But the spirit of helpfulness was not confined to special organizations; it seemed quite universal. Separate households planned and carried out benevolent enterprises to aid soldiers in the camps around the city. These soldiers were generally intelligent; many of them were from our academies and colleges. They were always glad to get good papers and magazines. In many households all such reading matter was carefully saved for them. At times when regiments of soldiers marched by our doors it was handed to them. They received it with avidity and often answered the attention bestowed upon them with hearty cheers. But the distinctive classes of the needy gave rise to specialization on their behalf. Some expended their energies in helping white refugees, others in caring for the freedmen; the efforts of the latter resulted in the organization of the Freedmen’s Relief Society, in 1863. But all lines of special effort were generously aided by the Sanitary Commission. It was the central, controlling energy, and directed by it, the multiplied benevolent agencies worked in perfect harmony. They simply divided the labor that it might be more thoroughly done. The work was one, and behind all its multifarious details there was one spirit and one purpose. But, however tempting the subject may be, I must not undertake to write even an outline history of the Western Sanitary Commission. This would require a volume, and it would embrace much that does not distinctively belong to our city. And yet we all bore some humble part in its magnificent work, and that work was all wrought before our eyes. But the country at large contributed to it, and the Federal government supported it with a liberal hand. In illustration of this take a single example. In opening the Home for the Refugees, the Commission expended three thousand dollars, the general government two thousand dollars. This is a fair specimen of the whole. All the generals of the Western Department heartily sustained it. So did the Secretary of War, and also Grant and Sherman.