Volume 1

Documents of the U.S. Sanitary Commission.

  • United States Sanitary Commission.
Date:
1866-1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Documents of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    imperilled dignity. The officers of the Kegular Army were just as kind and cordial as those of the Volunteers, and I am now sure that none of the difficulties anticipated from a conflict of powers, are at all likely to arise with a reasonable discretion on our part. Indeed, no averted eye or cold shoulder, either from a medical or military official, chilled my heart, in a visit extended to 20,000 troops, to twenty hospitals, to hundreds of medical gentlemen, and yet I spared no warniog, no remonstrance, no earnest words of entreaty, made necessary by what I found defective in the camp-police, the hospital arrangements, the inexperience of officers. Plain, honest, earnest, direct words, kindly and sympathizingly spoken, were the only weapons found necessary, besides the govern- mental authority to utter them. This was indispensable, and it was a great boon to possess it. I cannot here spread out the ample details which I proceed to Washington this evening to lay before the Sanitary Com- mission and the Government, as materials towards a correct judgment and immediate action. The general impression, however, which my visit to Camp Dennison, near Cincin- nati, Camp McClellan, at Cairo, Camp Pope, at Alton, and other smaller collections of Western troops made upon me, ■ I do earnestly desire at once to communicate. A nobler, manlier, a more intelligent, earnest, and valuable body of troops was never gathered on the earth's surface, than the 20,000 men I saw in these camps ! They are fully equal to the best of our Eastern troops in clothing and equipments, and better than that, their equals in moral force, and direct- ness and seriousness of purpose. I have visited them in their tents and barracks, hastily of course; seen them in the ranks, witnessed their evolutions, and marked their drill; messed with the men and with their officers ; conversed freely with hundreds in the hospitals, which now, all told, hold perhaps near a thousand of the 20,000, who are more or less seriously ill; but sick or well, in camp or on parade, I have seen only one spirit—a profound love of country, a solemn sense of the necessity of this war, a willingness to die in defence of the sacred interests at stake, with a most assured sense that God