THE SANITARY AND CHRISTIAN COMMISSIONS.
WOMEN IN THE WAR--SANITARY COMMISSION FORMED--THE PUBLIC IDEA ABOUT
IT--WORK OF THE COMMISSION--SANITARY FAIRS--THE CHRISTIAN
COMMISSION--VOLUNTARY NURSES--THE VAST AMOUNT OF WORK DONE BY WOMEN IN
HOSPITALS--MISS DOROTHEA L. DIX, MISS ALCOTT, AND MANY OTHERS.
The ancient sarcasm, that women have caused many of the bloodiest of
wars, was largely disarmed by the part they played in the war of
secession. Their contribution to the comfort and efficiency of the
armies in the field, and to the care of the sick and wounded soldiers,
was on the same vast scale as the war itself. Their attempts to assist
the cause began with the first call for volunteers, and were as
awkward and unskilled as the green regiments that they equipped and
encouraged. But as their brothers learned the art of war, they kept
even pace in learning the arts that alleviate its sufferings. When the
President issued the first call for troops, in April, 1861, the women
in many places held meetings to confer as to the best methods by which
they could assist, and to organize their efforts and resources. The
statement of the objects of one of these organizations suggests some
conception of the contingencies of war in a country that for nearly
half a century had known almost unbroken peace: "To supply nurses for
the sick; to bring them home when practicable; to purchase clothing,
provisions, and matters of comfort not supplied by Government
regulations; to send books and newspapers to the camps; and to hold
constant communication with the officers of the regiments, in order
that the people may be kept informed of the condition of their
friends."
[Illustration: SISTER OF MERCY.]
[Illustration: MISS LOUISA M. ALCOTT.]
On one of the last days in April, the Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows and
Dr. Elisha Harris met casually in the street in New York, and fell
into conversation concerning the evident need of sanitary measures for
the armies that were then mustering. They agreed to attend a meeting
of women that had been called to discuss that subject, and from that
meeting a call was issued to all the existing organizations of women
for a general meeting to be held in Cooper Union. This invitation,
which furnished the basis on which the Sanitary Commission was
afterward formed, was signed by ninety-two women. The hall was
crowded, and the Women's Central Association of Relief was organized,
under a constitution written by Dr. Bellows, who was chosen its
president. A committee was sent to Washington to offer the services of
the organization to the Government, and learn in what way they could
be most effective. This committee, consisting of Dr. Bellows and three
eminent physicians--Drs. Van Buren, Harsen, and Harris--presented to
the War Department an address whose suggestions were based largely
upon the experience of the British forces in the Crimean war of
1854-55. Being sent by women who were overflowing with patriotic
enthusiasm, to officials who were jealous and distrustful of
everything outside of the regulations, they had a difficult and
delicate task. The Government was already embarrassed somewhat in the
adjustment of authority between regular and volunteer officers, and
dreaded a further complication if a third element of civilian
authority should be introduced. Even Mr. Lincoln is said to have
spoken slightingly of their proposition as a fifth wheel to a coach.
General Scott received the committee kindly, but was not willing to
give the proposed commission any authority. He would, however, consent
to their acting in an advisory capacity, provided the head of the
medical bureau agreed. After an interview with Acting Surgeon-General
Wood, they obtained his consent to the formation of a "commission of
inquiry and advice in respect to the sanitary interests of the United
States forces," and he also wrote a letter commending the project to
the other officers whose consent was necessary. Most of these officers
looked upon the project with distrust and suspicion, and at length the
committee were asked to "tell outright what they really did want,
under this benevolent disguise." After fighting their way through
these obstacles, the committee met with a misfortune in the death of
Surgeon-General Lawson. His successor, Dr. Clement A. Finley, frowned
upon the whole matter, but after a long struggle was induced to
tolerate a commission that should not be clothed with any authority,
and should act only in connection with officers of the volunteer army.
