For three years I had been a thorough believer in the United States
Sanitary Commission. Reading carefully its publications, listening with
tearful interest to the narrations of those who had been its immediate
workers at the front, following in imagination its campaigns of love and
mercy, from Antietam to Gettysburg, from Belle Plain to City Point, and
thence to the very smoke and carnage of the actual battle-field, I had
come to cherish an unfeigned admiration for it and its work. For three
years, too, I had been an earnest laborer at one of its
outposts,--striving with others ever to deepen the interest and increase
the fidelity of the loyal men and women of a loyal New England town. I
was prepared then, both from my hearty respect for the charity and from
my general conception of the nature and vastness of its operations, to
welcome every opportunity to improve my knowledge of its plans and
practical workings. I therefore gladly accepted the invitation which
came to me to visit the head-quarters of the Commission at Washington,
and to examine for myself the character and amount of the benefits which
it confers.
The evening of August 23d found me, after a speedy and pleasant trip
southward, safely ensconced in the sanctum of my good friend Mr. Knapp,
the head of the Special Relief Department. Starting from that base of
operations, I spent two crowded weeks in ceaseless inquiries. Every
avenue of information was thrown wide open. Two days I wandered, but not
aimlessly, from office to office, from storehouse to storehouse, from
soldiers' home to soldiers' home, conversing with the men who have given
themselves up unstintedly to this charity, examining the books of the
Commission, gathering statistics, seeing, as it were, the hungry soldier
fed and the naked soldier clothed, and the sick and wounded soldier
cared for with a more than fraternal kindness. I visited the hospitals,
and with my own hands distributed the Sanitary delicacies to the
suffering men. Steaming down the Chesapeake, and up the James, and along
its homeless shores, I came to City Point; was a day and a night on
board the Sanitary barges, whence full streams of comfort are flowing
with an unbroken current to all our diverging camps; passed a tranquil,
beautiful Sabbath in that city of the sick and wounded, whose white
tents look down from the bluffs upon the turbid river; rode thirteen
miles out almost to the Weldon Road, then in sharp contest between our
Fifth Army Corps and the Rebels; from the hills which Baldy Smith
stormed in June saw the spires of Petersburg; went from tent to tent and
from bedside to bedside in the field hospitals of the Fifth and Ninth
Corps, where the luxuries prepared by willing hands at home were
bringing life and strength to fevered lips and broken bodies. I came
back with my courage re-animated, and with a more perfect faith in the
ultimate triumph of the good cause. I came back with a heartier respect
for our soldiers, whose patience in hardship and courage in danger are
rivalled only by the heroism with which they bear the pains of sickness
and wounds. I came back especially with the conviction, that, no matter
how much we had contributed to the Sanitary work, we had done only that
which it was our duty to do, and that, so long as we could furnish
shelter for our families and food for our children, it was our plain
obligation to give and to continue giving out of our riches or out of
our poverty.
* * * * *
I have felt that in no way could I do better service than by seeking to
answer for others the very questions which my fortnight with the
Sanitary has answered for me. Most, no doubt, have a general conviction
that the charity inaugurated by the Sanitary Commission is at once
marvellous in its extent and unique in the history of war. All, perhaps,
are prepared to allow that the heart which conceived such an enterprise,
and the mind which organized it, and the persistent will which carried
it to a successful issue, are entitled to all the praise which we can
give them. Few will deny now that this and kindred associations, by
decreasing the waste of war, will affect in an important degree our
national fortunes. And most, indeed, know something even about the
details of Sanitary work. They comprehend, at least, that through its
agency many a homely comfort and many a home luxury find their way to
the wards of great hospitals. They have seen, too, the Commission step
forward in great emergencies, after some terrible battle, when every
energy of Government was burdened and overburdened by the gigantic
demands of the hour, and from its storehouses send thousands of
packages, and from its offices hundreds of relief agents, to help to
meet almost unprecedented exigencies.
But what people wish to know, and what, despite all that has been
written, they do not know fully and definitely, is how and when and
where, and through what channels and by what methods, the Commission
works: precisely how the millions which have been poured into its
treasury from public contributions and private benefactions have been
coined into comfort for the soldier,--how the thousands and hundreds of
thousands of garments which have gone forth to unknown destinations have
been made warmth for his body and cheer to his soul. The whole height
and depth and length and breadth of Sanitary work, what varied
activities and what multiform charities are included in the great
circumference of its organization,--of that not one in twenty has any
adequate conception. And all about that is what everybody wishes to
know. The curiosity, moreover, which dictates such queries, is a natural
and laudable curiosity. Those who have given at every call, and often
from scanty means, and those who have plied the needle summer and
winter, early and late, have a right to put such questions. The
Commission wishes to answer all proper inquiries fully and unreservedly.
It would throw open its operations to the broadest sunlight. It believes
that the more entirely it is known, in its successes and its failures
alike, the more sure it is to be liberally sustained. To bring the
humblest contributor from the most distant branch, as it were, into
immediate communication with the front is a work most desirable to be
done. I do not wish to glorify the Commission, nor to theorize about it,
nor to discuss its relative merit as compared with that of kindred
organizations,--but rather to tell just what it is doing, precisely
where the money goes, and exactly what kinds of good are attempted.
* * * * *
The work of the Sanitary Commission may be naturally and conveniently
classed under five heads.
First, the work undertaken for the prevention of sickness and suffering.
Second, the Special Relief Department.
Third, the Hospital Directory.
Fourth, the assistance given to stationary hospitals.
Fifth, the grand operations in the front, on or near the actual
battle-field.
