Part Three: PETER HALL: The Commission was keenly aware of the problems that
hundreds of thousands of demobilized soldiers, many of them wounded,
weakened, and jobless, would present to the country. It understood
that it possessed a pool of expertise and a network of reliable
agents and volunteers that could ease the veterans reentry to
civilian life. Then too, there were millions of emancipated slaves
who would have to be prepared for the challenges of living in
freedom. But after Dwight's definitive opinion, the Commission
had little choice but to face the task of dismantling itself as
the war wound down. In May of 1865, a month after Lee's surrender, the Commissioners
began outlining, to its branches and aid societies, their final
duties. These included protecting the soldiers from "the evils
and temptations" of "idleness and dissipation," preventing their
being taken advantage of by unscrupulous civilians, securing employment
through a Bureau of Information and Employment, and helping them
secure the benefits to which they were entitled through Claims
Offices. While the Commission understood that it could not use
its resources to establish the kind of extensive and permanent
system of veterans' hospitals and asylums that it had originally
envisioned, it still did not fully accept the necessity to terminate
its existence. The May circular concluded by urging "the maintenance
of the organization of our Aid Societies" in order to enable the
Commission "the means of communicating with the people, from time
to time, upon such topics as concern the continued welfare of
the returned soldiers." Although it no longer saw itself as operating
such facilities, the Commission also promised to soon reveal "plans
for such asylums for disabled and discharged soldiers as it may
be necessary to establish." U.S. SANITARY COMMISSION No. 90. CIRCULAR ADDRESSED TO THE BRANCHES AND AID SOCIETIES TRIBUTARY TO THE U.S. SANITARY COMMISSION. MAY 15, 1865 WASHINGTON, D.C.: PRINTED BY McGILL & WITHEROW. 1865 U.S. SANITARY COMMISSION. CENTRAL OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D. C., May 15, 1865. TO THE BRANCHES AND SOLDIERS' AID SOCIETIES TRIBUTARY TO THE UNITED STATES SANITARY COMMISSION: At the late quarterly session of the Board of the U. S. Sanitary
Commission, held at Washington, April 18-21, the President and
General Secretary were requested to prepare an address to the
various Branches and Aid Societies co-operating with the Commission,
and awaiting instructions from the Commission as to their present
and future duty. Since that period, such rapid changes have occurred in the military
situation affecting so materially the work of the Commission,
that it has been impossible, until now, to arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion as to the probable demands to be made upon us. While our work in the field is rapidly drawing to a close, there
remains much to be done by the Commission within the approaching
two months for the relief and comfort of our armies, as they return
from their long marches and exhausting service. New depots of
supplies have already been established at several points where
these armies are to rondezvous and encamp preparatory to their
discharge. The abandonment of the Post and Base hospitals must increase,
for the time, the already large number of patients in General Hospital,
while the necessary aid to be extended to the various garrisons
during the interval preceding the more permanent adjustment of
the new military status must make large drafts upon our resources.
The supplies now available at our several depots are wholly insufficient
to meet this final but urgent demand upon the Supply Service;
and, deeming it important both for the actual relief of existing
needs and for the consistent completion of this work of the people,
continued now through four successive years of faithful co-operation,
that our issues be not meagre or our care neglectful, we call
upon our Branches and Aid Societies to maintain their usual system
and activity up to the 4th July next, persevering in their work
until that time with unabated energy, and with an intelligent
appreciation of the necessity of the case. It is confidently anticipated that their labors in contributing
supplies to the hospitals and the field may properly terminate
at that date, unless wholly improbable and unexpected events arise
to make such conclusion of their work unpatriotic and inhumane.
Timely notice will be given if any such necessity occur. In the meantime the rapid disbanding of our armies and their immediate
return to their relations in civil life will devolve upon our
Branches and Aid Societies a new and important work, to be performed
under their immediate supervision, and necessitating the maintenance
of their organization for an indefinite period. The occasion for
this continued effort grows out of the fact that these returning
soldiers, by their militarv service, have become more or less
detached from their previous relations, associations, and pursuits,
which are now to be re-established. Many of these men will be
not only physically, but morally disabled, and will exhibit the
injurious effects of camp life in a weakened power of self-guidance
and self-restraint, inducing a certain kind of indolence, and,
for the time, indisposition to take hold of hard work. The possession
of money in the majority of cases will increase the inducements
to idleness and dissipation, as well as the exposure to imposition.
