The Creation of the U.S. Sanitary Commission

By Lawrence Weber

The U.S. Sanitary Commission assisted the hard-pressed Medical Department in providing aid and comfort to sick and wounded soldiers.

In the spring of 1861, a group of influential northern men and women, led by Unitarian minister Henry Whitney Bellows and social reformer Dorothea Dix, met in New York City to discuss the formation of a sanitary commission, modeled after the British Sanitary Commission established during the Crimean War, to provide relief to sick and wounded soldiers in the Union Army. At the meeting, which took place on April 25, various topics were discussed, including how best to carry out much-needed sanitation and relief work on a grand scale for the benefit of Union soldiers spread throughout the country. By the conclusion of the meeting, the group had laid the foundation for a provisional sanitary commission to be called the Women’s Central Association of Relief for Sick and Wounded in the Army, or WCAR for short.

Creating the WCAR
The goal of the WCAR was to organize and implement a wide-reaching group of women who would provide humanitarian aid to wounded and sick Union soldiers. One of the most important members of the WCAR was Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree. Blackwell’s knowledge of medicine was critically important for training new nurses who would eventually travel to army camps to tend the sick and wounded. The goals were noble and humane, but implementing them successfully would prove to be daunting. To be effective, the provisional sanitary commission would need to be assisted by the national government. Bellows felt that it was imperative to go to Washington, D.C., to examine the existing system of medical relief already established by the government. He set off with a small group of doctors, dubbed the Sanitary Delegation, to investigate the government’s ability to respond to the Army’s mushrooming health and relief needs.

Bellows discovered that the government was woefully unprepared for the great national crisis that was already occurring; an extensive sanitary and relief system overhaul was needed immediately. Bellows’s delegation consulted with military and hospital departments for ways to supplement the all-too-apparent governmental deficiencies. They sent letters to the surgeon general of the United States Army, Colonel Thomas Lawson, and to Secretary of War Simon Cameron, requesting that a permanent sanitary commission be established.

Pushing the WCAR Through
Cameron did not reply immediately, and the letter sent to Lawson failed to reach him before the surgeon general died suddenly on May 15 of apoplexy. The letter made its way to the desk of interim Surgeon General Robert C. Wood instead. Wood, the son-in-law to former president Zachary Taylor and the brother-in-law of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, found the letter persuasive and wrote to Cameron endorsing the group’s request. “The Medical Bureau would, in my judgment, derive important and useful aid from the counsels and well-directed efforts of an intelligent and scientific Commission,” Wood advised.

Cameron waited until a new permanent surgeon general was appointed before making a decision. After President Abraham Lincoln chose Dr. Clement Finley to replace the deceased Lawson, Cameron presented Finley with Bellows’s suggestion for a sanitary commission. Meanwhile, Bellows fired off another letter to Cameron outlining the creation of a formally recognized United States sanitary commission. The letter highlighted the goals of the Sanitary Commission, with specific attention paid to the prevention of infection and disease among the sick and wounded.

After careful consideration of the letters and with the new surgeon general’s blessings, Cameron drafted a resolution on June 9 endorsing the creation of the United States Sanitary Commission. He sent the resolution to President Lincoln for approval, and on June 18, Lincoln signed the necessary paperwork establishing the United States Sanitary Commission. As a reward for his hard work, Bellows was named president of the commission. Other members included Robert C. Wood; George Templeton Strong, the famous Civil War diarist who became the commission’s treasurer; renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who had designed New York City’s Central Park; and Dorothea Dix, who was appointed superintendent of women nurses.

The Search for Recruits and Sponsors
The Sanitary Commission went to work immediately, attempting to increase its membership across the Union. In its first year, the commission’s membership grew almost exponentially. By 1863, there were more than 500 branches working under the umbrella of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which was divided into three departments: the Department of Preventive Service, sometimes called the Department of Inspection; the Department of General Relief; and the Department of Special Relief. The Preventive Service Department was responsible for the inspection of volunteer forces, with specific attention paid to the area of disease, field conditions, and proper medical care. Special focus was placed on the soldiers’ diet, which was often high in calories but low on nutrition. Hardtack, salted pork, coffee, crackers, and preserved beef were staples of the soldiers’ daily fare.

Conspicuously missing were fresh fruits and vegetables, which were hard to acquire. Food was often fried or undercooked, causing many soldiers to become ill from the poorly prepared, non-nutritious foods.

Once the Sanitary Commission was sufficiently organized and staffed, volunteers set out at once to take their message to the soldiers. One of the best ways the Sanitary Commission was able to get out its message was through the printed media. The commission distributed 18 short treatises written by eminent medical men to regimental surgeons and commanding officers. Since the Medical Department had not issued any such treatises to them, the little books were of inestimable value. Sanitary Commission circulars, pamphlets and broadsides were also critically important in keeping the public informed and supportive. To raise money, publications such as the Sanitary Commission Bulletin and Drum Beats were sold for profit, and agents traveled across the country lecturing and fund-raising.

First Battle, First Challenges
The ideas contained in the treatises were put to the test in July 1861, after the First Battle of Bull Run. There was no systematic method of gathering sick and wounded men from the battlefield to the field hospitals. The soldiers who could do so simply straggled in disarray, away from the battle, in search of help. When the Sanitary Commission investigated some of the reasons for the Union Army’s failure at First Bull Run, they discovered that many of the soldiers were too fatigued and hungry to fight properly.

To prevent the mistakes of First Bull Run from happening again, the Sanitary Commission submitted an article, written by Dr. William H. Van Buren, to Harper’s Weekly, which had a circulation of over 200,000 readers. The piece, published on August 24, roughly a month after the battle, was entitled “Rules for Preserving the Health of the Soldier.” The article, like the earlier treatises, included a great deal of useful information for the soldiers to consider. Included in the article were tips on food preparation (frying meat in camp was unsafe and wasteful), the use of spirits (men who used alcohol regularly were the first to fail when strength and endurance were required), campsite selection, and proper grooming habits (hair and beard should be closely cropped). There was also advice on the proper marching pace (90 to 100 steps to the minute), tent spacing (tents should be placed as far from each other as possible, and never less than two paces), and tips on the treatment of wounded men (it was not always necessary to extract a bullet; in fact, more harm might be done in attempts to remove them). The article succeeded in spreading the Sanitary Commission’s message to a wider audience.

Adapting to Challenges
As the war continued, the Sanitary Commission became more efficient. Dressing stations were established on the outskirts of a battlefield and staffed with assistant surgeons, stretcher bearers, and nurses. The staff of a typical dressing station came equipped with bandages, whiskey, brandy, opium pills, and morphine for injured soldiers. Soldiers who were treated at dressing stations but still in need of advanced care walked to field hospitals if their injuries allowed. Soldiers who could not transport themselves to field hospitals were taken by ambulance—provided there were ambulances.

If a soldier survived surgery or treatment in a field hospital, he still faced mortal danger from surgical fevers triggered by infection. Blood poisoning, pneumonia, or erysipelas (a subcutaneous skin infection) could rapidly lead to death. Perhaps the most famous example of this scenario came following the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, when Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson died from complications brought on by infection after his left arm was amputated.

Upon reaching a permanent hospital, the wounded soldier would be placed under the care of nurses. One of the most famous Sanitary Commission nurses was Louisa May Alcott, famed author of Little Women. In 1863, Alcott published a book entitled Hospital Sketches containing reflections on her life as a Sanitary Commission nurse. Alcott described a common scene: “To me, the saddest sight I saw in that sad place, was the spectacle of a grey-haired father, sitting hour after hour by his son, dying from the poison of his wound,” she wrote. “The old father, hale and hearty; the young son, past all help, though one could scarcely believe it; for the subtle fever, burning his strength away, flushed his cheeks with color, filled his eyes with luster, and lent a mournful mockery of health to face and figure. When the son slept, the father watched him, and though no feature of his grave countenance changed, the rough hand, smoothing the lock of hair upon the pillow, the bowed attitude of the grey head, were more pathetic than the loudest lamentations.” After his son died, the grieving father told Alcott and the other nurses: “My boy couldn’t have been better cared for if he’d been at home; and God will reward you for it, though I can’t.”

