Journal of Surgeon Alfred L. Castleman.

6th.–Yesterday I resumed my duties in hospital actively. On examining the Steward’s Department, I found almost nothing to feed the starving five hundred men on my hands –absolutely nothing suitable to feed them on; that for days there had not been a cooking utensil belonging to the hospital, for these five hundred sick, larger than a soldiers tin cup. To-day, I have set myself actively at work. I have called on Quartermasters, Commissary, Medical Directors, and Generals, for the proper authority to procure the necessary supplies; the promises are profuse, but the interminable “red tape” must be followed out, even though the men starve. Plenty of supplies in sight belonging to the government, and soldiers dying of starvation! I have not half nurses enough to care for the sick and dying. To-day I asked for a detail of half a dozen men, as cooks and nurses. “They could not be spared from the lines.” I immediately went to the top of the hospital, from which I counted over fifty muskets in the hands of our able bodied soldiers, guarding the vegetables, the fruits, the flour, the pork, the beef of rebels, (now in line of battle, in sight of where I stood) whilst our poor men were dying for the want of these very things. I came down and asked for a detail from these guards who were not “in the lines” to assist in nursing the sick and burying the dead. I could not have them! Verily, the unfortunate sick of an army must be interlopers; they can have no business there. I close this writing, and retire with loathing and disgust of what I must see here; but not till after I have written a letter to the Medical Director, setting forth the occurrences of this day in language as strong as I am master of, and asking to be either sustained in my efforts here, or returned to my regiment.