sanitary commission.
                  ...  l-j£___

APPEAL OF THE EXECUTIVE FINANCE COMMITTEE
            IN THE CITY OF NEW YOEK.

To our Fellow-C'dlzens :
          The Committee,  addressed in the preceding letter
from Dr. Bellows,  the  President of  the Sanitary Commission,
earnestly entreat your immediate and hearty  co-operation in
the noble  undertaking it so  ably advocates.
  Never before, in the  history of  human benevolence,  did
a  gracious Providence vouchsafe an  opportunity  for doing
good on such a scale; to  so great a number; in so  short a
time ; and with comparatively so little money.   Of  the im-
mense array of three hundred thousand men now in arms in
our defence,—to be swelled, if necessary, to five hundred thou-
sand,—the  experienced military and medical members of the
Sanitary Commission declare that one-fifth, if  not one-fourth,
may be saved by  proper  care, who must otherwise  perish.
Reducing  the  results of individual action to a form still more
precise,  they estimate that every dollar,  honestly  and judi-
ciously expended in sanitary measure, will save  at least  one
soldier's life.
  Cannot a  city like ours,  find forty or fifty, or even sixty
thousand dollars, to  save a  like number of the sons, the bro-
thers, the  friends, the fellow-countrymen now  gone to battle
for the very purpose of rebuilding  its  own broken fortunes,
of restoring, in fullest measure, its former prosperity ?
  Fellow-citizens: We cannot afford  that any one of our brave
defenders shall needlessly perish.  All our  interests, commer-
cial,  fiscal,  political  and  moral, are crying  aloud for a speedy 
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termination of this great national conflict.  In such a struggle,
it is madness  to waste a single  hour, still more  a  single life.
Most  of all, should we avoid the ruinous delay of slowly re-
placing in the wasted camp, the tens of  thousands which our
neglect may thoughtlessly leave to die, almost within our sight.
  Men and women of New York ! We beg you to awake to in-
stant  action.   Death  is already in  the breeze.  Disease, in-
sidious and inevitable, is now stealing  through the  camps, on
scorching plain, in  midnight damp, menacing our dearest treas-
ure—the very flower of the nation's youth.  You  surely will
not permit  them thus ingloriously to perish.  In the name of
humanity  and patriotism—in the name  alike  of justice and
manly generosity, bidding  us  save them who stake their lives
in saving us—in the name of the honored ancestors,  who fought
for the land we live in—in the name of  the Blessed  Being, the
friend on earth of the sick  and the suffering:, we now commit
this holy cause to your willing hearts, your helping bands ;
with our earnest assurance  that,  whatever you  do will be
doubly welcome, if done at once.
                    Samuel  B. Rugglks,
                    Christopher  R. Robert,
                    Robert B. Minturn,
                    George  Opdykk,
                    Jonathan  Stdrgks,
                    Morris Ketchum,
                    William A.  Booth,
                    David Hoadley,
                    J. P. Giraud Foster,
                    Charles E. Strong,
                          Members of the Executive  Com-
                            mittee of t'.ie Central Financial
                            Committee U. S.  Sanitary As-
                            sociation.
  New  York, July 13,1861. 
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   Contributions  may be sent to any member of this Committee,
at his place of business, or to their Treasurer, George S.  Coe,
Esq., of the American Exchange  Bank, cor. Broadway and
Ce<lar street.

   Wec/rfy  reports  are  made to the Committee  by  George T.
Strong, Esq, {a Member and the  Treasurer of the  Sanitary
Commission,)  of all its  engagements,  expenditures  and  ap-
pointments.
 Letter  of the  President to the Executive Committee of the
         Central Financial Committee, in New York.

                              New York, July 9th,  ISO 1.

To Hon. Samuel B. Ruggles,  Christopher R. Robert, Robert
  B.  Minturn,  George  Opdyke, Jonathan Stukges, Morris
  Ketciium, Wiiliam A.  Booth, David Hoadley, J. P. Giraud
  Foster, and Charles E. Strong,
                        Members of the Executive Committee
                         of the Central Financial Committee
                         of the U. S. Sanitary Commission :

