and its agitation for their improvement resulted in better sanitary conditions. It gave massive assistance in battle areas by providing ambulance and hospital services, hospital cars and steamers, and medical supplies. The various sanitary commissions assisted in recruiting female nurses, who served chiefly in general hospitals in the North; opened gardens at hospitals to improve the patients' diets with fresh vegetables; provided convalescent homes for the further care of men discharged from hospitals; and established feeding stations along routes traveled by soldiers. Information on the latest methods of treatment and advances in medical science was compiled and disseminated, channels by which soldiers could communicate with their families were provided, and a hospital directory was issued to enable relatives and friends to locate hospitalized soldiers. Claims agencies in Washington and in the loyal States helped soldiers and sailors and their families in pressing claims for pensions, arrears of pay, bounties, and prize money and other claims on the Government. All these services were supported by contributions from private sources; in the latter part of the war large sums were raised by "sanitary fairs" held in many cities. William Q. Maxwell, Lincoln's Fifth Wheel; the Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission (New York, 1956); Charles J. Stille, History of the United States Sanitary Commission, Being the General Report of Its Work During the War of the Rebellion; George W. Adams, Doctors in Blue; the Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War (New York, 1952); Howard D. Kramer, "Effect of the Civil War on the Public Health Movement," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 35:449-462 (Dec. 1948); Roland G. Usher, "The Western Sanitary Commission," Mississippi Valley Historical. Association, Proceedings, 2:218234 (1908-9); Earl S. Fullbrook, "Relief Work in Iowa During the Civil War," Iowa Journal of History, 16:155274 (Apr. 1918). There are also official histories of the Philadelphia branch, of the Chicago branch by Sarah E. Henshaw, of the Western Department by J. S. Newberry, and of the Western Sanitary Commission by Jacob S. Forman. Records in Other Custody. --When terminating its activities in 1865, the U. S. Sanitary Commission directed its branches to send in their records for use in preparing an official history of the organization. Bellows held the records of the commission until they were presented in Jan. 1879 to the Astor Library, which was consolidated in 1895 with the Tilden Trust to form the New York Public Library. The records of the central office and the branches--including correspondence, reports, accounts, hospital directories, printed materials, histories, maps, and charts--were in more than a thousand books and boxes; still other boxes contained records on claims and finances. For the Washington office there are records of the medical committee, the statistical bureau, the canvass and supply department, market supply, and special inspections of Army general hospitals; there are also archives registers, a history of special relief, and condensed historical material. Records of branches and affiliated organizations include those of the New England Women's Auxiliary Association, the Boston Associates' executive committee, the California and English branches, the Philadelphia agency, the New York office and the Women's Central Relief Association of New York, and the Western Department. Battlefields, military departments, and other field agencies that are the subjects of records include the Department of the Gulf; Frederick and Sharpsburg; Annapolis and Baltimore; Army of the Potomac; Department of the Shenandoah; Department of North Carolina; and Gettysburg and Harrisburg, Pa. There are also Washington and Louisville hospital directories and records of the Army and Navy Claim Agency, the Protective War Claim Associations of New York and Philadelphia, and the American Association for the Relief of Misery on Battlefields, a successor to the Sanitary Commission. The papers of several members and officials of the comission supplement the commission's records. Papers of Henry W. Bellows and of Samuel G. Howe are in the Massachusetts Historical Society; other Howe papers are in the Harvard University Library. Papers of Alexander D. Bache are in the Library of Congress, the Henry E. Huntington Library, and the American Philosophical Society. An extensive group of papers of Frederick Law Olmsted is in the Library of Congress. Information on the administration of the commission is in the diary of George Templeton Strong, a part of which was edited by Allan Nevins and Milton H. Thomas and published in 4 volumes in 1952. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has papers of Charles J. Stille that cover the war period. In the New-York Historical Society among the papers of Alfred J. Bloor, assistant secretary of the commission from July 1861 to Sept. 1864, is a letter book, Jan. -July 1864, that concerns the work of the commission. Some papers of Dr. Lewis H. Steiner, who became an inspector in 1861 and chief inspector in 1863, are in the Maryland Historical Society. The papers of another inspector, John H. Douglas, and some materials on the District of Columbia branch are in the Library of Congress. Papers of other branches of the commission and of organizations and persons connected with it are in other depositories. Documents concerning the Buffalo branch in the Buffalo Historical Society include a hospital directory, an expense account of the soldiers' rest home at Buffalo, and other accounts for supplies and hospital stores. Records of the Cleveland branch are in the Western Reserve Historical Society. Letters and pamphlets regarding the Women's Central Association of Relief of New York are in the New-York Historical Society. Correspondence of Mrs. James