, you can easily go to the portion of my home page that discusses the authors published books. From there you can go down to the history Section and order the book directly from Amazon. As I’ve stated in other places in my blogs and in my website when I completed this book I gave the copyright to the Harrison County Historical Society. All proceeds for the sale of this book go to support the Historical Society and its operations.

As I was doing my research I stumbled into the fact that this gentleman was perhaps one of the most interesting historical figures I had ever encountered. He was one of those unique individuals who lived in the 1850s and 1860s that just seemed to know or bump into a large number of historical figures.

He grew up in Philadelphia the son of a doctor. His father established a medical practice with Doctor George McClellan. Doctor McClellan was the father of the future general George B McClellan. Our hero grew up with the young George and they were friends in school.

When George McClellan received his appointment to West Point at the age of 15 our hero was somewhat forced to attend West Point with him. Our gentlemen in question immediately realized that the military life at West Point was not for him. Within a matter of a few weeks, he resigned his appointment and went back to Philadelphia. Ultimately, he became a doctor.

One of the problems with becoming a practicing physician in Philadelphia at that time was that there were a number of excellent medical schools in the city at the time of his graduation. Finding a practice that would accept him was difficult. However, there were other opportunities available. One of these prospects was to go West and practice medicine in an area where doctors were scarce. Our hero opted to take the train and go to Dubuque, Iowa. There he joined a practice with another doctor, and they became quite successful.

As I mentioned earlier this gentleman had a knack for running into people or dealing with people that ultimately would become famous around the time of the Civil War. While he was in his medical practice in Dubuque an army captain brought a severely injured soldier into his office seeking treatment for his wound.

The soldier had been severely cut by a cable that they were using to clear debris out of the Mississippi River. At first look it appeared that the soldier would lose the leg. However, our hero, while he was attending medical school, attended a lecture from a former army contract Surgeon who had served at a small outpost in the Dakota territories. This doctor in his lecture had talked about some native remedies that he had used, and some medical advice that he had learned from a native shaman.

Since it looked like the soldier was going to lose his leg anyway the two doctors decided that perhaps they could risk trying this Native American remedy. They were skeptical but they figured it was worth the attempt.

Remarkably they were successful. Within a matter of a week the soldier was up, his infection was gone, and his leg was healing adequately. By the end of the month, he was ready for duty again. His captain was elated; he was one of his best men.

The young captain who had brought the soldier to the two doctors was named Montgomery Meigs. Within a few short years this young Captain would serve as the Quartermaster General of the entire Union army during the Civil War. He would remember this doctor who decided to experiment and save the life and leg of one of his men.

Not long after this incident our hero would be invited to a social gathering in the little town of Galena IL. This burgeoning river community with its beautiful homes and elegant mansions was the center of trade in northwestern Illinois. The town had initially found itself at the center of galena (lead) mining. But as a result of clearing out the river that connected it to the Mississippi it also became a central shipping center. The town was quite wealthy. While our hero was attending a party for some leading men in the area he was asked to take a temporary leave of absence from his medical practice and take a wagon load of medical supplies to Topeka, Kansas territory. It seems that the gentleman who were shipping these supplies were concerned that they would be confiscated by the US Army, patrolling the Kansas border during the “Bloody Kansas” affair. They thought that if a doctor accompanied the supplies that they could easily pass through the Federal army patrols.

They convinced our doctor that he was their man. They agreed to pay him $5 a day for every day that he was on the trail with the wagon. He could travel in the ambulance, and he could sleep there with some degree of comfort. The men who were guarding the wagon would provide him food and security for the trip. At the end of the journey, he would receive a bonus of $500, which was a fortune in those days. He was also allowed to treat patients along the trail, and they would reimburse him for the patients that he treated.

Doctors were at a premium in that sparsely settled portion of the West. Our young doctor decided to go along.

