The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross (Vol. 1 of 2)

by William E. Barton

IN THE YEAR 1864

Clara Barton returned from Port Royal and Hilton Head sometime in January, 1864. On January 28 she was in Worcester, whence she addressed a letter to Colonel Clark in regard to the forthcoming reunion of veterans in Worcester. She did not expect to be present, as her stay in Massachusetts was to be brief.

On Sunday, February 14, she was in Brooklyn, and, as usual, went to hear Henry Ward Beecher. He preached on “Unwritten Heroism,” and related some heroic incidents in the life of an Irish servant girl who, all unknown to fame, was still a heroine. Clara meditated on the sermon and regretted that she herself was not more heroic.

Before many days she was in Washington. It was rainy and cold. She found very little that was inspiring. Her room was cheerless, though she does not say so, but the little touches which she gave to it, as recorded, show how bare and comfortless it must have been. Her salary at the Patent Office continued, but it now becomes apparent that the arrangement whereby the other women in the Patent Office were to do her work had not continued indefinitely. She was hiring a partially disabled man to do her writing and was dividing her salary with him. Out of the balance she paid the rent of her room, eighty-four dollars a year, payable a year in advance. It was not exorbitant rent considering the demand for space in Washington. But it was a cheerless place, and she did not occupy it much. Principally, it was a storehouse for her supplies, with a place partitioned off for her own bedroom. She had many callers, however, Senator Wilson coming to see her frequently, and aiding her in every possible way. More than once she gave him information which he, as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the United States Senate, utilized with far-reaching results. Sometimes she told him in the most uncompromising manner of what she regarded as abuses which she had witnessed. There were times when men seemed to her very cowardly, and the Government machinery very clumsy and ineffective. On the evening of April 13, 1864, she was fairly well disgusted with all mankind. She thus wrote her opinion of the human race, referring particularly to the masculine part of it:

I am thinking very busily about the result of the investigation into the Florida matter. Is General Seymour to be sacrificed when so many hundred people and the men know it to be all based on falsehood and wrong? Is there no manly justice in the world? Is there not one among them all that dares risk the little of military station he may possess to come out and speak the truth, and do the right? Oh, pity! O Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him!

The next day was not a cheerful day for her. She was still brooding on some of these same matters. She tried in those days to escape from these unhappy reflections by going where she would be compelled to think of something else. But not even in church could she always keep her mind off of them. She wrote at length in her diary on the morning of the 14th, and that evening, when Senator Wilson called, she told him what she thought of the United States Army, the United States Senate, and of people and things in general:

Thursday, April 14th, 1864. This was one of the most down-spirited days that ever came to me. All the world appeared selfish and treacherous. I can get no hold on a good noble sentiment anywhere. I have scanned over and over the whole moral horizon and it is all dark, the night clouds seem to have shut down, so stagnant, so dead, so selfish, so calculating. Is there no right? Are there no consequences attending wrong? How shall the world move on in all this weight of dead, morbid meanness? Shall lies prevail forevermore? Look at the state of things, both civil and military, that curse our Government. The pompous air with which little dishonest pimps lord it over their betters. Contractors ruining the Nation, and oppressing the poor, and no one rebukes them. See a monkey-faced official, not twenty rods from me, oppressing and degrading poor women who come up to his stall to feed their children, that he may steal with better grace and show to the Government how much his economy saves it each month. Poor blind Government never feels inside his pockets, pouching with ill-gotten gain, heavy with sin. His whole department know it, but it might not be quite wise for them to speak—they will tell it freely enough, but will not, dare not affirm it—COWARDS! Congress knows it, but no one can see that it will make votes for him at home by meddling with it, so it is winked at. The Cabinet know it, but people that live in glass houses must not throw stones. So it rests, and the women live lighter and sink lower, God help them. And next an ambitious, dishonest General lays a political plot to be executed with human life. He is to create a Senator, some memberships, a Governor, commissions, and all the various offices of a state, and the grateful recipients are to repay the favor by gaining for him his confirmation as Major-General. So the poor rank and file are marched out to do the job, a leader is selected known to be brave to rashness if need be, and given the command in the dark, that he may never be able to claim any portion of the glory—so that he cannot say I did it. Doomed, and he knows it, he is sent on, remonstrates, comes back and explains, is left alone with the responsibility on his shoulders, forces divided, animals starving, men suffering, enemy massing in front, and still there he is. Suddenly he is attacked, defeated as he expected he must be, and the world is shocked by the tales of his rashness and procedure contrary to orders. He cannot speak; he is a subordinate officer and must remain silent; the thousands with him know it, but they must not speak; Congress does not know it, and refuses to be informed; and the doomed one is condemned and the guilty one asks for his reward, and the admiring world claims it for him. He has had a battle and only lost two thousand men and gained nothing. Surely, this deserved something. And still the world moves on. No wonder it looks dark, though, to those who do not wear the tinsel. And so my day has been weary with these thoughts, and my heart heavy and I cannot raise it—I doubt the justice of almost all I see.

