284 The War Between the States 285

children to safer places in the interior, and the coming of ments dyeing the hills of Maryland with their blood, until the
speculators and adventurers to the auction sales of the blockade- whole air was filled with the wail of the widow and the orphan,
runners merchandise, as well as the advent of lawless and de- and the dead could no longer be honored with the last tribute of
praved characters attracted by the camps and shipping, had respect.

quite changed the aspect of the whole community. The military “The Wilmington Journal of September 29, 1862, gave all
post, including all the river and harbor defenses, was under its available editorial space to chronicle, for the first time, the
the command of Maj. Gen. W. H. ©. Whiting. character of the epidemic, and in a few brief words to notice
the death of some of the more prominent citizens. One para-
graph in the simple editorial notice ran as follows: ‘Dr. James
H. Dickson, a physician of the highest character and standing,
died here on Sunday morning of yellow fever. Dr. Dickson’s
death is a great loss to the profession and to the community.’

Close by, in another column, from the pen of the acting adju-
tant, Lieutenant VanBokkelen, of the Third N. C. Infantry,

ee ee er

Tue Yrettow Fever.

The distress of Wilmington during the yellow fever epidemic
was described as follows by the late Dr. Thomas F. Wood in
his biographical sketch of one of the heroes of that fearful
scourge, Dr. James H. Dickson, who died at his post of duty:

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“The month of September, 1862, was one of great calamity
to Wilmington. The alarming forebodings of the visitation of
yellow fever in a pestilential form had ripened into a certainty.
Depleted of her young and active men, there was only a military
garrison in occupation, and when the presence of fever was
announced the soldiers were removed to a safer locality. The
country people, taking panic at the news of the presence of the
fever, no longer sent in their supplies. The town was deserted
its silence broken only by the occasional pedestrian bound ‘*
errands of mercy to the sick, or the rumbling of the rude funeral
cart. The blockade was being maintained with increased vigor.

The only newspaper then published was the Wilmington Jour-
nal, a daily under the editorship of James Fulton, and its issues

were maintained under the greatest difficulties, owing to the
scarcity of paper and to sickness among the printers. .

were turned anxiously toward the physicians and those in au-
thority for help. To all the resident physicians the disease was
a new one ; not one in the number had ever seen a case of yellow
fever, and among them were men of large experience. The
municipal authorities recognized their helplessness; the town
was neglected, for it had been overcrowded with soldiers and

visitors since the early days of the spring of 1861. The black
pall of smoke from the burning tar barrels added solemnity to

the deadly silence of the streets; designed to purify the air and

mitigate the pestilence, it seemed more like fuliginous clouds of
ominous portent, a somber emblem of mourning. Panic, dis-

tress, mute despair, want, had fallen upon a population then
strained to its utmost, with the bleeding columns

of its regi-

numbering so many gallant souls of the young men of Wilming-
ton, was the list of the killed and wounded on the bloody field

of Sharpsburg.
‘Tistressed and bereaved by this new weight of sorrow, Wil-

mington sat in the mournful habiliments of widowhood, striv-
ing, amidst the immensity of the struggle, to make her coura-
geous voice heard above all the din of war to nerve the brave
hearts who stood as a girdle of steel about beleaguered Richmond.

“James Fulton, the well-known proprietor of the Journal,
the wary politician and cautious editor, striving to keep the
worst from the world, lest the enemy might use it to our dis-
advantage, often ruthlessly suppressed from his limited space
such matters as in these days of historical research might be of
the greatest service. There were two predominant topics which
eclipsed all the impending sorrow and distress: first, foreign
intervention, for the purpose of bringing about an honorable
peace; second, warnings to the State government of the inade-
quacy of the defense of Wilmington Harbor against the enemy.
The former topic was discussed with unvarying pleasure. The
horizon of the future was aglow with the rosy dreams of man-
dates from the British and French Governments which would
bring independence to the Confederacy and peace and quietness
to the numerous homes, from the sea to the mountains, where
sorrow and death had hung like a pall. It is not strange, there-
fore, that the few publications that had survived the scarcity
of printing material should have contained so little biographical
matter. Comrades dropped on the right and on the left, but
the ranks were closed up, the hurried tear wiped away, and the