THE SANITARY COMMISSION AND THE FAIRS.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
SINCE the battle of Chattanooga the events which have most interested "the Federais " have been the great fairs held for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission. They began with one at Chicago and are to end and culminate with one in New York, to the preparations for which influential committees of ladies and gentlemen are now devoting much time and energy. These fairs are not fancy fairs on a large scale, but great markets, quite like the periodical fairs of the middle ages, in which merchandise and even raw material of all kinds is exposed for sale in a merely mer- cantile way ; the difference being that here the goods are given as offerings of patriotism and humanity. To the exposition of goods on sale there is, of course, added the exhibition of works of art, and musical and theatrical performances. It is expected that the New York Fair will produce 500,000 dole. for the Sanitary Com- mission. That at Chicago produced 75,000 dols., a great sum for a freewill offering from so new and so comparatively small a place ; and it was even more remarkable for the manifestations of devotion to the Republic of which it was the occasion. The usual fancy and useful needlework was, of course, not wanting; but from the fruit- ful prairies and the half-cleared country round came the farmers. from him who cultivated a thousand acres to him who tilled that over which his own hands only could guide the plough, bringing grain, and hay, and the products of scanty garden patches, driving kine, or leading horses, having coops full of poultry or barrels of apples in their waggons. Mechanics brought machines and gins of all kinds, from steam-engines to appleparers ; and all kinds of manufactories sent something of their production, as contributions not only from the owners, but from the workmen, who made it a point of pride and honour to work without pay upon these articles. One steam-engine bore the inscription, " This engine is donated [horresco scribere .f] by the workmen of the Eagle Works Manufacturing Company, every man contributing something—not one Copperhead in the whole institution." Here let me throw in a remark by the way as to the vile word "donate." I have seen it written and printed many times, though never by a person of any, even the least, social or intellectual culture ; but I never heard it spoken but once, and then by certainly the most vulgar creature I ever saw admitted among decent folk. It is used here, and chiefly at the West, by people who mistakenly think that they express by it an act more formal and ceremonious than mere giving. Thus the givers of this engine, who, you may have observed, inscribe themselves in simple, unpretending English as "workmen," not operalives, would never talk of donating a shawl to a wife, a ring to a sweetheart, or a Christmas book to a child. But if one of them gave 10 dohs, to his church or his clergyman, or a garden-patch to his widowed sister; or, as in the present caste, a specimen of his workmanship to a public cause, he would " donate " his donation. A little more education will soon weed out this offensive word, and its trade-sprung companion " balance " instead of "rest." They have both come into use among such people as do use them within a few years, and are unmistakeable earmarks, indicating either a very great lack of education, or associations of the kind which corrupt good English as well as good manners. These remarks reveal I think a trait of the people who gave occasion for thew, as in a greater degree does what I have said and am about to say con- cerning the Fairs and the Sanitary Commission. Indeed, to omit from my correspondence any notice of the latter institution would be to fail to describe to my readers one of the most important and characteristic popular movements connected with this war.
There was a British Sanitary Commission in the Crimea, but it was directly responsible to the Government, and was a Commission with power. Our Sanitary Commission is not responsible to the Government, or in any way under its orders (except in the indi- vidual citizen relation of its officers), and is without power. Yet if its members and he who now writes about them were not boastful Yankees it would be safe to say that no body of the kind was ever formed which undertook and well performed so vast and com- plicated a labour of benevolence. When, after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, volunteer regiments from the Free States began to pour southward, as many as every other one of them was ac- companied or followed by agents of Relief Committees, established by various neighbourhoods to look after the special comfort of their boys. But regiments coming from poor or sparsely populated countries, or those chiefly peopled by thoughtless and uneducated immigrants, were without this attendance. The determination of the people to look after and comfort their representative volunteers could not be controlled. An attempt to control it would have crushed the war spirit, and would have done more than anything else could have done to secure the insurgents that aid they looked for from the Free States. Yet here was a manifest inequality and, in a certain sense, to our minds, injustice. Some regiments were cared for and others were not. This, too, would soon breed fatal demoralizing discontent. So means were soon taken to establish societies which sent relief to the army generally, and to make their working at once effective and somewhat in accordance with army routine and discipline. All the home work was done by women ; the men only put their hands in their pockets and undertook to move the articles after they were made and packed. But very soon it was seen that all this was yet insufficient to meet the great exigencies which were coming upon us. It was plain to those who looked into the subject that the medical staff of the army was, and under the circumstances must needs be, entirely inadequate to the great task which was about to be
laid upon it. It was seen that there must be organization upon a very large scale, and that preventive measures, thorough, syste- matic, and based upon the best established hygienic principles, must be taken to secure tolerable health and efficiency to the large bodies of undisciplined men who were about to be brought together, to suffer the privations and the hardships of war in a country so malarious and unreclaimed as that south of the Potomac. There- upon, after much earnest consideration, and not a little stout oppo- sition on the part of the medical staff of the regular army, who were not unnaturally distrustful of and opposed to the interference of outsiders, the sanitary commission was formed, and received as its sole status the mere approval of the Secretary of War. Now, the Sanitary Commission is, next to Congress, the most powerful national body in the country ; and this position it has made for itself solely by the admirable manner in which it has performed Herculean labours, the field of which stretched, either in preparation or in action, from Maine to Texas.