* * * * *
The efforts for the prevention of suffering and sickness are first in
order of time, and possibly first in importance. When this war
commenced, we had no wounded and we had no sick. What we did have was a
crowd of men full of untrained courage, but who knew little or nothing
about military discipline, and as little in regard to what was necessary
for the preservation of their health. What we did have was hundreds and
thousands of officers, taken from every walk of life, who were, for the
most part, men of great natural intelligence, but who did not at all
comprehend that it was their duty not only to lead their men in battle,
but to care for their health and their habits, and who had never dreamed
that such homely considerations as what are the best modes of cooking
food, what are the most healthy localities in which to pitch tents, what
is the right position for drains, had anything to do with the art of
war. What we did have was surgeons, many of whom had achieved an
honorable reputation in the walks of civil life, but who, on this new
field, were alike inexperienced and untried. The manifest danger was,
that this mass of living valor and embodied patriotism would simply be
squandered,--that, as in the terrible Walcheren Expedition, or in the
Crimea, the men whose strength and courage might decide a campaign would
only furnish food for the hospital and the grave.
Who should avert this danger? The Government could not. It had no time
to sit down and study sanitary science. It was bringing together
everything, where it found--nothing. Out of farmers and merchants and
students it was organizing the most efficient of armies. It was sending
its agents all over the world to buy guns and munitions of war. It was
tasking our factories to produce blankets and overcoats, knapsacks and
haversacks, wagons and tents, and all that goes to make up the
multifarious equipment of an army. It was peering into our dock-yards to
find steamers and sailing-vessels out of which to gather makeshift
navies, until it could find leisure to build stancher ships. Manifestly
the Government had no time for such a work. The existing Medical Bureau
was hardly equal to the task. Organized to take charge of an army of ten
thousand men, in the twinkling of an eye that army became five hundred
thousand. At the beginning of the war the medical staff must have been
very busy and very heavily burdened. With great hospitals to build, with
troops of willing, but young and inexperienced surgeons to train to a
knowledge of their duties and to send east and west and north and south,
with every department of medical science to be enlarged at once to the
proportions of the war, it had little leisure for excursions into fresh
fields of inquiry. That it brought order so quickly out of chaos, that
it was able to extemporize a good working system, is a sufficient
testimony to its general fidelity and efficiency. It was the Sanitary
Commission which undertook this special duty. It undertook to find out
some of the laws of health which apply to army life, and then to scatter
the knowledge of those laws broadcast.
Prevention, therefore, effort not so much to comfort and cure the sick
soldier as to keep him from being sick at all, was, in order of time,
properly the first work. And it is doubtful whether at the outset
anything more was contemplated. The memorial to the War Department in
May, 1861, says explicitly that the object of the Commission "is to
bring to bear upon the health, comfort, and _morale_ of our troops the
fullest and ripest teachings of sanitary science." How many of the
contributors to the funds of the Society are aware what an immense work
in this direction has been undertaken, and how much has been
accomplished to prevent sickness and the consequent depletion and
perhaps defeat of our armies? As I have already indicated, at the
commencement of the war we knew little or nothing about what was
necessary to keep men in military service well,--what food, what
clothing, what tents, what camps, what recreations, what everything, I
may say. Now the Sanitary Commission has made searching inquiries
touching every point of camp and soldier life,--gathering in facts from
all quarters, and seeking to attain to some fixed sanitary principles.
It has sent the most eminent medical men on tours of inspection to all
our camps, who have put questions and given hints to the very men to
whom they were of the most direct importance. As a result, we have a
mass of facts, which, in the breadth of the field which they cover, in
the number of vital questions which they settle, and in the fulness and
accuracy of the testimony by which they are sustained, are worth more
than all the sanitary statistics of all other nations put together.
And we are to consider that these inquiries were from the beginning
turned to practical use. If you look over your pile of dusty pamphlets,
very likely you will find a little Sanitary tract entitled, "Rules for
Preserving the Health of the Soldier." This was issued almost before the
war had seriously begun. Or you will come across paper containing the
last results of the last foreign investigations. So early was the good
seed of sanitary knowledge sown. We must remember, too, how many
mooted, yet vital questions have now been put to rest. Take an
example,--Quinine. Everybody had a general notion that quinine was as
valuable as a preventive of disease as a cure. But how definite was our
knowledge? How many knew when and in what positions and to what extent
it was valuable? As early as 1861 the Commission prepared and published
what has been justly termed an exhaustive monograph on the whole
subject, collecting into a brief space all the best testimony bearing
upon the question. This was the beginning of an investigation which,
pursued through a vast number of cases, has demonstrated, that, in
peculiar localities and under certain circumstances, quinine in full
doses is an almost absolute necessity. And in such localities, and under
such circumstances, Government issues now a daily ration to every
man, saving who can tell how many valuable lives? One more
illustration,--Camps. Suppose you were to lead a thousand men into the
Southern country. Would you know where to encamp them? whether with a
southern or a northern exposure? on a breezy hill, or in a sheltered
valley? beneath the shade of groves, or out in the broad sunshine? Could
you tell what kind of soil was healthiest, or how near to each other you
could safely pitch your tents, or whether it would be best for your men
to sleep on the bare ground or on straw or on pine boughs? Yet, if you
inquire, you will find that all these questions and countless others are
definitely settled,--thanks in a great measure to the Sanitary
Commission, which has gladly given its ounce of prevention, that it may
spare its pound of cure.
If you imagine that the need of this work of prevention has ceased, you
are greatly mistaken. Only last summer, in the single month of June, the
Commission distributed, in the Army of the Potomac alone, over a hundred
tons of canned fruits and tomatoes, and not less than five thousand
barrels of pickles and fresh vegetables. It is hardly too much to say
that what the Commission did in this respect has gone far towards
enabling our gallant army to disappoint the hopes of the enemy, and to
hold, amid the deadly assaults of malaria, the vantage-ground which it
has won before Petersburg and Richmond. All through the spring and
summer, too, at Chattanooga, on the very soil which war had ploughed and
desolated, invalid soldiers have been cultivating hundreds of acres of
vegetables. And on the rugged sides of Missionary Ridge, and along the
sunny slopes of Central Tennessee, the same forethought has brought to
perfection, in many a deserted vineyard, the purple glory of the grape.
And this not merely to cure, but to prevent, to keep up the strength and
vigor of the brave men who have marched victoriously from the banks of
the Ohio to Atlanta.