To protect the soldier from these evils and temptations, naturally
resulting from his previous military life, is a duty which is
now owed to him by the people, as much as was the care extended
to him through the Commission, while in active service in the
field; for we are to regard the future necessity that may exist
for help and guidance to returned soldiers as no less a condition
incident to the war, than the wounds and sickness to which the
supply agencies of the Comission have hitherto so generously
ministered. In submitting to our Aid Societies a practical plan of work adapted
to these new conditions, our object is to suggest such methods
as will aid the process by which these men are to resume their
natural and proper relations in civil life. The first and most important means in the accomplishment of this
object will be found in a systematic provision for securing suitable
occupation to all these returned men, adapted where necessary
to the condition of those partially disabled, thus constituting
each Branch and Aid Society a "Bureau of Information and Employment,"
by which the light occupations in all towns, and whatever work
can be as well done by invalid soldiers as by orders, shall be
religiously given to the men who may have incapacitated themselves
for rivalry in more active and laborious fields of duty by giving
their limbs, their health, and their blood to the nation. To this end, and to guard against the possibility of imposition,
the names of all men who have enlisted from each town and city
should be obtained and preserved, and a record kept that shall
gather all facts material to the work in hand; which, while it
will be the means of collecting most useful information, will,
at the same time, constitute an invaluable contribution to the
history of the war. Carefully prepared forms for this purpose
will be furnished from the Central Office of the Commission, to
which monthly returns will be made, and where they will be duly
tabulated. These results will be promptly transmitted each month
to the several Aid Societies, to furnish whatever guidance they
may for the wise prosecution of the work. The co-operation of our Aid Societies, in extending information
concerning the various agencies of the Commission for the relief
and aid of discharged soldiers and their families, will constitute
another important service which they may render. Some of these agencies are of a character which will not terminate
with the disbanding of our armies, but will find their largest
field of activity and usefulness during the year succeeding the
close of the war. The Commission is rapidly extending its system of Claim Agencies
to all the prinicipal cities and centers of population throughout
the country. Through these agencies all claims of soldiers or
sailors and their families are adjusted with the least possible
delay and without charge, thus securing to the applicants the
full amount of the claim as allowed, and exemption from the heavy
tax, and often gross imposition and fraud, to which they are subjected
by the ordinary methods. The evils to which the discharged soldier
is exposed, in the adjustment of claims against the Government,
are of so grave a nature that no effort should be spared to secure
to him the benefits of this agency of the Commission's work. Regarding
the Local Aid Societies as the natural guardians of the soldiers
and the supervisors of the work of the Commission in their respective
towns or cities, it is desired that they will exercise a careful
superintendence of this work, promoting by every practicable means
its efficiency, and making sure that every returned soldier in
their vicinity, and the family of every deceased soldier, is actually
informed of the aid gratuitously offered them by this agency of
the Commission. The maintenance of the organization of our Aid Societies will
preserve to the Sanitary Commission the means of communicating
with the people, from time to time, upon such topics as concern
the continued welfare of returned soldiers, and especially in
regard to the more permanent provision which it will be necessary
to make for disabled soldiers, incapable of self-support. It is
the profound conviction of the Sanitary Commission, that the peculiar
genius and beauty of American intitutions is to show itself in
the power which the ordinary civil, social, and domestic life
of the nation exbibits to absorb rapidly into itself our vast
army, and restore to ordinary occupations those who have been
fighting our battles; while the sick and wounded are distributed
through the country, objects of love, care, and restoration, in
the several communities where they belong, instead of being collected
in great State and National asylums, objects of public ostentation,
and subjected to the routine, the isolation, and the ennui of
an exceptional, unfruitful, and unhappy existence. Public provision
of this latter kind, as free from its evil as may be, must be
made for a certain small class of the friendless and the totally
disabled; but humanity and American feeling demand that this class
should be reduced to the smallest possible number through the
zeal and friendliness shown towards our returning invalid soldiers
in the towns from which they originally came. The Sanitary Commission
will soon lay, before its Branches, the public plans for such
asylums for disabled and discharged soldiers, as it may be necessary
to establish. Reserving the expression of our gratitude to our Branches and
Soldiers' Aid Societies to a later period, we remain, on behalf
of the Board, Yours, faithfully and truly, H.W. BELLOWS, President JNO. S. BLATCHFORD, General Secretary PETER HALL: The Commission's final report, although framed by
a recognition that its work was completed, both expressed a yearning
for a continued and enlarged role in dealing with the problems
of demobilized veterans and reiterated the central themes of its
activities during the course of the war. At the same time, by
identifying the veterans most in need of long-term institutional
assistance as immigrants, it bracketted, in no uncertain terms,
the challenges that lay ahead for the benevolent classes in the
future. The main themes of the Commission's work Bellows touched upon included concerns about the effects of "bad and demoralizing sentimentality" which led to destructive "schemes brewing in the hearts of private philanthropists" and "public legislators;" the tendency of charitable institutions to encourage mendacity by "idlers and drones"-- especially foreigners--"who went into the war under the attraction of the bounty;" the need to nurture the capacity of families and communities to deal with the disabled--"self-respect, self-support, and the true American pride of personal independence;" the need to underline the national character of the war and to characterize the war "as a struggle against State pretensions:" that the homes, if established, should be "made nurseries of our military glory, and should, in some way, be skilfully co-ordinated with the popular heart, so as to feel and to animate the national sentiment." But, Bellows also reiterated the importance of the Commission's
methods, especially its use of "social science" rather than politics
or sentimental private philanthropy to address social problems,
its use of experts and systematically gathered observations and
statistics, and its use of these data to influence the opinions
of the public and elected officials. At the same time, the document is curiously self-contradictory.
For all of its heavily institutionalist emphasis, it also stresses
strongly anti-institutionalist themes. In a way this is not surprising,
because it really consists of two documents--the first, Bellows'
1862 letter of instructions to S.H. Perkins on gathering information
on veterans affairs in Europe; the second, the Commission's 1865
summary of veterans problems and how they should be addressed.
The letter to Perkins is an expression of the Commission's sense
of its mission at its most grandiose, written at a time when it
saw itself as the nation's savior. Looking ahead to the war's
end, it saw itself working with the national government, sagely
guiding its efforts to manage the process of demobilization to
care for the permanently disabled. The 1865 summary not only scales
down these expectations, but also seeks to minimize the problems
that need to be dealt with. In effect, it seems to be saying that
because the invalid veteran presents no serious problems, no major
institutional commitment of any kind--public or private--is really
needed. Better to let individuals, families, and communities cope
with the problems, than to corrupt the citizenry with inappropriate
institutional mediation. SANITARY COMMISSION No. 95 PROVISION REQUIRED FOR THE RELIEF AND SUPPORT DISABLED SOLDIERS AND SAILORS AND THEIR DEPENDENTS. A Report to the Standing Committee U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION, BY REV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D., PRESIDENT. NEW YORK, December 15, 1865. To the Standing Committee of the United States Sanitary Commission: GENTLEMEN -- On the 9th of November, 1865, the Board requested
me to prepare a report upon the wants of sick and disabled soldiers,
with such account of the existing provisions for their relief
as I might be able to collect. The subject had engaged the attention of the Sanitary Commission
from a very early period of the war. Feeling that the time would
come when it must engross public attention, and that it was very
desirable to collect the whole experience of foreign countries
in advance, we took advantage of the going abroad of one of our
most intelligent students into social questions, Mr. Stephen H.
