Unveiling a Statue of Dr. Hunter McGuire. 259
of the Confederacy found himself supported in the medical depart- ment in such a way as gave him entire satisfaction."
And those who were sometime his enemies in war, now at his death come forward with cordial words of commendation and praise. From Boston comes the plaudit: " He humanized war by originating the custom of releasing all medical officers immediately on their capture." From New York came the recognition: " To Surgeon McGuire belongs the credit of organizing the Reserve Corps hos- pitals of the Confederate army and perfecting the Ambulance Corps." Accident alone, it may be, has preserved the record of these excel- lent works. What other reforms were inaugurated by him, and on what other objects his vast and fertile administrative powers were exercised are known only to those who witnessed them, and whose knowledge lies buried with them.
The operations of the Confederate army, in all its varied depart- ments of service, in the ordnance, the commissary, the quarter- master, as in the medical departments, stimulated the faculties of invention and contrivance in directions, and to an extent of which the world has but little knowledge, and for which those deserving of lasting honor and of rich reward have died impoverished and unknown. Not only from the crudest and most ill-adapted material were devices effective and adequate constructed, but the principles of science received new applications, and the resources of art a marvellous development.
The world was shut out from personal knowledge of the interior workings of the Confederate government and of its domestic se- crets, and the only medium of knowledge as to such matters has been one that cannot be approved for its manifest fitness to transmit rays of truth.
After the untimely death of his loved commander and comrade, Dr. McGuire served as Medical Director of the Second Corps, under its succeeding commanders, to the close of the war. It is enough to say that from each of them there came the same admiring and ap- proving expressions of his official conduct, as had never failed to appear in the official reports of General Jackson, and that from his brethren of the medical staff he continued to receive the same gen- erous support and the same frank expressions of trust and confidence that had marked their earlier relations. No petty jealousies dis- turbed the harmony of that relation, but to the close of his military career Dr. McGuire retained the warm friendship and the fullest confidence of each and all of his associates. And do we not all know,
