A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [249]
Mayo caught typhus as soon as he arrived on June 1. He put on a brave face for his family’s sake, telling them that he had a nice tent “pitched with that of the Medical Director of the Corps, under a pair of fine beech-trees on a hill,” neglecting to mention that there were nine others in the tent. He had been placed as staff surgeon-major and medical inspector of the XIII Army Corps, with 25,000 men under his care. Mayo found the survivors of the May 22 assault in a miserable state, many having been left to the care of unwilling and unsympathetic civilians. Ever practical, he immediately set about imposing some order on the shambolic situation. He had all the wounded collected and placed together under an open shed made of rough poles and boards. For beds, he copied an innovation found in a deserted Confederate camp and used cane poles and strips of bark braided together to make a mat. The contraption was strong enough to support a man’s weight and flexible enough to conform to his body.
Ill.38 Confederate scouts with percussion caps for the garrison of Vicksburg, running the Federal pickets, by Frank Vizetelly.
The army medical department was more of a hindrance than a help to him. But “we had one excellent and trustworthy friend,” he wrote, “namely, the Sanitary Commission.” The volunteer organization had depots and agents for every army in the field. “The principal agent with Grant’s army was a thoroughly good fellow, and consequently was of very great use to us, indeed without the aid of his supplies the sick must have suffered far more than they did,” Mayo wrote. The medical department always had an excuse, and whatever it did send was never enough. By contrast, the Sanitary Commission agent was so determined to secure the very best for the injured that he even managed to haul ice from Cincinnati to the camp, an unimaginable luxury in the searing heat. “But no man alive could have counteracted the effects of that climate,” wrote Mayo. “Malaria, salt pork, no vegetables, a blazing sun, and almost poisonous water, are agencies against which medicine is helpless. They soon began to tell on myself, as they did on others much more nearly accustomed to the climate. The hope of being recalled also vanished.”22
Mayo’s sense of duty kept him at his post, but by the middle of June he realized that if he did not do something about his situation he would be dead by the autumn. He had become used to the constant shelling, but the malarial conditions were sapping his strength. “Vicksburg still holds out,” he wrote miserably to his sister on June 19. A week later, Mayo had become so desperate that he sent a plea for help to Lord Lyons. It embarrassed him to write to the minister, particularly as Lyons had urged him not to accept an officer’s commission since it would put him beyond the help of the legation: “I was led to believe that I should have no difficulty in getting an order of transfer to a climate in which I could be of some use; if I had thought that they had intended to leave me here I would have left the service rather than come. Now, however, I cannot pass the lines of the army.” Mayo begged Lyons to give his letter of immediate resignation to the secretary of war.23
While Mayo looked to Washington for deliverance, the wilting Federal army turned its eyes to the South. Grant had been expecting General Banks to steam up the Mississippi River; he was meant to have taken Port Hudson by now and opened the way for joint river operations against Vicksburg. Where was he? Washington had been asking the same question. General Henry Halleck sent two angry letters to Banks, expressing his disappointment “that you and General Grant are not acting in conjunction.”24 Banks had captured Alexandria, the state capital of Louisiana, but Halleck dismissed this as a selfish quest for glory. The judgment was unduly harsh; Banks was trying to devise a way of capturing Port Hudson that did not