Perkins, of Boston, to engage him while visiting the chief military
countries in Europe, to collect all documents and pursue all inquiries
relating to the subject of pensions, military asylums, and the
methods of favoring by civil offices in the gift of the government,
the soldiers disabled in war. Mr. Perkins investigated the subject
thoroughly and made a valuable report, which was printed, and
served as the basis of an elaborate essay on the general subject,
prepared under the direction of the Commission in April, 1864,
which contains the materials of much instruction to all future
legislators in this department. On the 15th August, 1862, I addressed
a letter of general instructions to Mr. Perkins, on his departure
for Europe, in which peculiar relations of American institutions
to the probable wants of our disabled soldiers, not then in existence,
was fully dwelt upon. It seemed to me, even then, that the young
and vigorous civilization of America, with the respect for labor
and the habits of personal self reliance prevailing among us,
and the open opportunities of the new country, would prevent the
question of provision for our sick and wounded soldiers from ever
becoming one of very urgent and burdensome character; that the
experience of countries with a long past, very settled social
distinctions, and a thick and crowded population, where labor
was cheap and poverty common, would afford little that was instructive
to us, except in the way of contrast; that the splendor of the
names of certain military and naval asylums abroad, the Hotel
des Invalides, the Hospitals in Vienna, Naples, and Berlin, the
Hospitals at Chelsea and Greenwich, were likely enough to stimulate
our national and state pride to attempt some similar institutions
really not needed, while the lively sympathy of the people, grateful
toward the wounded and disabled heroes of the war, might, when
inflamed by local rivalries in this popular kind of benevolence,
multiply very injuriously, as well as needlessly, the refuges
and charities of our returned soldiers. It seemed to us that our
pride, as a democratic nation, ought to point just in the other
direction; i.e., towards such a shaping of public opinion as would
tend to reduce dependence among our returning soldiers to the
lowest possible point; to quicken the local and family sense of
responsibility, so as to make each neighborhood and each household,
out of which a soldier had gone and returned helpless and dependent,
feel itself privileged and bound to take care of him; to weaken
all disposition towards eleemosynary support; to encourage every
community to do its utmost towards favoring the employment of
returned soldiers, and especially, partially disabled ones in
all light occupations; to make mendicancy and public support
disreputable for all with any ability, however partial, to help
themselves; to prevent the public mind from settling into European
notions in regard to military asylums; especially to guard the
subject from the artificial excitement which political and medical
aspirants to place and power might strive to communicate to it,
and to keep it so far as might be, from state rivalries, party
emulation, and civic ambition. In short, we desired to favor in
every way the proud and beneficent tendency of our vigorous American
civilization, to heal its wounds by the first intention; to absorb
the sick and wounded men into its ordinary life, providing for
them through those domestic and neighborly sympathies, that local
watchfulness and furtherance due to the weakness and wants of
men, well known to their fellow citizens, and which is given without
pride and received without humiliation; and this source of relief
failing, then from the ordinary charities of the towns and counties
from which they had sprung. The facts furnished by Mr. Perkins' report, prove that foreign
experience, as we foresaw, chiefly teaches us what is to be avoided;
that their pension systems, France excepted, are wholly inadequate
even to the wants of the cheap countries of Europe, driving the
disabled into asylums, and would be absurdly deficient in America;
that their great asylums, the Hotel des Invalides, the military
hospitals at Berlin, Vienna, and Naples, are costly failures,
measured by their success in protecting the character or promoting
the, happiness of the men who occupy them, everywhere creating
ennui, drunkenness, and discontent. Since these reports, Chelsea
and Greenwich Hospitals, tired of their experience, have resolved
as rapidly as possible, to scatter on pensions their dependents,
and in so doing, have, in our judgment, settled forever the inexpediency
of creating permanent militia or naval asylums. They have long
had nothing in their favor but national pride, and the necessity
of having some place where a small percentage of homeless and
friendless incurables could be sent to die, or be taken care of
through their helpless lives. This small number, it now appears,
is more wisely attached to other public charities, and in a scattered
way, provided for as a small percentage of the indigent and wholly
dependent portion of the public, than made a separate class of,
and kept as a public show. None can have failed to admire the tendency which so suddenly
and quietly dissolved our vast and compact armies, and before
the exultation of their victories had died away, distributed them
far and wide over the land, setting them back in the furrow, the
workshop, the bench, the mill, the mine, out of which they had
come at the nation's cry "To arms." It must be already obvious
that this benignant tendency of our free and popular institutions,
so amazing to Europe, is equally operative over our sick and wounded
men, who have got out of the hospitals in an incredibly short
time, their wounds rapidly healed by the hope of getting home,
and the stimulus of the self-respectful necessity of resuming
work again; their limbs already replaced by artificial members;
their homes and friends and old comrades insisting on their return
to their old places, where protection, aid in finding occupation,
and all sorts of kindness have awaited them. In May last, we had still 183 general hospitals in operation, with 78,313 patients. Today, we have only 20 hospitals open, and not more than 2,463 patients under treatment. Such an anxiety to get away from the abundant and benignant care of the government have our sick and disabled soldiers manifested that their spirit of self-help and independence has no doubt cost many of them their lives. At their own urgent petition, they have often been suffered to leave before prudence warranted, and too early out of hospital, many of them have fallen into the homes and lodges of the Sanitary Commission, and in many instances died on our hands. We have seen hundreds much too feeble to travel, using what seemed to us their last strength in reaching their homes. It is obvious enough that such a spirit as this, though it may kill its proud exhibitors, will not leave many willing dependents on the public bounty! For a few months, while our soldiers were passing to their homes
and stopping in transit in our cities, there was a quantity considerable
in itself, although very small in percentage, of mendicancy among
our soldiers. Convalescents just out of the hospital, and not
half as well as they thought themselves, were appealing for assistance.
