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The Blue, the Gray, the Green

Civil War memorial plaque outside of Rauner Library in Webster Hall. The plaque was a gift of the DC Class of 1863 and has the names of the 56 class members who died in the Civil War.

Dartmouth College was far away from the battlefields of the Civil War, yet more than 600 Dartmouth students and alumni fought in the War Between the States. A third of those servicemen (women did not attend Dartmouth in those days nor fight in wars) were either past or future students at Dartmouth Medical School. In a Summer 2011 Dartmouth Medicine article, "Years of Change & Suffering," research scientist and amateur historian James Schmidt explains the state of medical care at that time and details many Dartmouth (and New Hampshire) connections to the war.

For those interested in the sources for this article, more about Civil War medicine, or further insight into some of the Dartmouth alumni who played a role in the war, here is a bibliography-cum-reading list.

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• Bridgman and Crosby letters: Author's collection
• Granville P. Conn, History of the New Hampshire Surgeons in the War of Rebellion (Ira C. Evans, 1906)
• Samuel J. Hingley, "A Close Shave In the Civil War of the U.S."
• Edward D. Redington, Military Record of the Sons of Dartmouth in the Union Army and Navy, 1861-1865 (Dartmouth, 1907)
• James M. Schmidt and Guy R. Hasegawa (eds.), Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine (Edinborough Press, 2009)
• Duane E. Shaffer, Men of Granite: New Hampshire's Soldiers in the Civil War (University of South Carolina Press, 2008)
• Walter E. Barton, M.D., "Bell(wether) of Psychiatry," Dartmouth Medicine, Fall 1987
• Seymour E. Wheelock, M.D., "When the Green Wore Blue," Dartmouth Medicine, Spring 1993
• Charles T. Wood, The Hill Winds Know Their Name: A Guide to Dartmouth's War Memorials, pages 4-5 (Dartmouth, 2001).