Finally, on June 13, 1861, the committee received from President
Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron an order authorizing them
to form an association for "inquiry and advice in respect to the
sanitary interests of the United States." Their first work was to
bring about a re-inspection of the volunteer forces, which resulted in
the discharge of many boys and physically unsound men who had been
accepted and mustered in through carelessness. When the committee
returned to New York, the fact that there was a wide popular demand
for the establishment of such an organization as they had proposed was
made evident through articles in the newspapers, {325} opinions of
physicians, and a multitude of letters from all parts of the country.
Dr. Bellows was made president of the Commission, Frederick Law
Olmsted secretary, and George T. Strong treasurer, and with them were
associated a score of well-known men, including several eminent
physicians. In the organization, the first division of the duties of
the Commission was into two departments--those of Inquiry and Advice.
The Department of Inquiry was subdivided into three--the first, to
have charge of such immediate aid and obvious recommendations as an
ordinary knowledge of the principles of sanitary science would enable
the board to urge upon the authorities; the second, to have charge of
the inspection of recruiting stations, transports, camps, and
hospitals, and to consult with military officers as to the condition
and wants of their men; the third, to investigate questions of
cleanliness, cooking, clothing, surgical dressings, malaria, climate,
etc. The Department of Advice was also subdivided. The general object
was "to get the opinions and conclusions of the Commission approved by
the Medical Bureau, ordered by the War Department, and acted upon by
officers and men." One sub-committee was in direct communication with
the War Department, another with army officers, and a third with the
State governments and the local associations.
The popular idea of the Sanitary Commission seemed to be that its
chief purpose was to form dépôts for receiving supplies of clothing,
medicines, and delicacies for the camps and hospitals, and forwarding
them safely and speedily. And this part of the work soon grew to
proportions that had never been contemplated. The Commission issued an
address "to the loyal women of America," urging the formation of local
societies for providing these articles, and in response more than
seven thousand such societies were organized. They were managed
entirely by women, and were all tributary to the Sanitary Commission.
Of the fifteen million dollars' worth of articles received and
distributed, more than four-fifths came from these local societies.
The Commission was managed as nearly as possible in accordance with
military ideas of discipline and precision. Every request that the
stores furnished by a State or city might be conveyed to its own
regiments was met with the answer that all was for the nation and must
be turned in to the general store. The Commission rapidly disarmed
prejudice, and won the admiration of everybody in the military
service. It employed skilled men to coöperate with the regimental
surgeons in choosing sites for camps, regulating the drainage, and
inspecting the cooking. It constructed model pavilion hospitals, to
prevent the spread of contagion. It established a system of soldiers'
homes, where the sick and the convalescent could be provided for on
their way back and forth between their homes and the front, and where
whole regiments were sometimes fed when their own commissariat failed
them. It fitted up hospital steamers on the Mississippi and its
tributaries, with surgeons and nurses on board, to ply between the
seat of war and the points from which Northern hospitals could be
reached. Dr. Elisha Harris, of the Commission, invented a hospital
car, in which the stretcher on which a wounded man was brought from
the field could be suspended and thus become a sort of hammock. The
cars were built with extra springs, to diminish the jolting as much as
possible, and trains of them were run regularly, with physicians and
stores on board, until the plan was adopted by the Government Medical
Bureau. Supplies were constantly furnished in abundance, and the
Commission established dépôts at convenient points, where the articles
were assorted and labelled, and the army officials were kept
constantly informed that such and such things, in such and such
quantities, were subject to their requisition. When it was found
difficult to transport fresh vegetables from distant points, the
Commission laid out gardens of its own, where vegetables were raised
for the use of the soldiers in the field. The Commission also had its
own horses and wagons, which followed the armies to the battlefield,
carrying supplies that were often welcome when those of the medical
department were exhausted or had gone astray. After the battle of the
Antietam, when ten thousand wounded lay on the field, the train
containing the medical stores was blocked near Baltimore; but the
wagon-train of the Sanitary Commission had been following the army,
and for four days the only supplies were those that it furnished. On
this occasion it issued over twenty-eight thousand shirts, towels,
pillows, etc., thirty barrels of lint and bandages, over three
thousand pounds of farina, over two thousand pounds of condensed milk,
five thousand pounds of beef stock and canned meats, three thousand
bottles of wine and cordial, several tons of lemons, and crackers,
tea, sugar, rubber cloth, tin cups, and other conveniences. In the
course of the war, the Commission furnished four million five hundred
thousand meals to sick and hungry soldiers. In many instances, notably
at the second battle of Bull Run and at the assault on Fort Wagner,
the agents of the Commission were on the actual battlefield with their
supplies, and were close at the front rescuing the wounded. At Fort
Wagner they followed up the storming party to the moat.