The railroad cars and street cars presented also the spectacle
of numerous invalids, wan and feeble. We saw in our cities all
the suffering of invalidism, all the beggary and want of the war,
just at its close, passing before us at one review. The public
mistook this to a great extent for the mere beginning of a worse
ending, or, at the best, as a permanent condition of things. They
thought they were seeing a sample, when they were really looking
at the whole piece. The public imagination was greatly inflamed,
and numerous and piteous appeals were made for creating asylums
and homes for a great army of sick and disabled soldiers. But
already, and in spite of the cold season, which closes navigation
and stops so many kinds of work, this spectacle of mendicant,
unemployed, and vagrant soldiers, or of sick and disabled men,
has so rapidly disappeared, that continuing at the same rate,
it is now certain in one more year to furnish no longer a subject
of considerable anxiety. All our predictions and hopes have been
doubly fulfilled. The disposition to provide in larger and expensive
ways for sick and disabled soldiers, in public asylums, has almost
entirely ceased. Without concert, and without even general reasonings,
with little or no knowledge of foreign experience, the healthy
mind of the American people all over the country has gravitated
(as we shall presently prove) to one result. With every disposition
to do all that is necessary for sick and disabled soldiers, and
with a greater readiness to extend relief to them--to erect shelters
over their heads, to provide for them while they live-- than to
exercise any other form of charity, there has been so little pressure
upon them, so little disposition to avail themselves of these
opportunities on the part of the invalids themselves, that a general
lull in the efforts to raise money for this purpose, or to carry
out projects in this direction, shows itself at all the great
centres of our military population, and we can safely predict
that very few of the hundred schemes that have been brewing in
the hearts of private philanthropists or of public legislators
will survive a twelve month of this uniform public experience. Although these open and universal facts, obvious to all eyes,
are more decisive than any special and classified testimony, yet,
to satisfy ourselves further upon these points, I requested Mr.
Knapp, our Special Relief Agent, to address a letter of inquiry
to the most expert persons at the chief centres of our military
strength, the regions where our soldiers enlisted, and to which
they have now returned, asking certain questions, the nature of
which the letter itself will best show: NEW YORK, Nov. 17, 1865. MY DEAR SIR -- I desire to obtain certain facts concerning sick
and disabled soldiers, and take the liberty of asking your aid
in procuring the information for me. What do you judge is the number, in your city and vicinity, of seriously disabled soldiers who would properly be received at a "Soldiers' Home," or an Asylum? What proportion is this to the whole number of men from your city and vicinity? What is the nature of the disability of these men? What proportion are disabled as the result of wounds? What proportion as the result of sickness? Are there many of them who are blind? Are many of them idiotic, or with weakened minds? What, so far as you have observed, is the nationality of these
men needing most aid? What provision has been made in your city for disabled soldiers;
and, if any, what has been the success of the undertaking? Can you inform me whether the feeling of the necessity of such
institutions as "Soldiers' Homes," or asylums, has, of late, increased
or diminished? I would also ask, whether the soldiers' families -- their widows
and orphans -- are or are not a larger and more important class
of sufferers than the "disabled soldier class," and how, among
you, their wants are met? I do not seek detailed or minutely accurate answers to these questions, but such as will give an idea of real needs, and how to meet them. If you will write me within a few days in response to this letter,
you will confer a favor which will be gratefully acknowledged. I am, dear sir, Very truly, your friend, FRED. N. KNAPP, Superintendent of Special Relief This letter was sent to different parts of the country, to twenty-seven
persons, men and women distinguished for their practical experience
with this class of sufferers, their relief labors, their tried
humanity, and living at the points of most interest and importance.
A majority of these letters have been answered, and if they had
not almost absolutely concurred in their replies, and coming from
widely scattered regions, put beyond question what the nature
of the others would be, I should have waited till all came in
before drawing my conclusions. But such is the urgent importance
of settling the public mind as far as possible, and of giving
such direction as wisdom and experience may furnish to the opinions
of Congress, soon to legislate upon the subject, that I have thought
it best to wait no longer for testimony, which is certain only
to confirm the evidence already abundant, which is here brought
forward. The fact that the testimony precisely bears out the expectations
of the Commission formed the first year of the war-- expectations
based on the American character and the nature of our institutions
-- indicates clearly enough that any remaining testimony will
only strengthen what is already sufficiently established. These letters, filed and tabulated for reference in our office,
(where any one specially interested can consult them), show that
the number of sick and disabled men needing any public care, or
even asking for it, is exceedingly small, compared either with
the size of our armies or the expectation compared of the public.
It is not because a very large class of sick and disabled men
does not exist, scattered through the country, but because these
men are the objects of a proud and tender domestic or neighborly
care, and withdrawn from public view, as it is desirable they
should be. Thousands, we doubt not, are declining rapidly or slowly in the
bosom of their homes, uncomplaining and even hiding, in many cases,
their griefs and their wants. The only form in which such noble
sufferers can be reached by the public gratitude, in a way not
to demean and injure their pride, is by an improved pension law.
