To supplement the work of the federal government the Sanitary Commission was established. Mrs. Livermore was president of an aid society in Chicago which was one of the first to merge with the Commission. And from then till peace came she gave her time, her energy, her heart and mind and soul to the work of relief. She had enlisted not for three months, but for the duration of the war. With Mrs. Jane Hoge she served as organizer and executive not only for all the activities of Chicago and Illinois, but for the entire Northwest. Faithfully she worked to provide for the sick and wounded soldiers abundantly, persistently, methodically. What full and varied days she had for those four years--opening a great sewing-room in Chicago where hospital garments were made by the wives of soldiers, writing hundreds of letters with news of missing men, establishing a system of relief for their families and for refugees, giving instructions and arranging transportation for groups of nurses starting to the front, planning ways and means to raise money and supplies, writing for her husband’s journal and for other publications sketches of her “Sanitary” experiences, supervising the four thousand aid societies under the Chicago office, constantly visiting groups of ladies to help them start the work, sending out monthly bulletins to keep in close touch with these branches, appointing inspectors to report on the quality of food and water, and the sanitary arrangements in camps and hospitals, printing and distributing to the army pamphlets on preserving health in camp and emergency treatment, initiating and overseeing forty soldiers’ lodgings--free hotels for men passing back and forth separated from their regiments--helping with a pension agency, a back-pay agency, a directory of more than two hundred hospitals, sending to the battle-fields surgeons and instruments, ambulances, anesthetics, and frequently going herself to see that the things reached the men and were efficiently distributed. The work of the women of the Northwest she consecrated and organized, making them half-soldiers while she kept the soldiers half-civilian by bridging over the chasm between military and home life. She planned wisely, largely. She worked exactly, persistently. In a few months army surgeons were enthusiastic in their praise of the Sanitary Commission, where at first the whole scheme was regarded as quixotic, described as the fifth wheel of a coach, and reluctantly agreed to only because its plans could do no harm. And the people of the North accepted their larger methods and gave supplies to any hospital and any men needing them. The Commission became the great channel through which the bounty of the nation flowed to the army.