This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Chapter
47
: freedmen's aid societies and an act of congress creating a Bureau of refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands
Chapter
55
:
first
appropriation by congress for the bureau; the reconstruction Act,
March
2
,
1867
; increase of educational work
Chapter
60
: opposition to Bureau and reconstruction work became personal; the
Congregational Church of
Washington
Chapter
62
: life in
Washington, D. C.
,
1866
to
1874
; assigned to duty in regular army as commander,
Department of the Columbia
Chapter
63
: in the
Northwest
, among the
Indians
; trip to
Alaska
; life in
Portland, Ore.
;
1874
to
1881
Chapter
64
: superintendent of the
United States military Academy
; commanding
Department of the Platte
,
Omaha, Neb.
Chapter
68
:
French
army maneuvers,
1884
; promotion to
Major General
,
United States army
,
San Francisco
1886
-
88
[352] On April 4th General Eliphalet Whittlesey, then the inspector general of the Bureau and recently brought from North Carolina, was appointed to superintend the distribution of the supplies. All the clerical force which he might require was placed at his service. The assistant commissioners in the States concerned were notified of this appointment and each was ordered to assign a faithful and efficient officer to act in this relief work as a commissary for his State. This officer was in this matter over the local agents, who receipted in bulk for all the supplies distributed to the needy; they made all proper returns and vouchers, as was done in the army subsistence department. No fund was ever better regulated, and the reports of General Whittlesey were so neat and clear that accounting officers highly complimented them. Whittlesey closed his able reports made near the end of the year 1867, in a condensed paragraph: “The whole expense incurred in giving this relief has been $445,993.36, i. e., about $8 to each person for the period of four months, or $2 per month. There remain on hand some commissary stores, which are reserved for the most destitute who will require help during the coming winter.” Little evidence of deception or fraud was found anywhere in the vast field supplied, and showed that for the most part the relief, small as it was, was timely and effective. As the incoming corn crop in the South and West was good, the relief, after the middle of August, was discontinued. The amount given to an individual appears very small; but there was an indirect additional supply through our associate benevolent societies. I have credited them in school aid with about one half. In this relief for the famine also, they
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