P. Andrews and her aunt, Miss Kate Clark, regarding their work for the commission in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and the District of Columbia are in the Henry E. Huntington Library. Papers of William G. Eliot, organizer of the Western Sanitary Commission, are in Washington University Library, St. Louis; and among Eliot papers in the Missouri Historical Society is the order of General Fremont, Sept. 5, 1861, appointing the commission. In this society also are the minutes, Feb. 1-Aug. 5, 1864, of the Mississippi Valley sanitary fair (held at St. Louis, May 18-June 18, 1864) and the prescription book of Dr. John Green, who treated patients on the hospital ship Ella. The U. S. Sanitary Commission published many documents concerning its work. These include circulars, statements of expenditures and receipts, compilations of papers, financial reports, instructions, orders, regulations, and rules, letters, a bulletin (Nov. 1, 1863-Aug. 1, 1864), minutes of its meetings, 1861-65, and reports of committees and branches. The rec ords of the War Department (especially those of the Surgeon General and the Adjutant General) contain reports on relief and the improvement of medical facilities for the soldiers and many letters making suggestions. A photo-offset edition of the 135volume hospital directory prepared by the commission was published in 1961 by G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Mass. U. S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION The U. S. Christian Commission was organized in New York City on Nov. 15, 1861, at a meeting of the local Young Men's Christian Association, to promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of soldiers in the Union Army and sailors and marines in the Navy, in cooperation with chaplains and others. Its ministrations were confined chiefly though not entirely to volunteers. It brought together earlier private organizations for such welfare and united them in one agency to collect, receive, and distribute food, clothing, and sundries; to provide religious services for the soldiers without undue regard to particular sects; and to distribute publications, chiefly religious or moral. Its Circular No. 1, issued Nov. 16, 1861, set forth these essential objectives and sketched a proposed organization ranging from local committees of the Y. M. C. A. and other private agencies to the central offices and field workers. Although the Christian Commission soon won War Department approval it did not gain access to Army hospitals, posts, garrisons, and camps until Jan. 24, 1863. Commission delegates and agents eventually became almost a part of the armed forces, enjoying privileges of transportation and access and doing many small chores, helpful especially to the Medical Department. The evolution of the commission's functions took from Nov. 1861 to Jan. 1863, when a sizable organization was attained. At first a central office was set up, responsible to an executive committee, which in turn reported at intervals to the Christian Commission proper. A general committee of three, one member of which was the treasurer, had the major administrative function of forwarding contributions of stores. Each geographical district of the commission was also governed by a committee of three, with the same function. The Jan 1863 organization introduced the "delegate system" and the efficient distribution of quantities of stores sent from many different sources throughout the North. The central office of the commission, at Philadelphia, was then composed of the commission, which had general supervision of the work; its president, who had executive supervision; a general secretary to assist the president; and secretaries for home and field workers respectively. Below these were 5 field agents, in charge of "divisions" or "districts," some of whom had assistants; 300 unpaid "delegates" at stations within the Army; and about 60 women who volunteered their services as "members of the diet kitchen." Quasi-formal "offices" were established in the larger cities (29 at the peak) to receive contributions; "base offices" in Nashville, Louisville, and Washington; and "Army agencies" at City Point, Fortress Monroe, New Bern (N. C.), Harper's Ferry, and Richmond. The commission officially went out of existence in Jan. 1866, when its activities had almost entirely ceased. U. S. Christian Commission, Annual Reports (Philadelphia, 186366); Lemuel Moss, Annals of the Unites States Christian Commission (Philadelphia, 1868); The American Annual Cyclopædia and Register of Important Events, 4:801-803 (New Record Group 94. --Although the commission by regulations of July 22, 1864, ordered that certain field records should be kept, it seems actually to have paid little attention to recordkeeping. The central office maintained financial records, considerable correspondence, and scattered memoranda of minutes, lists of workers, and related records. Some field records found their way to the central office, but in general records seem to have been left in the hands of those who made them. Most of the commission's records in this record group appear to be records that were in the possession of the commission's chief benefactor and ex-president, George H. Stuart. In 1894 the collection was augmented when the Record and Pension Office received from Stuart's son a chest of commission records and family archives. The records that can be identified as belonging to the central office include minutes of meetings of the executive committee, 1861-65 (3 in.); press copies of letters sent, 1862-66 (15 vols.); communications received, 1862-66 (1 1/2 ft.), with registers, 1864-65, and a record of inquiries, 1864-65; annual reports of the president; and delegates' reports, 1863-65 (1 ft.). The correspondence concerns contributions of money, supplies, books, and religious tracts; authorizations for delegates and agents