Commission was first organized, though
its members and officers had but little idea of the vast influence it
was destined to exert on the labors which were before it, they wisely
resolved to make it a National affair, and accordingly selected some of
their corporate members from the large cities of the West. The Honorable
Mark Skinner, and subsequently E. B. McCagg, Esq., and E. W. Blatchford,
were chosen as the associate members of the Commission for Chicago. The
Commission expected much from the Northwest, both from its earnest
patriotism, and its large-handed liberality. Its selection of associates
was eminently judicious, and these very soon after their election,
undertook the establishment of a branch Commission for collecting and
forwarding supplies, and more effectively organizing the liberality of
the Northwest, that its rills and streams of beneficence, concentrated
in the great city of the Lakes, might flow thence in a mighty stream to
the armies of the West. Public meetings were held, a branch of the
United States Sanitary Commission with its rooms, its auxiliaries and
its machinery of collection and distribution put in operation, and the
office management at first entrusted to that devoted and faithful worker
in the Sanitary cause, Mrs. Eliza Porter. The work grew in extent as
active operations were undertaken in our armies, and early in 1862, the
associates finding Mrs. Porter desirous of joining her husband in
ministrations of mercy at the front, entrusted the charge of the active
labors of the Commission, its correspondence, the organization of
auxiliary aid societies, the issuing of appeals for money and supplies,
the forwarding of stores, the employment and location of women nurses,
and the other multifarious duties of so extensive an institution, to two
ladies of Chicago, ladies who had both given practical evidence of their
patriotism and activity in the cause,--Mrs. A. H. Hoge and Mrs. M. A.
Livermore. The selection was wisely made. No more earnest workers were
found in any department of the Sanitary Commission's field, and their
eloquence of pen and voice, the magnetism of their personal presence,
their terse and vigorously written circulars appealing for general or
special supplies, their projection and management of two great sanitary
fairs, and their unwearied efforts to save the western armies from the
fearful perils of scurvy, entitle them to especial prominence in our
record of noble and patriot