It was Tuesday, January 19, 1864. In Washington D.C. the court-martial of Surgeon General William Alexander Hammond was beginning.

He had just returned from Tennessee where he had been overseeing the construction of new hospital facilities near where much of the fighting was taking place.

Hammond was annoyed. Though undoubtedly guilty of the charges, he stiffly maintained that he had done only what was necessary in the completion of his duties.

His crime?

He had exceeded his legal authority by purchasing blankets for the field hospitals personally rather than through the medical purveyor's office. The blankets turned out to be of poor construction, and Hammond was suspected of taking graft payments in return for purchasing the blankets.

William Hammond was a man of many accomplishments. Before joining the Army in 1860, he had performed medical research and studied naturalism in the American west. During his two years as Surgeon General, he had set up new hospitals and experimented with ventilation (the "pavilion concept"). He had visited medical schools to urge them to include hygiene and military surgery in their curricula. He established the Army Medical Museum, and he set up depot-level warehouses for medical supplies.

Problems in medical supply during the war were rampant. Battles were fluid events, often moving away from or overrunning hospitals near the front lines. Pilfering in the warehouses and abandonment of supplies in the field were problems. There were never enough ambulances, doctors, nurses, and beds available. Reprovisioning medical units was given low priority from a Quartermaster sorely pressed to provide guns, cannons, and ammunition to the troops. Undermining what could be obtained, the Confederates were doing their best to keep the northern railroad lines cut. Delays in the delivery of supplies were "producing frightful results" wrote Charles Tripler, the medical director of the Army of the East to his boss - William Hammond.

Hammond was also a man with powerful enemies. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in 1862, had only reluctantly appointed Hammond Surgeon General - at the urging of the Sanitary Commission.

Two days after being appointed, as recalled by Hammond, Stanton asked him a question about the Sanitary Commission in a "tone and manner offensive in the extreme." Then, according to Hammond, Stanton continued: "If you have the enterprise, the knowledge, the intelligence, and the brains to run the Medical Department, I will assist you."

In her book, The Army Medical Department, 1818-1865, Mary Gillett writes that Hammond's "head was thoroughly turned by the respect his colleagues had shown for his ability and by his rapid rise to high office." In any event, the insult from Stanton was too much for the doctor to bear.

He responded: "Mr. Secretary... I am not accustomed to be spoken to in that manner by any person, and I beg you will address me in more respectful terms ... during my service in the army, I have been thrown with gentlemen, who, no matter what our relative rank was, treated me with respect. Now that I have become Surgeon-General, I do not intend to exact anything less than I did when I was Assistant Surgeon, and I will not permit you to speak to me in such language as you have just used."

Secretary of War Stanton's reply: "You, sir, may leave my office."

Did Hammond wonder, that January day in the D.C. courtroom, if he had sown the seeds of his own demise in that brief exchange? Did he regret having brushed aside, two days before the trial, an offer from Stanton to let "bygones be bygones?"

There would be irregularities in the trial. Papers needed by the defense would mysteriously disappear. Some of Hammond's supporters would sign a petition in his behalf near the beginning of the trial and later, inexplicably, deny having done so. It would be a long trial.

Eight months later, in August, he would be found guilty of all charges. Sanitary Commission head George Strong would say that Hammond had been guilty of "little more than the technical sin of purchasing supplies too freely," but Hammond would be dismissed from the Army and prohibited from ever holding government office.

He would go on to clear his name in 1879, when a court would overturn his conviction on the grounds that "the trial court was prejudiced and that evidence that had not been admitted cast doubt upon the verdict."

Writes Mary Gillett: "Although technically Hammond was guilty of at least one of the charges, it seems obvious that he was doing what was necessary under the circumstances to provide the best care possible for the sick and wounded and that an impartial secretary of war would not have placed formal charges against him. Nevertheless, the net in which Hammond was caught was partly of his own making, the result not of greed but of arrogance."

Hmm. An arrogant surgeon? Imagine that!