The existing pension law is a great mercy, so great that the necessity
of giving up a claim upon one's pension in order to become an
inmate of a national asylum, is a sufficient check and a most
wholesome one to thousands from applying. Moderately increased,
it would still further lessen the claimants on this objectionable
form of public support, and no asylum or hospital from any cause
should fail to make this relinquishment a condition of its protection
and support. But while the number is comparatively and unexpectedly small,
it is yet in its aggregate considerable. There may be, take the country through, 2,000 persons, so homeless,
so helpless, so utterly disabled by sickness or wounds, that they
must, all of them for a while, become the objects of public support
in Asylums or Soldiers Homes. Among these, as we shall presently
see, are few, almost no Americans. They are chiefly Irish and
German; 75 percent Irish, 15 or 20 percent German, and the residue
of other foreign nationalities. We doubt if 2 percent would turn
out Americans! Now this is not only because Americans have a spirit
above dependence, but also because they have natural friends,
homes, parents, brothers, or in all cases, neighborhoods where
their claims are recognized and allowed. A foreigner, enlisting
in many instances just upon his arrival at the beginning of the
war, or who came over for the very purpose of joining the army,
if disabled, has nothing to look to but the care of a country
grateful for his services. Practically, so far as public asylums are concerned, it is almost
exclusively a question of what shall be done for the soldiers
of foreign birth and, chiefly, new comers. Were it only Americans
to be considered, there would be positively no occasion for any
public asylums. But the claims of foreigners losing limbs, health,
the power of self-support in our military service, are just as
sacred as those of natives, in some respects, even more so, as
natives may be supposed to have had greater reasons for going
into the field, and to have owed a more obvious debt to the country.
The wholly disabled Americans are, for the most part, patiently
and under tender care, dragging out their lives in American homes;
the disabled foreigners chiefly in public asylums, alms-houses,
and hospitals. Their case is indeed often a pitiable one. In estimating at 2,000, the number of such as need, for the current
year, Retreats and Refuges specially designed for them, we assume
the following facts to be well established in the evidence on
our files. The places we have heard from, which it was considered important
to address, give us about a thousand cases. Assuming that this
represents one-half of the total, we have 2,000 as the outside
number. Probably, this is a large estimate. It is manifest that
the agricultural regions will absorb the disabled soldiers more
rapidly than the manufacturing regions or the cities; not so much
because our invalids are better adapted to farm work, for the
very reverse is the case, but because living is so much cheaper,
and another mouth in a farmer's family, living on his own products,
is no considerable drain as it is found to be in cities and crowded
districts. Although the West has been most prompt in proposing Asylums and
Homes for disabled soldiers, we do not expect to see more than
half as great a need of them there as at the East; especially,
because the foreign population from which our asylums are filled
belongs very largely, and particularly the newest portion of it,
to our cities. The best established "Home" for disabled soldiers
(excepting that at Washington), now in existence, perhaps, is
at Columbus, Ohio. It is large and amply furnished, and has proclaimed
its readiness to receive all disabled soldiers who apply, without
regard to State lines. The Cincinnati Branch of the United States
Sanitary Commission has appropriated $15,000, and the Cleveland
Branch $5,000, to its support until the Ohio Legislature meets,
(January, 1866), from which an ample endowment is expected. Yet,
up to this time, only 130 have applied for admittance! The largest number of disabled soldiers requiring asylum, in any
one neighborhood, is apparently at Philadelphia, where Mr. R.M.
Lewis (and no one can give a wiser judgment) estimates them at
400. This must seem a very large percentage for the city, or even
the State. But we are to bear in mind the fact that, in that city,
both the Washington and Baltimore, as well as the great local
hospitals, have emptied their dregs, and we must expect to find,
as the Government hospitals close, the full number of Mr. Lewis's
estimate thrown upon some "Home" or asylum there. We consider
it a most encouraging fact that, at this most fruitful point of
want, only so many as 400 disabled men are to be provided for.
And it is a pleasure to know that an institution, already worth
a hundred thousand dollars, is in existence there to minister
to these needy and deserving soldiers. Mr. Knapp, as the result of thorough, personal examinations recently
made, estimates only 150 as the constant average of New York city
and immediate neighborhood. No doubt, this number will prove for
some time near the real amount of fit candidates for this kind
of care. Double this number will always be applying, for New York
is the natural home of the most skillful and successful beggary,
and all the idlers and drones, who went into the war under the
attraction of the bounty, will return to this city to live by
their wits or their frauds. But it is, as the metropolis, the
place where the foreign element which has been in the war (especially
the Irish) will present their claims. The "Lincoln Home" of the
United States Sanitary Commission, at 45 Grove street, which opened
last May, has not yet had one pure native American on its books.
Nine-tenths of its beneficiaries are, and have always been and
will always continue to be, Irish, the other tenth chiefly German.
It is most creditable to the Germans that they do not learn in
their own country the shameless beggary of the Irish, and so do
not, even when as poorly off, straightway slip into mendicancy
and dependence here in America. Doubtless, one or two years will carry off quite a percentage
of the 2,000 we estimate as the present number of men needing
asylum. A certain portion of them will rapidly wear of confinement,
and as they get better, solicit and find light occupation; others
will learn trades suited to their disability, and be able to make
their own living. We expect to see the number of helpless invalids,
unable to do better and left on the hands of the people, considerably
reduced within a very few years; and this in spite of the fact,
which we do not lose sight of, that as the men spend their bounty
and back pay, some who have supported themselves hitherto, will,
after a few months, fall into public dependence; others, struggling
with disease and reluctantly giving up, will, after a year or
two, come to the same fate. Already it is found in our asylums
that a good many of the applicants are men prematurely old, who
wore out the remnants of a constitution in the army, and at fifty,
have no stamina for work. It would be idle, therefore, and a wicked waste of money, and
time, and wisdom, to make permanent provision, for so distant
a future only as twenty years, for even a thousand men. And far
more than this provision is certain to be made; nay, exists in
part already in the National Soldier's Home, at Washington; Soldier's
Home, at Boston, Mass.; the Ohio State Home, at Columbus, Ohio;
the Soldier's and Sailor's Home, Philadelphia; the Lincoln Home,
New York; Soldier's Home, (projected) Milwaukee, Wis.; Soldier's
Home, at Chicago; Soldier's Home, Penn Yan, Yates Co., N.Y.; Soldier's
Home in some part of Indiana; a Soldier's Rest at Syracuse. A
Sanitary Commission Home at St.Louis, and probably several other
Homes and Asylums, ought to be added to this list, which professes
no completeness. Several other plans like the "Harris Hospital"
at Albany, are in gestation. There seems no need, whatever, to urge this form of provision,
as it appears certain to be over done without any additional stimulus.
