In the Spring of 1865, as the first Session of Toland Medical College drew to a successful conclusion, the Civil war entered its final stage. As we have suggested previously, it is unlikely that tension between Southern and Northern adherents in the medical profession was responsible for the demise of medical organizations in San Francisco and the State of California. In fact, Toland Medical College, founded by a Southerner from the flash-point State of South Carolina, was launched during the height of the War. It was for a time the only significant civilian medical organization in the State. It seems fair to credit a keen observer such as Henry Gibbons, Sr., with a correct diagnosis of the fatal affliction that led to the decline and disappearance of the early medical societies. In the following editorial on the subject, he does not mention North-South hostility as a factor: [51]
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Doctors are proverbially ungovernable. They appreciate order and discipline, but in others rather than in themselves. The germs of insubordination appear to be infused in the blood of the student by the dry bones and the cadaver of his novitiate. Given one-half the doctors in any community, to dictate and rule, and another half to submit, there will be perpetual harmony in camp. But the proportion of non-resistants is never so large as fifty per cent. In California, it is not much more than five. In the beginning, twenty years ago, it was still less. Society was then in its infancy - a villainous infancy, one might say. There was no medical profession properly speaking. . Medical societies were formed at (San Francisco) and Sacramento and several other places, and a State Society was organized in 1856. The latter flourished for a number of years, but finally received its death-blow in an attempt to expel a member (Elias Cooper) for some alleged misconduct. This is the rock, let me say, on which three out of four medical organizations have foundered. There are men in our profession everywhere who insist on making the Society a theatre for canvassing private or personal quarrels. It is in the power of a few individuals to destroy the harmony and usefulness of large bodies by such conduct. . . Profiting by the lessons of the past, Societies springing up more recently have taken care to shut out personal controversies, and have concentrated their labors on the culture of medicine. . .Present circumstances are highly favorable to a revival of medicine on the Pacific Coast. |
The Civil War and its aftermath caused little disruption in San Francisco because soon after the first inauguration of the Republican President Lincoln in 1861 the California State Legislature, reflecting strong public sentiment, adopted resolutions firmly aligning the State with the Union cause and opposed to the Secessionists. Also in 1861 Leland Stanford, a committed Unionist, was elected as the first Republican governor of the State. The reelection of Lincoln on the Republican ticket in November 1864, and the defeat of the Democrats who supported the rebellion, led to an enthusiastic celebration in San Francisco. [52]
In April 1865, just after the close of the First Annual Session of Toland College, General Lee was forced to retreat from the defense of Richmond, capitol of the Confederacy, and the city fell to the Union Army. Lee's surrender to Grant at the tiny village of Appamattox Court House in Virginia on 9 April 1865 marked the symbolic end of the war. President Lincoln's plans for reconciliation between the North and South were magnanimous and augured well for early restoration of a more perfect union. There must be no more bloodshed, no persecution, he said. And then, in a senseless act of violence, Lincoln was assassinated on April 14th. A brief outbreak of mob violence against Democratic newspapers in San Francisco, sparked by word of Lincoln's assassination, was the only major disturbance of the peace on the West Coast during the Civil War.
In the wake of the unspeakable tragedy of Lincoln's death, the Radicals in Congress gained control of the national government by appealing to the popular thirst for revenge. There followed the dozen years of reprisal by the North and resistance by the South known as the Reconstruction. [53]