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| Leonard |
Leonard’s hangout was the Morphy Chess Rooms in New York, on the south-eastern corner of Broadway and Fourth Street. After defeating a number of the country's best players, Leonard was touted as the “New Morphy.”
Almost all of his games were played in New York. In what appears to be the one exception, he did go to Philadelphia to play a match against Philadelphia city champions William Dwight (1831-1888) who was to become a general in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Dwight was in the process of moving to Philadelphia for his business and when the Civil War broke he took a commission as a Captain on May 14, 1861, lieutenant colonel less than a month later and then a few days after that, to full colonel on July 1, 1861.
As commanding officer of 70th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Dwight led his regiment during the Battle of Williamsburg, where he was seriously wounded on May 5, 1862, along with losing half of his command. Left for dead on the battlefield, Dwight was found by Confederate forces and held as a prisoner of war until his eventual release in a prisoner exchange November 15, 1862. In recognition of his gallantry on the field, Dwight was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and saw action in several battle until the end of the war. Following the war, Dwight went into the railroad business with his brother in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Leonard was leading the match by a score of +6 –3 =2 and with him needing only one more win, the match was left unfinished when Leonard returned to New York complaining that he had been the victim of double dealing by the Philadelphians.
When he got to Philadelphia, Leonard was badly treated by the local club and in a day before chess clocks, he bitterly complained of his opponent’s slow play. Leonard wrote, "If any of your readers ever had the misfortune to meet a slow antagonist, he can appreciate the agony a poor sinner must undergo who is compelled to sit motionless for 64 minutes awaiting his adversary’s move. Imagine the slowest player you ever met, and then one ten times as slow, and then you will have a remote idea of Mr. Dwight’s style of play.” At one point Dwight took three hours to make two moves.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Leonard enlisted in the Union Army in Company F., 88th New York Volunteers, an Irish regiment on February 1, 1862. By May 31, he was fighting in the battle of Fair Oaks in Virginia where he was captured. By late September, 1862 he was dead before reaching his 21st birthday, having succumbed to dysentery while being held prisoner in Annapolis, Maryland. Leonard’s mother had received word of his capture and was on her way to visit him, but he died before she arrived.
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| Union wounded just before the hospital was overrun by Confederates |
There were a whole host of diseases during the Civil War and the wort was dysentery. It accounted for around 45,000 deaths in the Union army and 50,000 deaths in the Confederate army. It spread rapidly through both armies primarily because of a lack of sanitation practices and contaminated water.
Civil War medicine was not advanced enough to connect a lack of hygiene with disease. For example, during a typical surgery cleanliness was an afterthought with surgeons using the same tools continuously on patient after patient. They might wipe them off on their apron, but they were never cleaned or sanitized. Even the importance of placing a latrine downstream and away from the clean water supply was unknown. The foul water would lead to water contamination which lead to the development and spread of the disease.
Dysentery is an intestinal inflammation that causes severe diarrhea, usually characterized by mucus or blood in the feces. Left untreated, the disease can lead to rapid loss of fluids, dehydration, and eventually death.
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