Nor is it likely that the value of this office will cease so long as the
war lasts. In the future, as in the past, new conditions, new
exigencies, and new dangers will arise. And to the end the foresight
which guards will be as true a friend to the soldier as the kindness
which assuages his pains. Looking back, therefore, upon the whole field,
and speaking with a full understanding of the meaning of the language, I
am ready to affirm, that, if the Sanitary Commission had undertaken
nothing but the work of preventing sickness, and had accomplished
nothing in any other direction, the army and the country would have
received in that alone an ample return for all the money which has been
lavished.
* * * * *
I come now to the Special Relief Department. I should call this a sort
of philanthropic drag-net, differing from that mentioned in the Gospel
in that it seems to gather up nothing bad which needs to be thrown away.
In other words, it appeared to me as though any and every kind of
Sanitary good which ought to be done, and yet was not large enough or
distinct enough to constitute a separate branch, was set down as Special
Relief. The whole system of homes and lodges to feed the hungry and
shelter the homeless comes directly under the head of Special Relief.
The immense collection of back pay, bounties, pensions, and prize-money,
which is made gratuitously by the Commission, is Special Relief. Visits
to the hospitals are under the direction of this same department. And
even the Directory and the vast work done at the front perhaps
legitimately belong to it. We can readily conceive, therefore, that the
Commission has no department which is larger or more important, or which
covers so wide and diversified a field of activity. Let us survey that
field a little closer.
Sanitary homes and lodges,--what are they? A soldier is discharged, or
he has a furlough. He is not well and strong,--and he has no money,
certainly none to spare. He ought not to sleep on the ground, and he
ought not to go hungry. But what is everybody's business is apt to be
nobody's business. Fortunately the Commission has seen and met this
want. In Washington, on H Street, there is a block of rough, but
comfortable one-story wooden buildings, erected for various purposes of
Special Relief, and, amongst others, for the very one which I have
mentioned. In the first place, there is a large room containing
ninety-six berths, where any soldier, having proper claims, can obtain
decent lodging free of expense. In the second place, there is a kitchen,
and a neat, cheerful dining-room, with seats for a hundred and fifty.
Here plain and substantial meals are furnished to all comers. This table
of one hundred and fifty has often, and indeed usually, to be spread
three times; so that the Commission feeds daily at this place alone some
four hundred soldiers, and lodges ninety to a hundred more. The home
which I have now described is simply for transient calls.
Near the depot there is a home of a more permanent character. When a
soldier is discharged from the service, the Government has, in the
nature of the case, no further charge of him. Suppose now that he is
taken sick, with, no money in his purse and no friends, near. Can you
imagine a position more forlorn? And forlorn indeed it would, be, were
it not for the Commission. The sick home is a large three-story
building, with three or four one-story buildings added on each side.
Here there is furnished food for all; then one hundred and fifty beds
for those who are not really sick, but only ailing and worn-out; then
bathing-rooms; and, finally, a reading-room. There is here, too, a
hospital ward, with the requisite nurses and medical attendance. In this
ward I saw a little boy, apparently not over twelve years of age, who
had strayed from his home,--if, alas, he had one!--and followed to the
field an Ohio regiment of hundred-days' men, and who had been taken sick
and left behind. Who he was or where from nobody knew. Tenderly cared
for, but likely to die! A sad sight to look upon! One feature more.
Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday a physician goes from the home in
Washington to New York, taking charge of those who are too sick or too
crippled to care for themselves; while the relief agents procure for the
sick soldier the half-price ticket to which he is entitled, or else give
him one, and such articles of clothing as are needful to send him in
comfort to his own home.
I must not fail to speak in this connection of another beautiful
ministry,--the home for soldiers' wives and mothers. A soldier is like
other human beings. In his sickness he yearns for a sight of the
familiar faces, and sends for wife or mother; or wife or mother, unable
to bear longer the uncertainty, when she can get no tidings from the
absent, starts for Washington. There, searching vainly for husband or
son, she spends all or nearly all her money. Or if she finds him, it may
well be that he has no funds with which to help her. In the little
buildings on one side of the refuge for the sick are rooms where some
sixty-five can receive decent lodging and nourishing food; and if
actually penniless, the Commission will procure them tickets and send
them back to their friends.
We often hear people wondering, almost in a skeptical tone, where all
the Commission's money goes. When I was at Washington and City Point, I
only asked where it all came from. Consider what it must cost simply to
feed and lodge these soldiers and their wives at Washington. And then
remember that this is but one of many similar homes scattered
everywhere: at Baltimore, Washington, and Alexandria, in the Eastern
Department; at Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga, in the Western; at
New Orleans and Baton Rouge, in the Southwestern; and at many another
place beside. And, finally, reflect that this whole system of homes is
really but one portion of one branch of Sanitary work.
The collection of back pay, bounties, and pensions,--how many have a
definite idea of this work? Not many, I suspect. Yet it takes all the
time of many persons to accomplish it, and it was the branch of Sanitary
work which awakened in my own mind the deepest regard; for it has its
foundation in a higher virtue than any mere sentimental charity,--yea,
in the highest virtue known in heaven or on earth,--justice. However
impossible it may be to prevent such occurrences, certainly it is a
cruel and undeserved hardship to a soldier who has served faithfully and
fought for his country, and has perhaps been wounded and almost died at
the post of honor and duty, that he should be unable to obtain his
hard-earned pittance, when, too, he needs it for his own comfort, or
when it may be that his family need it to keep them from absolute
suffering.
Look at a single class of these collections,--the back pay of sick men.
Government, we all allow, must have some system in its disbursements. It
should not pay money without a voucher, and the proper voucher of a
soldier is the pay-roll of the regiment or company of which he is a
member. Now a sick or wounded man drops out of the ranks. He gets into a
field hospital to which he does not belong. He is transferred from one
hospital to another, from hospital to convalescent camp, and finally, it
may be, is put on the list of men to be discharged for physical
disability. Meanwhile his commanding officer does not know where he is,
cannot trace him thinks it very likely that he is a deserter. On pay-day
the man's name is not on the roll, and, having no voucher, he gets no
money. You say that there ought to be a remedy. There is none. It would
be difficult to devise one. What shall the soldier do? He cannot go from
point to point to collect evidence, for he is sick. Besides, he is
utterly ignorant of the necessary forms. If he applies to a lawyer, it
costs him often from one half to three quarters of all he gets. Very
likely the lawyer cannot afford to take care of one or two petty cases
for a less price. In this emergency the Commission steps in, and, with
its knowledge of routine and its credit in all quarters, obtains for the
poor fellow for nothing what he has in vain sought for in other ways.
