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The College Hospital
Pennsylvania Hall
"No voice of speaker, student, or stranger was heard in our halls... Instead the voice of prayer, the cry of the wounded, and the groans of the dying."
-- Dr. Henry L. Baugher, College President, 1850-1868
When Michael Culver, Class of 1863, returned to the Edifice (Pennsylvania Hall) after the Battle of Gettysburg, the building scarcely resembled the one he had left just days earlier. "All rooms, halls and hallways were occupied with the poor deluded sons of the South," he wrote. "The moans, prayers and shrieks of the wounded and dying were heard everywhere." Confederate troops had occupied the campus on the first day of the battle, converting the Edifice into a field hospital. Throughout the course of July, the building would house between 500 and 900 wounded men, many of whom perished within its walls.
Like much of Gettysburg, the scene at the College gave testimony to the battle's terrible toll. Soldiers, "maimed in every conceivable way by every kind of weapon and missile," filled every room and hallway. Surgeons, nurses and volunteers hurried from one man to the next, offering what little help and comfort they could. Blood stained the floors and piles of amputated limbs grew. The bodies of the dead filled hastily-made grave on College grounds.
By August, the wounded were evacuated and the College began to repair the damage left behind. Although the school's fall term began on schedule, students found horrific reminder of the events that had occurred that summer. Bullets and shell fragments littered the campus and for years to come, construction projects would turn up the remains of soldiers buried on the grounds.
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Euphemia Goldsborough
Among the volunteers who flooded Gettysburg after the battle was Euphemia Goldsborough of Baltimore, Maryland. First stationed at the Edifice, Euphemia went to great, even dangerous, lengths to serve the Southern cause. In one instance, she smuggled a pair of boots into the Edifice for a wounded Confederate, an act strictly forbidden by the federal government. Men who lived to thank Euphemia did so vehemently. One lieutenant wrote that because of her care, his "College Days" were "the green spot of the days of my captivity".
At the Edifice, Euphemia supported an unconscious Confederate colonel for an entire night in an effort to keep him upright and prevent suffocation. |