Expanding the Sanitary Commission
By 1862, the Sanitary Commission’s role had grown as the scope and nature of the war had grown. The Peninsula campaign of 1862 witnessed the launch of one of the first Union hospital ships during the Civil War, Daniel Webster No. 1, which was able to support some 1,000 sick and wounded soldiers. Most hospital ships were outfitted and staffed by the Sanitary Commission. The objective of the hospital ships was to transport injured soldiers from the war zone as quickly as possible to safe locations where they had access to better medical treatment. During the campaign, some 19 hospital ships were assigned to the Virginia peninsula. It was hard work, but every patient on the ships had a good place to sleep and something hot to eat, and the sickest were given every medical essential.

As 1862 moved along, the Sanitary Commission was severely tested at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. The commission responded admirably and even seemed to outperform the government’s Army Medical Department, which was slow to respond to battlefield needs and often less efficient. That year saw another important addition to the Sanitary Commission’s already critical work: the creation of the Hospital Directory, an agency that provided information to the general public about the location of sick and wounded soldiers in the army’s general hospitals.

The Creation of the Hospital Directory
Established because of the tremendous influx of letters from families inquiring about the status of their loved ones, the Hospital Directory was headed by John Bowen. Under Bowen’s leadership, the directory recorded information on more than one million soldiers. The information was sent to the directory’s four main offices in Washington, Louisville, Philadelphia, and New York, where it was used to answer questions about missing soldiers and offer comfort and closure to families in despair.

The Hospital Directory also served as a data- gathering center, recording hospital and patient information that was used, in turn, by the Statistical Bureau for the evaluation of medical performance. The Statistical Bureau compiled data on the sanitary conditions of Army life through questionnaires that contained some 190 questions on such topics as camp soil, drainage, quality of available food, water supply, and the background of medical personnel. Through the careful evaluation of the questionnaires, the Sanitary Commission could understand more fully the dangers and complexities of camp life and, consequently, tweak and improve its own relief work.

Acceleration of the War
The year 1863 was especially tumultuous. The battles that took place that year were some of the largest and most consequential of the entire war—Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. The Sanitary Commission was there for all of them. At Gettysburg, where the carnage was perhaps the most gruesome (approximately 22,000 soldiers from both sides needed medical attention after the battle), Sanitary Commission volunteers worked without rest. When the work of tending to sick and wounded was done, the surgeons in charge of the general hospitals near Gettysburg took the time to write the Sanitary Commission inspector at Gettysburg a letter expressing gratitude “at the manner in which the affairs of the United States Sanitary Commission have been managed since the late battle. The supplementary articles for the sick and wounded have been abundant, comprising every requisite which the exigency demanded, and which nothing but a well-regulated system, with much experience and forethought, could have secured.”

In 1864 came some of the worst carnage of the war. In such places like the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Atlanta, and Nashville, the Sanitary Commission went to offer relief. The commission extended its Department of Special Relief to include the Army and Navy Claim Agency, based in Washington, which was designed to assist soldiers and their families in filling out the proper government forms to obtain back pay, pensions, bounties, and prize money. Many soldiers in the hospital, with families sorely in need of help, were unable to obtain the money that was due them or that was so tied up in red tape that it was beyond their power to collect. Agents of the commission, authorized by the Paymaster’s Department, helped remove such difficulties. In Stanton Hospital alone, the back pay of 56 men, amounting to $3,008.96, was procured in a single week.

Maintaining a Presence
When the Civil War ended in April 1865, the work of the Sanitary Commission continued. The commission worked to negotiate the return of prisoners of war, helped to smooth the process of discharging Union soldiers, and continued to care for hospitalized soldiers. The commission also continued the good work of the Hospital Directory by reuniting soldiers with their families whenever they could and by offering comfort and closure to families who had lost loved ones. Not until October 1, 1865, did the commission’s active relief work officially end. And though it is true that more soldiers died during the Civil War from infection and disease than from bullet wounds, the numbers surely would have been higher without the tireless contributions of the United States Sanitary Commission.

Originally Published February 2010

Image 1: A Sanitary Commission barge at City Point, one of 19 hospital ships assigned to the Virginia peninsula.

Image 2: Sanitary Commission nurses and officers pose at Fredericksburg, Virginia, during the 1864 Wilderness campaign.

From: warfarehistorynetwork.com

Read More

The Ladies Union Aid Society of St. Louis (LUAS)

From: civilwartalk.com

We often see photographs of women who were serving with the U. S. Sanitary Commission in the East. Jessie Fremont was the wife of General John C. Fremont and daughter of prominent Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton. She urged her husband to set up a separate Western Sanitary Commission in St. Louis to serve the Trans-Mississippi region. Gen. Fremont issued an order that established the Western Sanitary Commission in St. Louis, Order No. 159. A primary purpose was to provide doctors and nurses for the hospitals in the fight in the West. It opened or supplied some 15 hospitals in St. Louis as well as hospital ships and trains that brought the wounded from the battles on the Mississippi to St. Louis. Eventually, the WSC also provided assistance for soldiers in St. Louis who had no funds for lodging, refugees from the South, and newly freed people in the city.

Another organization, the Ladies Union Aid Society of St. Louis (LUAS) actually preceded the WSC in its founding. The LUAS was organized on August 2, 1861 and the WSC on September 10, 1861. Many of the women whose names appear in our thread on Women of Missouri like Mrs. Anna Clapp were members of the Ladies Union Aid Society of St. Louis (http://civilwartalk.com/threads/civil-war-women-of-missouri.123548/) with Mrs. Clapp being the president. They met initially in the founders' homes, but the group soon became too large and they were given a room for meetings in the Military Hospital in downtown St. Louis. The LUAS met each week at 3:00 pm on Friday for reports from hospitals and their other activities.

The Union military authorities weren't prepared for the numbers of the wounded that would be transported to St. Louis, where there were hospitals such as New House of Refuge, Jefferson Barracks, City General, Good Samaritan, Marine, Pacific, Hickory Street, Benton Barracks, Lawson, Eliot, Schofield Barracks, City and Sisters, Invalid Corps Hospital, and the Gratiot Prison Hospital to care for them. LUAS members worked in the hospitals, visited the sick now in St. Louis due to the war, and provided for burial expenses. They also raised considerable amounts of money to support these efforts. Some LUAS members like Adaline Couzins would be injured or suffer frostbite as they went into the field to nurse the wounded. Ms. Couzins had been badly frostbitten early in the war and was later hit by a minie ball at Vicksburg. Arethusa Forbes was also frostbitten attending to soldiers in the field. The deaths of Mrs. Margaret Breckinridge and Mary Palmer were attributed to exhaustion from their work for LUAS.

Sometimes the statements about women's efforts during the Civil War seem to be along the lines of "They rolled bandages and visited the soldiers in the hospital, bringing them flowers and reading to them." I don't know whether the actions of women in Missouri were more than elsewhere, or whether they were just better documented. This passage from the recording Secretary of the LUAS describes the kind of baskets which were delivered to those convalescing in the 14 hospitals that LUAS dealt with:

"Within was a bottle of cream, a home-made loaf, fresh eggs, fruit and oysters;, stowed away in a corner was a flannel shirt; a sling, a pair of spectacles, a flask of cologne; a convalescent had asked for a lively book, and the lively book was in the basket; there was a dressing-gown for one, and a white muslin handkerchief for another; and paper, envelopes for all.” Woman's Work in the Civil War: A Record of Heroism, Patriotism and Patience, Linus Pierpont Brockett, Mrs. Mary C. Vaughan, p. 632.

18thVirginia said: ↑
The Union military authorities weren't prepared for the numbers of the wounded that would be transported to St. Louis, where there were hospitals such as New House of Refuge, Jefferson Barracks, City General, Good Samaritan, Marine, Pacific, Hickory Street, Benton Barracks, Lawson, Eliot, Schofield Barracks, City and Sisters, Invalid Corps Hospital, and the Gratiot Prison Hospital to care for them. LUAS members worked in the hospitals, visited the sick now in St. Louis due to the war, and provided for burial expenses. They also raised considerable amounts of money to support these efforts. Some LUAS members like Adaline Couzins would be injured or suffer frostbite as they went into the field to nurse the wounded. Ms. Couzins had been badly frostbitten early in the war and was later hit by a minie ball at Vicksburg. Arethusa Forbes was also frostbitten attending to soldiers in the field. The deaths of Mrs. Margaret Breckinridge and Mary Palmer were attributed to exhaustion from their work for LUAS.

