During the Battle of Tebbs Bend, a Federal field hospital stood on a knoll where wounded soldiers were carried for treatment. Chief Surgeon Boliver Barnum and Assistant Surgeon John N. Gregg worked there after the battle, and amputation was often used to treat arm and leg wounds, with a chloroform-soaked rag or whiskey sometimes used to dull the pain. Two Michigan soldiers lost arms because of the battle: Pvt. George W. Hicks underwent amputation there, while Pvt. Arbuth Nott was shot in the arm, captured by Confederates, had his arm amputated by a Southern surgeon, and was exchanged after the battle. It may also have been the place where Lizzie Compton was treated and discovered to be a female soldier serving the Union. Three members of the 25th Michigan were killed during the battle, three more died before the next morning, and others later died in hospitals away from the site; the first six were buried one hundred yards from the hospital before many Federal dead from scattered area cemeteries were later reinterred by the U.S. Government in the National Cemetery at Lebanon, Kentucky. Among the 25th Michigan soldiers killed in action or mortally wounded at Tebbs Bend on July 4, 1863, or dying the next day, were Cpl. Roswell Beebe, Cpl. Morgan L. Wallace, Pvt. Southard Perrin, Cpl. Peter G. Cuddeback, Pvt. Peter VerSchure, and Sgt. James L. Slater, while Pvt. Henry Beebe and Pvt. George W. Hicks died later as a result of the battle. Letters and recollections from men who stayed with the wounded preserved the suffering of the aftermath: Pvt. Dirk Van Rallte wrote on August 2, 1863, that the mortally wounded said, "Tell my folks that I have fought and that I did not die as a coward," and on August 3 he noted that most wounds were to the arm and one to the leg, while Pvt. John Wilterdink recalled carrying Pvt. Peter VerSchure from the battlefield as VerSchure asked for water, asked for prayer, and said he would die before reaching camp. The site was also connected to the wartime presence of the 8th Michigan Infantry and men of the 79th New York, who camped there in 1863 while rebuilding Green River Bridge after Confederates burned it in the Christmas Raid on January 1, 1863; most of both regiments moved south to Vicksburg by June, but about forty men remained behind for the rest of the year to finish the bridge.
