October 24, 2000

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Chancellorsville, Manassas. The names of the great battles resonate through time. Library shelves groan under the weight of books depicting the military and political history of America's Civil War. Books that chronicle the casualties, the destruction and the horrors of the conflict.

It is the art of preserving life amid the death and destruction of war that has received little attention over the years. The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Reynolds Historical Library will highlight the role of the healer with the November opening of an exhibit of the wartime journal of Union hospital steward Spencer Bonsall.

The exhibit will open November 1 and run through the end of January 2001. It can be viewed 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, in the Reynolds Historical Library, on the third floor of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, 1700 University Boulevard.

Bonsall was a hospital steward for the 81st Pennsylvania volunteer regiment. His journal covers two periods of the war, beginning with the Union Army of the Potomac's Peninsula campaign and the battle of Fair Oaks in late spring/summer of 1862. After a six-month gap, the journal resumes with the events surrounding the battle of Fredricksburg in the winter of 1862-63.

The journal sheds little light on its author, but does give considerable insight into what it was like to be part of a medical unit during the Civil War, said UAB Historical Collections unit specialist Katie Oomens. As a hospital steward, Bonsall was part administrator, part pharmacist and part surgical assistant. He was responsible for the procurement of supplies, record keeping, dispensing of medicines and the organization of the hospital. Ranked on a level with an ordinance sergeant, he was a respected enlisted man, entrusted with some responsibility.

"He was also a gifted writer, whose duties allowed him time to record his observations of the army, the hospital and even the Virginia countryside through which the army traveled," Oomens said.

"Our exhibit includes excerpts from Bonsall's journal, other Civil War books from the library's collection and reproductions of Civil War photographs. We also have a transcribed copy of his entire journal for those who wish to take a more in-depth look."

The journal, which consists of 60 tightly written pages, covers events from May 6 through June 22, 1862, and December 4, 1962 through March 26, 1863. It was purchased by Dr. Lawrence Reynolds in 1957 from Henry Schuman, a prominent antiquarian book dealer in New York. The Reynolds Historical Library was established when Reynolds donated his extensive collection of rare medical writings to UAB in 1958.

"Spencer Bonsall does not write about battlefield valor, brave charges or even dramatic defeats," says Michael Flannery, associate director for Historical Collections for the library. "He writes of the important, but uneventful duties of keeping a large body of men fed, clothed and cared for. We get a rare, intimate glimpse of camp life, medical care and military operations from the perspective of an otherwise ordinary but dedicated hospital steward."

The journal covers only two short periods of the entire war. The six month gap between the two sections is unexplained. And it is not known if Bonsall continued to record journal entries after March 26, 1893, with the possibility that those pages are now either lost or destroyed. The 81st Pennsylvania was part of the Army of the Potomac throughout the war and took part in most of the major campaigns in the East, including the final surrender at Appomattox. Whether Bonsall served with the regiment until the war's end is a mystery.