Thanks for the thread, 18th! Yes, they did indeed lay it all out. What's crazy is how many of these women were lost. It's very tough getting ' the word out ' on them, too. You see their photos, care worn, battered, so faded by the time anyone has asked for a photograph and no one imagines this uninteresting looking female has incredible stories attached to her. Many who died I cannot find, when coming across a mention of them in someone's diary or journal. There will be an entry of a death " Mrs. Reed died today of typhoid after being here for only 6 weeks. She was buried with many tears. " That kind of thing. It's so prevalent, makes me wonder if there are statistics, you know?

No, it's not just Missouri- women from all over, North and South had the same kind of stories. It's just always been extremely hard, knowing how to convey who did what, you know? Some organizations were poorly funded but rich in intent- these lost a lot of workers to disease and over work. Some, the bandage rollers, tended to make a lot of noise over volunteering, maybe had an awful lot of resources but stayed little distant from the action. I wonder if there's a list somewhere?

But then, how do you include women like those in towns post battle? Virginia Wade's sister handed her baby, Lewis McClellan to her mother and walked to the hospitals.

The work accomplished by the Ladies Union Aid Society of St. Louis was very impressive. One quote I read from a Union soldier about the Confederate leaning women of Missouri said they were "spunkier" than some other women. I'd say that went for both Union and Confederate women of Missouri--makes me quite proud to count a great-grandmother from Missouri.

The LUAS went far beyond just carrying baskets to the convalescing soldiers and supplying nurses to the many St. Louis hospitals and the hospital ships. Finding a need for hospital clothing, they received $5,500 from the Western Sanitary Commission to sew 75,000 pieces of clothing. Soldiers' wives who needed to earn extra money were hired to provide the sewing. The Medical Purveyor then gave them a contract for $6,000 to produce 128,000 articles of clothing. Sewing machines were available in the LUAS headquarters for the women to use.

LUAS also received a contract for 261,00 yards of bandages.

In 1864, the Western Sanitary Commission and the Ladies Union Aid Society collaborated on the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair of 1864, to raise funds for their hospitals and the many wounded soldiers flowing through St. Louis. Though the men of the Western Sanitary Commission chaired most of the committees, it is generally agreed that the LUAS women did most of the work and personed the booths.

The Fair lasted from May 17 to June 18, 1864 and raised $550,000. Admission to the Fair to view the booth exhibits of sewing machines, hardware, and other knitted, embroidered or quilted crafts by the women of St. Louis started at $2 and went to .50 after the initial days.

The most popular booth at the fair was The Delphic Oracle, a fortune-telling booth.

Read More

Hospital Ships of the Sanitary Commission

From: revolvy.com

Frederick Law Olmsted, the executive director of the United States Sanitary Commission, set up a system of hospital ships for wounded and sick soldiers in the American Civil War. The USSC was a private agency that cooperated closely with the U.S. Army.

City of Memphis and Fanny Bullit
Between 6 and 16 Feb 1862, the Union advanced across the country and captured Forts Henry and Donelson. Upon hearing word of the battle, members of the Sanitary Commission in Cincinnati gathered supplies, volunteers and procured a steamer passengered by the most senior members of the commission at the Cincinnati branch. Upon arrival at Fort Donelson, the commission learned that insufficient means were taken to treat and transport the wounded. The Union's two army "hospital" ships, the City of Memphis and Fanny Bullitt, had not been furnished to serve as such ships and were merely empty vessels on which vast numbers of wounded suffered. Supplies were distributed, and 80 wounded were transported back to Cincinnati on the steamer with doctors and nurses to tend to them. The boat traveled from Mississippi to Ohio.

Tycoon and Monarch
In April 1862, the Union's victory at Shiloh resulted in the outpouring of hospital transports to the city. The two transports refitted and dispatched by the Sanitary Commission were joined by a fleet of private, army, and state hospital ships. The Tycoon and Monarch were the Commission's first refitted hospital ships. Sympathy, benevolence, patriotism and a desire to ease the suffering of our nation's troops was the only thing these groups shared in common. Following this event, the Sanitary Commission began outfitting any hospital ship, army, state, association, or voluntary, and if necessary, they operated the ships as well. All of the army's ships used as hospital transports were refitted and initially supplied through the direction of the Sanitary Commission. Funding came from the army, Sanitary Commission, state, and volunteer organizations. The army transferred at least one ship to the Sanitary Commission, the steamer Daniel Webster No. 1. Even the Red Rover, a river boat captured by the Union Army, was well equipped and initially staffed by the Sanitary Commission until the ship was sold to the navy.

St. Philip
These were not the first hospital ships employed by the Civil War governments; previous ships used as hospitals, like the hospital ship CSS St. Philip (formerly the Star of the West) in September 1861 and April 1862, retained patients for long periods of time (30–90 days easily) and stayed on station rarely travelling. The Sanitary Commission used their steamers as a means of bringing wounded further back behind supply lines, keeping wounded on board for as short a time as possible, from 1–7 days. Men and women of all races, some hired while others volunteered, served throughout the hospital ships and hospitals of the Union as nurses.

The Western Sanitary Commission was a private agency based in St. Louis that was a rival of the larger U.S. Sanitary Commission, doing much the same work. It was led by abolitionists and focused more on the needs of Freedmen.

The Hospital Transport Service
The Sanitary Commission, at the request of the army, created the Hospital Transport Service. It acquired 16 medium and large boats and converted them to hospital ships. Its first major operations came in the Peninsular Campaign of spring 1862, when it serviced casualties from General McClellan's Army of 100,000 men after a series of battles.[1]

The Sanitary Commission quickly organized large fleets of ships and created a network system of routes to move wounded. Rivers and ocean connecting the Union became highway over which the wounded steadily traveled further North.

When possible, few embarkation points were used. Ships were assigned schedules and maximum patient allowances. If a ship embarked more patients than allowed, even though space permitted, her crew would be required to notify the receiving station. Several ships were kept in reserve, used only when another ship was unable to continue to make a journey. Thus a very predictable and organized system grew. On the Pamunkey River, 19 hospital transports working on a fixed schedule, moved 700 wounded a day, every day. Of particular interest, the ships had far greater capacity, some 600 more wounded could have been crammed onto some of the ships. But, this was frowned upon by the organizers as such a number would overcrowd the ship, overtask the medical staff, erode the quality of care, and place an unexpected burden on the receiving hospital. Thus, in theory some 70,000 wounded could be moved from Virginia in 100 days to hospitals in five states as far north as New York. A second inland force of about 16 hospital ships moved patients along riverways north to Missouri, Ohio, and Kentucky.

Hospital Ships of the Peninsula Campaign
Name Load Embarkation Area Debarkation Area Transport Days Note
S.R. Spaulding Unk Fortress Monroe New York 7
Daniel Webster No. 1 Fortress Monroe New York 7 Former Army, saw service at Yorktown
Empress 400 York River Fortress Monroe 2
Imperial 400 York River Fortress Monroe 2 Outfitted in St. Louis
Ocean Queen 400 James River Fortress Monroe 2
Wilson Small 400 James River Fortress Monroe 2
Elizabeth n/a Fortress Monroe York and James River n/a Storeboat
Elm City 400 Pamunkey River Philadelphia 6
Commodore 400 Pamunkey River Maryland 4
Vanderbilt 400 Pamunkey River Maryland 4
Louisiana 400 Pamunkey River Maryland 4
State of Maine 400 Pamunkey River Maryland 4
Kennebeck 300 Pamunkey River Virginia 2
Daniel Webster No. 2 300 Pamunkey River Virginia 2
John Brooks 400 Pamunkey River n/a n/a In Reserve
Whilldin 400 Pamunkey River n/a n/a In Reserve
Knickerbocker 400 Pamunkey River n/a n/a In Reserve
St. Mark Pamunkey River n/a n/a Stationary
Euterpe Pamunkey River n/a n/a Stationary

Hospital Boats of the Sanitary Commission
Fanny Bullitt (Ohio River)
City of Alton
Crescent City
Ruth
Glasgow
Diana
Nebraska
Champion
Baltic
J. S. Cairns
Ben Franklin
Continental
Hazel Dell
Bickerdyke
Tycoon (Shiloh - Cincinnati)
Monarch (Shiloh - Cincinnati)
Ships Outfitted by Sanitary Commission but transferred to Army
Red Rover (Mississippi River) later transferred to Navy
City of Memphis (Ohio River)
City of Nashville
City of Louisiana, Renamed R. C. Wood (Ohio River)
D. A. January*

Notes
Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century (2000) pp 208-13

Further reading
Maxwell, William Quentin. Lincoln's Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the U.S. Sanitary Commission (1956) online edition
Olmsted, Frederick Law. The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Vol. 4: Defending the Union: The Civil War and the U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1861-1863 (1986) excerpt and text search
Stillé, Charles J. History of the United States Sanitary Commission, Being the General Report of Its Work during the War of the Rebellion (1866), online

Image: A Sanitary Commission barge at City Point,

Read More

Connecticut Sanitary Fair

From: connecticuthistory.org

On July 25, 1864, the Stamford Ladies Soldiers’ Aid Society held a Sanitary Fair. Sanitary Fairs were established in response to the needs of Civil War soldiers beyond what the government could supply. The United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian organization, was authorized by the government in 1861. The primary objective of the commission was to collect supplies, provide support to soldiers’ homes, transport the sick, supply food, and to provide services to discharged soldiers.