Evening. At eight Mr. Wilson called. I asked him if the investigation was closed. He replied yes, and that General Seymour would leave the Department in disgrace. This was too much for my fretted soul, and I poured out the vials of my indignation in no stinted measure. I told him the facts, and what I thought of a Committee that was too imbecile to listen to the truth when it was presented to them; that they had made themselves a laughing-stock for even the privates in the service by their stupendous inactivity and gullibility; that they were all a set of dupes, not to say knaves, for I knew Gray of New York had been on using all his blarney with them that was possible to wipe over them. When I had freed my mind, and it was some time, he looked amazed and called for a written statement. I promised it. He left. I was anxious to possess myself of the most reliable facts in existence and decide to go to New York and see Colonel Hall and Dr. Marsh again; make my toilet ready, write some letters, and at three o’clock retired.

From all of this it will appear that Clara Barton had a rather gloomy time of it after her return to Washington. Old friends called on her and she was amid pleasant surroundings, but she was ill at ease. The Army of the Potomac had failed to hold its old position north of the Rappahannock. She anticipated the same old round which she had witnessed, marching and counter-marching with ineffective fighting, great suffering, and no permanent results. Nor did she see how she was henceforth to be of much assistance. The Sanitary and Christian Commissions were doing increasingly effective work in the gathering and distribution of supplies. The hospitals were approaching what ought to have been a state of efficiency. There seemed little place for her. She went to the War Department to obtain blanket passes, permitting herself and friend to go wherever she might deem it wise to go, and to have transportation for their supplies. She could hardly ask for anything less if she were to ask for anything, but it was a larger request than Secretary Stanton was at that time ready to grant. Her attempts to secure what she deemed necessary through the Medical Department were unavailing. The Medical Department thought itself competent to manage its own affairs. But she knew that there was desperate need of the kind of service which she could render.

For a time she questioned seriously whether she should not give up the whole attempt to return to the front. She even considered the possibility of asking for her old desk at the Patent Office, and letting the doctors and nurses take care of the wounded in the way they thought best.

The national conventions were approaching. A woman in Ohio who had worked with her on the battle-field wrote asking Miss Barton for whom she intended to vote. She replied at considerable length. She intended to vote for the Republican candidate whoever he might be, because in so doing she would vote for the Union. She would not vote for McClellan nor for any other candidate nominated by his party. For three years she had been voting for Abraham Lincoln. She thought she still would vote for him; she trusted him and believed in him. But still if the Republicans should nominate Frémont, she would not withhold her approval. There was in Washington and in the army so much incompetence, so much rascality, it was possible that another President—especially one with military experience—would push the war to a speedier finish, and rout out some of the rascality she saw in Washington. She thought that Frémont might possibly have some advantage over Lincoln in this respect. But she rather hoped Lincoln would be renominated. He was so worthy, so honest, so kind, and the people could trust him. Though the abuses which had grown up under his administration were great, they were mostly inevitable. And so she rather thought she would vote for Lincoln, even in preference to the very popular hero, Frémont. Frémont had, indeed, seen, sooner than Lincoln, the necessity of abolition, and she thought would have a stronger grip on military affairs. But her heart was with Lincoln.

While she was waiting for a new call to service and was busy every day with a multitude of cares, she heard a lecture by the Reverend George Thompson, which is of interest because it enables us to discover how she now had come to feel about “Old John Brown.” It will be remembered that she had not wholly approved the John Brown raid, nor shared in the public demonstrations that followed his execution. She had come, however, to a very different feeling with regard to him. On April 6, 1864, George Thompson, the abolitionist, gave an address in Washington. The address was delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, and the President and Cabinet were among those who attended. Clara Barton was present, and close beside her in the gallery sat John Brown’s brother.

For a few days previous she had been reading “No Name,” by Wilkie Collins. She compared his style to that of Dickens with some discriminating comments on the literary work of each. But she discontinued “No Name” when near the end of it, in order to read in preparation for the lecture by George Thompson. It will be well to quote her entry in her diary for the 5th and 6th of April:

Washington, April 5th, 1864, Tuesday. Rained all day just as if it had not rained every other day for almost two weeks, and I read as steadily indoors as it rained out; am nearly through with “No Name.” Until 4 o’clock P.M. I had no disturbance, and then a most pleasant one. Mr. Brown came in to bring me letters from Mary Norton and Julia, and next to ask me to mend a little clothing, and next to present me a beautiful scrapbook designed for my own articles. It is a very beautiful article and I prize it much. Then my friend, Mr. Parker, called for a chat, and I read to him some two hours, in order to prepare his mind for George Thompson’s lecture which is to occur to-morrow night. Then a call from Senator W., and next Dr. Elliott which lasted till just now, and it is almost eleven o’clock, and I have set my fire out and apparently passed the day to little purpose; still, I think it has glided away very innocently, and with a few minutes’ preparation I shall retire with a grateful heart for the even, pleasant days which run so smoothly in my course.