Take one single case, and what they would call at the Relief Office an
easy case. Study it attentively, and you will get an idea of all
cases,--and you will understand, moreover, how much work has to be done,
and how impossible it would be for a sick man to do it.
Charles W. J---- is a member of Company K, One Hundred and Twenty-First
New York Regiment, and he has been transferred to this company and
regiment from Company F of the Sixteenth New York. He has been thus
transferred for the reason that the Sixteenth New York is a two years'
regiment, whose time has expired, while he is a three years' recruit,
who has a year or two more to serve. Now he claims that pay is due him
from November 1, 1863, to August 1, 1864, and that he needs his pay very
much to send home to his wife. He represents that he was at Schuyler
Hospital from the time he left the ranks until December 17, 1863; that
then he was sent to Convalescent Camp, New York Harbor; and on December
29 to Camp of Distribution at Alexandria; whence, February 8, 1864, he
was brought to Staunton Hospital, Washington, where he now is. He has
never joined his new regiment, has only been transferred with others to
its rolls. His new officers have never seen him, and do not know where
he is. The relief agent hears the story and then sets about proving all
its details: first, that the man was a member of the Sixteenth New York
Regiment; second, that he has been transferred to the One Hundred and
Twenty-First Regiment; third, that he has never been paid beyond
November 1, 1863; fourth, that he has really been in the various
hospitals and camps which he mentions. This evidence is procured by
writing to agents and surgeons at convalescent and distributing camps,
and at Hospital Schuyler, and by examining the rolls of the Sixteenth
and One Hundred and Twenty-First Regiments. In a few days or weeks the
man's story is proved to be correct, and he is put into a position to
receive his pay,--a satisfaction not simply in a pecuniary sense, but
also to his soldierly pride, by removing an undeserved charge of
desertion.
Now I beg my readers not to imagine that this is a difficult case. At
the Relief Rooms they treasure up and mysteriously display, much as I
suspect a soldier would flaunt a captured battle-flag, a certain roll of
paper, I dare not say how many yards long, covered with certificates
from one end to the other, obtained from all parts of the country and
from all sorts of persons, and all necessary in order to secure perhaps
a three or six months' pay of one sick soldier. The correspondence of
the back-pay department is itself a burden. From thirty to forty letters
on an average are received daily at one of its offices. They are written
in all languages,--English, German, French,--and must be read,
translated, and the ideas, conveyed often in the blindest style,
ascertained and answered.
A new branch has been recently added,--the collection of pay for the
families of those who are prisoners in Rebeldom. But as this involves no
new principles or fresh details, I pass it by. Another class of cases
should receive a moment's notice. This includes the collection of
bounties for discharged soldiers, of pensions for wounded soldiers, of
bounty, back pay, and pensions for the families of deceased soldiers,
and of prize-money for sailors. These cases are not, as a general rule,
as intricate as those which I have already considered, inasmuch as the
proper departments have a regular system of investigation, and take up
and examine for themselves each case in its turn. All that the
Commission does is to put the soldier on the right track, and to make
out and present for him the fitting application. It undertook this
because Washington was infested with a horde of sharpers, who, by false
representations, defrauded the soldiers out of large sums.
I cannot more appropriately close this branch of my subject than by
stating the simple fact, that during the months of July and August the
relief agents examined and brought to a successful issue 809 cases of
back pay and bounty-money, averaging $125,--203 cases of invalid
pensions, 378 cases of widows' pensions, and 10 cases of naval pensions,
averaging $8 a month,--and 121 cases of prize-money, averaging $80.
I have only to add that the amount of good which can be done in this
direction seems to be limited only by the capacity of those who
undertake to do it. A relief agent said to me, in conversation, that in
one hospital in Philadelphia there were several hundreds who claimed,
but were unable to collect their just dues,--and that what was true of
this hospital was true to a less extent of all of them.
* * * * *
The Hospital Directory is a most interesting branch of Sanitary work.
Not because it will compare with many other branches in extent of
usefulness, but because it shows what a wide-reaching philanthropy is at
work, seeking to furnish every possible alleviation to the inevitable
hardships of war. Whoever has at any time had a sick or wounded friend
in the army knows how difficult it often is to obtain any intelligence
about him. I have in mind a poor woman, who exhausted every resource in
seeking to ascertain the whereabouts of a sick son, and who never
received any tidings of him, until one day, months after, he came home,
worn-out and broken, to die. The regiment is in active service and
passes on, while the sick man goes back. He has several transfers,
too,--first to the corps hospital on the field, then to the army
hospital at City Point, then to Washington, and very possibly again to
some hospital in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or other city or town farther
north, and on that account believed to be more healthy. Meanwhile, amid
all these changes, the man may be delirious, or from some other cause
unable to communicate with his friends. How shall they get information?
The Commission undertakes to keep a correct list of all the sick and
wounded men who are in regular hospitals. They obtain their information
from the official returns of the surgeons. I do not mean to say that
these lists are absolutely correct. They approximate as nearly to
correctness as they ever can, until surgeons are perfectly prompt and
careful in their reports.
The amount of work done is very great. Seven hundred thousand names have
been recorded in this Directory, between October, 1862, and July, 1864.
From ten to twenty-five applications for information are made each day
by letter, and from one hundred to two hundred and fifty personally or
through the various State agencies. Branch offices, working upon a
similar plan, have been established at Louisville and elsewhere.
