Frederick Law Olmsted to John M. Forbes, December 16, 1861

U. S. Sanitary Commission,

Washington, D. C., December 16, 1861.

My Dear Sir, — I have just received your favor of the 12th, and am exceedingly glad there is so good a prospect of financial aid to the commission from Massachusetts. Your contributions of goods have astonished me and overrun all my calculations. You have done in a month nearly four times as much as the New York association — of which we had been quite proud — in six months! If the present rate of supply continues, I shall soon be in concern to know where to put it.

I shall refer that portion of your letter which relates to the surgeon-general to Dr. Bellows. The simplest statement of the case would be perhaps that with an army of 600,000 fresh men, with impromptu officers, it is criminal weakness to intrust such important responsibilities as those resting on the surgeon-general to a self-satisfied, supercilious, bigoted blockhead, merely because he is the oldest of the old mess-room doctors of the old frontier-guard of the country. He knows nothing and does nothing, and is capable of knowing nothing and doing nothing but quibble about matters of form and precedent, and sign his name to papers which require that ceremony to be performed before they can be admitted to eternal rest in the pigeonholes of the bureau. I write this personally rather than as the secretary, and from general report rather than personal knowledge, but if it were not true is it not certain that as secretary of the Sanitary Commission, after six months' dealings with these poor, green volunteer sawbones, I should have seen some evidence of life in and from their chief?

You may contradict the report to which you refer, that the contributions made to the Sanitary Commission for the benefit of the soldiers' sick have been diverted to the aid of the exiles of the rebellion. To this date no funds of the commission have been disbursed in St. Louis. Probably the local commission there has done something which has given rise to the report.

I have directed Dr. Ware, in visiting Fort Monroe, to ascertain the condition of the refugees there, and report, but to give them no aid except under advice or in an emergency.

Very respectfully yours,

Fred. Law Olmsted.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 265-6