Originally aired on October 11, 1996 - In part 111 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses the health problems and war wounds of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Francis R.T. Nicholls and how they endured the rigors of battle.
#111 – Health
Without question, the most overlooked but vital aspect of any Civil War figure is health. How good or bad a general felt certainly affected his performance in the field. Every knowledgeable student of the Army of Northern Virginia knows that the heart condition of General R. E. Lee and the kidney problems of General A. P. Hill noticeably impaired their leadership in the last half of the war.
Two other Southern commanders suffered heavily from wounds and sickness.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was surely the finest cavalryman in the Western theatre. The Tennessean personally killed more enemy soldiers in close combat than did any other general officer in that conflict. Yet before the war Forrest had struggled with typhoid fever, dysentery, a bullet wound in a street fight, and a shoulder contusion from an accident.
Forrest entered Confederate service as a private and rose eventually to the rank of lieutenant-general (and this despite a total lack of formal military training). In the course of the war, Forrest had five accidents while on horseback. A cannon ball once passed between his legs and through his mount.
War wounds began with a bullet that entered his hip and lodged against the spine. It was removed without anesthesia. Another bullet in the hip bounced off the pelvic bone and passed through his body without touching any vital organ. A third battle injury came when Forrest was shot in the foot; the fourth wound was a series of saber cuts about the head and shoulders in one of the last actions of the war. Meanwhile, and throughout the conflict, the general suffered agony from boils.
Forrest never fully recovered his strength or was free from pain. For ten years after the war, he slowly lost weight, battled chronic diarrhea, and likely contracted diabetes. When Forrest died in 1877, the famous and in many ways incomparable cavalry leader weighed no more than 100 pounds. He had spent a lifetime with pain.
A lesser-known general likewise incapacitated by poor health was Francis R. T. Nicholls. Born in Louisiana, an 1855 graduate of West Point, Nicholls served in the army only a year before resigning because of gastro-intestinal problems. In 1861 he entered the Confederate army and soon was second-in-command of the 8th Louisiana Infantry. Persistent headaches often deterred him from duty but not from gaining promotion to brigadier general.
At the 1862 battle of Winchester, Virginia, a bullet shattered Nicholls’ left elbow and led to his capture. Six days later, Union surgeons amputated his arm. Nicholls received a drink of whiskey as anesthesia.
He rejoined his command in time to participate in the 1863 battle of Chancellorsville. There a shell fragment struck his left ankle and knocked him senseless. Nicholls awakened on the battlefield that night. When he reached for his foot, he discovered that it was gone. The piece of shrapnel had torn it from his leg.
Nicholls used a crutch with his one arm while performing desk duties for the remainder of the war. He then hobbled home to Louisiana, but his public career was far from over. In 1876 Louisiana Democrats announced that, to be governor of the state, they were nominating “all that is left of General Nicholls”.
The old warrior won by a landslide, gained a second term easily, and then became a justice of the state supreme court. Nicholls resigned from the bench in 1912 because of failing health. A few weeks later, he died of a heart attack. Nicholls was seventy-eight.
This son of Louisiana demonstrated for all to see that he was a man who would not let crippling impairments block him from making high marks in life.