* * * * *
The subject of assistance to regular hospitals may be despatched in a
few words,--not because the gifts are insignificant, but because the
method of giving is so regular and easy to explain. Whenever the surgeon
of any hospital needs articles which are extras, and so not supplied by
the Government, or which, if allowed, the Government is deficient in at
the time, he makes a requisition upon the Commission; and if his
requisition is deemed to be a reasonable one, it is approved, and the
goods delivered on his receipt for the same. As to the amount given, I
can only say that something is sent almost every day even to the
hospitals near Washington and the great cities, and that the amount
bestowed increases just in proportion to the distance of the hospital
from the great Government centres of supply. This is a noiseless and
unostentatious charity,--sometimes, I am tempted to think, too
noiseless and unostentatious. A few weeks ago, a lady friend visited one
of the hospitals near Washington, carrying with her for distribution
some Sanitary goods. She gave a handkerchief to one of the sick men. He
took it, looked at it, read the mark in the corner, paused as if he had
received a new idea, and then spoke out his mind thus:--"I have been in
this hospital six months, and this is the first thing I ever received
from the Sanitary Commission."--"But," she replied, "have you not had
this and that?" mentioning several luxuries supplied to this very
hospital for extra diet.--"Oh, yes, often!"--"Well, every one of these
articles came from the Sanitary Commission."
Just now the Sanitary is seeking to enter into closer relations with the
hospitals through the agency of regular visitors. The advantages of such
a policy are manifest. The reports of the visitors will enable the
directors to see more clearly the real wants of the sick; and the
frequent presence and inquiries of such visitors will tend to repress
the undue appropriation of hospital stores by attendants. But the
highest benefit will be the change and cheer it will introduce into the
monotony of hospital life. If you are sick at home, you are glad to have
your neighbor step in and bring the healthy bracing air of out-door life
into the dimness and languor of your invalid existence. Much more does
the sick soldier like it,--for ennui, far more than pain, is his great
burden. When I was at Washington, I accepted with great satisfaction an
invitation to go with a Sanitary visitor on her round of duty. When we
came to the hospital, I asked the ward-master if he would like to have
me distribute among his patients the articles I had brought. He said
that he should, for he thought it would do the poor fellows good to see
me and receive the gifts from my own hands. The moment I entered there
was a stir. Those who could hobble about stumped up to me to see what
was going on; some others sat up in bed, full of alertness; while the
sickest greeted me with a languid smile. As I went from cot to cot, the
politeness of _la belle France_, with which a little Frenchman in the
corner touched the tassel of his variegated nightcap at me, and the
untranslatable gutturals, full of honest satisfaction, with which his
German neighbors saluted me, and the "God bless your honor," which a
cheery son of Old Erin showered down upon me, and the simple "Thank you,
Sir," which came up on all sides from our true-hearted New England boys,
were alike refreshing to my soul. No doubt the single peach or two which
with hearty good-will were given to them were as good as a feast; and it
may be that the little comforts which I left behind me, and which had
been borne thither on the wings of this divine charity, perhaps from
some village nestling among the rocky hills of New England, or from some
hamlet basking in the sunlight on the broad prairies of the West, had
magic power to bring to that place of suffering some breath of the
atmosphere of home to cheer the sinking heart, or some fragrant memory
of far-off home-affection to make it better. I came away with the
feeling that visits from sunny-hearted people, and gifts from friendly
hands, must be a positive blessing to these sick and wounded people.
* * * * *
Of course the deepest throb of interest is given to the work at the
front of battle. That is natural. It is work done on the very spots
where the fortunes of our nation are being decided,--on the spots
whither all eyes are turned, and towards which all our hopes and prayers
go forth. It is work surrounded by every element of pathos and tragic
interest. The wavering fortunes of the fight, the heroic courage which
sustains a doubtful conflict, the masterly skill that turns disaster
into triumph, the awful carnage, the terrible suffering, the manly
patience of the wounded, all combine to fix the attention there and upon
everything, which is transacted there. The question is constantly
asked,--What is the Sanitary doing at the front? what at City Point?
what at Winchester? are natural questions. Let me state first the
general plan and method of what I may call a Sanitary campaign, and
afterwards add what I saw with my own eyes at City Point and before
Petersburg, and what I heard from those who had themselves been actors
in the scenes which they described.
When the army moves out from its encampment to the field of active
warfare, two or three Sanitary wagons, loaded with hospital stores of
all sorts, and accompanied by a sufficient number of relief agents, move
with each army corps. These are for the supply of present need, and for
use during the march, or after such skirmishes and fights as may occur
before the Commission can establish a new base. In this way some of the
Commission agents have followed General Grant's army all the way from
the Rapidan, through the Wilderness, across the Mattapony, over the
James, on to the very last advance towards the Southside
Railroad,--refilling their wagons with stores as opportunity has
occurred. As soon now as the march commences and the campaign opens,
preparations upon an extensive scale are made at Washington for the
great probable demand. Steamers are chartered, loaded, and sent with a
large force of relief agents to the vicinity of the probable
battle-fields; or if the campaign is away from water communication,
loaded wagons are held in readiness. The moment the locality of the
struggle is determined, then, under the orders of the Provost Marshal,
an empty house is seized and made the Sanitary head-quarters or general
storehouse; or else some canal-barge is moored at the crazy Virginia
wharf, and used for the same purpose. This storehouse is kept constantly
full from Washington, or else from Baltimore and New York; and the
branch depots which are now established in each army corps are fed from
it, while the hospitals in their turn make requisitions for all needful
supplies on these branch depots. That is to say, the arrangements,
though rougher and less permanent in their character, approximate very
nearly to the arrangements at Washington.
A few details need to be added. Where the distance from the battle-field
to the base of supplies is great, what are called feeding-stations are
established every few miles, and here the wounded on foot or in
ambulances can stop and take the refreshments or stimulants necessary to
sustain them on their painful journey. At the steamboat-landing the
Commission has a lodge and agents, with crackers and beef-tea, coffee
and tea, ice-water and stimulants, ready to be administered to such as
need. Relief agents go up on the boats to help care for the wounded; and
at Washington the same scene of active kindness is often enacted on
their arrival as at their departure. This is the general plan of action
everywhere, modified to suit circumstances, but always essentially the
same. It will apply just as well West as East,--only for the names
Baltimore, Washington, and City Point, you must put Louisville,
Nashville, and Chattanooga.