  Gentlemen,—On returning  from a tour of inspection of our
troops in the West, I bear with  the liveliest  satisfaction  that
the thoughtful, business  men  of New York, associated with
other  patriotic individuals throughout the country, have taken
in hand  the pecuniary interests of " The Sanitary Commission,"
and are  devising ways and means of supplying it with money,
the true and only means  of strength and efficiency.  Could I
transfer  to your  hearts and  minds  the rich experience of the
last fortnight passed in the camps of the West, you would need
nothing  further to  animate you to the most earnest, immediate 
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and unwearied efforts, to provide our Commission with money—
the only thing it now lacks  to  give it a benignant power to
diminish and control the malignant influences that bang darkly
round our troops, and threaten to make out of the most precious
portion of our whole  population another " noble  Army of
Martyrs!"  Money ! money! promptly  and liberally expended
in supplying our  officers and men with the instructions, the
warnings  and the  aids, which their inexperienced and  unfur-
nished condition  demands, and which  only an association like
our own—of an extraordinary character, unhampered by rou-
tine and  with special  rights and privileges granted  by the
government, with  express reference to the exigencies of this
exceptional case—can hope to impart, with promptness enough
to secure the end.
  Money is the indispensible condition  of our success, and the
only one now wanting.
  Consider the prospects of 250,000 troops, chiefly volunteers,
gathered  not only from the out-door, but  still more from the
in-door Occupations of life : farmers, clerks, students, mechan-
ics, lawyers, doctors, accustomed, for the most part, to regular-
ity of life, and  those  comforts of home which, above  any
recorded experience, bless our own prosperous land and benig-
nant institutions ;  consider those  men,  used to the tender pro-
vidence of mothers,  wives  and  sisters,  to varied and well
prepared food, separate and commodious homes, moderate toil,
to careful medical supervision in all their ailments—consider
these men, many  of them not  yet hardened into the bone of
rugged manhood, suddenly precipitated by unexpected  events
into the field of war, at the very  season  of the greatest heat,
transferred to climates  to which they are unwonted, driven to
the use of food and water to which they are not accustomed,
living in  crowded  barracks and  tents, sleeping  on the bare
earth, broken of rest,  called on  to bear  arms six and eight 
5
 hours a-day, to make rapid  marches over rough  roads in July
 and August, wearing their thick  uniforms and carrying heavy
 knapsacks on their backs—and what can  be looked for, but
 men falling by the dozen in the ranks  from sheer exhaustion,
 hundreds prostrated with relaxing disorders, and finally, thou-
 sands suddenly swept off by camp diseases,  the result of irregu-
 larity of life, exposure, filth, beat, and inability to  take care of
 themselves under such  novel conditions.   If you add the  re-
 flection that the brave and worthy officers who command these
 men, are, from the very nature  of  the case, wholly inexperi-
 enced  in  camp-life, that they are usually no more than the
 social equals of those they  are set over, that the excellent  and
 devoted medical  men selected to watch  over our volunteers are
 equally unaccustomed to the field and to  the  military hospital,
 that their commissaries  and quarter masters  have been sum-
 moned from civil life, and that our whole military  array, with
 so small an exception as not to be worth noting, is  the product
 of a rare necessity, extemporised almost as  miraculously as the
 armed men that sprang from the teeth that Cadmus sowed, you
 will at once feel how inevitable must be  the  defects, the fric-
 tion, the  mistakes, the  delays, the  dreadful  consequences to
 health and life attending the very collection and existence of
 such a body of  troops, so officered and so provided for.
  Can anything but the energetic interposition  of a body of
 persons devoting themselves to the  special  work of furnishing
 condensed  experience to officers and  men, diligently  attending
 the camps, bringing instantly to head quarters the warnings of
 scientific and practical instruction, relieving surgeons, commis-
 saries and quarter-masters of their embarrassing want of knowl-
 edge how, in the  shortest manner, to relieve their official neces-
sities, establishing a quick connection between the  volunteers
starting under State patronage, and sadly  tried  to  understand
how their  relations are  changed upon passing under United 
6
States  control,  and the General Government,  who can  alone
relieve their wants.
  My recent experience in the West  has confirmed  all my ex-
pectations of the feasibleness of such a service, and  removed
every doubt which others had raised, in regard to the cheerful
acceptance on  the  part of officers  and surgeons, of this extra-
ordinary intervention.  I went, in some little anxiety, as to the
welcome I might receive as the envoy of that mixed body,
scientific, medical, military, and civil, the Sanitary Commission.
But I found my way prepared before me.  Tidings of the ap-
pointment of the commission bad already spread far and wide.
Orders  for our cordial reception  had  providently gone forth
from the War  Department.   From the highest to  the  lowest
officials, the most generous courtesy, the most willing co-opera-
tion, the most grateful sympathy, flowed without any interrup-
tion from  a jealous etiquette, or an  imperilled dignity.  The
officers of the Regular  Army were just as kind and cordial as
those of the Volunteers, and  I am  now sure that  none of the
difficulties anticipated from a conflict  of powers, are at all likely