to visit troops; the acceptance of new members and arrangements for speakers; and other matters of administration, personnel, and transportation. Records of the individual relief department comprise letters of inquiry received (incomplete), 1864-65, concerning the whereabouts and condition of soldiers, with registers and abstracts of replies; a similar "Record of Inquiries," 1864 (1 vol.), maintained by the bureau of information at Washington; and abstracts of letters written for sick and wounded soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, 1864-65 (1 vol and additional pieces), and for soldiers at Nashville, Tenn., 1864-65 (3 vols.). The commission's records of accounts and contributions comprise invoices for articles furnished, order books, cash ledgers, petty-cash books, payment orders, invoices of money received from soldiers for forwarding, and cash accounts of various officials. Contributions are recorded in the "Receiving Books," 1862-65 (7 vols. ); and related records include a record of contributions of Ladies' Auxiliary Christian Commissions, 1864-65 (1 vol.), and a 1-volume list of such contributors. The forwarding of items to and from soldiers is documented by receipts from the Adams Express Co., 186465 (2 vols.); records of express packages received at City Point, Va., 1864 (2 vols.); a record of "money expressed," 1864-65 (2 vols. ); and other express books, 1864-65 (10 vols.). Other significant records include a record of the commission's religious activities, 1864 (1 vol. ); several photograph albums and scrapbooks; memoranda concerning contributors, auxiliary associations, publicity, and other office matters (11 vols. ); a record of publications received and sent, 186465 (6 vols.); a list of religious newspapers ordered for 1865; correspondence concerning the Record of the Federal Dead, a commission publication; and copies of other commission issuances, including Christ in the Army, Information for Army Meetings, and Instructions to Delegates (1 ft.). Records, besides those mentioned above, that are useful in identifying persons working for or cooperating with the Christian Commission include several registers of delegates and a list of delegates offering their services for general work. The collection includes also the diaries, 1862-65, of Christian Commission officials at Nelson Station and Wild's Station, Va.; with the Fifth, Ninth, and Eighteenth Army Corps; and with the Army of the Potomac. There are also a register of prisoners at Richmond, Va., 1861-64 (apparently a record of the C. S. A., written on the unused pages of an 1842 Richmond land book), and correspondence of the New England Soldiers' Relief Association, 1862-65 (20 vols.). National Archives, Preliminary Inventory [No. 17] of the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, comp. by Lucille H. Pendell and Elizabeth Bethel (Washington, 1949), p. 140147. Records in Other Custody. --In the Library of Congress are other records of the commission, 1863-68 (5 boxes), a volume of notes kept in 1865 by an unidentified field representative in the vicinity of Norfolk, Va., and other papers of George H. Stuart, including his correspondence with officers, officials, and other persons. The papers of the Rev. Joseph C. Thomas in the same custody relate to libraries established for the Army by the commission. A notebook kept by S. Hastings Grant while a member of the commission is in the New-York Historical Society. COMMISSIONERS ON EMANCIPATION IN THE Under an act of Apr. 16, 1862 (12 Stat. 376), and a supplementary act of July 12, 1862 (12 Stat. 538) "for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia," three Commissioners were appointed to examine petitions for compensation to the former owners of freed slaves in the District and to investigate and decide the claims to freedom of "persons held to service or labor within the District of Columbia by reason of African descent" for whom compensation had not been claimed by their former owners. The original Commissioners were Daniel R. Goodloe, Horatio King, and Samuel F. Vinton; they met initially at the City Hall on Apr. 28, 1862; but their labors had hardly begun before Vinton died (May 11, 1862) and was replaced by John M. Brodhead, who served from June 14, 1862. Claimants for compensation were required to file their petitions by July 15, 1862; the 966 petitions presented covered 3, 100 "persons held to service or labor," for whom compensation was claimed. The Commissioners reported favorably upon 909 petitions, rejected 36 in their entirety, and rejected 21 in part. Because there were no persons available in Washington who had "the knowledge and discrimination as to the value of slaves" necessary to "a just apportionment of compensation under law," the Commissioners consulted "an experienced dealer in slaves from Baltimore," one B. M. Campbell. Their final report to the Secretary of the Treasury, Jan. 14, 1863 (H. Exec. Doc. 42, 38 Cong., 1 sess., Serial 1189), analyzes claims difficult of decision and includes a complete list of petitions filed showing action thereon. The supplementary act of July 12, 1862, provided not only that the Commissioners would investigate claims to freedom of persons for whom no compensation had been claimed by their owners, but also that "all persons held to service or labor under the laws of any State, and who at any time since the sixteenth day of April, anno Domini eighteen hundred and sixty-two, by the consent of the person to whom such service or labor is claimed to be owing, have been actually employed within the District of Columbia, or who shall be hereafter thus employed, are hereby declared free, and forever released from such servitude, anything in the laws of the United States or of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Under these provisions, 161 petitions were presented, of which 139 were granted, and 22 rejected. The |