Christopher H. Tebault, Surgeon to the Confederacy

208 Pages·2020·46.198 MB·English

by  Alan I. West

Christopher H. Tebault,
Surgeon to the Confederacy

Christopher H. Tebault,
Surgeon to the Confederacy
Alan I. West
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-8082-8
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-3884-3
Library of Congress and British Library
cataloguing data are available
Library of Congress Control Number 2020000397
© 2020 Alan I. West. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
The front cover image of Dr. Tebault was first published in the 1914
Confederate Veteran as part of his obituary (August 1914, xxii (8): 372–373);
background Confederate flag from the top of Dr. Tebault’s
medicine cabinet (photograph by author)
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Preface 1
1. Dr. Christopher Hamilton Tebault 5
2. The War 15
3. Medical Practice in New Orleans 46
4. Reconstruction 65
5. The Lost Cause 112
6. The United Confederate Veterans 136
Afterword 141
Dr. Tebault’s Writings—A Selection 155
Chapter Notes 179
Bibliography 185
Index 193
v

Preface
My fascination with Christopher Hamilton Tebault began with an antique medicine
box. In 1998 I purchased a walnut medicine chest from a Connecticut antiques dealer. It was
manufactured by Savory & Moore, London, “Chemists to the Queen,” with a label contain-
ing the notation “PRIZE MEDAL 1862 for Excellence of Manufacture.” The chest included
a number of original bottles with the labels of Thomas Roper, a 19th-century druggist who
practiced in Ross-on-Wye, a small English town located in southeastern Herefordshire. But
the most exciting part of the chest was its top, where a brass plate was engraved with a name.
C.H. Tebault, M.D.
—Surgeon—
10th S.C. Inf. Regt.
C.S.A.
The brass plate reads “C.H. Tebault, M.D.—Surgeon—10th S.C. Inf. Regt. C.S.A.” The purchase of
the chest began a 20-plus-year journey to understand who its owner was. Photograph by author.
1
2 Preface
As the Savory & Moore label cited an 1862 prize, the chest had to have been purchased
in 1862 or later, most likely from a Confederate blockade-runner. The wooden chest would
have been expensive for its time. It is my belief that the case was presented to Dr. Tebault in
honor of his promotion to surgeon of the 10th South Carolina Infantry Regiment in August
1862. The men of the regiment may have purchased it as a gift to an esteemed surgeon and
colleague, but it is more likely that Dr. Tebault’s father, Major Edward Tebault, procured it
for his son. Blockade-runners auctioned their wares at southern port cities, such as Savan-
nah, Charleston, Wilmington, Mobile and Pensacola. Interior states and cities rarely bene-
fited from such goods. Major Tebault was financially well-off and connected politically, so
he could easily have had access to those auctions.
How the chest wound up in the inventory of a Connecticut antiques dealer is still a
mystery. The dealer had mentioned that the chest was purchased from a Connecticut estate.
Somewhere during Dr. Tebault’s travels, most likely during General Braxton Bragg’s cam-
paign in Tennessee, the chest may have been captured along with other supplies and even-
tually found by a Connecticut doctor. As it would have been too heavy for an enlisted man
to carry or transport home, I believe it may have been used until the end of the war. Some
of the bottles have handwritten labels that do not match Dr. Tebault’s handwriting. But it is
still one of those provenance mysteries that make collecting interesting.
Thus began a 2 2-year-long quest to understand the persona of Dr. Tebault. As I
dug into his life, I discovered a complex individual. He was a creative and compassion-
ate surgeon who utilized the meager resources available to Confederate surgeons to
effectively treat the wounded and sick. After the war, he specialized in the diseases of
children in New Orleans, perhaps as a respite to the devastation he faced during the
war. His colleagues honored Dr. Tebault by choosing him as Surgeon General of the
United Confederate Veterans in 1896. He worked to establish pensions and other ben-
efits for aging Confederate veterans, he successfully fought the restrictive taxes placed
upon Louisiana during Reconstruction, and he helped advance sanitation measures
that successfully reduced outbreaks of disease in New Orleans. During reunions of the
United Confederate Veterans, Dr. Tebault collected and compiled a significant amount
of material regarding Confederate medicine that had been lost during the 1865 fires in
Richmond. He published a number of o ften-quoted articles on Confederate resources,
medicine, and the treatment of disease and injuries. Dr. Tebault was a friend of Con-
federate General P.G.T. Beauregard, and he moved in social circles with the elites of the
South. He was one of the Confederate veterans chosen to escort Jefferson Davis’s body
to Richmond in 1893.
But Dr. Tebault was also a proponent of the “Lost Cause,” an ideology that promul-
gated the belief that the cause of the Confederacy was just and heroic. While he was not a
member of southern paramilitary groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League,
he did fight alongside the White League during the 1874 uprising of southern whites against
the Republican government and a largely black metropolitan police force. His writings sup-
ported the notion that those living in the North failed to understand the “peculiar institu-
tion” of slavery as it was practiced “benignly” in the South.
I completed the first draft of his story a few years ago but could not finish it as I was
conflicted. But, as I began to better understand the economic and political forces of Re-
construction and the social mores of the era, I developed a new respect for Dr. Tebault.
The recent national controversies regarding Confederate monuments also made me want
to revisit his life. I concluded that his story needed to be finished and told. A couplet that
Preface 3
served as the tagline for the Confederate Veteran magazine summarized the southern ideal
of respecting those veterans who had sacrificed so much:
Though men deserve, they may not win, success;
The brave will honor the brave, vanquished none the less.
The Lost Cause doctrine, however, went beyond simply honoring the brave and estab-
lished the view that the South’s cause was just, that the war was fought over states’ rights
and not the institution of slavery. How and why did such a doctrine arise? The vanquished
of other wars came to terms with their participation; for example, Germany came to ac-
cept and reject their Nazi past and the atrocities of World War II. After researching this
book and reading Dr. Tebault’s many speeches and publications, I began to understand why
southerners felt compelled to defend their actions rather than accept that their cause was
flawed. Living in New Orleans during the years of Reconstruction must have been challeng-
ing for former Confederates. It
was an era when black freed-
men outnumbered the white
citizens of the city, and many
blacks were placed into politi-
cal positions and made police-
men, even though most were
still illiterate. The city and state
were under military rule by
their former enemies, and New
Orleans was controlled largely
by a corrupt government of
carpetbaggers and scalawags.
It was certainly a tumultuous
time.
It is my hope that this
book is an adequate descrip-
tion of Dr. Tebault’s life and
his many contributions as a
doctor and a man of compas-
sion and strength, and that it
provides the reader with a bet-
ter understanding of the South
following the war. Certainly,
there is a difference between
understanding a problem and
excusing it. While we should
never excuse the rise of groups
such as the White League and
the Ku Klux Klan, by under-
standing their evolution we
can better appreciate how their
rise affects even today’s social The chest was manufactured in 1862 by Savory & Moore,
environment. Sadly, racism is London, “Chemists to the Queen.” Photograph by author.