What is vastly more important, is to make prompt temporary provision
for the 2,000 men, more or less, who need immediate care; to build
no slow, expensive palaces; to aim at no permanent institutions,
but to meet the exigencies of the case; and to do no more until
the future necessities of this class can be more exactly measured.
If a hundred thousand dollars exists in the hands of a body of
trustees, for the interests of disabled men, their duty is, not
to hoard it and spend the interest, not to lay it out in a purchase
of house and grounds and beg money to support their Asylum, but
to hire a modest and suitable place, and support it out of their
principal as long as it lasts, and when ten years have used it
up, learn that the occasion for their asylum has passed away. We hope to see no great national institutions rising at Washington
or elsewhere. The evidence obtained on the nature of the disability, which is
generally loss of limbs, or occasioned by wounds, rather than
by sickness, is probably due to the fact that the sick either
get well, die, or, as invalids, find light employment, while limbless
men take much longer to accommodate themselves to their condition,
are thrown much more out of their old callings, have a much more
obvious claim on public sympathy, or are much easier to put forward
and so contract a readier habit of dependence. It is pleasant
to state that very many men with one arm have found occupation
in our cities as messengers and that systematic efforts, already
very successful in Boston and, quite so, in New York, are now
making to establish in our cities the foreign plan of commissionaires, under thorough drill and with substantial responsibility, to
serve as light porters, messengers, and guides, as temporary servants
to strangers in the cities, and to perform the thousand offices
which all travellers on the continent will remember so well,
the convenience of having received from them in Paris and all
along the route of continental travel. It is believed that a corps
of 500 men, neatly uniformed, and under semi-military drill, well
selected from among our invalid soldiers, would find a comfortable
support in the city of New York as commissionares. Philadelphia would, doubtless, support at least half as many,
and perhaps Boston a hundred. The country at large could well
employ 1,500 men in this way. We learn that the messengers in
this city, not soldiers generally, ravaged, dirty, and repulsive
as they often are, who now assume partially this career, are making
from one to two dollars a day, when in the least attentive to
their duties. The fifty in our Sanitary Commission Bureau of Employment
do even better than this. The general disposition which the men of the "Veteran Reserve Corps" have shown to be disbanded (90 percent of the whole), proves that the necessity for public support is far less urgent than we thought. In no other country but ours could such a testimony be furnished in evidence of the openness of career offered to all, as this voluntary relinquishment, for more inviting prospects of living wages, on the part of a large body of men, whose support the Government had assumed as an act of justice and humanity. It is instructive to notice that the percentage of men disabled
by blindness, is very small. This is a remarkable testimony to
the general excellence of our commissariat and our hospital system
since blindness, by reason of wounds, is inconsiderable compared
with what grows out of bad food, unhealthy lodging, disregard
for all sanitary laws, and ignorance of ophthalmic surgery; above
all, from special diseases and contagious disorders to which crowded
places camps, and hospitals are subject. The United States of
America has an enviable freedom from blindness as compared with
other nations. One to 2,470 being the ratio to our population;
not one half what it is in Great Britain; while in France, it
is 1 to 938, and in Norway 1 to 540. No class of disabled men
deserves greater sympathy than those blinded by the war; a hardship
almost strictly proportioned to the want of internal resource
and mental activity. It is a special satisfaction to find this
class so small. The idiotic, too, turn out much less than was
feared from the terrible effect which rebel prisons had, at least
temporarily, upon the brains of our weaker-minded men. To revert again to the nationality of our disabled men applying
for public aid, they are, in the Eastern and Middle States, Irish
and German almost exclusively, and in the proportion of 75 and
20 percent, respectively, of the whole number; while in the Northwest,
and probably in the West, they are German and Irish, perhaps in
about equal proportion, or 45 percent each of the whole. It is a just source of pride that, while about 80 percent of our
whole army was composed of native citizens, 90 percent of all
the drafted men requiring aid are of foreign extraction; a fact
which that portion of the English press, long in the habit of
attributing our victories to mercenaries from abroad, may digest
as it best can. It is plain, from all that has been said, that the anxiety of
the public, in regard to wholly disabled men requiring care and
support in public asylums, which now appears to be a comparatively
small and very manageable class, has distracted attention from
that vastly more important class of sufferers, lingering uncomplainingly
in their homes, who have claims on the Pension Bureau, which,
small as they are, are very slowly settled, and which, when paid,
furnish a very meagre expression of the gratitude of the country
towards its most self-sacrificing benefactors. The Sanitary Commission, early feeling the importance of the relief
which the present system might afford the invalids of the war
and their families, established a Special Bureau for the gratuitous
collection of soldiers claims, (back pay, bounty, pensions, &c.,)
which, extending all over the United States, has rendered most
efficient service in saving soldiers and their families from the
thousand harpies preying on their ignorance and their necessities.
By making known the rights and claims of soldiers in all communities,
it has also advanced the work of the Pension Bureau in a very
important degree. It is alleged that half the claims of soldiers
and their families, for a given period, passed through our offices.
But no effort of ours could very much relieve the delay which,
unavoidably or otherwise, has occurred in the settlement of soldiers'
claims and those of their widows and orphans. But leaving the
question of the settlement of soldiers' claims, there is a question
of still more importance, which concerns the insufficiency of
the pension allowed. Eight dollars per month for a man who has lost a limb, or is otherwise
equally disabled, twenty for one who has lost both feet, and twenty-five
for one who has lost both hands or both eyes, is much too little
to meet their necessities. What a feeble reciprocation, too, is
eight dollars per month to the poor widow with her orphan children
to support and educate, who has given her husband and the protector
of their offspring up to his country? The subject is too large
and too complicated to be treated here in anything but the most
general way. It is full of minute and embarrassing details, which
only an expert can understand, and there is no official work on
the subject. What we have to suggest is that the pension system
is the true system for the relief of our invalided and disabled
soldiers -- their widows and orphans; it deserves a far more careful,
generous, and constant consideration than it seems to receive;
that it should occupy the time and sympathies which are so much
more readily expended upon schemes of showy, debilitating charity.
