Robert A. Mills, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Robert A. Mills
MINIE- May 17, 2014 5/17/2014 8:10:16 AM
In typical battles between the North and South in the War Between the States, as it was called, it was the norm to kill off as many as 12,000 men — from each side.
I am reminded of Antietam, Chancellorsville, Frederiksberg, and Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Kennesaw Mt. as examples, but none were as drastic and devastating as the battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in May of 1863. The cemetery in Vicksburg contains monuments to over 13,000 Union soldiers killed in that battle!
As this siege raged on for forty-seven days, a certain doctor, trained in Pennsylvania (but from South Carolina and obviously for the Rebel cause) was assigned a ‘field’ responsibility to care for any Confederates he came across needing his assistance.
The doctor, name of Dr. Legrand Capers, was in the field less than a minute when he was screamed for by a corporal, Peter MacGavin, who had been shot in the leg by a Yankee with the dreaded Minié ball in his rifle.
The bullet had hit the kneecap and richoshayed upwards, severing the corporal’s left testicule and exited through the pocket of his trousers — from there, God only knew where the Minié ball wound up.
“How old are you, son?” the doctor asked, as he sewed him up.
“Twenty-five or so,” the Rebel replied, between clenched teeth.
“You know you’re gonna go through life,” Dr. Capers told him, “with half a load.”
“Yeah, I . . . know!”
No sooner had Capers stitched up Cpl. MacGavin than a horse-drawn ambulance pulled up, and the driver was given the command: “Sir, I am Dr. Legrand Capers! Take this man to the nearest field hospital! Tell the surgeon there he’s been shot in the balls! I’ve sewn him up best I could!”
At that precise moment Dr. Capers was summoned to a nearby farmhouse by a Mr. Abraham Liddy, who shouted out: “Come quick! My daughter’s been shot by a gol-darned Union sharpshooter! Right thru the winda over there!”
One look at fifteen-year-old Miss Lori Liddy in a pool of blood on the rug by the fireplace was all Dr. Capers needed. “Let’s make her as comfortable as possible,” he said, to Mrs. Liddy, without completing the sentence: “while we wait for the inevitable.
When the war was over, it took the better part of twenty years to make the city over again (more beautiful than ever), so Capers moved to Vicksburg, MS. from Charleston, S.C. and established a practice, as did many professionals in his position.
One day a few months later he was near the Liddy farm; he thought he would stop and see how they were doing.
Talk about surprises!
Miss Lori (Liddy) herself answered the door, apparently in great health.
“I’m Dr. Capers,” he told her. “The last time I saw you, you were, uh, well, at death’s door, and you weighed much less than you appear to now . . . May I examine you, er, I am a doctor?”
With Mr. and Mrs. Liddy in the room to witness, Capers said at the completion of his rudimentary exam, “One reason you’ve gained weight, my dear, is that you’re pregnant.”
“PREGNANT!” Miss Lori exlaimed.
“She can’t be!” Mr. and Mrs. Liddy cried in unison.
“Well, she can be,” said Dr. Capers. “And she certainly is!” Lori whispered, between breaths, “I but am still a virgin!”
"While you may well be . . .” The good doctor thought it through, and he came to the conclusion that the Minié ball, while ripping thru the young corporal’s testicule, had become saturated with enough live sperm to swim ‘south’ in Miss Lori’s belly, then her fallopian tubes and — she became pregnant!
Rather than just write an article for The Medical Journal of Pennsylvania, Dr. Capers asked Mr. and Mrs. Liddy if he could remove the Minié ball.
“Sure,” said Mrs. Liddy, “if it’s okay by Lori, here!”
While Capers relieved Miss Liddy (Lori) and her abdomen of the Minié ball, he asked Mr. Abraham Liddy, “Did the shot do any further damage than break the window — and get your daughter pregnant?”
“Yes, sir! It shattered the mirror, too!”
The doctor looked at himself in what left of the mirror above the mantle of the fireplace and it was then that Capers’ was struck with a wonderful idea — what if he acted as ‘match-maker,’ and brought teenager Lori and twenty-six year old Cpl. Peter MacGavin together? He wouldn’t even charge them for the exam and additional surgery!
It was a known fact that the Liddy and MacGavin acreage (190 in all) were adjacent to each other with an abundance of peanuts, cotton, potatoes and corn, and old Mr. Liddy, with his livestock, needed all the help he could get.
In fact, Abe ‘passed on’ shortly after his third grandchild was born — named Billy Legrand MacGavin. Lori and Peter having more than enough to take care of with Mrs. Liddy and their own kids, never did get a bill for the exam or the surgery to remove the Minie ball. Or the three deliveries, either.
Dr. Capers did write a note several years later to The Medical Journal of Pennsylvania, admitting the entire matter of the Minié ball ‘saturated with semen’ was a hoax brought about his ‘profession having a field day’ with medical absurdities during the Civil War.
Consequently, there is no copy of the May 18, 1863 edition of The Pennsylvania Journal available, even for legitimate study.
Oh, by the way, the Minié ball I’ve written about here is on display at the Court House Museum, 719 Court House Square, Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Robert A. Mills Copyright 2014 all rights reserved, may not be published, re-written or broadcast without permission of the author
