Lincoln's Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission
New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956. First Edition/Camp and Field Edition for Civil War Book Club. Hardcover. xii, Preface by Allan Nevins. Biographical Notes. Sources. Bibliography. Index. Autographed on Camp and Field Edition. Item has some wear and soiling. William Quentin Maxwell was a 1951 Guggenheim Fellow in Humanities. 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. It operated across the North, raised an estimated $25 million in Civil War era revenue (assuming 1865 dollars, $399.67 million in 2018) 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 Mutiny of 1857. In June 1861, the Sanitary Commission set up its central office inside the United States Treasury Building in 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 events of those first six months of the war displayed the 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. Derived from a Kirkus Review: this is not a pretty tale, for it is a record of an undertaking to supply the ghastly inadequacies for all phases of sanitary matters in the war. One would have thought the Commission's existence would be welcomed. Instead it became the football of political maneuverings and against amazing odds performed near miracles. An exciting rescue of records that needed to be saved. Condition: Good.
Keywords: United States Sanitary Commission, Ambulance Corps, Army Hospitals, Military Medicine, Nurses, USSC, Elisha Harris, Medical Bureau, Frederick Law Olmsted, Edwin Stanton, Henry Bellows, George Strong, William Van Buren
[Book #74827]
Price: $75.00