Washington, April 6th, 1864, Wednesday. There are signs of clear weather, although it is by no means an established fact yet. I laid my reading aside, and took up my pen to address a letter to Mr. Wilson. I wrote at greater length than I had expected and occupied quite a portion of the day. The subject woke up the recollection of a train of ills and wrongs submitted to and borne so long that I suffered intensely in the reproduction of them, but I did reproduce, whether to any purpose or not time will reveal. It is not to be supposed that any decided revolution is to follow, as this is never to be looked for in my case. I have done expecting it, and done, I trust, with my efforts in behalf of others. I must take the little remnant of life that may remain to me as my own special property, and appropriate it accordingly. I had asked an appointment, as before referred to. I find I cannot make the use of it I had desired, and I have asked to recall the application. I have said I could not afford to make it. This was the day preceding the night of Mr. George Thompson’s lecture in the Hall of Representatives. I went early with Mr. Brown. We went into the gallery and took a front seat in a side gallery. The House commenced to fill very rapidly with one of the finest-looking audiences that could be gathered in Washington. Conspicuous among them were Mr. Chase, Governor Sprague, Senator Wilson, Governor Boutwell and lady, Speaker Colfax, Thad. Stevens, and, to cap all, the brother of “Old John Brown” came and sat with us. At eight the orator of the evening entered the Hall in the same group with President Lincoln, Vice-President Hamlin, Rev. Mr. Pierpont, and others whom I did not recognize. Preliminary remarks were made by Mr. Pierpont. Next followed Mr. Hamlin, who introduced Mr. Thompson, who arose under so severe emotions that he could scarce utter a word. It seemed for a time that he would fall before the audience he had come to address. The contrast was evidently too great to be contemplated with composure; his sensitive mind reverted doubtless to his previous visits to this country, when he had seen himself hung and burnt in effigy, been mobbed, stoned, and assailed with “filthy missiles,” and now he stood, almost deafened with applause, in the Hall of Representatives of America, America “free” from the shackles of slavery, and to address the President, and great political heads of the Nation. No wonder he was overcome, no wonder that the air felt thick, and his words came feebly, and his body bent beneath the weight of the contrast, the glorious consummation of all he had so earnestly labored and so devoutly prayed for. But by degrees his strength returned, and the rich melody of his voice filled every inch of the vast hall, and delighted every loyal, truth-loving ear. It would be useless for me to attempt a description of his address—it is so far immortal as to be always found, I trust, among the records of the glorious doings and sayings of our country’s supporters. His endorsement of the President was one of the most touching and sublime things I have ever heard uttered, and the messages from England to him breathed a spirit of friendship which I was not prepared to listen to. Surely we are not to growl at and complain of England as jealous and hostile when her working-people, deprived of their daily labor and the support of their families through our difficulties, bid us Godspeed, and never to yield till our purpose has been accomplished, and congratulate us upon having achieved our independence in the War of the Revolution, and ask us now to go on and achieve a still greater independence, which shall embrace the whole civilized world. Surely these words show a nobler spirit in England than we had any reason or real right to expect. His remarks touching John Brown were strong, and, sitting as I was, watching the immediate effect upon the brother at my side, and when in a few minutes the band struck up the familiar air dedicated to him the world over, I truly felt that John Brown’s Soul was marching on, and that the mouldering in the grave was of little account; the brother evidently felt the same. There was a glistening of the eye and a compression of the lip which spoke it all and more; he was evidently proud of the gallows rope that hung Old John Brown, “Old Hero Brown!”

On leaving the Hall, Mr. Parker joined us, and we all took a cream at Simmod’s and returned, and I made good my escape to my room.

Since her return from Hilton Head, she had been furnished no passes. Official Washington had forgotten her in her year of absence. But there came a day when Clara Barton had no difficulty in obtaining passes, and when all Washington was willing enough to have her go to the front. That was when the battle of Spotsylvania occurred, May 8, 1864. It took Washington a day or two to realize the gravity of the situation; and Clara Barton was begging and imploring the opportunity to hasten at the sound of the first gun. There was refusal and delay; then, when it was realized that more than 2700 men had been killed and more than 13,000 wounded, her passes came. General Rucker, who had been endeavoring to secure them for her, obtained them, and sent them in haste by special messenger; and Clara Barton was back on the boat, landing, as so often before, at Acquia Creek, and wading through the red mud to where the wounded were.

They were everywhere; and most of all they were in wagons sunk to the hub in mud, and stalled where they could not get out, while men groaned and died and maggots crawled in their wounds. Bitterly she lamented the lost hours while she had been clamoring for passes; but now she set herself to work with such facilities as she could command, first for the relief of the wounded men in wagons:

The terrible slaughter of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania turned all pitying hearts and helping hands once more to Fredericksburg [she wrote afterward]. And no one who reached it by way of Belle Plain, while this latter constituted the base of supplies for General Grant’s army, can have forgotten the peculiar geographical location, and the consequent fearful condition of the country immediately about the landing, which consisted of a narrow ridge of high land on the left bank of the river. Along the right extended the river itself. On the left, the hills towered up almost to a mountain height. The same ridge of high land was in front at a quarter of a mile distant, through which a narrow defile formed the road leading out, and on to Fredericksburg, ten miles away, thus leaving a level space or basin of an area of a fourth of a mile, directly in front of the landing.

