I am sitting up now, but I don’t know how long I can sit up. He wrote to her on July 13, 1864: Dear Friend, I now improve a few moments time in writing to you.
During his nearly two-year stint in the Union Army, he wrote frequently to his “friend” back in Maine: Cynthia McPherson. “My leg is very painful now, and I can’t rite but a very little this time.”īradford had another loved one on his mind as he began his convalescence. From his hospital bed, he wrote to his mother to inform her of his injury a week later. The young soldier began his life as an amputee in Columbian Hospital in the Union capital. Private Bradford was evacuated from the front at Petersburg to a general hospital in Washington, DC. The surgeons decided, as they did in many cases, that nothing else was to be done. The 22-year-old private lost the lower half of his right leg to the surgeon’s blade that day. The bullet had ripped through Bradford’s right knee. Private Bradford’s comrades in the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery moved him from the site of his wounding to a field hospital in the rear.Īt the field hospital, surgeons recognized the danger in such a wound. “He always said he was sure that the Rebel sharpshooter had aimed for his head,” wrote Richard Bradford, Peleg’s grandson, “He always figured he swapped his knee for his head.” The bullet smashed through Bradford’s leg, which was raised as he attempted to put the shoe back onto his foot. Just then, a Confederate sharpshooter took aim and fired. On June 17, 1864, while on the picket line outside Petersburg, Virginia, Private Bradford crouched down to remove the rock from his shoe. Jake Wynn is the Program Coordinator at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. This blog post has been written by guest blogger Jake Wynn.
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