Three Years in the Sixth Corps

A regimental surgeon’s account of the Army of the Potomac, written by the doctor who left Saratoga Springs in November 1861 with the 77th New York, the Bemis Heights Battalion. Stevens follows the Sixth Corps through the Peninsula, Antietam, the storming of Fredericksburg Heights, Gettysburg, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, the defense of Washington at Fort Stevens, and Sheridan’s Shenandoah campaign, then carries the corps’ story on to the breaking of Lee’s lines at Petersburg on April 2, 1865. He built it from notes taken in camp and on the field, corrected against official reports and letters from fellow officers. The medical eye shows throughout: hospital tents, sick lists, wounded men left behind in a retreat. Published in 1866 for his old comrades of the corps.