Across this small plain all transportation to and from the army must necessarily pass. The soil was red clay. The ten thousand wheels and hoofs had ground it to a powder, and a sudden rain upon the surrounding hills had converted the entire basin into one vast mortar-bed, smooth and glassy as a lake, and much the color of light brick dust.

The poor, mutilated, starving sufferers of the Wilderness were pouring into Fredericksburg by thousands—all to be taken away in army wagons across ten miles of alternate hills, and hollows, stumps, roots, and mud!

The boats from Washington to Belle Plain were loaded down with fresh troops, while the wagons from Fredericksburg to Belle Plain were loaded with wounded men and went back with supplies. The exchange was transacted on this narrow ridge, called the landing.

I arrived from Washington with such supplies as I could take. It was still raining. Some members of the Christian Commission had reached an earlier boat, and, being unable to obtain transportation to Fredericksburg, had erected a tent or two on the ridge and were evidently considering what to do next.

To nearly or quite all of them the experience and scene were entirely new. Most of them were clergymen, who had left at a day’s notice, by request of the distracted fathers and mothers who could not go to the relief of the dear ones stricken down by thousands, and thus begged those in whom they had the most confidence to go for them. They went willingly, but it was no easy task they had undertaken. It was hard enough for old workers who commenced early and were inured to the life and its work.

I shall never forget the scene which met my eye as I stepped from the boat to the top of the ridge. Standing in this plain of mortar-mud were at least two hundred six-mule army wagons, crowded full of wounded men waiting to be taken upon the boats for Washington. They had driven from Fredericksburg that morning. Each driver had gotten his wagon as far as he could, for those in front of and about him had stopped.

Of the depth of the mud, the best judgment was formed from the fact that no entire hub of a wheel was in sight, and you saw nothing of any animal below its knees and the mass of mud all settled into place perfectly smooth and glassy.

As I contemplated the scene, a young, intelligent, delicate gentleman, evidently a clergyman, approached me, and said anxiously, but almost timidly: “Madam, do you think those wagons are filled with wounded men?”

I replied that they undoubtedly were, and waiting to be placed on the boats then unloading.

“How long must they wait?” he asked.

I said that, judging from the capacity of the boats, I thought they could not be ready to leave much before night.

“What can we do for them?” he asked, still more anxiously.

“They are hungry and must be fed,” I replied.

For a moment his countenance brightened, then fell again as he exclaimed: “What a pity; we have a great deal of clothing and reading matter, but no food in any quantity, excepting crackers.”

I told him that I had coffee and that between us I thought we could arrange to give them all hot coffee and crackers.

“But where shall we make our coffee?” he inquired, gazing wistfully about the bare wet hillside.

I pointed to a little hollow beside a stump. “There is a good place for a fire,” I explained, “and any of this loose brush will do.”

“Just here?” he asked.

“Just here, sir.”

He gathered the brush manfully and very soon we had some fire and a great deal of smoke, two crotched sticks and a crane, if you please, and presently a dozen camp-kettles of steaming hot coffee. My helper’s pale face grew almost as bright as the flames and the smutty brands looked blacker than ever in his slim white fingers.

Suddenly a new difficulty met him. “Our crackers are in barrels, and we have neither basket nor box. How can we carry them?”

I suggested that aprons would be better than either, and, getting something as near the size and shape of a common tablecloth as I could find, tied one about him and one about me, fastened all four of the corners to the waist, and pinned the sides, thus leaving one hand for a kettle of coffee and one free, to administer it.

Thus equipped we moved down the slope. Twenty steps brought us to the abrupt edge which joined the mud, much as the bank of a canal does the black line of water beside it.

But here came the crowning obstacle of all. So completely had the man been engrossed in his work, so delighted as one difficulty after another vanished and success became more and more apparent, that he entirely lost sight of the distance and difficulties between himself and the objects to be served.

If you could have seen the expression of consternation and dismay depicted in every feature of his fine face, as he imploringly exclaimed, “How are we to get to them?”

“There is no way but to walk,” I answered.

He gave me one more look as much as to say, “Are you going to step in there?” I allowed no time for the question, but, in spite of all the solemnity of the occasion, and the terribleness of the scene before me, I found myself striving hard to keep the muscles of my face all straight. As it was, the corners of my mouth would draw into wickedness, as with a backward glance I saw the good man tighten his grasp upon his apron and take his first step into military life.

But thank God, it was not his last.

I believe it is recorded in heaven—the faithful work performed by that Christian Commission minister through long weary months of rain and dust and summer suns and winter snows. The sick soldier blessed and the dying prayed for him, as through many a dreadful day he stood fearless and firm among fire and smoke (not made of brush), and walked calmly and unquestioningly through something redder and thicker than the mud of Belle Plain.