to arise with a reasonable discretion on  our part.   Indeed, no
averted eye, or  cold shoulder, either from a medical or military
official, chilled my heart, in  a visit extended to 20,000 troops,
to twenty hospitals, to hundreds of medical gentlemen, and yet,
I spared no warning, no remonstrance, no earnest  words of en-
treaty, made necessary by what I found defective in the Camp-
police, the Hospital arrangements,  the inexperience of officers.
Plain,  honest, earnest, direct words, kindly and sympathizingly
spoken, were the  only weapons found  necessary,  besides the
governmental authority to utter them.  This was indispensible,
and it  was  a great boon to possess it.
  I cannot here spread out the ample  details  which I proceed
to Washington  this evening to lay before the Sanitary Commis-
sion and the Government, as materials towards a correct judo-- 
7
ment and immediate action.  The general impression, however,
which  m}' visit  to  Camp  Dennison, near Cincinnati,  Camp
McClellan, at  Cairo, Camp Pope, at  Alton, and other smaller
collections  of  Western troops made upon me, I do  earnestly
desire at once  to communicate.
   A nobler, manlier, a more intelligent, earnest, and valuable
body  of troops  was never  gathered on the earth's surface,
than the £0,000  men I saw in these camps!   They are fully
equal to the best of our  Eastern troops  in clothing and  equip-
ments, and better than that, their  equals in moral force,  and
directness and seriousness of purpose.  I have visited them
in their tents and  barracks,  hastily of course;  seen them
in the  ranks, witnessed  their evolutions,  and marked  their
drill;  messed with  the  men and with  their officers;  con-
versed freely  with hundreds in the  hospitals, which now, all
told, hold perhaps near a thousand  of the 20,000, who are more
or less seriously  ill;—but  sick or well, in camp or on  parade, I
have seen only one spirit—a profound love of country, a solemn
sense of the necessity of this war,  a willingness to die in de-
fence of the sacred interests at stake,  with a most assured sense
that God was  behind and  victory before  them !  Since the ear-
liest and best  days  of the War of the  Reformation, no such
spirit has stirred soldiers in the field, as  that which now anim-
ates our troops.  Nor were so many  priceless lives ever so freely
offered for an  end so devotedly held to be worth all it can cost.
The perils of the actual battlefield  are nothing  to  such men ;
the injury their  open enemies can  do them, almost  not worth
thinking of;—but will malaria, fever, pestilence—irrational and
viewless enemies—be  as  little dangerous'?  No! It is  before
these inglorious  but deadly foes, that our brave boys will flinch,
before their unseen weapons that they will fall! Their generous
and self-devoted  officers   are  likely  to  be  the  first  to  suffer.
They share the hardships, they more than share the labor and 
s
exposure of their commands.  They have the best purposes.
But they know not yet how to control  the diet, the  personal
habits, the ventilation and  police of their quarters and camps.
They are studying war tactics,  intent on  making soldiers ;  they
rashly assume that intelligent men know how to take care of
themselves ; and they are already finding camp-dysentery seiz-
ing their regiments with a most threatening grasp.  The  most
striking difference is  already apparent in camps and troops, ac-
cording as attention is given or denied, to  the  character of the
water used, the situation of the camp with reference to the pre-
vailing winds, and to the regulation of sinks and the cleansing
of tents  and quarters.   Two regiments, separated  by a quarter
of a mile only, contained, in one  camp not a dozen  sick men ;
in the other, 250 men more or less ill with dysenteric diarrhoea,
and all because one was on a plain with decent well-water at
at hand, the other in  a  wood, with a wretched  puddle  of black
ditch-water as the only resource  for drinking and cooking ! Do
you ask, will medical  men and  officers, too, stand with folded
arms and see this go  on without immediate and energetic re-
monstrance and action 1  They will,  I reply, under some  pro-
vision of military etiquette, or some governmental  obstacle—
which it requires the  boldness and decision of a  power in con-
fidential relations with  the War Department, to put aside.  We
possess this power.
  But, gentlemen, I must spare you and the public and myself
any further details.  I am  confident I have said enough to stim-
ulate your utmost energies in supplying us with  the means of
immediately sending efficient men, experts in sanitary matters,
into every camp  and  fortress, and of keeping them there under
our direction, and fortified with  all the  authority of our Com-
mission, to warn, instruct  and befriend  our  officers and  men,
cooperating with the  noble physicians who have  so largely vol-
unteered in this war,  in preventing all the disease that can be 
9
prevented by sanitary science, and in assuaging and mitigating
all that must inevitably  visit  our  troops.   You, with the re- •
sponse which the public will give  your honored names, must
place us in a position of moral independence, by enabling us
to dispense with all pecuniary support  from the Government.
The Government has given us  what is  far more important, its
sanction, and its  authority.  We  seek, from  sources  that you
command, the material aid,  which at your hands  we can re-
ceive without loss of moral power and position with the country
and the army.  Thanking you in  advance  in the name of the
army, the Government and the Commission, for any labors and
sacrifices you may make in our behalf,
             I remain, gentlemen,
                Your obliged friend and servant,
                                Henry  W. Bellows,
                    President of the Sanitary Commission.