The Stamford Ladies Soldiers’ Aid Society held their fair to raise money for medical supplies for men in Union hospitals by selling a stamp that they had issued at a cost of 15 cents. These stamps were not the usual postage stamp but a drop letter stamp in which mail would be held at the post office and called for by the addressee.

Read More

Chicago Supports the Civil War Wounded

By Theodore J. Karamanski

The Civil War was a crucial event in the development of nineteenth-century Chicago. The war came at a time when the city's commercial economy and transportation links had matured to the point of providing the foundation for substantial industrialization.

The opening of the Union Stock Yard on Christmas Day, 1865, is symbolic of the Civil War's impact on Chicago. The war directed the flow of vital food commodities away from Chicago's most persistent urban rivals, which were too close to the front lines during the first two years of the war and were hurt by stoppages of trade on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Because the war cost St. Louis its status as the major grain distribution center and Cincinnati lost its distinction as the pork-packing capital, Chicago emerged as the logical center for the meatpacking, wheat distribution, and related industries. Heavy industry took root in Chicago during the war to provide Union forces with the rolling stock and rails needed to transport troops and supplies. The first steel rails made in America came off the North Chicago Rolling Mill in 1865. Although Chicago wasn't one of the North's main procurement centers, Chicago-area firms sold millions of dollars' worth of horses, hardtack, preserved meats, tents, saddles and harnesses, and other supplies to the state of Illinois and the U.S. Army for the troops.

The Civil War also helped spur industrialization by bringing stable banking to Chicago for the first time. The First National Bank of Chicago was founded in July 1863, and by war's end the city boasted 13 national banks, more than any other city in America. The $30 million in deposits at those banks was the capital foundation necessary for industrial expansion. By 1870 the number of factories in Chicago had tripled since the outbreak of the war, and the city's population had nearly tripled as well.

The Civil War divided Chicago, not as dramatically as it did the Union but in nonetheless important ways. Racial tensions ran high. In 1862 the city suffered its first race riot when white teamsters tried to prevent African Americans from using the omnibus system. The Chicago City Council voted to segregate the public schools. The Chicago Times, a Democratic Party organ, was the nation's loudest and most persistent critic of Lincoln and emancipation. In June 1863, the Union Army closed the Times at bayonet point. Only when mobs of Democratic supporters threatened to destroy the Republican Chicago Tribune did Lincoln order the suppression to cease. Suspicions ran so high that Republicans in 1864 accused a small group of disgruntled Democrats of conspiring with Confederate secret agents to disrupt voting in the presidential election by liberating the prisoners of war at Camp Douglas. The alleged conspirators were arrested on the eve of the balloting.

Camp Douglas, located on the city's South Side, was one of the largest POW camps in the North. At times more than 10,000 rebel soldiers were held behind its stockade, 4,457 of whom perished. The majority of the deaths were due to poor sanitary and medical facilities at the camp.

While Confederate soldiers suffered in appalling conditions on the South Side, Chicago women played an important role improving the lot of Union soldiers at the front. The Sisters of Mercy nursed wounded men in numerous makeshift hospitals. Mary Livermore and Jane Hoge rallied the women of the Midwest through the operation of two gigantic fairs in 1863 and 1865. At the hastily assembled but elaborately decorated Northwest Sanitary Fairs, donated items were sold to fund medical supplies and treats for the troops. The 1863 Chicago fair was imitated throughout the North. The public affairs experience won by Chicago women during the war helped to fuel the embryonic women's rights movement in postwar Illinois.

Although the war was controversial in Chicago, support for the Union ran strong. Cook County sent 22,436 men to fight, approximately two-thirds of them from Chicago. Surrounding counties together sent 13,516 men, more than half of them from Kane and Will counties. The draft was little used in Chicago because of enthusiastic enlistment rallies and generous bounties. Chicago music publisher George Frederick Root produced many of the most popular Union war songs for use at city rallies, including “Battle-Cry of Freedom” and “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.”

Nearly four thousand Chicagoans died in the Civil War. Respect for their memory and pride in their accomplishment is preserved today in the numerous war heroes, frozen in bronze, standing over Grant Park, Lincoln Park, and the city's historic cemeteries.

Bibliography
Karamanski, Theodore J. Rally 'Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War, 1993.

Image: Chicago Sanitary Commission Fair

Read More

The Chicago Branch of the U.S. Sanitary Commission

By Theodore J. Karamanski

Created in October 1861, the Chicago branch (later known as the Northwestern branch) of the United States Sanitary Commission was a privately funded effort to improve the morale, logistical support, and medical care of men serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Judge Mark Skinner, a leading War Democrat, was the president, but as with most antebellum charities the officers relied upon “benevolent ladies” to handle the day-to-day operations of the organization. In the spring of 1862, the Chicago branch's operations were taken over by Mary A. Livermore and Jane C. Hoge, who quickly emerged as effective executives and able fundraisers. Under their direction, the Chicago branch sent a steady stream of medical supplies and food to the front.

The Chicago branch also established several Soldier's Rests, where troops in transit were treated to coffee and sandwiches. In July 1863, a Soldier's Home was founded to house men too sick or wounded to return to their homes. To fund these activities Hoge and Livermore organized Sanitary Fairs in 1863 and 1865. These popular charity bazaars became a model copied in most northern cities and succeeded in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the war effort. The Chicago office became the funnel through which most aid from the Midwest reached the front. After the war the movement for women's suffrage in Illinois was spearheaded by the women who first came to public service as managers and nurses with the Sanitary Commission.

From: encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org

Read More

The Sanitary Commission To The Rescue

From: civilwarhome.com

The United States Sanitary Commission, the leading prilate relief organization of the Civil War period, was created-against strong opposition in the army-in June 1861. A distinguished Unitarian divine, the Reverend Henry W. Bellows, was President; the famous landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, was Secretary; and the Commission enlisted scores of physicians and literally hundreds of public-spirited men and women. Its object, wrote Mary Livermore, "was to do what the Government could not." The "could" here is, of course, relative; it was merely that governments had not yet conceived it their responsibility to take care of the health, comfort, and general welfare of soldiers.

The Commission did a little bit of everything. Its inspectors looked into the sanitary arrangements in camps-hence its name-and brought about reforms. It reviewed matters of diet, cooking, clothing; provided private aid to soldiers and to their dependents; took care of fugitives; collected and forwarded boxes of food to the soldiers-a combination, as we have said elsewhere, of YMCA, Red Cross, and USO-and helped out even with nursing and hospital care. At the time of the Peninsular campaign the Commissi . on obtained some hospital transports for the wounded.

We give an account here of the use of these hospital transports. Katharine Wormeley, who tells the story, was one of the many women who worked heroically for the Sanitary Commission. Born in England, the daughter of an admiral, she later distinguished herself in philanthropy and literature. She is remembered today for her remarkable translations of Balzac and of other modern French writers.

"WILSON SMALL," 5 June, 1862

Dear Mother:

I finished my last letter on the afternoon of the day when we took eighty men on the Small, and transferred them to the Webster.

We had just washed and dressed, and were writing letters when Captain Sawtelle came on board to say that several hundred wounded men were lying at the landing; that the Daniel Webster No. 2 had been taken possession of by the medical officers, and was already half full of men, and that the surplus was being carried across her to the Vanderbilt; that the confusion was terrible; that there were no stores on board the Daniel Webster No. 2 (she having been seized the moment she reached the landing on her return from Yorktown, without communicating with the Commission), nor were there any stores or preparations, not even mattresses, on board the Vanderbilt.

