Fragments of Expectorated Clothing From the Battle of Gettysburg

摘要

Late on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, John B. Callis of the 7th Wisconsin Volunteers (part of the famous "Iron Brigade") survived a gunshot wound "by a ball ... which entered the right side, immediately over the tenth rib, midway between the sternum and spinal column, fractured the rib, passed downward and backward, and lodged."Callis had volunteered for service in the Union Army at the age of 33, after stints studying medicine, building army forts on the Minnesota frontier, and visiting California (Callis was a 49er) and Central America. Callis explained to his father: "I then conceived it to be not only my privilege, by my patriotic duty to abandon my business, my home and my family for a time and go to battle for the Nation's safety."