Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. TEE SANITARY COMMISSION. 'What becomes of its Money?--Its Operation at Fredericksburg.--Hospital Issues.--The Work of the Commission.--Its Enlargement as the War went on.--The Death Rates of the Army contrasted with the English in the Crimea.--General Belief.--Special Relief.--The Auxiliary Relief Corps.--Its Organization.--Personal Relief.--Hon. Frank B. Fay.--Relief Chests.--Their Contents. IT would be clearly impossible in a few paragraphs to condense all that might be said of the Sanitary Commission. Its service embraced all those more immediate necessities of the soldier, of personal relief, both in the field and in the hospital, and included in its operations a vast aggregate of good, out of the army, which never met the public eye. Its various departments in the field; its bureaus in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York; its beneficent operations all over the continent, wherever a soldier's comfort was to be provided for, or his interests were to be protected, need a volume for the record; and if the story is ever told, it will be one of the brightest pages in our national history. In the operations of this vast campaign it was foremost in everything. It reached the new base as soon as there were soldiers to protect it. It was at work preparing for hospitals and providing necessary stores before the government machinery began to move; and its red flags were seen everywhere with the stars and stripes, establishing its feeding stations and its depots of supplies. It was made supplementary to the government; and thus, in emergencies of great suffering, or when starvation threatened to add its horrors to the miseries of the wounded, the Commission was at hand with its medicines, morphine, or chloroform, saving by them as...
