David C. DeLeon, grandson of Jacob and Hannah Hendricks DeLeon, earned the nickname “The Fighting Doctor” for his courage as a physician in the Mexican War. When South Carolina seceded from the Union, he resigned from the United States Army and offered his services to his new country, the Confederate States of America. He served briefly as Surgeon General of the Confederacy and, for a month, as head of medical operations for the Army of Northern Virginia. While no military records survive to explain these sudden changes, Mary Boykin Chesnut noted in her diary that, “Camden DeLeon is sure to lose his place as surgeon general” because he “is always drunk.”