Of course the best in our power had to be done. Mrs. Griffin and I begged Mr. Olmsted not to refrain from sending us, merely because we had been up all night. He said he wouldn't send us, but if we chose to offer our services to the United States surgeon, he thought it would be merciful. Our offer was seized. We went on board; and such a scene as we entered and lived in for two days I trust never to see again. Men in every condition of horror, shattered and shrieking, were being brought in on stretchers borne by "contrabands," who dumped them anywhere, banged the stretchers against pillars and posts, and walked over the men without compassion. There was no one to direct what ward or what bed they were to go into. Men shattered in the thigh, and even cases of amputation, were shovelled into top berths without thought or mercy. The men had mostly been without food for three days. but there was nothing on board either boat for them; and if there had been, the cooks were only engaged to cook for the ship, and not for the hospital.

We began to do what we could. The first thing wanted by wounded men is something to drink (with the sick, stimulants are the first thing). Fortunately we had plenty of lemons, ice, and sherry on board the Small, and these were available at once. Dr. Ware discovered a barrel of molasses, which, with vinegar, ice, and water, made a most refreshing drink. After that we gave them crackers and milk, or tea and bread. It was hopeless to try to get them into bed; indeed, there were no mattresses on the Vanderbilt. All we could do at first was to try to calm the confusion, to stop some agony, to revive the fainting lives, to snatch, if possible, from immediate death with food and stimulants. Imagine a great river or Sound steamer filled on every deck,-every berth and every square inch of room covered with wounded men; even the stairs and gangways and guards filled with those who are less badly wounded; and then imagine fifty well men, on every kind of errand, rushing to and fro over them, every touch bringing agony to the poor fellows, while stretcher after stretcher came along, hoping to find an empty place; and then imagine what it was to keep calm ourselves, and make sure that every man on both those boats was properly refreshed and fed. We got through about 1 A.M., Mrs. M. and Georgy having come off other duty and reinforced us. We were sitting for a few moments, resting and talking it over, and bitterly asking why a Government so lavish and perfect in its other arrangements should leave its wounded almost literally to take care of themselves, when a message came that one hundred and fifty men were just arriving by the cars. It was raining in torrents, and both boats were full. We went on shore again: the same scene repeated. The wretched Vanderb ilt was slipped out, the Kennebec brought up, and the hundred and fifty men carried across the Daniel Webster No. 2 to her, with the exception of some fearfully wounded ones, who could not be touched in the darkness and rain, and were therefore made as comfortable as they could be in the cars. We gave refreshment and food to all, Miss Whetten and a detail of young men from the Spaulding coming up in time to I assist, and the officers of the Sebagoj who had seen how hard pressed we were in the afternoon, volunteering for the nightwatch. Add to this sundry Members of Congress, who, if they talked much, at least worked well. One of them, the Hon. Moscs F. Odell, proposed to Mr. Olmsted that on his return to Washington he should move that the thanks of Congress be returned to us! Mr. Olmsted, mindful of our feelings, promptly declined.

We went to bed at daylight with breakfast on our minds, and at six o'clock we were all on board the Daniel Webster No. 2, and the breakfast of six hundred men was got through with in good time. Captain Sawtelle kindly sent us a large wall-tent, twelve caldrons and camp-kettles, two cooks, and a detail of six men. The tent was put up at once, Dr. Ware giving to its preparation the only hour when he might have rested during that long nightmare. We began to use it that (Tuesday) morning. It is filled with our stores; there we have cooked not only the sick-food, but all the food needed on the Government boats. It was hard to get it in sufficient quantity; but when everything else gave out, we broke up "hard-tack" into buckets full of hot milk and water a little sweetened,-"bread and milk" the men called it. Oh, that precious condensed milk, more precious to us at that moment than beef essence!

Tuesday was very much a repetition of Monday night. The men were cleared from the main-deck and gangways of the Daniel Webster No. 2 onto the Kennebec. The feeding business was almost as hard to manage as before. But still it was done, and we got to bed at 1 A.M. Mrs. M. and I were to attend to the breakfast at 6 next morning. By some accident Mrs. M., who was ready quite as soon as I was, was carried off by the Small, which started suddenly to run down to the Spaulding. I had, therefore, to get the breakfast alone. I accomplished it, and then went ashore and fed some men who were just arriving in the cars, and others who were in tents near the landing. The horrors of that morning are too great to speak of. The men in the cars were brought on board the Daniel Webster No. 2 and laid about the vacant maindeck and guards and on the deck of a scow that lay alongside. I must not, I ought not to tell you of the horrors of that morning. One of the least was that I saw a "contraband" step on the amputated stump of a wretched man. I took him by the arm and walked him into the tent, where I ordered them to give him other work, and forbade that he should come upon the ships again. I felt white with anger, and dared not trust myself to speak to him. While those awful sights pass before me I have comparatively no feeling, except the anxiety to alleviate as much as possible. I do not suffer under the sights; but oh! the sounds, the screams of men. It is when I think of it afterwards' that it is so dreadful....

About nine hundred wounded remain to be brought down. Mr. Olmsted says our boats have transported one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six since Sunday; the Government and Pennsylvania boats together about three thousand. Mr. Clement Barclay was with us on Monday night on the Vanderbilt. I believe he went with her to Fortress Monroe. He was working hard, with the deepest interest and skill. I went with him to attend to a little "Secesh" boy, wounded in the thigh; also to a Southern colonel, a splendid looking man, who died, saying to Mr. Barclay, with raised hand: "Write to my wife and tell her I die penitent for the part I have taken in this war." I try to be just and kind to the Southern men. One of our men stopped me, saying: "He's a rebel; give that to me." I said: "But a wounded man is our brother!" (rather an obvious sentiment, if there is anything in Christianity); and they both touched their caps. The Southerners are constantly expressing surprise at one thing or another, and they are shy, but not surly, at receiving kindness. Our men are a noble set of fellows, so cheerful, uncomplaining, and generous.

Remember that in all that I have written, I have told you only about ourselves-the women. What the gentlemen have been, those of our party, those: of the Spaulding and of the other vessels, is beyond my power to relate. Some of them fainted from time to time.

Last night, shining over blood and agony, I saw a lunar rainbow; and in the afternoon a peculiarly beautiful effect of rainbow and stormy sunset,-it flashed upon my eyes as I passed an operating-table, and raised them to avoid seeing anything I passed.

WORMELEY, "The Other Side of War"

Read More

Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864

From: victoriana.com

Although the U.S. Sanitary Commission (an official government agency signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln) was headed by men, much of its work to support the Federal army during the American Civil War with funds and supplies was accomplished by thousands of women volunteers. They helped to organize sanitary fairs, marking the first time during the American Civil War that women expressed their patriotism in the public sphere rather than the domestic arena.

In Brooklyn, women’s organizations produced the successful "Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair", featuring dances, parades, merchandise sales, auctions, and a cattle show. The event lasted two weeks and raised a remarkable $400,000, four times more than anticipated.

Today, an exhibition of nearly thirty artworks and historical objects celebrating the contributions of Union women to an American Civil War relief effort known as the Sanitary Movement is the subject of an exhibition in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864, on view through October 17, focuses on one of the many sanitary fairs held in Northern cities to raise money to aid the Union troops, each seeking to outdo the others.

The Herstory Gallery is dedicated to exhibitions that relate to the lives and histories of the 1,038 women named in The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, which is on permanent view in the adjacent gallery. Represented in Chicago’s iconic work is Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States and a leader of the Sanitary Movement.

The focal point of the exhibition is an exceptional doll and its trousseau, made by the dressmaker Eliza Lefferts for the 1864 Brooklyn fair, which was held in a Montague Street location. The doll and her exquisitely created wardrobe, last on public view in 1985, entered the Brooklyn Museum collection in 1924.

Also included in the exhibition are lithographs that depict the halls of the Brooklyn Sanitary Fair, where handmade items were for sale, as well as engravings of several magazine illustrations by Winslow Homer showing scenes of the war and the relief effort at home. The material in the exhibition is from the Brooklyn Museum’s permanent collections, augmented by loans of ephemera from the Brooklyn Historical Society.

