Every hour saw boxes arriving at the crowded rooms of the Chicago branch, where the total force of workers was four. Supplies were unpacked, assorted, repacked, one kind in a box, and sent to Washington or Louisville, the gates to the South. A high standard Mrs. Livermore set for her aid societies--one box of hospital supplies every month, and this standard she upheld throughout the war. Such a rigid system was insisted on, in receiving and distributing their stores, that a very insignificant fraction was lost, the vouchers taken at every stage making it possible to trace them back to the original contributors. Her first actual war experience was after the victory at Donelson. There was a cold rain during the first day’s fighting which changed to sleet and snow with a bleak wind. There were no tents. The men bivouacked in the snow. Hundreds of them who fell were frozen to the ground and had to be dug out. The hospitals were not ready for such a stream of patients. There were few ambulances. In their bloody frozen uniforms wounded men were jolted over the hilly roads in springless carts, to be sent to St. Louis. Mrs. Livermore spent three weeks in the different hospitals there and in Cairo, visiting every ward, reporting careless arrangements, happy to see great improvements on her second visit. Always the men greeted her gladly, stretching out their hands to touch hers, talking freely of home and friends. A year later she was sent down the Mississippi with shipments of sanitary stores, to inspect every hospital from Cairo to Young’s Point, opposite Vicksburg. Mud and water she found everywhere, swamp fever and malaria and scurvy. One group of hopelessly sick men she offered to take north with her, and Grant made this possible by cutting the red tape of the military régime. The demand for hospital supplies increased steadily, as the army increased in numbers and in the scope of its operations. The Sanitary Commission expended fifty million dollars during the war, each battle costing about seventy-five thousand, and Gettysburg half a million. And in raising this vast sum Mrs. Livermore was one of the most efficient workers. She planned a great Sanitary Fair in Chicago, to raise twenty-five thousand dollars. The men laughed at such an impossibility. But the women went ahead. They hired fourteen of the largest halls in the city, and went into debt ten thousand dollars. They must have gone crazy, said the business men, and sent a committee to advise that the fair be given up, and adding that when they thought the money was needed they would contribute the twenty-five thousand. But the ladies thanked them courteously and continued with their plans.