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)
“...I was confronted with a virile idealism, an awareness of what man must have for manliness, dignity, and inner liberty which, by contrast, made me see how easy living had made my own group into childishly unthinking people. The Negro’s struggles and despairs have been like fertilizer in the fields of his humanity, while we, like protected children with all our basic needs supplied, have given our attention to superficialities.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 19 (1962)
“There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)