Andrew Jackson Foard was born around 1827 in Milledgeville, Georgia. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and by 1850, he was working as a physician in Payneville, Alabama. In May 1853, he received a commission as an assistant surgeon in the United States Army.

 

He resigned in April 1861, and he became an assistant surgeon in the Confederate army. He eventually earned a promotion to surgeon, and he served as a medical director under General Braxton Bragg. In December 1862, Confederate officials assigned him to General Joseph E. Johnston’s command. He remained in the army until at least March 1865.

 

He settled in Columbus, Georgia, after the war, and he applied for a presidential pardon in August 1865. He testified that “prior to the ordinance of Secession of the State of Georgia he was devoted to the Service of the United States Army, but his state having left the Union and with it his kindred and Earliest friends, he reluctantly and sorrowfully resigned his position.” He insisted that his wartime service was “strictly [that] of a medical officer, in the discharge of which he has contributed alike to the relief of the sick and wounded of both armies.” President Andrew Johnson pardoned him on February 7, 1867.

 

In the summer of 1867, he became an anatomy professor at Washington Medical College in Baltimore, Maryland. He fell ill with double pneumonia soon afterward. He died in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 18, 1868.

SOURCES