MINNESOTA.
St. James, Minn., May 31, 1909.
Mr. Ernest P. Bicknell,
Of the American National Red Cross, Washington, D. C.
Sir: I got your address from clipping herewith from our Minneapolis Journal. I write for a copy of the last report of your organization.
I am, so far as I know, the sole survivor of the original “Auxiliary Relief Corps” of the U. S. Sanitary Commission, a corps organized by the commission in the winter of 1863-64, and taking the field with Grant’s movement on Lee, May, 1864, its first entry into the personal relief work.
In January, 1865, I put the Geneva Cross, now the Red Cross, on our corps of some fifty young men attached to the base hospitals of the armies of the Potomac and the James, its first display upon any organized body of men on any field in the world. The “San. Com.” had already been sufferers from lack of this protective emblem of neutrality.
Such reports, etc., as may give me a notion of the present condition of this now assured success, the Red Cross of America, I shall be grateful for.
I am, sir,
ANSON M. SPERRY.