Doctor Samuel Preston Moore completed a quarter of a century of service as a medical officer. He resigned his commission as a major and surgeon in the Union, to ally himself with his native State of South Carolina. Shortly after his resignation, he accepted the position of Surgeon General of the Confederate forces. He held this position during the entire duration of the war.

Among his former medical associates that became his trusted assistants in the Medical Department of the Confederacy, were such able men as Surgeons De Leon, Madison, Haden, Johns, Langworthy, Potts, Fauntleroy, Ramseur, and others. Without their extensive knowledge, training, and experience in the military, the Confederate medical service might very likely have achieved less high efficiency.

After the resignation of Surgeon Moore and his Southern associates the rest of the medical associates, a mere handful in number, made up in quality what it lacked in quantity, and furnished the germ from which developed the vast medical service which came to be required. It included many men whose natural administrative and military abilities, in many cases developed by the experiences of the war with Mexico, if employed in other than the direction of non-combatants, would probably have made them national figures in the military history of the United States.