When he finally arrived in Topeka he realized that he had left one of his medical journals in the ambulance that had been parked inside of a large warehouse. When he went to retrieve his journal, he observed that they were unloading the wagon and to his surprise only the top three layers of packages were medical supplies. The rest of the wagons were loaded with guns and ammunition to support General Lane and his anti-slavery faction.

Our doctor was mortified. He felt that he had violated his Hippocratic Oath; he was now a gun runner, and he felt that he was unfit to practice medicine any longer.

Meanwhile the Kansas territorial governor intervened and hired him as a speechwriter. He was a highly educated man, a doctor, and he had studied in some of the best academies in Philadelphia. He was an articulate gentleman.

Unfortunately, the territorial governor was recalled by Congress, and our hero lost his job. But the governor had other plans for him. The country was about ready to undergo the election of 1856, and the governor was a ranking member of the Democratic Party. He asked his young friend to go to Chicago and work for him as a newspaper man in support of the Buchanan election. He set him up in a newspaper called the Democratic Bugle. As a result of his editorial abilities the paper became a very prominent mouthpiece for the election of James Buchanan.

As a result he received a ‘spoils appointment’ as the postal inspector for the state of Illinois. During his many trips around the state, he dealt with prominent men who convinced him that the Democratic Party was collapsing and that he should throw his support to the Republicans. On one of his trips to Springfield, Illinois he met a young lawyer and the future president of the United States in 1860. He was now the friend of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln as president-elect, surrounded himself with a group of men that he referred to as his ‘Frontier Guard’; he asked our hero to go with him as he needed a doctor, but this doctor was carrying a 44-caliber pistol in his medical bag. They traveled across the entire United States; Lincoln would stop and give speeches at major cities and at whistle stops introducing himself to the American public after he won the election.

One of their stops was Philadelphia. While our hero was there, he attended a party with some of his former classmates. They had a good time catching up and evidently the party got kind of wild one evening. One of his former classmates was talking about a plot to assassinate President Lincoln. He indicated that his father was one of the conspirators and that when Lincoln got to Baltimore, Maryland he would be assassinated.

The next morning our young hero had an interesting discussion with the famous detective, Alan Pinkerton, who was travelling with the Lincoln party. Pinkerton listened intently and then sent some agents to Baltimore where they uncovered the plot. They safely got president-elect Lincoln into the nation’s capital for his inauguration. Shortly afterward the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. The army took over guarding the president and our friend was now once again out of a job.

As he was leaving the White House who does he bump into but his old friend from Dubuque, Iowa, Montgomery Meigs. Meigs had just been appointed as the Quartermaster General of the entire Union army, a position he would hold throughout the entire Civil War.

That night at dinner he offered our doctor an appointment as a captain in the Union army as an Assistant Quartermaster General. Our friend had hoped that he could go to Cairo, Illinois, and serve there as the Assistant Quartermaster General, but instead he ended up in a little town in western Virginia by the name of Clarksburg, he was supporting his old school chum General George B McClellan.

I don’t want to give away the rest of the story of his time in Clarksburg, which was one of the largest logistical centers that supported operations as far East as the Shenandoah Valley and as far South as Charleston, Virginia (WV). He did a remarkable job especially considering that he had no training in quartermaster operations. So how does he accommodate the locals? Well, I suppose you’re going to have to read the book to find out.

I hope you enjoy the book. I think it’s a great story.

He left Clarksburg in the Spring of 1862 and experienced other unique adventures, meeting people that were famous and taking on unique roles in both the New Mexico and Arizona territories prior to his death from Rocky Mountain spotted fever at the young age of thirty-eight.

If you’re enjoying these blogs, please drop me a comment or if you have any questions that I might answer again submit a comment on the comment pages. Glad to hear from you. Again, take a look at all of my books that I have listed, they can be purchased with the click of a button. Until next week, Have a good one.

Next week we’ll go back and talk about some aspects of the Vietnam Advisor series.

For more information visit my website: ptaylorvietnamadvisor.com