The pension is a debt due the soldier and his widow and his orphans,
which it does not demean them to receive, which they have a moral
right to claim, and which ought to be adjusted, to their necessities,
and made adequate to their relief or support. If there be any
direction in which the public money may be expended with freedom,
without complaint on the part of tax-payers, though with a generousity,
leaning to indulgence, it is in the matter of pensions. At present,
the provision is pernicious and disgraceful to the nation. We
desire, in a democratic country, to see the private soldier honored
and his life, services, and sacrifices valued at the full by a
grateful country. The disposition to heap richly merited honors
and emoluments on a few distinguished officers only is not worthy
of a nation that knows no difference in the political claims of
its citizens, and values men not for rank or station, but for
merit and personal worth. We have seen too much of the patriotic
spirit of our common soldiers, and of their wives and children,
not to feel that they are wronged by the scrimped and paltry pensions
they draw, after the precious sacrifices they have made. Two years
ago, we offered bounties with an almost humiliating eagerness
to the worst men whom we could press into the ranks -- bounties
which, in one sum, often exceeded what ten years' pension pays
a disabled soldier, or his widowed and orphaned family. Now, looking
back on the services we were ready to bribe so lavishly, we are
slow to value them, after they are rendered, at any reasonable
sum! For ourselves, we held the bounty system as a disgrace, reproaching
the spirit of our volunteers, demoralizing the country, and letting
down the war, by its mercenary aspect, both in foreign eyes and
our own. But a fit pendant for this disgrace is the present set
of pension laws. If the bounties already paid could only have
been saved to increase the pensions, how much better and more
honorable for the country it would be! Still, it is fair to say
that no country offers as good military pensions as ours, even
at present rates; but let it be remembered that foreign wages
are no standard for America, and foreign pensions no rule for
us. We believe the pension system is the proper substitute for military asylums. We could desire that the wholly disabled, who claim public support, should be pensioned to the full extent of their living, board, and clothes, and then suffered to go where they please, and look up their own residence and their own protectors. It would be both more humane, more economical for the country, and more favorable to the temper and spirit of our people. This may be illustrated by the history of the National Soldiers' Home at Washington. We had 73,260 officers and men engaged in the Mexican war. The National Soldiers' Home was founded, we believe, on the money paid General Scott by the city of Mexico for sparing the captured city from sack. To this sum, doubtless, large appropriations have been made besides the amount collected from the assessment which is laid upon all soldiers of the regular army. What it has cost, we have no means of knowing; but we should be surprised to find it less than half a million. It is a beautiful and attractive place, both as to house and grounds, and in the immediate vicinity of Washington. All regulars and pensioners of the volunteers, on relinquishing their pension for the time, have a right to a residence in this Home. At the beginning of the war, there were only 80 inmates. The present number is 150. The average cost per man, including food, clothing, lights, fuel, and medical treatment, (but not including rent or interest on original outlay,) was for the year-- 1861..................................................$262.00 1862...................................................265.70 1863...................................................312.12 1864...................................................413.87
Those who are able and willing to work as common laborers are
paid 25 cents per day; mechanics, $14 per month. It is very difficult to keep the men in any state of contentment.
Those who have pensions to fall back upon, soon weary of the Home
and prefer to take their chances in the world of freedom with
that small dependence at command. Many who resort there are, it
is said, of a rough and unruly disposition. Now, if the sum expended upon these men were allowed them in pensions,
not only would the cost of the building and grounds be saved --
although that we do not consider a very important item -- but
the spirit and independence of the soldier's name and character,
and his rapid return to civic virtues and independence of life,
would be favored, while the vices which come from herding coarse
men together in purely masculine and official hands, would be
entirely obviated. We cannot doubt that if the pension rates were doubled, it would be as economical for the country as it would be honorable to its gratitude and useful and blessed for the invalids, widows, and orphans of the war. And this brings us to the last point. The testimony of the letters referred to is that soldiers' families
-- their widows and orphans -- present a much more urgent and
suffering claim than disabled soldiers themselves, and it is even
said that the widow and orphans are pecuniarily better off than
those families who have had a maimed and disabled husband and
father returned to them to be supported. Some of the States have
made special provisions for this class, both during and since
the war. Special laws have been passed in Massachusetts for their
relief. But too much was done during the war, and too little has
been done since, and is doing now. In the city of New York, a
profuse and injurious relief was afforded the families of absent
soldiers by the city, at a time when wages were high enough to
make the general condition of the poor easier than at any period
within our memory. Thus soldiers were encouraged to spend their
wages on themselves and to their own hurt, instead of sending
them home, and many women, accustomed to honest labor, fell into
dependent and dissolute ways. But that relief was suddenly cut
off, and now the difficulty is the other way. But it is not in
cities alone that the orphaned families of our brave soldiers
are most in need. Everywhere, and from all quarters, we hear but
one story of their sufferings and distress; and we see with great
satisfaction numerous private charities and public associations
moving for their relief. We must not permit the freedmen, or the
needy Southerners, to absorb our attention to the neglect of this
most deserving class of our own people -- the widows and orphans
of the war. Again, we repeat, we know no way of meeting their
necessities so free from objection as that of prompt and generous
aid through the Pension system. It is, however, worthy of consideration
whether an immediate and temporary appropriation, of say five
millions of dollars, for the relief of the widows and orphans
of the war, additional to their permanent pension, and payable
by the Pension agents on some equitable scale of pro rata, would
not be the most popular, humane, and righteous act the present
Congress could pass. We hear already of several orphan asylums called into existence
by the necessities of the war. Among them, either in action or
projected, and pretty sure to go into operation, are the Soldier's
Orphan Home and Colored Orphan Home at St. Louis; Soldier's Orphan
Home, Trenton, N.J.; Orphan's Home, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Orphan's
Home near Davenport, Iowa; Patriot Orphan's Home, Flushing, N.Y.;
Orphan's Home, New York City. Many of our other and well-established institutions also receive these orphans. So far as collecting them temporarily in Homes and Refuges goes,
it is no doubt a beneficent plan, but only to favor their dispersion
at the earliest moment in private households and farmers' families
over the whole country. There is a real demand for these children.