A large part of the money and supplies was raised by means of fairs
held in nearly every city, and the generosity exhibited in a thousand
different ways was something for the nation to be forever proud of.
Those who could not give cash gave all sorts of things--horses, cows,
carriages, watches, diamonds, books, pictures, curiosities, and every
conceivable article. The managers would be informed that a farmer was
at the door with a cow, which he wished to give, and some person would
be deputed to take the cow and find a stable for her until she could
be sold. Another would appear with a portion of his crops. Men and
women of note were asked to furnish their autographs for sale, and
papers were printed, made up of original contributions by well-known
authors. The sales were largely by auction, and rich men would bid off
articles at high prices, and then give them back to be sold over
again. The amount of cash received by the Commission was over four
million nine hundred thousand dollars. The State of California, which
was farthest from the seat of war, and contributed but few men to the
armies, sent more than one million three hundred thousand dollars. The
value of articles received by the Commission was estimated at fifteen
million dollars. It established convalescent camps, which were
afterward taken by the Government, and a system of hospital
directories, and a pension bureau and claim agency, by which soldiers'
claims were prosecuted free of charge. From beginning to end there was
never a deficit or irregularity of any kind in its finances.
At the beginning of the war, many of the volunteers were members of
the Young Men's Christian Association, and through these an especial
solicitude was felt in that organization for the spiritual needs of
the soldiers. Almost as soon as the first call for troops was made,
measures were taken to supply every regiment with religious
reading-matter, prayer-meetings were held at the recruiting stations,
and a soldiers' hymn-book was compiled and printed by thousands. When
the army began to move, men volunteered to go with it, at their own
expense, and {326} continue this work. One of these was Vincent
Colyer, the artist, who, after spending ten weeks in the field, wrote
to the chairman of the national committee of the Association, urging
the formation of a Christian Commission to carry on the work
systematically. As a result, such a commission was organized on
November 14, 1861. The approval of the President and the War
Department was obtained more readily than in the case of the Sanitary
Commission, but the appeal to the people did not elicit any immediate
enthusiasm. Even the religious press was in some instances distrustful
and discouraging. For nearly a year the means of the Commission were
limited, and its work was feeble. In May, 1862, after an earnest
address to the public, it was enabled to equip and send out fourteen
delegates, as they were called, ten of whom were clergymen. By the end
of that year, they had sent four hundred to the army, and had more
than a thousand engaged in the home work. They had distributed in the
armies more than a hundred thousand Bibles, as many hymn-books, tens
of thousands of other books, ten million leaflets, and hundreds of
thousands of papers and magazines; they had formed twenty-three
libraries, expended over a hundred and forty thousand dollars in
money, and distributed an equal value in stores.
[Illustration: OFFICERS OF THE SANITARY COMMISSION. (From a war-time
photograph.)]
[Illustration: REV. DR. HENRY W. BELLOWS. (President of the Sanitary
Commission.)]
