"Oh, thou hast done enough," Love cried,
"For duty, fame,—enough, indeed!"
He touched his sabre, and replied,—
"It is our country's hour of need."
Back to the field, from respite brief,
Back to the battle's fiery breath,
Hurried our young high-hearted chief
To lead the charge where waited Death.
Oh, fallen in manhood's fairest noon,—
We will remember, 'mid our sighs,
He never yields his life too soon,
For country and for right who dies.
A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY.
For three years I had been a thorough believer in the United States Sanitary Commission. Reading carefully its publications, listening with tearful interest to the narrations of those who had been its immediate workers at the front, following in imagination its campaigns of love and mercy, from Antietam to Gettysburg, from Belle Plain to City Point, and thence to the very smoke and carnage of the actual battle-field, I had come to cherish an unfeigned admiration for it and its work. For three years, too, I had been an earnest laborer at one of its outposts,—striving with others ever to deepen the interest and increase the fidelity of the loyal men and women of a loyal New England town. I was prepared then, both from my hearty respect for the charity and from my general conception of the nature and vastness of its operations, to welcome every opportunity to improve my knowledge of its plans and practical workings. I therefore gladly accepted the invitation which came to me to visit the head-quarters of the Commission at Washington, and to examine for myself the character and amount of the benefits which it confers.
The evening of August 23d found me, after a speedy and pleasant trip southward, safely ensconced in the sanctum of my good friend Mr. Knapp, the head of the Special Relief Department. Starting from that base of operations, I spent two crowded weeks in ceaseless inquiries. Every avenue of information was thrown wide open. Two days I wandered, but not aimlessly, from office to office, from storehouse to storehouse, from soldiers' home to soldiers' home, conversing with the men who have given themselves up unstintedly to this charity, examining the books of the Commission, gathering statistics, seeing, as it were, the hungry soldier fed and the naked soldier clothed, and the sick and wounded soldier cared for with a more than fraternal kindness. I visited the hospitals, and with my own hands distributed the Sanitary delicacies to the suffering men. Steaming down the Chesapeake, and up the James, and along its homeless shores, I came to City Point; was a day and a night on board the Sanitary barges, whence full streams of comfort are flowing with an unbroken current to all our diverging camps; passed a tranquil, beautiful Sabbath in that city of the sick and wounded, whose white tents look down from the bluffs upon the turbid river; rode thirteen miles out almost to the Weldon Road, then in sharp contest between our Fifth Army Corps and the Rebels; from the hills which Baldy Smith stormed in June saw the spires of Petersburg; went from tent to tent and from bedside to bedside in the field hospitals of the Fifth and Ninth Corps, where the luxuries prepared by willing hands at home were bringing life and strength to fevered lips and broken bodies. I came back with my courage re-animated, and with a more perfect faith in the ultimate triumph of the good cause. I came back with a heartier respect for our soldiers, whose patience in hardship and courage in danger are rivalled only by the heroism with which they bear the pains of sickness and wounds. I came back especially with the conviction, that, no matter how much we had contributed to the Sanitary work, we had done only that which it was our duty to do, and that, so long as we could furnish shelter for our families and food for our children, it was our plain obligation to give and to continue giving out of our riches or out of our poverty.
I have felt that in no way could I do better service than by seeking to answer for others the very questions which my fortnight with the Sanitary has answered for me. Most, no doubt, have a general conviction that the charity inaugurated by the Sanitary Commission is at once marvellous in its extent and unique in the history of war. All, perhaps, are prepared to allow that the heart which conceived such an enterprise, and the mind which organized it, and the persistent will which carried it to a successful issue, are entitled to all the praise which we can give them. Few will deny now that this and kindred associations, by decreasing the waste of war, will affect in an important degree our national fortunes. And most, indeed, know something even about the details of Sanitary work. They comprehend, at least, that through its agency many a homely comfort and many a home luxury find their way to the wards of great hospitals. They have seen, too, the Commission step forward in great emergencies, after some terrible battle, when every energy of Government was burdened and overburdened by the gigantic demands of the hour, and from its storehouses send thousands of packages, and from its offices hundreds of relief agents, to help to meet almost unprecedented exigencies.
But what people wish to know, and what, despite all that has been written, they do not know fully and definitely, is how and when and where, and through what channels and by what methods, the Commission works: precisely how the millions which have been poured into its treasury from public contributions and private benefactions have been coined into comfort for the soldier,—how the thousands and hundreds of thousands of garments which have gone forth to unknown destinations have been made warmth for his body and cheer to his soul. The whole height and depth and length and breadth of Sanitary work, what varied activities and what multiform charities are included in the great circumference of its organization,—of that not one in twenty has any adequate conception. And all about that is what everybody wishes to know. The curiosity, moreover, which dictates such queries, is a natural and laudable curiosity. Those who have given at every call, and often from scanty means, and those who have plied the needle summer and winter, early and late, have a right to put such questions. The Commission wishes to answer all proper inquiries fully and unreservedly. It would throw open its operations to the broadest sunlight. It believes that the more entirely it is known, in its successes and its failures alike, the more sure it is to be liberally sustained. To bring the humblest contributor from the most distant branch, as it were, into immediate communication with the front is a work most desirable to be done. I do not wish to glorify the Commission, nor to theorize about it, nor to discuss its relative merit as compared with that of kindred organizations,—but rather to tell just what it is doing, precisely where the money goes, and exactly what kinds of good are attempted.