Even infants are readily disposed of to trustworthy families ready
to adopt them. Girls specially are wanted to rear as domestic
helpers. Boys are, without trouble, placed in farmer's families,
if they have not been picked up in the streets, or have not been
trained to vice by bad companionship in crime, whether in public
Refuges or elsewhere. Finally, we may sum up our conclusions in the following manner: 1. The number of totally disabled men dependent on the public
care in Asylums or Soldiers' Homes is small, and calls for less
of the public attention than it already receives. The number of
Soldiers' Homes at present existing, or with means for starting,
is totally adequate to the demand. Every new one projected will
be of doubtful utility. 2. The worst suffering consequent upon the war, is in the families
of soldiers that make no appeal for special protection; but who,
from having a disabled head, or from the want of any, being widows
and orphans, are smitten, in thousands of cases, with a poverty
and desolation they never knew before. Town, county, and State
relief does something for this class. But the pension system is
their true resource, and pensions ought to be paid promptly and
doubled in amount. 3. An extra provision for soldiers' families, for the present
winter and spring, should be made by Congress, additional to everything
allowed for pensions, and not less than $5,000,000 in amount. All of which is respectfully submitted to the Committee by their
obedient servant, HENRY W. BELLOWS, Chairman. PETER HALL: The work of the Sanitary Commission had an extraordinary
impact on American philanthropy at every level. Recognizing that
it was the "first modern war," foreigners had observed the struggle
with keen interest -- understanding that the Union's medical and
public health initiatives were at least as important as its military
and technological achievements. Although the Commission had drawn
on European examples, especially the work of the British Sanitary
Commission in the Crimean War, it had gone beyond them. And the
example set by the Commission and the 1866 establishment of the
American Association for the Relief of Misery on the Battlefield
by Commission veterans planted the seed for what eventually became
the International Red Cross (Maxwell, 1956). No one has summarized the national impact of the Commission better
than George Frederickson: "Its success and the public acceptance
of its policies, its victories over the voluntarists and the individualists,
symbolized this new willingness of Americans to work in large,
impersonal organizations. . . ." The Commission "did much to teach
Americans the practical value of institutions as opposed to spontaneous
action" (111). "Much prewar philanthropy," Frederickson wrote,
"had been inspired by utopian ideals of social reform. At the
same time, however, there had been a conservative philanthropy
concerned primarily with social control. This upper class benevolence
had often taken the form of charitable work to teach social responsibility
to the potentially dangerous urban masses. While the Sanitary
Commission had followed the conservative tradition in its essential
spirit, it had suggested important changes of method. Before the
war, upper-class philanthropy had been an individual proposition;
the whims of the giver were law." In place of this, the Sanitary
Commission "instituted a board of experts between the giver and
the recipient which would decide on a 'scientific' basis" how
money could best be spent or goods distributed. The freedom and
independence of the donor were taken away by the policy of refusing
gifts earmarked for specific regiments or even armies. In addition,
the Commission encouraged a new attitude toward suffering in which
concepts "scientific philanthropy," "tough-minded 'realism,'"
and an "emphasis on discipline and efficiency" enabled the benevolent
to harden their hearts to individual suffering in order to deal
with its causes. This "highly organized and 'scientific'" -- if
non-humanitarian -- benevolence "set an important precedent for
the operation of post-war philanthropy" (112). In addition, Frederickson suggests, the work of the Commission
transformed the political role of the upper classes. The Commission
gave the conservative activists of the upper class, "who had been
outside most of the prewar reform movements, a stronger sense
that philanthropy and reform could be carried on for practical,
non-utopian, even profoundly conservative purposes." Its work
encouraged among these conservatives "greater social activity"
and gave them "an expectation that principles of order and stability,
a greater reverence for the institutions which they favored, could
be instilled in the popular mind by an aristocratic elite operating
in a private or semiofficial capacity." Although Frederickson
argues that "they began to believe that the kind of democratic
politics they detested was not the only path to power and influence"
(an awareness that patricians had in fact possessed since the
death of the Federalist Party early in the century), it can equally
well be asserted that the work of the Commission helped to reengage
such people in politics -- not electoral politics, but in the
less obtrusive but no less effective politics of lobbying, advocacy,
and opinion-making. And this in itself was, as the later emergence
of the Gilded Age reform movements suggests, just a prelude to
more direct forms of political action. THE IMPACT OF THE CIVIL WAR ON AMERICAN PHILANTHROPY AND VOLUNTARISM The Sanitary Commission dominated the philanthropic arena during
the war, but it remained only one of many benevolent initiatives.
For that reason, it is necessary to consider a broader range of
organizations and activities when attempting to assess the impact
of the war on philanthropy and voluntarism. This is especially
important because there were many problems or½ issues -- most notably,
helping the newly emancipated slaves of the South -- on which
the Commission was curiously silent. And there were other areas,
including the problems of immigrants, on which the Commission's
patrician biases were all too evident. For this reason, a volume
like Brockett's Philanthropic Results of the War in America (1864) gives a more balanced account of wartime benevolence and
its impact than either the writings of the Commission and its
partisans or those of twentieth century historians like Frederickson
who, in their eagerness to depict the Commission as the harbinger
of the modern bureaucratic order, have tended to exaggerate its
significance. |