At the close of the second year the Commission had one hundred and
eleven auxiliary associations, and the work in the field was more
perfectly organized. General Grant, then in command in the West,
issued a special order giving the Commission every opportunity for the
prosecution of its work, and tried, but in vain, to obtain permission
for its delegates to visit the National soldiers in Confederate
prisons. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, was chairman of the
executive committee, Joseph Patterson treasurer, and Lemuel Moss
secretary. The work increased rapidly. Chapel tents and chapel roofs
were furnished to the armies, diet kitchens were established in the
hospitals, the service called "individual relief" was extended, and
schools were opened for children of colored soldiers. Thousands of
letters were written for disabled men in the hospitals, and thousands
of packages forwarded to the camps. Jacob Dunton, of Philadelphia,
invented a "coffee wagon" and presented it to the Commission. Coffee
could be made in it in large quantities, as it was driven along. Like
the Sanitary Commission, the Christian Commission had its own teams,
and followed the armies with medical supplies. In the course of its
existence, it sent out in all six thousand delegates, none of whom
received any pay. One hundred and twenty of these were women employed
mainly in the diet kitchens.
There were also many women in the service of the Government as
volunteer nurses. The first of these was Miss Dorothea L. Dix, who
offered her services eight days after the call for troops in April,
1861, and was accepted by the Surgeon-General, who requested that all
women wishing to act as nurses report to her. Miss Dix served through
the war. Miss Amy Bradley, besides having charge of a large camp for
convalescents near Alexandria, Va., assisted twenty-two hundred men in
collecting arrears of pay due them, amounting to over two hundred
thousand dollars. Arabella Griffith Barlow, wife of the gallant
General Francis C. Barlow, spent three years in hospitals at the
front, and died in the service. Miss Clara Barton entered upon
hospital work at the beginning of the war, had charge of the hospitals
of the Army of the James during its last year, and after the war
undertook the search for the missing men of the National armies. Miss
Louisa M. Alcott, author of "Little Women," served as a nurse, and
published her experiences in a volume entitled "Hospital Sketches."
Many other women, less noted, performed long and arduous service,
which in some cases cost them their lives, for {327} which they live
in the grateful remembrance of those who came under their care.
Among these was Miss Helen L. Gilson, a teacher in Boston, who gave
this answer to an inquiry as to how she succeeded in getting into the
work: "When I reached White House Landing I saw the transport _Wilson
Small_ in the offing, and knew that it was full of wounded men; so,
calling a boatman, and directing him to row me to the vessel, I went
on board. A poor fellow was undergoing an amputation, and, seeing that
the surgeon wanted help, I took hold of the limb and held it for him.
The surgeon looked up, at first surprised, then said, 'Thank you,' and
I stayed and helped him. Then I went on with him to the next case; he
made no objection, and from that time I never had any difficulty
there."
[Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF THE SANITARY COMMISSION, ARMY OF THE
POTOMAC. (From a war-time photograph.)]
Dr. Bellows, president of the Sanitary Commission, writing of his
experiences on the field of Gettysburg, said: "I went out to the field
hospital of the Third Corps, where two thousand four hundred men lay
in their tents, a vast camp of mutilated humanity. One woman [Miss
Gilson], young and fair, but grave and earnest, clothed in purity and
mercy--the only woman on that whole vast camp--moved in and out of the
hospital tent, speaking some tender word, giving some restoring
cordial, holding the hand of a dying boy, or receiving the last words
of a husband for his widowed wife. I can never forget how, amid scenes
which under ordinary circumstances no woman could have appeared in
without gross indecorum, the holy pity and purity of this angel of
mercy made her presence seem as fit as though she had indeed dropped
out of heaven. The men themselves, sick or well, all seemed awed and
purified by such a resident among them." Miss Gilson continued her
labors unremittingly through the war, and died about two years after
its close, probably from the effects of her arduous work, at the age
of thirty-two.
[Illustration: MARGARET AUGUSTA PETERSON.]
Besides the labors of such women in the field hospitals, a vast amount
of similar and quite as useful work was done by a great number of
women in the hospitals at various points in the Northern States,
whither the wounded were sent as soon as they could be removed. A
peculiarly sad and romantic case was that of Margaret Augusta
Peterson, a young lady of brilliant promise, who entered upon service
in a large hospital at Rochester, N. Y., refused to leave it when
there was an outbreak of small-pox, saying she was then needed more
than ever, and lost her life, at the age of twenty-three, from some
dreadful mistake in the vaccination. Her story, which had other
romantic elements, is told literally in this poem:
Through the sombre arch of that gateway tower
Where my humblest townsman rides at last,
You may spy the bells of a nodding flower,
On a double mound that is thickly grassed.
And between the spring and the summer time,
Or ever the lilac's bloom is shed,
When they come with banners and wreaths and rhyme,
To deck the tombs of the nation's dead,
They find there a little flag in the grass,
And fling a handful of roses down,
And pause a moment before they pass
To the captain's grave with the gilded crown.
But if perchance they seek to recall
What name, what deeds, these honors declare,
They cannot tell, they are silent all
As the noiseless harebell nodding there. {328}
She was tall, with an almost manly grace;
And young, with strange wisdom for one so young;
And fair, with more than a woman's face;
With dark, deep eyes, and a mirthful tongue.
The poor and the fatherless knew her smile;
The friend in sorrow had seen her tears;
She had studied the ways of the rough world's guile,
And read the romance of historic years.
What she might have been in these times of ours,
At once it is easy and hard to guess;
For always a riddle are half-used powers,
And always a power is lovingness.
But her fortunes fell upon evil days--
If days are evil when evil dies--
And she was not one who could stand at gaze
Where the hopes of humanity fall and rise.
Nor could she dance to the viol's tune,
When the drum was throbbing throughout the land,
Or dream in the light of the summer moon,
When Treason was clinching his mailèd hand.
Through the long, gray hospital's corridor
She journeyed many a mournful league,
And her light foot fell on the oaken floor
As if it never could know fatigue.
She stood by the good old surgeon's side,
And the sufferers smiled as they saw her stand;
She wrote, and the mothers marvelled and cried
At their darling soldiers' feminine hand.
She was last in the ward when the lights burned low,
And Sleep called a truce to his foeman Pain;
At the midnight cry she was first to go,
To bind up the bleeding wound again.
For sometimes the wreck of a man would rise,
Weird and gaunt in the watch-lamp's gleam,
And tear away bandage and splints and ties,
Fighting the battle all o'er in his dream.
No wonder the youngest surgeon felt
A charm in the presence of that brave soul,
Through weary weeks, as she nightly knelt
With the letter from home or the doctor's dole.
He heard her called, and he heard her blessed,
With many a patriot's parting breath;
And ere his soul to itself confessed,
Love leaped to life in those vigils of death.
"Oh, fly to your home!" came a whisper dread,
"For now the pestilence walks by night."
"The greater the need of me here," she said,
And bared her arm for the lancet's bite.
Was there death, green death, in the atmosphere?
Was the bright steel poisoned? Who call tell?
Her weeping friends gathered beside her bier,
And the clergyman told them all was well.
Well--alas that it should be so!
When a nation's debt reaches reckoning-day--
Well for it to be able, but woe
To the generation that's called to pay!
Down from the long, gray hospital came
Every boy in blue who could walk the floor;
The sick and the wounded, the blind and lame,
Formed two long files from her father's door.
There was grief in many a manly breast,
While men's tears fell as the coffin passed;
And thus she went to the world of rest,
Martial and maidenly up to the last.
And that youngest surgeon, was he to blame?--
He held the lancet--Heaven only knows.
No matter; his heart broke all the same,
And he laid him down, and never arose.
So Death received, in his greedy hand,
Two precious coins of the awful price
That purchased freedom for this dear land--
For master and bondman--yea, bought it twice.
Such fates too often such women are for!
God grant the Republic a large increase,
To match the heroes in time of war,
And mother the children in time of peace.
[Illustration]
{329}