Image 1: Brooklyn Sanitary Fair, 1864. Brooklyn Museum. Bequest of Samuel E. Haslett

Image 2: Antique doll clothes

Read More

Behind the Lines: Olmsted at War

By K.M. Kostyal, 4-28-15

IN JULY 1861 A SLIGHT, 39-YEAR-OLD MAN with a limp (the result of a recent buggy accident) watched Washington, D.C., descend into a new kind of chaos as the survivors of the First Bull Run battle thronged the muddy, miasmic city. “Many regiments are but a mob…a disintegrated herd of sick monomaniacs,” he wrote to his wife in New York. The soldiers, “pale, grimy, with bloodshot eyes, unshaven, unkempt, sullen, fierce, feverish, weak, and ravenous,” slept in the streets, while their officers, by and large oblivious to their regiment’s whereabouts and condition, drank at the Willard Hotel. But the writer himself—Frederick Law Olmsted—was determined to “overcome in some details the prevailing inefficiency and misery.”

After a restless early manhood that took him to Europe and China, Olmsted had established himself first as a writer and then as a designer and superintendent of New York’s pioneering new urban park. In the former capacity he had made a long sweep through the antebellum South about a decade earlier, with an eye to understanding how slavery impacted the region and its economy, a subject—and lifestyle—he believed most Northerners had no true comprehension of. His articles on the subject had appeared in several newspapers, and his book The Cotton Kingdom, would be out later in that first year of the Civil War. More recently, Olmsted had spent almost three years on upper Manhattan Island, turning a vast rock-ribbed wasteland “steeped in the overflow and mush of pig-sties, slaughterhouses, and bone­-boiling works” into a “rural park” meant to humanize a city that was becoming increasingly crowded and industrialized. Central Park—the creation of Olmsted and his partner, the older, well-established Calvert Vaux—was to be far more than a decorative respite: It would bolster the physical and mental health of the city’s inhabitants.

The following year he and Calvert Vaux won the competition to design Central Park. The superintending of the park’s development had taught Olmsted how to handle recalcitrant work crews and push through projects, even over the objections of his superiors. As the war began, then, Olmsted was well suited to his newest role as secretary general of the Sanitary Commission. The brainchild of Northern liberals, the commission hoped to harness the energy and resources of ladies’ relief societies and other organizations committed to helping Union troops at the front. Olmsted and his Sanitary Commission brethren had had to lobby hard for some kind of official sanction, and the month before Bull Run, President Lincoln had approved an executive order for a “Commission of Inquiry and Advice in respect of the Sanitary Interests of the United States Forces.” Privately, the president worried that such a commission might prove a problematic “fifth wheel to the coach” rather than any real help.

If Lincoln had his doubts about this extragovernmental commission, Olmsted had his about the president. “Lincoln has no element of dignity; no tact, not a spark of genius,” he wrote to his father the first summer of the war, adding that the president was, however, “an amiable, honest, good fellow. His cabinet is not that.” Olmsted was even less impressed with the army’s Medical Bureau and the 64-year-old surgeon general, Clement Alexander Finley, who preferred old methods to the new medical knowledge hard won in conflicts like the Crimean War and flowing out of European research. Despite the inevitability of an American war, the bureau had done little to organize, provision, or otherwise prepare for it. Olmsted was determined to have the Sanitary Commission make up for the bureau’s inadequacies.

AFTER THE UNION DEFEAT at Bull Run, Olmsted was convinced there was “but one sanitary measure to be thought of…and that is discipline.” Within days of the battle, seven Sanitary Commission inspectors, armed with 75 questions on conditions before, during, and after the fighting, were dispatched to 30 of the regiments that had fought. Olmsted compiled the results of the questionnaires in an inflammatory report “on the demoralization of the volunteers in the army,” in which the military and civil government were indicted by their own troops for poorly distributed rations, weak military organization, and bad officers. While it made the commission no friends in government, the report began the long process of improving conditions for the fighting man.

Meanwhile, Olmsted began streamlining the commission’s own operations, publishing bulletins about disease, wound treatment, medicines, and other health-related topics and distributing them to the medical men in the field. He also launched a public campaign to encourage civilians who wanted to donate clothing and other necessities to the troops to send their parcels to the Sanitary Commission for better distribution, and he made new arrangements for storing such items and then moving them quickly to the front when they were needed. All the while, Olmsted and his cohorts were battling on their own front—fending off critics determined to put the Sanitary Commission out of business and at the same time fighting to have Congress reform the moribund Medical Bureau.

In the spring of 1862, after “seven weary months of hope deferred,” wrote Sanitary Commission treasurer and champion George Templeton Strong, a bill passed Congress “to increase the efficiency of that rheumatic, lethargic, paralytic, ossified, old institution.” Congress also appointed a new surgeon general, the vigorous, far-sighted 33-year-old William Hammond, an assistant surgeon in the bureau who had written reports critical of army hospitals.

That same spring, Olmsted headed to the Virginia Peninsula with McClellan’s army and his own small fleet of vessels, including a beat-up ocean liner turned troop transport that Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs had given the Sanitary Commission. As it steamed down the Potomac in late April, Olmsted, the four surgeons, six medical students, 20 or so male nurses, and four women volunteers onboard worked to turn the ship into a “floating hospital.” The commission’s smaller, shallow-draft vessels would collect the sick and wounded soldiers from land and carry them to the hospital ship. By early May, after the siege at Yorktown, that first floating hospital was on its way to New York with almost 200 patients on board and other ships had replaced it.

THROUGHOUT THE LONG MONTHS of the Peninsula Campaign, unnecessary turf battles complicated treatment of the ailing. Old-guard army doctors resented volunteer surgeons; officers resented giving up men or matériel to medical needs; the Medical Bureau resented the efforts of the Sanitary Commission; and a lot of people resented Olmsted, who never stopped pushing to improve medical care. The troops needed more quinine to prevent malaria in that swampy, mosquito-plagued coastal world, but lacking the necessary amounts, the army was losing about 6 percent of its force to illness every 10 days, according to one doctor’s estimate. Olmsted also urged that each army corps have no less than one medical “depot” close behind the line of fire. “Such an arrangement would have saved many lives after the battle of Fair Oaks,” Olmsted wrote to Surgeon General Hammond.

In one month that spring the Sanitary Commission spent $22,000 to supply the Medical Bureau and itself with cots, beds, medicine, food, and more. Its volunteers manned food stations, offering hot soup or “piles of fresh bread and pots of coffee” to troops, who sometimes hadn’t eaten for days. “As for sick-food, stimulants, drinks &c., such things scarcely exist in the medical mind of the army,” one commission worker reported, “and there was not even a pail or a cup to distribute food, had there been any.” Olmsted worried that the men fighting in Virginia had a choice of dying by quick bleeding or slow starvation. And with the war’s end nowhere in sight, the misery of that spring and early summer seemed to presage the same for years to come.

THROUGH THOSE YEARS, the Sanitary Commission had two great enemies—the war and the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. Angered at the commission’s meddling in bureau affairs and in having the surgeon general replaced, Stanton never mentioned the commission’s name “without a curse.” The commission’s George Templeton Strong quipped that Stanton himself would do his country the “most service as Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Heaven.” With no sign of that on the horizon in 1862, Olmsted and the Sanitary Commission continued to fight the good fight. In the September aftermath of Antietam, the commission urged New York physicians to the front and dispatched to the field over 28,700 shirts, towels, pillows, bedding material, bandages; 10 pounds of chloroform; 3,100 pounds of farina; 2,600 pounds of condensed milk; 5,000 pounds of cured meats and beef stock; and many more pounds of other supplies, including tin cups.

Battle followed battle, and the Sanitary Commission kept up its drumbeat: The healthier the men were, the better they would fight. But that health required reasonable diets (with among other things vegetables and dried fruit high in Vitamin C to prevent scurvy), warm clothes (something one head of the Union armies, Major General Henry Halleck, characterized as “effeminating comforts”), medicines, field hospital facilities, and campsites where sanitary conditions (including properly placed and constructed latrines) were a priority. Olmsted and Hammond also worked on a proposal for an official ambulance corps to transport the wounded quickly, but Stanton predictably quashed the idea (later in the war it was implemented).

Despite the war secretary’s opposition, things slowly improved for Union troops, thanks to the ceaseless work of Hammond and Olmsted. “He works like a dog all day and sits up nearly all night,” one commission member said of Olmsted. His diligence was helped along by a large infusion of cash that began making its way from the California goldfields to the coffers of the Sanitary Commission in the fall of 1862. By war’s end the total received from California was close to $1.5 million.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1863, as Lee moved north and the Army of the Potomac followed after him, Olmsted anticipated carnage and moved food (some via refrigerated freight car) and medical supplies into the vicinity of Gettysburg, even before the battle. “Our regular wagon force was on the ground during the battle,” he wrote his wife, “and the wagons visited all the field hospitals as fast as they were established and hours before they received supplies from other quarters.”

