A Civil War Good Samaritan

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in 1861

Lately I’ve been reading (okay, listening to) book called A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation, by John Matteson. It follows a couple of remarkable individuals through the wartime years leading up to Fredericksburg. One of these individuals is future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who served in the US army in the war in his 20s.

During the Battle of Antietam in 1862, Holmes was shot in the neck, though, miraculously, the bullet missed every vital part of his neck, and he would recover. As he lay on the ground bleeding that day, however, his fate wasn't at all certain. Matteson describes the scene:

As he fluttered on the edge of consciousness, a man sauntered up to him and spoke: “You’re a Christian, aren’t you?” Holmes’s eyelids flickered. “Well, then, that’s alright,” the man said with satisfaction, and wandered off. There followed a span of time whose length Holmes had no way to measure. At the end of it came a second man, who, fortunately, cared more about Holmes’s prospects in this life than in the next. William Le Duc, a regimental quartermaster, saw the prostrate captain and called for a surgeon.

Even when the surgeon saw the neck wound and dismissed Holmes as a hopeless case, Le Duc didn’t give up. He gave the injured man a sip of brandy to rouse him, helped him walk to a home nearby where he could get shelter and care, and finally sent a telegraph to Holmes’s family in Boston, letting them know what had happened.

I couldn’t hear this story without being reminded of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. A traveler is beaten by robbers and left for dead by the road. A priest comes along and sees him there but “passed by on the other side.” Then a Levite, who also served in the Jerusalem Temple, approaches, and he, too, “passed by on the other side.” Finally, a Samaritan, universally despised by Jews, arrives, but when he sees the wounded man, “he took pity on him,” bandaged his wounds, put him on his donkey, and carried the man to an inn where someone could care for him. (10:30-35)

Preachers and teachers like to speculate about why the priest and Levite ignored the man in need. Maybe they were afraid for their own lives. Maybe they were more concerned with their own religious purity—that man looks unclean! Maybe they were too focused on their Temple duties and didn’t have time to bother with him.

This story about the good Samaritan who saved Oliver Wendell Holmes’s life (and the first man, who left him for dead) made me wonder, though: How often do we overlook the material needs around us because, “You’re a Christian, aren’t you?... Well, then, that’s alright.” How often to we prioritize spiritual needs to the extent of disregarding someone’s earthly condition, as if that’s unimportant?

Meanwhile, Jesus spent his ministry going around healing and restoring people’s earthly conditions. Jesus spent his ministry telling stories like the parable of the Good Samaritan—which, don’t forget, he ends with a question:

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (10:36-37)

Which man was a neighbor to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that day?

It wasn’t the man who piously inquired about his soul. It was William Le Duc.

Go and do likewise.