Civil War and Reconstruction
During the Civil War Howe was one of the directors of the Sanitary Commission. The goal of the Sanitary Commission was to improve hygiene standards and prevent outbreaks of disease at Union Camps, which were breeding grounds for illnesses like dysentery, typhoid and malaria.
At the close of the Civil War, Dr. Howe entered into the work of the Freedmen's Bureau. His work with the Freemen’s Bureau served as an extension of his work as an abolitionist. It was the job of the Freedmen’s Bureau to help house, feed, clothe, educate and provide medical care to newly freed slaves in the South after the Civil War. In some instances it would also attempt to aid Freedmen, as the emancipated slaves were then called, locate and reunite with relatives who had either fled north or who had been sold away during slavery.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Gridley Howe
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“All war represents a failure of diplomacy.”
—Tony Benn (b. 1925)