By the end of the year the fact is revealed that the members had raised, by voluntary subscription, in the village of Port Chester, the sum of $3289.25, and had expended, for relief, $3215.57, almost of all which was given in sums of from three to six or seven dollars per week. During the early months of 1862 the amounts contributed for the relief increased notably, and especially do the names of the donors increase in number, every member of the conunittee seeming to have been hard at work, while other people were inspired by them to " go and do likewise," so that the balance never fell below a hundred dollars, and was generally nearer two hundred.

THE CIVIL WAR, 1860-65.

in spite of increasing appeals for help. At the close of the " voluntary period," as it may be called, when the system of helping the families of volunteers gave way to the juster and more practical method of relief by town and county bonds, the record shows that there had been raised, in Port Chester, $4403.75, of which the balance remaining on hand, when the first bonds were received, wa-s $218.53 -- a result that shows, even at the present day, when the paper is yellow with age, the ink faded and brown, that the hearts of the people of Port Chester, in the persons of their relief committee, were in the right place during the war.

But the time had come when this system of relief was to give way to another. On the 1st of September, 1862, came the first town bonds, into the hands of the committee, and with them, alas! the first token of that " bounty system," which was to do more to degrade the name of the American soldier than anything that occurred in the whole course of the war.