No one has forgotten the heart-sickness which spread over the entire country as the busy wires flashed the dire tidings of the terrible destitution and suffering of the wounded of the Wilderness whom I attended as they lay in Fredericksburg. But you may never have known how many hundredfold of these ills were augmented by the conduct of improper, heartless, unfaithful officers in the immediate command of the city and upon whose actions and indecisions depended entirely the care, food, shelter, comfort, and lives of that whole city of wounded men. One of the highest officers there has since been convicted a traitor. And another, a little dapper captain quartered with the owners of one of the finest mansions in the town, boasted that he had changed his opinion since entering the city the day before; that it was in fact a pretty hard thing for refined people like the people of Fredericksburg to be compelled to open their homes and admit “these dirty, lousy, common soldiers,” and that he was not going to compel it.

This I heard him say, and waited until I saw him make his words good, till I saw, crowded into one old sunken hotel, lying helpless upon its bare, wet, bloody floors, five hundred fainting men hold up their cold, bloodless, dingy hands, as I passed, and beg me in Heaven’s name for a cracker to keep them from starving (and I had none); or to give them a cup that they might have something to drink water from, if they could get it (and I had no cup and could get none); till I saw two hundred six-mule army wagons in a line, ranged down the street to headquarters, and reaching so far out on the Wilderness road that I never found the end of it; every wagon crowded with wounded men, stopped, standing in the rain and mud, wrenched back and forth by the restless, hungry animals all night from four o’clock in the afternoon till eight next morning and how much longer I know not. The dark spot in the mud under many a wagon, told only too plainly where some poor fellow’s life had dripped out in those dreadful hours.

I remembered one man who would set it right, if he knew it, who possessed the power and who would believe me if I told him [says Miss Barton in describing this experience]. I commanded immediate conveyance back to Belle Plain. With difficulty I obtained it, and four stout horses with a light army wagon took me ten miles at an unbroken gallop, through field and swamp and stumps and mud to Belle Plain and a steam tug at once to Washington. Landing at dusk I sent for Henry Wilson, chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate. A messenger brought him at eight, saddened and appalled like every other patriot in that fearful hour, at the weight of woe under which the Nation staggered, groaned, and wept.

He listened to the story of suffering and faithlessness, and hurried from my presence, with lips compressed and face like ashes. At ten he stood in the War Department. They could not credit his report. He must have been deceived by some frightened villain. No official report of unusual suffering had reached them. Nothing had been called for by the military authorities commanding Fredericksburg.

Mr. Wilson assured them that the officers in trust there were not to be relied upon. They were faithless, overcome by the blandishments of the wily inhabitants. Still the Department doubted. It was then that he proved that my confidence in his firmness was not misplaced, as, facing his doubters he replies: “One of two things will have to be done—either you will send some one to-night with the power to investigate and correct the abuses of our wounded men at Fredericksburg, or the Senate will send some one to-morrow.”

This threat recalled their scattered senses.

At two o’clock in the morning the Quartermaster-General and staff galloped to the 6th Street wharf under orders; at ten they were in Fredericksburg. At noon the wounded men were fed from the food of the city and the houses were opened to the “dirty, lousy soldiers” of the Union Army.

Both railroad and canal were opened. In three days I returned with carloads of supplies.

No more jolting in army wagons! And every man who left Fredericksburg by boat or by car owes it to the firm decision of one man that his grating bones were not dragged ten miles across the country or left to bleach in the sands of that city.

Yes, they owed it all to Senator Wilson. And he owed it to Clara Barton.

Why was there such neglect, and why did no one else report it?

The surgeons on the front were busy, and they did not see it. The surgeons and nurses in the base hospitals were busy, and they knew nothing of it. Military commanders only knew that the roads were bad, and that it was difficult to move troops to the front or wounded men back to the rear, but supposed that the best was being made of a bad matter. But Clara Barton knew that, if some one in authority could realize that thousands of men were suffering needless agony and hundreds were dying who might be saved, something would be done.

Something was done; and many a soldier who lived and regained his health had reason, without knowing it, to bless the name of Clara Barton.

At the close of the Wilderness campaign, Clara Barton found time to answer some letters and acknowledge some remittances. In one of these letters she answered the question why, being as she was in close touch and entire sympathy with the work of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, she still continued to do her work independently. It is a thoroughly characteristic letter:

May 30, 1864

... The question would naturally arise with strangers, why I, feeling so in unison with the Commission and among whose members I number my best friends, should maintain a separated organization. To those who know me it is obvious. Long before either commission was in the field, or had even an existence, I was laboring by myself for the little I might be able to accomplish and, gathering such helpers about me as I was best able to do, toiled in the front of our armies wherever I could reach, and thus I have labored on up to the present time. Death has sometimes laid his hand upon the active forces of my co-workers and stilled the steps most useful to me, but others have risen up to supply the place, and now it does not seem wise or desirable, after all this time, to change my course. If I have by practice acquired any skill, it belongs to me to use untrammeled, and I might not work as efficiently, or labor as happily, under the direction of those of less experience than myself. It is simply just to all parties that I retain my present position, and through all up to the present time I have been always able to meet my own demands with such little supplies as came voluntarily from my circle of personal friends, which fortunately was not small. But the necessities of the present campaign were well-nigh overwhelming, and my duty required that I gather all I could, even if I shouted aloud to strangers for those who lay fainting and speechless by the wayside or moaning in this wilderness. I did so and such responses as yours have been the reply. Dearly do I think God poured his blessing on my little work, for the friends He has raised up to aid me, for the uninterrupted health and unfailing strength He has given me, and more and more with each day’s observation do I stand overawed by the great lessons He is teaching us His children, grand and stern as the earthquake’s shock, judgments soft and terrible as the lightning stroke. He is leading us back to a sense of justice and duty and humanity, while our thousand guns flash freedom and our martyrs die. It is a terrible sacrifice which He requires at our hands and in obedience the Nation has builded its altar and uplifted its arm of faith and the knife gleams above the child. He who commands it alone knows when His angel shall call from heaven to stay our hands and bid us no longer slay our own. Then may we find hidden in the peaceful thicket the appropriate sacrifice that in blessing He may bless us, that our young men return together, that our seed shall possess the gates of our enemies, and that all the nations of the earth be blessed.

CHAPTER XVIII
TO THE END OF THE WAR

At the end of May, 1864, Clara Barton was in Washington. She wrote to her brother David informing him of her return to the city on the night of May 24. There had been, she told him, a series of terrible battles; she doubted if history had ever known men to be mowed down in regiments as in these battles. Victory had been won, but it was incomplete, and the cost had been terrible. She had seen nine thousand Confederate prisoners.

As to her future plans, she thought she would not go out from Washington a great deal during the excessively hot weather. She remembered her sickness of the previous summer, and did not wish to repeat it. But as for keeping her away in case there should be a battle, she would not count a kindness on anybody’s part to attempt that. She said: “I suppose I should feel about as much benefited as my goldfish would if some kind-hearted person should take him out of his vase where he looked so wet and cold, and wrap him up in warm, dry flannel. We can’t live out of our natural element, can we? I’ll keep quiet when the war is over.”

She was not permitted to stay in Washington and guard her health. She was appointed Superintendent of the Department of Nurses for the Army of the James. She was under the authority of Surgeon McCormack, Chief Medical Director. The army was commanded by General B. F. Butler. She entered this new field of service June 18, 1864. We have a letter which she wrote concerning a celebration, such as it was, of the 4th of July.

Point of Rocks, Va., July 5, 1864
General Butler’s Department

My Most Esteemed and Dear Friend:

Here in the sunshine and dust and toil and confusion of camp life, the mercury above a hundred, the atmosphere and everything about black with flies, the dust rolling away in clouds as far as the eye can penetrate, the ashy ground covered with scores of hospital tents shielding nearly all conceivable maladies that soldier “flesh” is heir to, and stretching on beyond the miles of bristling fortifications, entrenchments, and batteries encircling Petersburg,—all ready to blaze,—just here in the midst of all this your refreshing letter dropped in upon me.

New York! It seemed to me that in the very postmark I could see pictured nice Venetian blinds, darkened rooms where never a fly dared enter, shady yards with cool fountains throwing their spray almost in at the open windows, watered streets flecked with the changing shadows of waving trees, bubbling soda fountains and water ices and grottoes and pony gallops in Central Park and cool drives at evening, and much more I have not time to enumerate, and for an instant I fear human selfishness triumphed, and, before I was aware, the mind had instinctively drawn a contrast, and the sun’s rays glowed hotter and fiercer, and the dust rolled heavier, and my wayward heart complained to me that I was ever in the sun or dust or mud or frost, and impatiently asked if all the years of my life should pass and I never know again a season of quiet rest; and I confess it with shame. I trust that the suddenness with which it was rebuked may atone for its wickedness in some degree, and when I remembered the thousands who would so gladly come and share the toils with us, if only they could be free to do so, I gave thanks anew for my great privileges, and broke the seal of the welcome missive.

And you find hot weather even there, and have time among all the business of that driving city to remember the worn-out sufferers who are lying so helpless about us, many of whom have fought the last fight, kept the last watch, and, standing at the outer post, only wait to be relieved. The march has been toilsome, but the relief comes speedily at last—sometimes almost before we are aware. Yesterday in passing through a ward (if wards they might be termed) filled mostly from the U.S. Colored Regiments I stopped beside a sergeant who had appeared weak all day, but made no complaint, and asked how he was feeling then. Looking up in my face, he replied, “Thank you, Miss, a little better, I hope.” “Can I do anything for you?” I asked. “A little water, if you please.” I turned to get it, and that instant he gasped and was gone. Men frequently reach us at noon and have passed away before night. For such we can only grieve, for there is little opportunity to labor in their cases. I find a large number of colored people, mostly women and children, left in this vicinity, the stronger having been taken by their owners “up country.” In all cases they are destitute, having stood the sack of two opposing armies—what one army left them, the other has taken.