When I was at City Point, the base of operations had been established
there more than two months; and though there was much sickness, and the
wounded were being brought in daily by hundreds from the prolonged
struggle for the Weldon Road, everything moved on with the regularity of
clock-work. As you neared the landing, coming up the James, you saw, a
little farther up the river, the red flag of the Sanitary Commission
floating over the three barges which were its office, its storehouse,
and its distributing store for the whole Army of the Potomac. Climbing
up the steep road to the top of the bluff, and advancing over the
undulating plain a mile, you come to a city,--the city of hospitals. The
white tents are arranged in lines of almost mathematical accuracy. The
camp is intersected by roads broad and clean. Every corps, and every
division of every corps, has its allotted square. Somewhere in these
larger squares your eye will be sure to catch sight of the Sanitary
flag, and beneath it a tent, where is the corps station. You enter, and
you find within, if not as great an amount, at least as varied a supply,
of hospital stores as you would find anywhere, waiting for surgeons'
orders. To a very great extent, the extra diet for all the sick and
wounded is furnished from these stores; and very largely the cooking of
it is overseen by ladies connected with the Commission. In every corps
there are from five to fifteen relief agents, whose duty it is to go
through the wards once, twice, three times in each day, to see what the
sick need for their comfort, to ascertain that they really get what is
ordered, and in every way to alleviate suffering and to promote
cheerfulness and health.
I shall never forget a tour which I made with a relief agent through the
wards for the blacks, both because it showed me what a watchful
supervision a really faithful person can exercise, and because it gave
such an opportunity to observe closely the conduct of these people. The
demeanor of the colored patients is really beautiful,--so gentle, so
polite, so grateful for the least kindness. And then the evidences of a
desire for mental improvement and religious life which meet you
everywhere are very touching. Go from bed to bed, and you see in their
hands primers, spelling-books, and Bibles, and the poor, worn, sick
creatures, the moment they feel one throb of returning health, striving
to master their alphabet or spell out their Bible. In the evening, or
rather in the fading twilight, some two hundred of them crept from the
wards, and seated themselves in a circle around a black exhorter.
Religion to them was a real thing; and so their worship had the beauty
of sincerity, while I ought to add that it was not marked by that
grotesque extravagance sometimes attributed to it. One cannot but think
better of the whole race after the experience of such a Sabbath. The
only drawback to your satisfaction is, that they die quicker and from
less cause than the whites. They have not the same stubborn hopefulness
and hilarity. Why, indeed, should they have?
Speaking of the white soldiers, everybody who goes into their hospitals
is happily disappointed,--you see so much order and cheerfulness, and so
little evidence of pain and misery. The soldier is quite as much a hero
in the hospital as on the battle-field. Give him anything to be cheerful
about, and he will improve the opportunity. You see men who have lost an
arm or a leg, or whose heads have been bruised almost out of likeness to
humanity, as jolly as they can be over little comforts and pleasures
which ordinary eyes can hardly see with a magnifying-glass. So it
happens that a camp of six thousand sick and wounded, which seems at a
distance a concentration of human misery that you cannot bear to behold,
when near does not look half so lugubrious as you expected; and you are
tempted to accuse the sick men of having entered into a conspiracy to
look unnaturally happy.
If you go back now six or thirteen miles to the field hospitals, you
find nothing essentially different. The system and its practical
workings are the same. But it is a perpetual astonishment to find that
here, near to the banks of a river that has not a respectable village on
its shores from Fortress Monroe to Richmond,--here, in a houseless and
desolate land which can be reached only by roads which are intersected
by gullies, which plunge into sloughs of despond, which lose themselves
in the ridges of what were once cornfields, or meander amid stumps of
what so lately stood a forest,--that here you have every comfort for the
sick: all needed articles of clothing, the shirts and drawers, the socks
and slippers; and all the delicacies, too, the farinas, the jellies, the
canned meats and fruits, the concentrated milk, the palatable drinks and
stimulants, and even fresh fruits and vegetables. And in such profusion,
too! I asked the chief agent of the Commission in the Ninth Corps how
many orders he filled in a day. "Look for yourself." I took down the
orders; and there they were, one hundred and twenty strong, some for
little and some for much, some for a single article and some for a dozen
articles.
But it is not in camps of long standing that the wounded and sick suffer
for want of care or lack of comforts. It is when the base is suddenly
changed, when all order is broken up, when there are no tents at hand,
when the stores are scattered, nobody knows where, after a great battle
perhaps, and the wounded are pouring in upon you like a flood, and when
it seems as if no human energy and no mortal capacity of transportation
could supply the wants both of the well and the sick, the almost
insatiable demands of the battle-field and the equally unfathomable
needs of the hospital, it is then that the misery comes, and it is then
that the Commission does its grandest work. After the Battles of the
Wilderness and Spottsylvania, twenty-five thousand wounded were crowded
into Fredericksburg, where but ten thousand were expected. For a time
supplies of all kinds seemed to be literally exhausted. There were no
beds. There was not even straw. There were not surgeons enough nor
attendants enough. There was hardly a supply of food. Some found it
difficult to get a drop of cold water. Poor, wounded men, who had
wearily trudged from the battle-field and taken refuge in a deserted
house, remained hours and a day without care, and without seeing the
face of any but their wounded comrades. Then the Sanitary Commission
sent its hundred and fifty agents to help the overburdened surgeons.
Then every morning it despatched its steamer down the Potomac crowded
with necessaries and comforts. Then with ceaseless industry its twenty
wagons, groaning under their burden, went to and fro over the wretched
road from Belle Plain to Fredericksburg. A credible witness says that
for several days nearly all the bandages and a large proportion of the
hospital supplies came from its treasury. No mind can discern and no
tongue can declare what valuable lives it saved and what sufferings it
alleviated. Who shall say that Christian charity has not its triumphs
proud as were ever won on battle-field? If the Commission could boast
only of its first twenty-four hours at Antietam and Gettysburg and its
forty-eight hours at Fredericksburg, it would have earned the
everlasting gratitude and praise of all true men.