There has been much said, and doubtless with some reason, in Europe as to our blindness and over-confidence in this war, and our incompetence to appreciate the vastness of the task we undertook. But something upon this point may be gathered from the time it took us to get as far as the formation and appointment of this great commission. Fort Sumter was bombarded in April, 1861. Before that event you know we had not called for a single com- pany of volunteers. All the preliminary organization I have men- tioned had been gone through with, its insufficiency discovered, and the Sanitary Commission appointed in two months. Secretary Cameron's approval of the plan of organization is dated June 13th, 1861. I am unable to remember any instance in history in which a corresponding discovery was made and measures of correspond- ing efficiency taken in the course of eight disturbed, tumultuous weeks.
The Commission has been very far from confining its efforts to the relief of the wounded on the battlefield and the sick in hospi- tals. It has sought to fulfil in the completest manner the com- prehensive promise of its name. It has overlooked and advised upon the placing and the sanitary arrangement of camps. It sup- plies the men of newly arrived regiments with such care and food as their circumstances require. For after a long and fatiguing journey many men among a thousand will, without being sick enough to go to the hospital, be in just such a condition that, if they cannot receive more attention than any army regulations allow, in a day or two they will go there. The Commission takes care of honourably discharged soldiers, and sees that they get com- fortably home,—not in an almsgiving or overseeing way, but by having agents who will direct them, and aid them if necessary, and relief stations at which the homeward-bound invalid may make himself clean and comfortable. It looks after the health and com- fort of men who arrive in large numbers from battles and from field hospitals. It has established a hospital directory system, by which the friends of any soldier in any hospital, if he be in Tennes- see and they in Wisconsin, can find out exactly his situation, and communicate with him. It even looks after the pay of the soldier, and keeps him as much as possible out of the clutches of army sharks. I have given you but a disconnected and very incomplete notion of the organization of this commission and of the func- tions which it performs. Still that which gives it the strongest hold upon the public mind is, of course, the relief it gives after battle. You may get some notion of what this is from the fact that within ten days after the battle of Chattanooga 4,000 packages of sanitary stores had gone to the field from Nashville, and 2,000 more were on their way down the Mississippi. After the battle of Gettysburg 74,8384:Io1a. worth of supplies were sent to the Army of the Potomac, including every article necessary to comfort and restoration which could be found in the best hospitals in the world. Between November 17 and December 3 of this year, the Com- mission sent 28,000 dols. worth of supplies to our Buffering prisoners at Richmond. These are but examples of its ceaseless labours.
What has been the result of all this ? That appears in the rate of mortality, in considering which, remember the morasses and the Southern forests through which our armies moved. From July to September, 1854, the British army lost at the rate of 293 out of 1,000 per annum, of which 96 per cent, was from disease. During the next three months the loss was at the rate of 511 out of 1,000, seven-eighths of which was by disease. In January, 1855, the loss was at a still higher rate, of which 97 per cent, was due to disease Now, up to
May, 1862, our armies had lost only at the rate of 53 out of 1,000 per annum, and of this loss only 44 per cent. was due to disease or accident. Of course, the unprecedented degree of education and intelligence in the rank and file of our armies goes for much in accounting for this remarkable freedom from disease ; but it is chiefly due to the Sanitary Commission. And this Com- mission—what is it ? A great body of men, long experienced in administration, with hospital knowledge, and army knowledge, and familiarity with the business of transportation, with an imposing suite of offices and array of clerks P Nothing of the kind. A Unitarian clergyman, two or three lawyers, two or three physi- cians, a merchant or two, and a man of letters (Mr. Olmsted), High Church Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics serving together under the Unitarian, are the chief mana- gers of the vast and complicated machinery of this Com- mission, which spreads over the whole country like its sys- tem of railways. Their principal office in Broadway consists of three little rooms, at which a third or fourth-rate book- seller would turn up his nose, and the furniture of which would not bring 10 dols. at auction. The treasurer, a gentleman of large inherited fortune and high social culture, who handles money by the hundreds of thousands of dollars, coming in sums of from 50 cents to 50,000 dols., does most of his business in a little room about ten feet by eight up three flights of stairs. But the Com- mission has the people at its back ; they have worked with it from the beginning. Its associate members and its auxiliary societies are scattered all over the country, and by means of these it can appeal at twenty-four hours' notice directly to every citizen of the Republic. But still its operating machinery is, of course, under the direction of its own officers, and that you will see must needs be of the largest and most complicated kind ; yet so well is it managed that of all the stores, and clothing, and such like com- mitted to its care, amounting in value to million , of dollars, not two eases have been lost. It is worthy of notice that California, that State which Jefferson Davis was "sure of," and which European prophets said would cleave from the Union "of course," has sent to the Commission 600,000 dols. in cash. And, apropos of gifts, one of our great Express companies has carried goods and hospital stores for the Commission, the bills for the carriage of which amount to more than 120,000 dols. These bills are receipted and presented to the Commission as the contribution of the company. The popular character of this Commission and its har- monious working with the Government, not under it, make it a peculiar and interesting trait of our national character as developed
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