I tried during the past year to make the most of the pandemic by reading more than usual in topics I don't normally select. I am not especially interested in Civil War history, at least not accounts of military strategy and tactics.
So when I decided to read more about the War of the Rebellion in Arkansas, I selected a 1998 title which had escaped my attention previously: "Surgeon on Horseback, the Missouri and Arkansas Journal and Letters of Dr. Charles Brackett of Rochester, Indiana."
The words "journals and letters" in the title were enough to get my attention, for they promised the possibility of historical immediacy--the unguarded reactions of a man caught up in the daily grind of keeping people alive in a sickly climate which was a more deadly enemy than the sword.
Dr. Brackett was a Union Army physician who wrote his wife regularly, letters full of interesting and sometimes bitterly critical commentary on his inept superiors and the shocking situations in which he was forced to treat sick and wounded soldiers, including treating the large number of Black freedmen who flocked around Helena where Dr. Brackett spent considerable time.
Charles Brackett was born June 18, 1825, one of eight children of James and Eliza Brackett of Cherry Valley, N.Y. Charles and other members of the family migrated to Fulton County in north-central Indiana. He became a medical doctor, as did his brother James.
Four of the Brackett brothers served in the Ninth Illinois Cavalry during the Civil War. The youngest, Albert, was a professional soldier and was colonel of the regiment; James and Charles served as surgeon and assistant surgeon, respectively, and Joseph was the regimental quartermaster.
Charles Brackett was married and the father of four young children when the war erupted. Leaving his wife, Margaret, to give birth to a new child, raise the family, manage a 90-acre farm, and collect his medical debts, Dr. Brackett joined an Indiana unit and found himself stationed at a camp hospital near St. Louis. Later he joined his brother Col. Albert Brackett in the Ninth Illinois in time to be stationed in northeast Arkansas.
In an April 1862 letter to Margaret, Dr. Brackett reported favorably on Pocahontas and Randolph County, saying the "Secesh [secessionists] here being fewer in number by far than in Missouri, the people better informed as a class ... & having a stronger Union feeling."
Still, Dr. Brackett could not restrain his contempt for his superiors in the regimental hospital, a criticism heard repeatedly: "Our Hospital management is very bad, could indeed hardly be worse ..."
Complaints and professional jealousies aside, he was a close observer, and his letters were full of interesting details and asides. While stationed at Jacksonport on the White River in Jackson County, Dr. Brackett commented on the regiment's "immense" cavalry force with its 1,200 horses and 200 mules, which "consume at a feed one hundred and forty bushels of corn, or two hundred and eighty bushels per day, and about ten tons of hay."
On Sunday, June 8, 1862, he wrote his "Dearest Wife" a long and descriptive account of a Confederate gunboat attack on the Union army encampment at Jacksonport, telling her that the rebels "had our range perfectly, the citizens male & female cheering them & telling them where the Hospital & Company tents were ... all the City was out cheering & waving flags, & handkerchiefs, the men directing the gunners where to fire to reach our tents."
The locals stopped cheering, however, when the gunboat crew went ashore and destroyed anything which might benefit the federal cause. Dr. Brackett wrote that they "burned about a thousand bales of cotton, rolled off in the river all the sugar & molasses [barrels] they could roll then & they stove in the rest." The "stench of commingled Sugar, Cotton, & Molasses" left the town "perfectly sour."
He came to know Thomas Todd Tunstall, the founder of Jacksonport and a defiant unionist, whom the doctor mentioned several times in letters and his diary. In June 1862, fearing Confederate gunboats on the White, the regimental hospital was relocated to Tunstall's farm about three miles inland.
Dr. Brackett wrote: "This Mr. Tonsall [Dr. Brackett never once correctly spelled Tunstall's name] is an old soldier [who] was at the battle of Tippecanoe, & the Thames [1813, fought in Canada] ... & is a perfect Union man." Brackett goes on to write that a few months earlier a Confederate gunboat made Tunstall "a special target for one of their Shot--which cut off a large limb over his head."
Tunstall remained calm: "The old Gentleman took it coolly & brought a bit of the splinter (which hit him) home."
Dr. Brackett was apparently not close to his brother, the commanding colonel Albert Brackett. His diary entry of June 27, 1862, in which he briefly mentions that Albert had been shot during a skirmish, but "Col saved by steel vest" seems awfully detached.
A "heavy Minnie ball" had been deflected by the steel vest, but it left the colonel battered and bruised. Later diary entries indicate the close call had affected Albert's "whole system," leaving him "very nervous" and forcing him to take medical leave.
The Ninth Illinois Cavalry was transferred to Helena in July 1862, the capture of Helena resulting in several rear-guard skirmishes. Dr. Brackett was impressed with the Black soldiers he observed in one particularly bitter encounter in which "the negroes of our regiment fought bravely using knives, bludgeons, & fire arms with telling effect." He concluded: "I am satisfied they will do well for soldiers."
Many of the affluent Confederate families in Helena fled the city, leaving homes to be occupied by the Union forces. On more than one occasion Dr. Brackett engaged in looting, sending a variety of things home to Margaret or the kids. One shipment included a violin for himself and "a nice bit of swans down" for his wife.
Dr. Brackett's health had been declining for some weeks when he made his final diary entry dated Jan. 28, 1863. Four days later he was diagnosed as having "conjestive fever," followed by paralysis of his left arm, indicating he had suffered a stroke. He died Feb. 20, 1863, at age 38, and was buried back home in Indiana.
Fortunately for posterity, Dr. Brackett's letters and diaries were saved by three generations of family members, finally being transcribed, annotated lightly, and published by descendant James W. Wheaton in 1998.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.