Olmsted’s long work on the Sanitary Commission was at last reaping real rewards for the men at the front. His unrelenting push to improve battle­front conditions, however, had cost him the confidence of the commission’s own executive committee. Even Treasurer Strong called Olmsted “wary, shrewd, and never sanguine.” Certainly, Olmsted had become wary—of his own standing in the commission—and he was shrewd enough to recognize how precarious his position was. In August 1863 he learned that a huge gold-mining operation in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, the Mariposa Estate, wanted him as superintendent of their 70 square miles of villages, mines, and wilderness. Leaving the war and his crushing and increasingly thankless duties with the Sanitary Commission behind, Olmsted moved West.

The commission soldiered on to the end of the war and beyond. The prime mover behind its founding, Henry Bellows, worked hard to have the commission’s achievements and lessons acknowledged and adopted internationally and was annoyed to find it being overshadowed by a new organization calling itself the Red Cross.

As for Olmsted’s personal achievements in the Civil War, his greatest accolades came from the wounded and ill, the hungry, thirsty, despondent men he helped in the field. After Antietam one soldier wrote, “I would rather have Mr. Olmsted’s fame than that of any general in this war since its beginning.”

Image 1: Frederick Law Olmsted om 1857, at age 34.

Image 2: Sanitary Commission wagons were on hand at Belle Plain, Virginia, the supply depot on the Potomac that Grant used as he began his Wilderness Campaign in the spring of 1864. By then Olmsted had left the Sanitary Commission, but his legacy continued. (Timothy O'Sullivan/Library of Congress)

Read More

Book Review: With Courage and Delicacy: Civil War on the Peninsula: Women and the U.S. Sanitary Commission (By Nancy Scripture Garrison)

By William J. Miller

The women of the U.S. Sanitary Commission risked their own health to care for sick and wounded Union soldiers.

In June 1862, a mere half-morning’s ride from the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, Union Major General George B. McClellan, commanding the largest standing army in America, was content to dawdle. As the lazy summer days passed (36 of them, to be exact), McClellan kept his troops waiting amid the fetid swamps and muddy marshes of the Chickahominy River. His army was always busy, if far from mobile. His engineers, fatigue parties and quartermasters had scarcely a night’s rest. Yet no one in the Union army worked as quickly or effectively as the Chickahominy itself, whose mosquitoes spread malaria and whose malignant waters bore diseases to thousands of McClellan’s bogged-down men. The magnificent Army of the Potomac grew progressively weaker.

McClellan was typical of the military leaders of the period, who focused their energies on building and wielding large bodies of men while largely taking for granted the health and well-being of those same men. Few officers knew or cared anything about military medicine, and they met with derision any efforts by civilians to improve the health of the individual soldiers. One New York clergyman who traveled to Washington to offer the services of an organized and well-funded group of volunteers was summarily rebuffed. “The War Department,” wrote the Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows, “regarded us as weak enthusiasts representing well-meaning but silly women.”

In such an atmosphere of pervasive ignorance and contempt was born the U.S. Sanitary Commission, one of the great medical success stories in American history–and a sadly neglected band of Civil War heroes and heroines. The commission had its roots in the volunteer nursing operation run by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War. In Europe, as in America, military medicine was a poor relative to military science, and soldiers died of disease and neglect by the tens of thousands. Nightingale, however, had enough success to encourage American emulators. One of the first was Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who organized the Women’s Central Association of Relief in New York. The group attracted patriotic women from the highest levels of Northern society. Included on the roster were the Woolsey sisters, Georgeanna and Eliza–whose uncle was the president of Yale University–and Katherine Prescott Wormeley, daughter of an admiral in the British Navy, who had grown up in Rhode Island. Together with Unitarian minister Bellows, the women formed the core of the Women’s Central Association of Relief, which quickly grew into the U.S. Sanitary Commission.

The important and pioneering work of the Sanitary Commission is the subject of Nancy Scripture Garrison’s book With Courage and Delicacy: Civil War on the Peninsula: Women and the U.S. Sanitary Commission (Savas Publishing Co., Mason City, Iowa, 1999, $24.95). The commission served throughout the war, ministering to the needs of the various Federal armies. It raised millions of dollars in private donations and distributed the bounty to the troops in the form of bandages, medicine, fruits, vegetables, socks, blankets and scores of the other things necessary to promote or restore health. Volunteer nurses, male and female, worked tirelessly in hospitals a few miles from the front.

With Courage and Delicacy is not simply a narrative history of the Sanitary Commission’s work on the Virginia Peninsula, but a wide-ranging–and often confusing–attempt to describe the commission members’ experiences while also decoding those experiences, particularly as they related to the female members’ growing self-awareness and self-actualization. The women, writes Garrison, labored hard to “grasp the peculiar significance of their role as Sanitarians–along with the conflicting loyalties implicit in that role. Letters and journals, reflecting a series of external events–often deeply shocking–and long-ingrained internal perspectives, witness the shaping of their self-discoveries.” The meaning of such text is often hard to decipher, and in Garrison’s attempts to analyze the experiences of U.S. Sanitary commission workers, she fails to humanize her subjects. I never got to know the women in the book, and I never felt immersed in their hardships.

Readers interested in a thoughtful perspective on what the failed Peninsula campaign meant to the women of the Sanitary Commission will do well to read Garrison’s book. Those wishing to know what these women actually did on the peninsula would do better to go directly to the firsthand sources: the letters and the memoirs of these highly articulate heroines. The complete story of the U.S. Sanitary Commission still deserves and needs to be told fully and well from a modern perspective, but With Courage and Delicacy is at least a step in the right direction.

From: historynet.com

Read More

The Sanitary Commission Bulletin

The Sanitary Commission Bulletin
v. 1, no. 2 (November 15, 1863)
(New York : The Commission, 1863-1865).
From the collections of the Boston Medical Library.

Issued twice monthly from November, 1863, to August, 1865, the Bulletin reported on the work of the Commission and the local sanitary fairs, accounts of battles and the experiences of prisoners of war, and provided a regular means to report on the use of funds contributed by the public.  This issue outlines some of the Commission’s activities and personnel.

Read More

Civil War Army Hospitals

From: learnnc.org

Nearly 200,000 men lost their lives from enemy fire during the four years of the war. However, more than 400,000 soldiers were killed by an enemy that took no side — disease.

From our modern perspective, medicine during the Civil War seems primitive. Doctors received limited medical education. Most surgeons lacked familiarity with gunshot wounds. The newly-developed minie ball produced grisly wounds that were difficult to treat. The Northern and Southern medical departments were ill-prepared for removing wounded men from the battlefield and transporting them to hospitals. Systems to provide hospital care for the sick and wounded had not been developed. Blood typing, X-rays, antibiotics, and modern medical tests and procedures were nonexistent.

Open latrines, decomposing food, and unclean water were the rule in the camps. Diarrheal diseases affected nearly every soldier and killed hundreds of thousands of men. Although surgeons used ether and chloroform routinely as anesthetics, surgery was performed with unwashed hands and unclean instruments, resulting in infected wounds. The most effective drugs were the pain-killers opium and morphine, while many of the other available drugs were useless or harmful. Despite these limitations, Civil War doctors achieved some remarkable successes in treating the wounded and comforting the sick.

Popular but generally incorrect images of Civil War medicine involve surgery-amputations without anesthesia, piles of arms and legs, the surgeon as a butcher. By modern standards, wartime surgery was limited. Despite the lack of both surgical experience and sanitary conditions, the survival rate among those who underwent the knife was better than in previous wars. Amputation was not the only surgical recourse available. Surgeons also extracted bullets, operated on fractured skulls, reconstructed damaged facial structures, and removed sections of broken bones.

As bullets hit their victims, shattered bone and shredded flesh became the calling cards of the minie ball. Most of the surgeons who had come from civilian practices had little or no experience in dealing with such wounds. They quickly became aware of the surgical options: remove the limb, remove the fractured portions of bone, or clean the wound and apply a dressing. Union surgeons documented nearly 250,000 wounds from bullets, shrapnel, and other missiles. Fewer than 1,000 cases of wounds from sabers and bayonets were reported.

