United States Sanitary Commission - Women in The USSC

Women in The USSC

Arising from a meeting in New York City of the Women's Central Relief Association of New York, the organization was also inspired by the British Sanitary Commission of the Crimean War. The volunteers raised money ($25 million), collected donations, worked as nurses, ran kitchens in army camps, administered hospital ships, soldiers' homes, lodges, and rests for traveling or disabled soldiers, made uniforms, and organized Sanitary Fairs to support the Federal army with funds and supplies. Women that worked hard, often traveled great distances, and in other than ideal situations, included Louisa May Alcott, Almira Fales, Eliza Emily Chappell Porter, Katherine Prescott Wormeley and many others.

The Sanitary Fairs offered ways for local communities to see themselves as part of a larger nation. The first Sanitary Fair during the war occurred in Chicago from October 27 to November 7, 1863. Called the Northwestern Soldiers' Fair, it raised almost $100,000 for the war effort. It included a six-mile-long parade of militiamen, bands, political leaders, delegations from various local organizations, and a contingent of farmers, who presented carts full of their crops. The fairs generally involved large scale exhibitions, including displays of art, mechanical technology, and period rooms. These sorts of displays called upon ideas of the American past, a history that local communities held in common. Often, different communities competed with each other over their donations to the national cause. People in various cities and towns across the North contributed to the same war effort because they saw themselves as having shared fortunes in their common nation. The USSC leadership sometimes did not approve of the excitement and lavishness of the fairs. They wanted to encourage sacrifice as a component of membership in a nation. Although the fairs were one way to create a national identity which might motivate citizens to perform their duties, the commission leadership did not want the fairs to become the focus of USSC work.

The USSC worked with Union veterans after the war to secure their bounties, back pay, and apply for pensions, until it was finally disbanded in May 1866.

Henry Whitney Bellows, a Massachusetts clergyman, planned the USSC and served as its only president. According to The Wall Street Journal, "its first executive secretary was Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park." George Templeton Strong, New York lawyer and diarist, helped found the commission and served as treasurer and member of the executive committee. Also active in the association was Col. Leavitt Hunt, a New York lawyer and photographer, who wrote to President Abraham Lincoln's secretary John George Nicolay in January 1864, asking that Nicolay forward him a copy of the President's signature that Hunt's mother, the widow of Vermont congressman Jonathan Hunt, desired to attach to several casts of the President's hand to be sold to raise funds for the war effort.