Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865, vol. 2

In the autumn of 1861, Miss Anna Lowell, now Mrs. Woodbury, with other Boston ladies, organized the ‘Union Hall Association of Boston,’ which was formed to give employment to the wives of the volunteer soldiers. Among the ladies interested with Miss Lowell were Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Mrs. James T. Fields. These ladies took large contracts of army clothing at the government price, and obtained contributions of money from wealthy people, which enabled them to pay good wages to the sewing-women. Over 900 women were employed by this association the first year, and more than 70,000 garments of different kinds were made in that time by these needy wives of soldiers. During the four years of the war they made 346,715 garments, mostly shirts and drawers, and the sum of $20,033.78, raised by donation, was paid as additional wages to the work-women.

Later in the war, Miss Lowell helped to organize, and personally managed, the special diet kitchen in connection with the Armory Square Hospital, in Washington. In 1865, in connection with Miss Annie Buttrick, Miss Mary Felton and Miss Annette Rogers, she organized the ‘Howard Industrial School,’ in Cambridge, Mass. This school received and provided for several hundred colored people, sent North by Gen. Charles Howard and Gen. S. C. Armstrong. This was one of the earliest industrial schools, and exerted a wide influence. Situations in Northern families were found for the colored women, while the girls and children were kept in the school and instructed to read, write, cook, sew and do household work. The school continued for three years, and stimulated the establishment of others like it, which have been enlarged and improved to meet emergencies continually arising.

One of the ten branch commissions was located at St. Louis, Mo., and was called ‘The Western Sanitary Commission.’ Its organization was the result of circumstances growing out of the war in Missouri, and the necessity for it was sudden and unexpected. The city of St. Louis had become the ‘headquarters of the military department of the west.’ During the summer of 1861 half a dozen desperately fought battles occurred in the State, within easy railroad distance of the city, and the number of killed and wounded was very great. The wounded, numbering over seven hundred, were taken to St. Louis, where they were not expected; no preparation had been made for them, and the hospital accommodations of the whole city were insufficient for them. This was but the beginning of things. Large detachments of sick and wounded men continued to arrive daily; and the care of them, with the fitting up of extemporized hospitals, improvising means of relief and subsidizing nurses and supplies, were mainly left to the loyal people of St. Louis by the acting medical director.

It was at this juncture that the Western Sanitary Commission was called into existence. The loyal people of St. Louis and the State rallied to its support, but they were unequal to the situation, generous and patriotic as they were. It became necessary for the commission to send its appeals for aid outside the geographical territory assigned it. Every loyal State answered willingly and with more or less generosity. ‘But among all the States of the Union which have given to the Western Sanitary Commission,’ wrote its secretary at the close of the war, ‘none have surpassed Massachusetts. And, though operating in a wholly western field, the western commission is free to acknowledge that its largest and most munificent contributions have come from the old Bay State. When it is remembered ’