LaFayette Guild was an American surgeon in the antebellum United States Army.
Background
Guild was born on November 23, 1825, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His father, Dr. James Guild, a native of Tennessee, was a prominent practitioner in Tuscaloosa for fifty years. His mother, Mary Elizabeth Williams, was a daughter of Judge Marmaduke Williams of Tuscaloosa, who served three terms in Congress from North Carolina. A brother, Dr. James Guild, Jr. , served as a surgeon in the Confederate army.
Education
LaFayette attended the local schools and was graduated from the University of Alabama in 1845. He began to study medicine under his father and took his medical degree at the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia with the class of 1848.
Career
Guild joined the medical service of the army as an assistant surgeon on March 2, 1849, reporting for duty in New Orleans. In the following six years he had short tours of duty in fourteen different stations in the South and Southwest. In April 1857 he was sent to San Francisco, where he was assigned to duty with the 2nd Dragoons. With this regiment he took part in field operations against the Indians of Northern California in the summers of 1858 and 1859. The political uncertainties that preceded the Civil War were bringing serious problems to army officers whose homes were in the South. They were being torn by the forces of conflicting loyalties to the country and the service on the one hand and to the home state and home people on the other. The 2nd Dragoons was soon to send a dozen general officers into the Union and Confederate armies nearly equally divided in their allegiances. Guild shared in the common anxiety and by a letter dated June 28, 1861, at Washington, D. C. , he asked that his resignation from the army be accepted, stating that he wished to return home to his aging parents. His request was denied and he was directed to renew his oath of allegiance. This latter request was probably incidental to his promotion to the grade of major, which took place on May 21, 1861. He refused to renew his oath, and his name was stricken from the rolls on July 1, 1861. Following this action he joined the Confederate service with the grade of major and surgeon and was appointed an inspector of hospitals. After the wounding of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at Fair Oaks on May 31, 1862, Gen. Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia, and in the reorganization of the army staff that followed, Surgeon Guild was chosen medical director. The Seven Days' Battle early in June gave Guild his first severe test. For this service he and his subordinates were given the praise and thanks of the army commander in his official report. After this prolonged battle Guild's duties were extended to the aid of the Federal medical officers in collecting their scattered casualties. This experience brought to him the need of an ambulance service, which he made the subject of a recommendation at that time. At Antietam in September 1862 he organized corps and division hospitals in the barns and other large buildings of the vicinity. At Fredericksburg in December and in preparation for the Gettysburg campaign in the following summer Guild made urgent recommendation for means of evacuating the sick and wounded by the railroads. Gettysburg gave his service the most severe ordeal when following the battle the vast number of Confederate wounded was transported by whatever means were at hand over the mountains and down the Cumberland Valley into Virginia. The chivalrous spirit of General Lee was shown after the Seven Days' Battle, and again after Second Bull Run when he sent Guild into consultation with the Federal medical officers to give parole to the disabled of the beaten armies and to permit their transfer to Federal hospitals. When Gen. James Longstreet was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness on May 4, 1864, Guild was called in consultation upon the injury and joined in the official report to General Lee. He guided the medical service of Lee's army through the campaign around Richmond and Petersburg, and on the retreat that ended at Appomattox. Always his service was marked by intelligence, industry, and initiative of a high order. It was his misfortune that many of his useful recommendations went for naught owing to lack of personnel and supplies for his uses. Following the close of the war he went to Mobile, Alabama, broken in health. After a trial of private practice he became quarantine officer of the port, serving from 1866 to 1869. In this latter year, thinking to improve his health by a change of climate, he moved to San Francisco. Here among old friends Guild was appointed visiting surgeon to the City and County Hospital. His hopes for improvement were not realized, and he died at Marysville, California, on July 4, 1870, after but a year in the West. His body was returned to Tuscaloosa for burial in the family plot.
Achievements
Personality
Guild's portrait taken in a Confederate uniform shows a long, thin ascetic countenance, with sad eyes, black hair, long black beard, and mustache. It is the face of a gentle-mannered, scholarly man, as he is said to have been.
Connections
Guild was married at Mobile, Alabama, in 1851, to Martha Aylette Fitts, daughter of John and Virginia (Aylette) Fitts. They had no children but they reared in their home two Indian boys, given into their charge while stationed in California.