* * * * *
But is there not a reverse to this picture? Are there no drawbacks to
this success? Is there no chapter of abortive plans, of unfaithful
agents, of surgeons and attendants appropriating or squandering
charitable gifts? These are questions which are often honestly asked,
and the doubts which they express or awaken have cooled the zeal and
slackened the industry of many an earnest worker. There is no end to the
stories which have been put in circulation. I remember a certain
mythical blanket which figured in the early part of the war, and which,
though despatched to the soldier, was found a few weeks after by its
owner adorning the best bed of a hotel in Washington. To be sure, it
seemed to have pursued a wandering life,--for now it was sent from the
full stores of a lady in Lexington, and now it was stripped perhaps by a
poor widow from the bed of her children, and then it was heard from far
off in the West, ever seeking, but never reaching, its true destination.
Without heeding any such stories, although they have done infinite
mischief, I answer to honest queries, that I have no doubt that
sometimes the stores of the Commission are both squandered and
misappropriated. I do not positively know it; but I am sure that it
would be a miracle, if they were not. It would be the first time in
human history that so large and varied a business, and extending over
such a breadth of country and such a period of time, was transacted
without waste. Look at the facts. Here are thousands of United States
surgeons and attendants of all ages and characters through whose hands
many of these gifts must necessarily go. What wonder, if here and there
one should be found whose principles were weaker than his appetites?
Consider also the temptations. These men are hard-worked, often scantily
fed. Every nerve is tried by the constant presence of suffering, and
every sense by fetid odors. Would it be surprising, if they sometimes
craved the luxuries which were so close at hand? Moreover, the
Commission mission employs hundreds of men, the very best it can get,
but it would be too much to ask that all should be models of prudence,
watchfulness, and integrity.
I allow, then, that some misappropriation is not improbable. At the same
time I do say, that every department is vigilantly watched, and that the
losses are trivial, compared with the immense benefits. I do say,
emphatically, that to bring a wholesale charge against whole classes,
whose members are generally as high-minded and honorable as any other,
to accuse them as a body of wretched peculations, is simply false and
slanderous. I maintain that fidelity is the rule, and that its reverse
is the petty exception; and that it would be in opposition to all rules
by which men conduct their lives to suffer such exceptions to influence
our conduct, or diminish our contributions to a good cause. In business
how often we are harassed by petty dishonesty or great frauds!
Nevertheless, the tide of business sweeps on. Why? Because the good so
outweighs the evil. The railroad employee is negligent, and some
terrible accident occurs. But the railroad keeps on running all the
same; for the public convenience and welfare are the law of its life,
and private peril and loss but an occasional episode. By the same rule,
we support, without misgiving, the Commission, because the good which it
certainly does, and the suffering it relieves, in their immensity cover
up and put out of sight mistakes, which are incident to all human
enterprise, and which are guarded against with all possible vigilance.
* * * * *
But allow all the good which is claimed, and that the good far
transcends any possible evil, and then we are met by these further
questions: Is such an organization necessary? Cannot Government do the
work? And if so, ought not Government to do it?
I might with propriety answer: Suppose that Government ought to do the
work and does not, shall we fold our hands and let our soldiers suffer?
But the truth is, Government does do its duty. Some persons foolishly
exaggerate the work of the Commission. They talk as though it were the
only salvation of the wounded, as though the Government let everything
go, and that, if the Commission and kindred societies did not step in,
there would not be so much as a wreck of our army left. Such talk is
simply preposterous. The Commission, considered as a free, spontaneous
offering of a loyal people to the cause of our common country, is a
wonderful enterprise. The Commission, standing ready to supply any
deficiency, to remedy any defect, and to meet any unforeseen emergency,
has done a good work that cannot be forgotten. But, compared with what
Government expends upon the sick, its resources are nothing. I have not
the figures at hand, though I have seen them; and it is hardly too much
to say, that, where the society has doled out a penny, the Government
has lavished a pound.
No sane defender, therefore, of this charity supports it on any such
ground as that it is the principal benefactor of the soldier. The
Commission alone could no more support our hospitals than it could the
universe. But the homely adage, "It is best to have two strings to your
bow," applies wonderfully to the case. In practical life men act upon
this maxim. They like to have an adjunct to the best-working machinery,
a sort of reserved power. Every sensible person sees that our mail
arrangements furnish to the whole people admirable facilities.
Nevertheless, we like to have an express, and occasionally to send
letters and packages by it. When the children are sick, there is nothing
so good as the advice of the trusted family physician and the unwearied
care of the mother. Yet when the physician has done his work and gone
his way, and when the mother is worn out by days of anxiety and nights
of watching, we deem it a great blessing, if there is a kind neighbor
who will come in, not to assume the work, but to help it on a little.
The Commission, looking at the hospitals and the armies from a different
point of view, sees much that another overlooks, and in an emergency,
when all help is too little, brings fresh aid that is a priceless
blessing. To the plain, substantial volume of public appropriations it
adds the beautiful supplement of private benefactions. That is all that
it pretends to do.
There are some special reflections that bear upon the point which we are
considering. This war was sprung upon an unwarlike people. The officers
of Government, when they entered upon their work, had no thought of the
gigantic burdens which have fallen upon their shoulders. Since the war
began, Government, like everybody else, has had to learn new duties, and
to learn them amid the stress and perplexity of a great conflict. And
among other things, it has been obliged, in some respects, to recast its
medical regulations to meet the prodigious enlargement of its medical
work. Beyond a doubt, much help, which, on account of this imperfection
of the medical code itself, or of the inexperience of many who
administered it, was needed by our hospitals at the commencement of the
war, is not needed now, and much help that is needed now may not, if the
war lasts, be needed in the future. But it takes time to move the
machinery of a great state. And when any change is to become the
permanent law of public action, it ought to take both time and thought
to effect it. You do not wish to alter and re-alter the framework of a
state or of a state's activity as you would patch up a ruinous old
house. If you work at all in any department, you should wish to work on
a massive, well-considered plan, so that what you do may last. It is not
likely, therefore, that, in the great field of suffering which the war
has laid open to us, the public ministries will either be so quickly or
so perfectly adjusted as to make private ministries a superfluity.
