HIS COMFORT, NOT HERS; HIS LIFE, NOT HERS
In the winter of 1863–64 Clara Barton lived for a time in an old plantation house on Chapin’s farm, in Virginia. Chapin’s farm was not far from the field hospital. In the hospital were the sick and wounded; her services there were greatly needed. An ambulance was sent as a detail to bring her to the hospital. The soldier-messenger arrived at the house, and called for her. It was in the midst of a snow storm, the thermometer indicator hovering around zero. “Wait a minute,” she said; “tie your horses and come in. Have you had any dinner?” “No marm,” he replied. The soldier sat down to a dinner of cold meat, hot biscuit, cake and cocoa,—a refreshing change from “hardtack” and “salt hash,” the daily rations of the soldier.
While the soldier-messenger was eating his meal she had been thinking. “The soldier has generally no part nor voice in creating the war in which he fights. He simply obeys, as he must, his superiors and the laws of his country.” The soldier is under orders, but he is under my orders now. It’s bitter cold and, while I can ride comfortably on the inside of the ambulance, he must ride outside on the seat in the snow. She considered his comfort, not her own; his life, not hers. She ordered him to put his horses in the barn and care for them. She made him her guest, standing sponsor for him at military headquarters—awaiting a pleasant day for the trip. In soliloquizing on her conduct she said: “God forbid that I should ask the useless exposure of one man, the desolation of one home.”