The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was a private relief
agency created by federal legislation on June 18, 1861, to support
sick and wounded soldiers of the United States Army (Federal /
Northern / Union Army) during the American Civil War.[a] It operated
across the North, raised an estimated $25 million in Civil War era
revenue (assuming 1865 dollars, $417.55 million in 2020) and in-kind
contributions to support the cause, and enlisted thousands of
volunteers. The president was Henry Whitney Bellows, and Frederick Law
Olmsted acted as executive secretary. It was modeled on the British
Sanitary Commission, set up during the Crimean War (1853-1856), and
from the British parliamentary report published after the Indian
Rebellion of 1857 ("Sepoy Rebellion").[b]Henry Whitney Bellows,
(1814-1882), a Massachusetts clergyman, planned the USSC and served as
its only president.[c] According to The Wall Street Journal, "its
first executive secretary was Frederick Law Olmsted, (1822-1903), the
famed landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park".
George Templeton Strong, (1820-1875), New York lawyer and diarist,
helped found the commission and served as treasurer and member of the
executive committee.In June 1861, the Sanitary Commission set up its
central office inside the United States Treasury Building, just east
of the Executive Mansion (now the White House), on Pennsylvania Avenue
and 15th Street in central Washington, D.C. By late October 1861, the
USSC Central Office and the U.S. War Department had received detailed
studies and reports from the Sanitary Inspectors of more than four
hundred regimental camp inspections. The rapidly crowded events of
those first six months of the war displayed the sheer gravity of the
situation in which the adjustment to the means and agencies were
desperately needed to ensure a high health-rate in all those untrained
Union Army regiments.Immediately following the First Battle of Bull
Run in July 1861, the first orders and receipts submitted to the
Central Office began to arrive from the military Union Army hospitals
at Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., requesting water-beds,
small tables for writing in bed, iron wire cradles for protecting
wounded limbs, dominoes, checkerboards, Delphinium and hospital gowns
for the wounded.[d] United States Sanitary Commission Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter