to Washington for conference with the Secretary
of War. They represented not only the
"Woman's Central Association," but also the
Advisory Committee of the Boards of Physicians
and Surgeons of the New York hospitals,
and the New York Medical Association
for furnishing Hospital Supplies in aid of the
Army. The three bodies were all acting
harmoniously together in turning to the best
account the free gifts from the City and State of
New York, designed in aid of the comfort and
security of the troops. They petitioned for
some rigour in inspection of volunteers, that
unsuitable persons might not be sent to certain
death in the army; the Woman's Association
was about to send for service in the general
hospitals of the army one hundred picked and
trained female nurses, and they asked that the
War Department should be content to receive
on wages during actual duty as many of such
nurses as the exigencies of the campaign might
require. They suggested, also, the appointment
of a Sanitary Commission, which President
Lincoln scoffed at as a " fifth wheel to the military
coach." This memorial was very coldly received
by the War Department and the Medical Bureau
of the army. The United States Sanitary
Commission, which has by this time turned to right
use in works of health and mercy, voluntary
contributions amounting to about two millions of
money, got its first lift towards existence in a note
of recommendation from Dr. R. C. Wood, acting
surgeon-general to the United States army.

The four delegates then at once sent in a sketch
of the plan of such a commission, specifying all
they asked for it from the government; no new
legal powers whatever, and none of the public
money; but simply official public recognition
during the war, or until it should be found
unserviceable, and a room in one of the public
buildings in Washington or elsewhere with
stationery and other insignia of a recognised
public office. The object of the desired
commission would be "to bring to bear upon the
health, comfort and morale of the troops, the
fullest and ripest teachings of sanitary science
in its application to military life;" directing
particular attention, for example, to the materiel
of the volunteer force, and to such subjects as diet
and cookery, clothing, and precaution against
damp, cold, heat, malaria, infection &c.; tents,
camping-ground, transports, transitory depots
with their exposures, camp police; organisation
of hospitals, hospital supplies, regulations of the
patriotic service of the capable women offering
themselves as nurses; the questions of
ambulances, of field service, of extra medical aid, and
whatever else relates to the care or cure of the
sick and wounded.

Reluctant consent was at last given to the
establishment of such a commission, in a document
of which the last paragraph thus expressed
the official contempt it excited: " The commission
will exist until the Secretary of War shall
otherwise direct, unless sooner dissolved by its own
action" It is something to know that there is
a Circumlocution Office across the Atlantic.

Yet at that time the army suddenly quadrupled
was deficient in the commonest requisites
of clothing, bedding, and hospital staff, while
the local soldier's aid societies founded in
different districts for the succour each of its own
particular body of volunteers, bewildered by the
marchings and counter-marchings of the distant
regiments, were wasting much good energy.
One of the first difficult labours of the Commission
was to prove to these local bodies the
shortsightedness of their provincial allies, and get
them to throw all their resources into the
organisation of one common national work. One by
one the work of woman's love that strove to
follow the particular fortunes of brothers and
friends was gathered into one great national
effort, and the local aid societies became
branches of the commission, with Mr. Frederick
Law Olmsted for its secretary, that strove to
secure the well-being of the army, and detect
the more unwholesome blots upon its discipline
wherever they might be. Influential men in
every part of the country now became unpaid
advocates of the commission as " Associate
Members;" circulars setting forth the wants of
the army were widely diffused; sanitary agitation
was kept up; directors of insurance companies
were made to understand their interest in the
well-being and the health of the volunteer.

Then it was found necessary to break down
the exclusiveness of state sovereignty, and, for
right organisation of the conveyance of the
bales provided for use of the sick, establish
central depots for districts, determined not by
political predilections, but by the course of
railways, rivers, and canals. One hundred and
twenty towns thus became auxiliary to Cleveland
in Ohio, and twelve hundred and twenty-
six accepted the City of New York as their
centre. The Commission sent also sanitary
inspectors to the camps and camp hospitals,
and has received and tabulated some fifteen
hundred of their reports, each consisting of
answers to a set of one hundred and eighty
printed questions.

Meanwhile, the government had taken no
step towards the organisation for war purposes
of the Medical Bureau, beyond the appointment
of a Surgeon-General, who at once pronounced
against the Sanitary Commission, and declared
that " he would have nothing to do with it;"
for it was " a perilous conception to allow any
such outside body to come into being." The
Commission, however, having been already
authorised by government, he consented to its
action for the volunteers on condition that it
never meddled with the regular troops.

This wonderful gentleman confined himself to
the maintenance of every old regulation, and
resisted every attempt at "innovation" to adapt
what might have sufficed for the case of a bush-
fighting army of twelve thousand, to the greater
needs of a tremendous civil war. So there
arose civil war between the Sanitary
Commission and the Surgeon-General; and the
Commission, working by deputations to the
government, complaints from army officers, and