lyn, Boston, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland,
Chicago and elsewhere. To their powerful as
sistance the Commission is indebted for the
greater part of its success ; indeed the Com
mission is but the means by which the
Branches which furnish the great bulk of the
supplies are enabled to act with economy,
system and efficiency. Nor would the Branches
in the great cities have been able to furnish
supplies in such abundance, but for the hun
dreds and thousands of “ sewing circles,” and
“ Aid Societies ” contributing to their stores
from all parts of the interior of the country.
Hence, in speaking of the success of the
Commission, and of the great and valuable
work it has done for our soldiers and our coun
try, we desire to be understood as including
all the Branches, sewing circles and Aid Soci
eties.
How to condense into brief space any ade
quate description of the inestimable services
rendered by the Army Relief Department of
the Commission baffles our ingenuity. A
full statement would require the space of an
ordinary volume.’
Steamboats chartered by the Cincinnati
Branch reached Fort Donelson laden with
medicines and supplies of every kind in time
to supplement the deficient stores of the Medi
cal Staff, and save hundreds of men. At An
tietam there were literally no Government
medical stores. The surgeons had used up
their stock during General Pope’s campaign in
Virginia. Supplies sent them from Washing
ton had been captured at Manassas. The
Quartermaster’s Department, taxed to its
utmost to forward ordnance and Commissary
stores, ammunition and food, had been obliged
to leave all medical supplies behind, miles
away from the field.
But the officers of the Commission at Wash
ington, advised by authority of this unfortunate
deficiency, and of the impending battle, sent
off by independent routes, and in good season,
wagon trains laden with medical and surgical
appliances, which reached the field before the
battle was over, and for forty-eight hours after
that hardly-won victory, thousands of wounded
men got all their opiates, stimulants, chloro
form, medicines, appropriate diet, and hospi
tal clothing and bedding, mainly from agents
of the Sanitary Commission. So at Gettys
burg, the headquarters and supply depots of
the Commission were established and at work
while the battle was hottest. At Vicksburgh,
Murfreesboro, Chancellorsville, Chattanooga,
Chickamauga, Fredericksburg, its relief agents
dispensed many thousand dollars’ worth of life
saving supplies. During the Peninsular cam
paign it did the army most signal service. Its
Relief depots and Hospital transport service
did more to relieve misery and save life than
any other voluntary organization has ever
done within the same period.
After the second battle of Bull Run, the
OITB ID_A_I XilT JLK- 33.
wagon trains of the Commission, moving from
Washington, met our retreating forces at Cen
treville, exhausted by hard fighting, and
wholly without restoratives or medicines.
Their medical supplies had fallen into rebel
hands. At this point, as at many others, the
Commission’s proper work of supplementing
accidental deficiencies in the Army system,
saved hundreds from perishing from prostra
tion, and enabled them to return to their
ranks and their duty. We have elsewhere set
forth (in our army letters) what was lately
done by the Commission at White House.
That need not be repeated. At Belle Plain,
before Grant changed his base to White House,
the agents of the Commission fed and cared
for more than 22,000 wounded men. The
pangs of consuming thirst and of raging fever
there alleviated—the agonizing pains relieved
—the tender and home-like nursing extended
to that city of suffering soldiers set down in
the fields—what pen can do justice to them ?
Who can estimate the priceless relief that
was there administered ?
Before the first train of ambulances of
wounded from the Wilderness reached Port
Royal, two steamers, two barges, a steamer,
and a tug-boat had arrived with the stores of
the Sanitary Commission, and more than a
hundred active and experienced men and wo
men were instantly at work and in readiness
for the coming sufferers. What fabulous sum
in dollars and cents can express the value, or
what words can do justice to the benificent
nature of this prompt relief? Who will set a
price on the hundreds of lives saved on those
blood-stained fields ?
But we can follow this branch of the subject
no further. It is the promptness of the action
of the Sanitary Agents at Port Royal, as just
mentioned, that is its great characteristic. It
is always on the spot with its abundance of
stores, and its hundreds of willing hands and
cheerful hearts, just at the very point of time
when their service is most needed. Help and
supplies then are worth infinitively more than
when they have to be sent for after the battle—
and when precious days are consumed in get
ting them to the field.
Nothing that is here said is intended to ex
press or imply any want of efficiency in the
Medical Staff of the army. They do oil that
it is in the power of medical officers to do;
and the Agents of the Commission, who act in
entire subordination to them, bear cheerful and
cordial testimony to their devotion to the
duties of their noble profession. But they
are limited in number, and are obliged to act
within the means furnished to them, and
according to their instructions. They have no
power to act according to discretion. The
Agents of the Commission have discretionary
powers, and also have abundance of supplies
of a kind which the Government never undertakes
to furnish. Here we perceive another of the
great advantages of the Commission, as an
auxiliary to the medical staff of the army
The Commission does what the Government
cannot undertake to do, but what the people
would not willingly leave undone for their
soldiers.
The devotion of the Sanitary Agents to their
duties has become a matter of honorable
record. Many noble instances of the sublime
courage with which they have gone into the
fire of the enemy to bring in the wounded are
mentioned in letters and reports from the
army. There was a conspicuous instance of
this at the storming of Fort Wagner. Under
the very guns of the fort, the trained Agents
of the Commission picked up the wounded men
as they fell and bore them to the hospital.
Some of the wounded were struck while
climbing the parapet, and then rolled into the
deep ditch round the fort, where they would
have been drowned had they been left without
other help than their own. But the Sanitary
agents, acting under the direction of Dr.
Marsh, rescued them under the hottest fire.
The devotion of these men in other places has
resulted not only in ruined health, but loss of
life. One of the martyrs to the service of the
Commission was the Rev. James Richardson,
a gentleman of education and high social in
fluence, who died November 10th, 18G3, from
disease contracted in the field.
We have now closed our sketches of the
Sanitary. They might have been swelled to
volumes, but we are compelled to be brief;
yet, imperfect as they are, they will servo to
illustrate, to some extent, the origin, the na
ture, the organization and the inestimable
benefits extended to our soldiers by the noble
organization for which we are now holding
our Great Fair.
THE TWO BBECKIHBIDGES.
BY JOHN W. FORNEY.
The appearance of the Rev. Dr. R. J. Breck
inridge, as he advanced to take his post as
temporary chairman of the Union National
Convention at Baltimore, on the 7th of June,
(inst.,) was most impressive. There stood one
of the historical characters of the age—a
spotless divine, a self-sacrificing idealist, an
unselfish patriot—one, across whose eventful
path not a single doubt as to his sincerity had
ever thrown a shadow, and whose lofty moral
integrity had never been questioned either by
the enemies of his church or the advocates of
slavery. What he said before the Convention
has been widely and profitably read. But
how he said it oould not be painted or printed.
First of all, was the evidence, not necessary to
be made clear to those who sat in rapt atten
tion under his utterances, of the perfect unpre
paredness of his speech. The short-hand re
porters took it down as it fell from his lips,
and then carried it to Washington by the even-