1861

On June 13, Lincoln creates U.S. Sanitary Commission, of which Frederick Olmsted becomes Executive  Secretary (Rutkow, 66-81; Humphreys, 103-151). Initial meeting was called by Elizabeth Blackwell in NYC to create interface between women’s charity groups and Union Army sick (Humphreys, 103); through USSC, women supplied bedding, clothing, and food (fruit & vegetables).  USSC had its own system of medical supply depots with its own transportation (Humphreys, 120-126). Other USSC activities includes distribution of educational pamphlets; medical inspection of regimental camps; soldier aid stations (boarding houses) for soldiers on furlough; and hostels and hospital directory for travelers, especially to Washington, in search of loved ones (126-129). Through its paid agents, USSC aided in naming the dead (Faust, 110-111).  In fall, 1864, USSC published Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers While Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Rebel Authorities following limited prisoner exchange of spring, 1864.  But report covered up conditions in northern prison camps (248, 256-2). One explanation:  it was a campaign document intended to support Lincoln’s reelection by showing southern leadership as too evil for a negotiated peace, as advocated by Democrats and their candidate, McClellan (264). USSC became an instrument of antebellum racism by regarding race as a factor in the spread of disease; this “undermined the sanitary practices that Nightingale had promoted. . . . USSR doctors changed the direction of the early development of epidemiology as a field by resurrecting an outdated theory about racial identity as an explanation for the cause of disease.”  This began with a massive effort to catalogue the height, weight, and other characteristics of both Black and white soldiers . . . (Downs, 122-123).   The comparison of native white, foreign-born, and Black soldiers to explain varying rates of mortality and susceptibility to disease “fed into a larger discourse that used racial differences as a way to justify slavery and other forms of oppression” (123).  It “morphed into an organization that collected data aiming to reify racial difference” (124).