Neither do we reflect enough upon the limitations of human power. We
think sometimes of Government as a great living organism of boundless
resources. But, after all, in any department of state, what plans, what
overlooks, what vitalizes, is one single human mind. And it is not easy
to get minds anywhere clear enough and capacious enough for the large
duties. It is easy to obtain men who can command a company well. It is
not difficult to find those who can control efficiently a regiment.
There are many to whom the care of five thousand men is no burden; a few
who are adequate to an army corps. But the generals who can handle with
skill a hundred thousand men, and make these giant masses do their
bidding, are the rare jewels in war's diadem. Even so is it in every
department of life. It is perhaps impossible to find a mind which can
sweep over the whole field of our medical operations, and prepare for
every emergency and avoid every mistake; not because all men are
unfaithful or incapable, but because there must be a limit to the most
capacious intellect. Looking simply at the structure of the human mind,
we might have foreseen, what facts have amply demonstrated, that in a
war of such magnitude as that which we are now waging there always must
be room for an organization like the Sanitary Commission to do its
largest and noblest work.
But, above and beyond all such reflections, there are great national and
patriotic considerations which more than justify, yea, demand, the
existence of our war charities. Allowing that the outward comfort of the
soldier (and who would grant it?) might be accomplished just as well in
some other way,--allowing that in a merely sanitary aspect the
Government could have done all that voluntary organizations have
undertaken, and have done it as well as they or better than they,--even
then we do not allow for a moment that what has been spent has been
wasted. What is the Sanitary Commission, and what are kindred
associations, but so many bonds of love and kindness to bind the soldier
to his home, and to keep him always a loyal citizen in every hope and in
every heart-throb? This is the influence which we can least of all
afford to lose. He must have been blind who did not see at the outset of
the war, that, beyond the immediate danger of the hour, there were other
perils. We were trying the most tremendous experiment that was ever
tried by any people. Out of the most peaceful of races we were creating
a nation of soldiers. In a few months, where there seemed to be scarcely
the elements of martial strength, we were organizing an army which was
to be at once gigantic and efficient. Who could calculate the effect of
such a swift change? The questions many a patriotic heart might have
asked were these: When this wicked Rebellion is ended,--when these
myriads of our brethren whose lives have been bound up in that wondrous
collective life, the life of a great army, shall return to their quiet
homes by the hills and streams of New England or on the rolling prairies
of the West, will they be able to merge their life again in the simple
life of the community out of which they came? Will they find content at
the plough, by the loom, in the workshop, in the tranquil labors of
civil life? Can they, in short, put off the harness of the soldier, and
resume the robe of the citizen? Many a one could have wished to say to
every soldier, as he went forth to the war, "Remember, that, if God
spares your life, in a few months or a few years you will come back, not
officers, not privates, but sons and husbands and brothers, for whom
some home is waiting and some human heart throbbing. Never forget that
your true home is not in that fort beside those frowning cannon, not on
that tented field amid the glory and power of military array, but that
it nestles beneath yonder hill, or stands out in sunshine on some
fertile plain. Remember that you are a citizen yet, with every instinct,
with every sympathy, with every interest, and with every duty of a
citizen."
Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these
Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in
producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us,
one of the people? Five hundred thousand hearts following with deep
interest his fortunes,--twice five hundred thousand hands laboring for
his comfort,--millions of dollars freely lavished to relieve his
sufferings,--millions more of tokens of kindness and good-will going
forth, every one of them a message from the home to the camp: what is
all this but weaving a strong network of alliance between civil and
military life, between the citizen at home and the citizen soldier? If
our army is a remarkable body, more pure, more clement, more patriotic
than other armies,--if our soldier is everywhere and always a
true-hearted citizen,--it is because the army and soldier have not been
cast off from public sympathy, but cherished and bound to every free
institution and every peaceful association by golden cords of love. The
good our Commissions have done in this respect cannot be exaggerated; it
is incalculable.
Nor should we forget the influence they have had on ourselves,--the
reflex influence which they have been pouring back into the hearts of
our people at home, to quicken their patriotism, We often say that the
sons and brothers are what the mothers and sisters make them. Can you
estimate the electric force which runs like an irresistible moral
contagion from heart to heart in a community all of whose mothers and
daughters are sparing that they may spend, and learning the value of
liberty and country by laboring for them? It does not seem possible,
that, amid the divers interests and selfish schemes of men, we ever
could have sustained this war, and carried it to a successful issue, had
it not been for the moral cement which these wide-spread philanthropic
enterprises have supplied. Every man who has given liberally to support
the Commission has become a missionary of patriotism; every woman who
has cut and made the garments and rolled the bandages and knit the socks
has become a missionary. And so the country has been full of
missionaries, true-hearted and loyal, pleading, "Be patient, put up with
inconveniences, suffer exactions, bear anything, rather than sacrifice
the nationality our fathers bequeathed to us!" And if our country is
saved, it will be in no small degree because so many have been prompted
by their benevolent activity to take a deep personal interest in the
struggle and in the men who are carrying on the struggle.
These national and patriotic influences are the crowning blessings which
come in the train of the charities of the war; and they constitute one
of their highest claims to our affection and respect. The unpatriotic
utterances which in these latter days so often pain our ears, the
weariness of burdens which tempt so many to be ready to accept anything
and to sacrifice anything to be rid of them, admonish us that we need
another uprising of the people and another re-birth of patriotism; and
they show us that we should cherish more and more everything which
fosters noble and national sentiments. And when this war is over, and
the land is redeemed, and we come to ask what things have strengthened
us to meet and overcome our common peril, may we not prophesy that high
among the instrumentalities which have husbanded our strength, and fed
our patriotism, and knit more closely the distant parts of our land and
its divided interests, will be placed the United States Sanitary
Commission?