On the plantation which forms the site of this hospital is a colored woman, the house servant of the former owner, with thirteen children, eight with her and five of her oldest taken away. The rebel troops had taken her bedding and clothing and ours had taken her money, forty dollars in gold, which she had saved, she said, and I do not doubt her statement in the least. I gave her all the food I had that was suitable for her and her children and shall try to find employment for her.

For the last few days we have been constantly meeting and caring for the wounded and broken-down from Wilson’s cavalry raid; they have endured more than could be expected of men, and are still brave and cheerful under their sufferings.

I hope I shall not surprise you by the information that we celebrated the Fourth (yesterday) by giving an extra dinner. We invited in the lame, the halt, and the blind to the number of some two hundred or more to partake of roast beef, new potatoes, squash, blancmange, cake, etc., etc. We had music, not by the band, but from the vicinity of Petersburg, and, if not so sweet and perfectly timed as that discoursed by some of your excellent city bands, it must be acknowledged as both startling and thrilling, and was received with repeated “bursts.”

I thank you much for your kind solicitude for my health. I beg to assure you that I am perfectly well at present and, with the blessing of Heaven, I hope to remain so.

Of the length of the campaign I have no adequate idea, and can form none. I should be happy to write you pages of events as they transpire every day, but duty must not be neglected for mere gratification.

Thus far I have remained at the Corps (which is, in this instance, only an overburdened and well-conducted field) hospital. This point, from its peculiar location, is peculiarly adapted to this double duty service, situated as it is at one terminus of the line of entrenchments.

This part of Clara Barton’s war experience is least known of all that she performed. Her diaries were unkept and as her war lectures were mostly occupied with her earlier service in the field, they make almost no reference to this important part of her work. It is through her letters that we know something of what she experienced and accomplished in the closing months of 1864, and the early months of 1865. There is less material here of the kind that makes good newspaper copy or lecture material than was afforded by her earlier work in the open field, and it is probably on this account that this period has fallen so much into the shadow of forgetfulness that it has sometimes been said that Clara Barton retired from active service after the Wilderness campaign. Two letters, one to Frances Childs Vassall, and the other to Annie Childs, give somewhat intimate pictures of her life in this period, and may be selected out of her correspondence for that purpose.

Tenth Army Corps Hospital
September 3rd, 1864

My darling Sis Fannie:

It is almost midnight, and I ought to go to bed this minute, and I want to speak to you first, and I am going to indulge my inclination just a little minute till this page is down, if no more; but it will be all egotism, so be prepared, and don’t blame me. I know you are doing well and living just as quietly and happily as you deserve to do. I hear from no one, and indeed I scarce write at all; and no one would wonder if they could look in upon my family and know besides that we had moved this week—yes, moved a family of fifteen hundred sick men, and had to keep our housekeeping up all the time; and no one to be ready at hand and ask us to take tea the first night either.

I have never told you how I returned—well, safely, and got off from City Point and my goods off its dock just in time to avoid that terrible catastrophe. I was not blown to atoms, but might have been and no one the wiser. I found my “sick family” somewhat magnified on my return, and soon the Corps (10th) was ordered to cross the James, and make a feint while the Weldon Railroad was captured, and this move threw all the sick in Regimental Hospital into our hospital, five hundred in one night. Only think of such an addition to a family between supper and breakfast and no preparation; and just that morning our old cook John and his assistant Peter both came down sick, one with inflammation of the lungs and the other with fever. It was all the surgeons, stewards, and clerks could do to keep the names straight and manage the official portion of the reception; and, would you believe it, I stepped into the gap and assumed the responsibility of the kitchen and feeding of our twelve hundred, and I held it and kept it straight till I selected a new boss cook and got him regularly installed and then helped him all the time up to the present day. I wish I had some of my bills of fare preserved as they read for the day. The variety is by no means so striking as the quantity. Say for breakfast seven hundred loaves of bread, one hundred and seventy gallons of hot coffee, two large wash-boilers full of tea, one barrel of apple sauce, one barrel of sliced boiled pork, or thirty hams, one half barrel of corn-starch blancmange, five hundred slices of butter toast, one hundred slices of broiled steak, and one hundred and fifty patients, to be served with chicken gruel, boiled eggs, etc. For dinner we have over two hundred gallons of soup, or boiled dinner of three barrels of potatoes, two barrels of turnips, two barrels of onions, two barrels of squash, one hundred gallons of minute pudding, one wash-boiler full of whiskey sauce for it, or a large washtub full of codfish nicely picked, and stirred in a batter to make one hundred and fifty gallons of nice home codfish, and the Yankee soldiers cry when they taste it (I prepared it just the old home way, and so I have everything cooked), and the same toasts and corn starch as for breakfast. And then for supper two hundred gallons of rice, and twenty gallons of sauce for it, two hundred gallons of tea, toast for a thousand, and some days I have made with my own hands ninety apple pies. This would make a pie for some six hundred poor fellows who had not tasted pie for months, it might be years, sick and could not eat much. I save all the broken loaves of bread from transportation and make bread puddings in large milk pans; about forty at once will do. The patients asked for gingerbread, and I got extra flour and molasses and make it by the score. I have all the grease preserved and clarified, and to-morrow, if our new milk comes, we are to commence to make doughnuts. I have a barrel of nice lard ready (they had always burned it before to get it out of the way).

