Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/31

Rh York, New England, and the Northwest, were the wonders of the world in the variety and beauty of their exhibits and the vast sums realized from them. Scarcely a woman in the nation, from the girl of tender years, to the aged matron of ninety, whose trembling hands scraped lint or essayed to knit socks and mittens for "the boys in blue," but knows its work, for of it they were a part. But not a hundred of all those thousands who toiled with willing hands, and who, at every battle met anew to prepare or send off stores, knows that to one of her own sex was the formation of the Great Sanitary due.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, returning to this country from England about the time of the breaking out of the war, fresh from an acquaintance with Miss Nightingale, and tilled with her enthusiasm, at once called an informal meeting at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, where, on April 25th, 1861, the germ of the sanitary, known as the Ladies' Central Relief, was inaugurated. A public meeting was held April 26, 1861, at the Cooper Union, its object being to concentrate scattered efforts by a large and formal organization. The society then received the name of the "Woman's Central Relief Association of New York." Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler was chosen its president. She soon sent out an appeal to women which brought New York into direct connection with many other portions of the country, enabling it "to report its monthly disbursements by tens of thousands, and the sum total of its income by millions." But very soon after its organization, Miss Schuyler saw the need of more positive connection with the Government. A united address was sent to the Secretary of War from the Woman's Central Relief Association, the Advisory Committee of the Board of Physicians and Surgeons of the hospitals of New York, and the New York