XV
In the same year, and about the same time in the year, that Clara Barton first started for the battlefield her warm personal friend, Julia Ward Howe, wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
The Author.
You remember the time was Sunday, September 14th, 1862.
Clara Barton.
Society forbade women at the front. Clara Barton.
Tradition absolutely forbade a good woman to go unprotected among rough soldiers. Clara Barton.
And what does woman know about war, and because she doesn’t know anything about it she mustn’t say, or do, anything about it.
Clara Barton.
It has long been said, as to amount to an adage, that women don’t know anything about war. I wish men didn’t either. They have always known a great deal too much about it for the good of their kind. Clara Barton.
I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety—with the appalling fact that “I was only a woman” whispering in one ear; and thundering in the other the groans of suffering men dying like dogs—unfed and unclothed, for the life of every institution which had protected and educated me. Clara Barton.
When war broke over us, with an empty treasury and its distressed Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, personally trying in New York to borrow money to pay our first seventy-five thousand soldiers, I offered to do the work of any two disloyal clerks whom the office would discharge and allow the double salary to fall back into the treasury. When no legal way could be found to have my salary revert to the national treasury, I resigned and went to the field.
Clara Barton.
I could not carry a musket nor lead the men to battle; I could only serve my country by caring for, comforting, and sustaining the soldiers. Clara Barton.
I broke the shackles and went to the field. Clara Barton.
Washington, D. C., June 20, 1864.
Dr. J. M. Barnes,
Acting Surgeon General, U. S. A.,
Sir: The undersigned, Senators and Representatives of Massachusetts, desire you to extend to Miss Clara Barton of Worcester, Massachusetts, every facility in your power to visit the army at any time or place that she may desire, for the purpose of administering to the comfort of our sick and wounded soldiers. Also that such supplies and assistants, as she may require, may be furnished with transportation.
We are, very respectfully,
H. L. Dawes,
Alex. H. Rice,
D. W. Gooch,
John D. Baldwin,
Thos. D. Eliot,
Geo. S. Boutwell,
Charles Sumner,
Henry Wilson,
Jno. B. Allen,
Oakes Ames,
W. F. Washburne.