Dr. Seth Rogers to his daughter Dolly, March 3, 1863

March 3.

The plot thickens. Our steamers are coaling up and the stores and ammunition are going aboard. This looks southward and before this letter reaches you we shall probably be up some river, I hope not the one spoken of on the streets. Today Dr. M. M. Marsh of the U. S. Sanitary Commission has made his official visit and dined with me. I suppose I care the more for Dr. Marsh that he is not only a gentleman, and a physician whom I greatly respect, but also that he comes from the capital of my own native state. He is an elderly man with a countenance all covered with benignity. The following note to me from his agent at Beaufort, Mr. H. G. Spaulding, indicates the right spirit toward our movement.

“If you are in want of any hospital or sanitary supplies for your regiment, we shall be most happy to fill out a requisition for you. Send for whatever you need and state in every case the amount wanted. This is all the ‘red tape’ of our Commission, and there are no knots in it. In view of your unexpected movement I take this opportunity of assuring you of our desire to assist you in every way in our power.”

Of course Dr. Minor was posted off with a requisition and our good soldiers shall bless the Commission.

Last night our men seemed bewitched. A few ran guard to be at a dance at the old “Battery plantation.” Very early in the morning a poor fellow refused to halt, when ordered to do so by the guard, and has lost his life for it. He was shot through the side and will die within a few days.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 43, October, 1909—June, 1910: February 1910. p. 369

Diary of Caroline Cowles Richards: August 1863

The U. S. Sanitary Commission has been organized. Canandaigua sent Dr. W. Fitch Cheney to Gettysburg with supplies for the sick and wounded and he took seven assistants with him. Home bounty was brought to the tents and put into the hands of the wounded soldiers. A blessed work.

SOURCE: Caroline Cowles Richards, Village Life in America, 1852-1872, p. 155

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