celebrity autograph

Here’s some evidence that 150 years ago today exiled Copperhead Clement L. Vallandigham responded to a request for support of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. In lauding the commission’s work Mr. Vallandigham did a pretty thorough job cataloging the horrors or war in general and the American Civil War in particular.

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in 1863:

Letter from Mr. Vallandigham.

WINDSOR, C.W., Dec. 18, 1863.

Geo. McLaughlin, Esq., Cincinnati, O.

SIR: – Yours of the 11th, requesting from me an autograph letter for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission, has been received, and I cheerfully comply.

I support the troops

The object of the Commission is one of mercy. It is a charity truly Christian to visit the sick, to heal the wounded, to minister to the maimed, to comfort the afflicted, to relieve the prisoner, to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to give drink to them who are athirst, to cheer the widow and the fatherless, to save human life, to save human life, to alleviate human suffering, and thus to restore some part of that which war always so largely subtracts from the sum of human happiness. That all this is to be wrought on the behalf of those or the families of those who brave wounds and death with heroic courage on the many battle-fields of this most sorrowful of wars, gives but still more of value to the merciful purpose. – the Commission, if justly, fairly, with integrity and without partiality, it shall perform its pious duties, will prove itself worthy of the noble praise bestowed by Burke upon the benevolent Howard.

Very truly, C.L. VALLANDIGHAM

And it wasn’t just famous opponents of the war. A member of the United States Sanitary Commission requested President Lincoln’s signatures:

Also active in the association was Col. Leavitt Hunt, a New York lawyer and photographer. In January 1864, he wrote to President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary John George Nicolay asking that Nicolay forward him any documents he might have available with the President’s signature. Hunt’s mother, the widow of Vermont congressman Jonathan Hunt, planned to attach Lincoln’s signature to copies of several casts of the President’s hand, to be sold to raise funds for the war effort.

Sanitary Fairs were also held to raise funds for the commission.