The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC), a civilian organization, sent physicians and others to inspect U.S. Army camps and hospitals during the Civil War, gathering data on camp and hospital conditions, health of the troops, and supplies needed. The USSC also gathered a wide variety of anthropological and sociological data on thousands of Union soldiers, hoping to determine "important facts relative to the moral and physical characteristics and capacities of our soldiers and of men in general." These tables recorded the skin colors ("complexions") of the soldiers and related them to other variables. Pages 202-205 of Benjamin A. Gould, Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers. New York: Arno Press, 1979. (Reprint of Vol. 2 of the 1869 Edition of the United States Sanitary Commission's Sanitary Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion, published for the commission by Hurd and Houghton, New York.)
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