Walt Whitman describes a battlefield hospital:

FALMOUNT, VA., opposite Fredericksburgh, December 21, 1862. — Begin my visits among the camp hospitals in the army of the Potomac. Spend a good part of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the Rappahannock, used as a hospital since the battle — seems to have receiv’d only the worst cases. Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, each cover’d with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, towards the river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of barrel-staves or broken boards, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies were subsequently taken up and transported north to their friends.) The large mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, prisoners. One, a Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk’d with some time; he ask’d me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months afterward in Washington, with his leg amputated, doing well.) I went through the rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying. I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home, mothers, &c. Also talk’d to three or four, who seem’d most susceptible to it, and needing it.
— Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

Image: Nurses and officers of the U.S. Sanitary Commission pose under a tree in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Photograph by James Gardner, May 1864.

Read More

Isabella Fogg of Maine

From: americancivilwarforum.com

In 1861 Isabella Fogg of Calais, Maine, asked herself what to do. The answer? Follow son Hugh and his regiment to Washington. There, she visited hospitals as a volunteer for the Maine Camp and Hospital Association. Soon, she and others realized the greatest need for help was in the field. Once there, they were horrified to find sick and wounded soldiers languishing in barns, sheds and tents. They offered what help they could with limited supplies.

Isabella Fogg
Berlin, Nov. 10, 1862
Mr. Hathaway,

Dear Sir,

I suppose Mr. W[atson] has given you some information in regard to how we were occupying our time in Frederic, so I will give you some account of our movements since. We left Frederic on Saturday, the 1st in company with Mr. Hayes, stopped at Middletown, and found them very comfortable, men happy, said the ladies were very kind, went on to Kedarsville [Keedysville], but what a painful contrast! There we found several Maine men, in a church and three other buildings occupied as Hospitals, lying on the bare floor with their coats for pillows. Their stores consisted of hard bread, beef and coffee, as we had no supplies with us, of course we could not relieve, they promised to apply to the commission on the day following.

We then went up to Smoketown Hospital, here we found 30 Maine men. This place is in a most miserable condition, the men complain very much, although Mrs. Harris and several Penn. ladies, with a great quantity of supplies were there. The effluvia arising from the condition of these grounds is intolerable, quite enough to make a man in perfect health sick, and how men can recover in such a place is a mystery to me. We then went to Bakersville, saw there 25 of the 5th Maine, left in a school house in care of the steward, without supplies; found him making every effort to keep them comfortable, we inquired why he did not call on the Commission, he replied, he had always found so many difficulties in obtaining them from this source he preferred purchasing himself. We told him, we would go to the Commission; and have what he required put up for him, here, we opened your box of jelly.

We then came to Sharpsburg, the Maine troops had crossed the river, only five Maine men were left here, also Capt. Hill of the 20th in a private house. We did what we could for his comfort and then proceeded to Harpers Ferry. Here the sick are in a fearful condition, in every old house and church and hundreds on the ground. You no doubt think your ladies in Washington are doing a great work, but I can assure you, if they were here, they would find the stern reality of want, privation and extreme suffering.

We visited the sick of the 19th in care of Dr. Hawes, asst. surgeon, he has upwards of 50, does all in his power for their comfort. At Gen. Slocums request we went over to Loudin Valley to learn the condition of several hundreds, who had been sent the day previous without any preparation. We found them lying on the ground, in all directions, many convalescent, but a great many very low. At this time no surgeons, nurses or cooks were on the ground and hard bread their only food. Fortunately, we had that morning obtained a few supplies from the Commission, after much pleading, for they actually appeared as if they were contributing out of their own pocket and for our personal wants, however, we went to work to administer to the wants of the sick, Mrs. E[aton] to wash and clean them, which they stood greatly in need of, while I prepared food for them. Mr. Hayes went in search of Maine men, but found none, we however found famishing soldiers.

After feeding every one who could not help themselves, we left for Berlin, and here the misery and suffering beggars all description, the heart sickens at the sight. We visited the Hospital of the 10th Maine, found them more comfortable than many others, but yet very much can be added to their comfort. Taking a stroll through the town, we searched every old school house, log cabin &c for the poor men who had been left behind, as our army moved on. In an old hut destitute of doors or windows and minus a part of the roof, we found 7 men, who had slept in the woods the night before, had crept in there, for the miserable shelter the place afforded. - Our inquiries were for Maine men, and although these were not from our State, they claimed our sympathy. - Conversing with one of them, he told us he was sick, thought he had the measles, on this point, our opinion did not coincide with his, we supposing it to be a case of small pox, which of course required immediate attention.

With no little difficulty we at last succeeded in finding the surgeon of the district, who coroberated our opinion, our next step was to report to Col. Fillebrown, who expressed earnest thanks for our attention to the case. - In a dilapidated school house, without fireplace, we found a man sick and old, who had enlisted in the Maine 12th. He was now 57 years old, had been left, injured in the spine, at Fortress Monroe, then knocked about from one Hospital to another, thrust into a New York regiment till at last all discouraged, he knew not what to do. Measures have now been set on foot by Mr. Hayes for his discharge. - Learning there were men left from Franklins Corps, left in a very destitute condition at Hagerstown, and feeling anxious to furnish some supplies for those we had seen the week previous in Kedarsville [Keedysville], we here separated, Mrs. E to attend to duties here, while I, in company with Mr. Hayes, who was anxious to find more of our men who were scattered all along the way, took an anbulance on route for Hagerstown.

While at Harpers Ferry, we had stated the suffering conditions of those at Kedarsville to Dr. McNultz, Medical Director in charge at Harpers Ferry, who expressed great surprize to learn that there were any there, he having had them all removed from that place a short time since;but of our sick and wounded men it may be said their name is Legion and almost as fast as an old ruined building is emptied, it is filled by other stragglers; however, through the information received from us, he had again caused their removal, and we were spared from again witnessing that scene of want and hunger.

Next visted the Russell Spring Hospital, found them comparatively comfortable with only three Maine men. - Again we went to Smoketown, hoping to find them in a more comfortable condition than when we were last there, but how sadly were we disappointed. - How I wish I could introduce you, and the Washington Com. to Smoketown Hos. in the midst of this driving snow storm! You could have seen the poor fellows huddled together, with their pallets of straw on the gound, their tents connected by flyes, the same as ***** in the heat of summer, many without walls and no stoves. Those who were able to creep out of their tents were crouched over fires, built in the woods, their heads covered with snow. And all I may say, almost without exception with thin muslin shirts on. - The exposure has been such that diptheria has broken out among them, and in nearly every case proves fatal.

One of our poor Maine boys who had been very diligent in looking up for us those belonging to Maine, at our last visit had been seized suddenly with diptheria, caused by exposure, and lived but two or three hours. - Distributing what few articles we had received from the Commission among them, we moved on, deeply regretting we had no winter clothing, as many of them were destitute of stockings. I cannot describe what my feelings were that I had no articles of woolen clothing to distribute especially as the chaplain told us, there were plenty to take their names but few to relieve their wants.

Next, we proceeded to the school house at Bakersville, where so many of the 5th had been left without supplies. Imagine our indignation to find that the requisition we had left for them with the commission at Sharpsburg had been cut off fully one half on every article. They probably were not expecting we should be on the track again. -We found the industrious steward, William Noyes of Saco, grating corn on a grater he had made from an old canteen, to furnish meal wherewith to make gruel for his sick men. This is only a sample of his expedients for his men, give his name a place in your reports for he is worthy.

At Hagerstown we found several Maine men, but in a more comfortable condition than we had expected. The citizens deserve great credit for their efforts in providing for the wants of the sick soldiers as there are nearly a thousand in that vicinity. But we found very many of our Maine men with muslin shirts on and some without any. Here we found three boxes for Maine Regiments, one of them of not much account, containing mostly old pillow cases, another chiefly muslin shirts, but the third, to our great joy, contained upwards of a hundred flannel shirts, with some other useful articles.

Imagine now, with what pleasure we retraced our steps to Bakersville and Smoketown! Could you have seen the happy faces and heard the thankful expressions of gratitude you would have felt that too much could not be done for their comfort. - We then came on to Burketsville, found many Maine men there and they likewise were without woolen shirts. We were able also to supply them and arrived home about 7 o;clock, after the tedious labor and hard exposure of three days. I should have written before but I suppose Mr. Hayes and Mr. Watson kept you informed of our movements. You may assured however we have not spent much idle time. It will not be necessary to reply to this, as we expect soon to report to you at Washington unless ordered otherwise by you.

Yours with very great respect.

I. Fogg"

Read More