Last Saturday night we learned that we were to change with the Eighteenth Corps, and go up in front of Petersburg, and their first loads of sick came with the order. At dark I commenced to cook puddings and gingerbread, as I could carry them best. At two o’clock A.M. I had as many of these as I could carry in an ambulance, and packed my own things in an hour, and at three A.M. in the dark, started over the pontoon bridge across the Appomattox to our new base, about four miles. Got there a little before day, and got some breakfast ready about 8.30 for four hundred men that had crossed the night previous, nearly one hundred officers. The balance followed, and in eighteen hours from the receipt of the order we were all moved—but a poor change for us. Since dark forty wounded men have been brought in, many of which will prove mortal, one with the shoulder gone, a number of legs off, one with both arms gone, some blown up with shells and terribly burned, some in the breast. By request of the surgeons, I made a pail full of nice thick eggnog (eggs beaten separately and seasoned with brandy), and carried all among them, to sleep on, and chicken broth, and I have left them all falling asleep, and I have stolen away to my tent, which is as bare as a cuckoo’s nest—dirt floor, just like the street, a narrow bed of straw, and a three-legged stand made of old cracker boxes, and a wash dish. A hospital tent without any fly constitutes my apartment and furnishing. And here it is one o’clock, damp and cold, one little fellow from the 11th Maine dying, whose groans have echoed through the camp for hours. Another noble Swiss boy, I fear mortally wounded, who thinks he shall not live till morning, and has gained a promise from me that I will see him and be with him when he dies (I have still hopes of his recovery). Oh, what a volume it would make if I could only write you what I have seen, known, heard, and done since I first came to this department, June 18th. The most surprising of all of which is (tell Sally) that I should have turned cook. Who would have “thunk it”?

I am writing on bits of paper for want of whole sheets. I am entirely out. My dresses are equal to the occasion; the skirt is finished, but not worn yet. I am choice of it. The striped print gets soiled and washes nicely, all just right, and I have plenty, and I bless you every day for it. I want so to write Annie a good long letter, but how can I get time? Please give her from this, if you please, an idea of what I am doing, and she will not blame me so much.

Tell Sally that our purchases of tinware were just the thing, and but for them this hospital could not be kept comfortable a single day, not a meal. I wish I had as much more, and a nice stove of my own, with suitable stove furniture besides. And I think I could do as much good with it as some missionaries are supposed to do. Our spices and flavorings were Godsends when I got them here. I wish I had boxes of them. I need to use so much in my big cooking. There, I said it would be all egotism, but I am too stupid to think of anybody but myself, so forgive me. Give my love to all and write your loving Sis,

Clara

From letters such as this we are able to rescue from oblivion a full year of war service of Clara Barton. Contrary to all her previous intent, she was a head-nurse, in charge of the hospitals of an entire army corps. Not only so, but she was on occasion chief cook and purveyor of pie and gingerbread, and picked codfish and New England boiled dinners so like what the soldiers loved at home that they sometimes cried for joy. But she did not relinquish her purpose to be at the front. The front was very near to her. Another of her letters must be quoted:

Base Hospital, 10th Army Corps
Broadway Landing, Va.
Sept. 14th, 1864

My dear Sis Annie:

Your excellent and comforting letter reached me some time ago, and, like its one or two abused predecessors, has vainly waited a reply. I cannot tell how badly I have wanted to write you, how impossible I found it to get the time. But often enough an attack of illness has brought me a leisure hour, and I am almost glad that I can make it seem right for me to sit down in daylight and pen a letter.

For once in my life I am at a loss where to commence. I have been your debtor so long, and am so full of unsaid things, that I don’t know which idea to let loose first. Perhaps I might as well speak of the weather. Well, it rains, and that is good for my conscience again, for I couldn’t get out in that if I were well enough. Rain here means mud, you must understand, but I am sheltered. Why, I have a whole house of my own, first and second floors, two rooms and a flight of stairs, and a great big fireplace, a bright fire burning, a west window below, a south one above, an east door, with a soldier-built frame arbor of cedar, twelve feet in front of it and all around it, so close and green that a cat couldn’t look in, unless at my side opening. It was the negro house for the plantation, and was dirty, of course, but ten men with brooms and fifty barrels of water made it all right, and they moved me into it one night when I was sick, and here I have lain and the winds have blown and the rains descended and beat upon my house, and it fell not, and for hours in the dark night I have listened to the guy ropes snapping and the tent flies flapping in the wind and rain, and thunder and lightning. All about me are the frail habitations of my less fortunate neighbors. One night I remembered a darling little Massachusetts boy, sick of fever and chronic diarrhœa, a mere skeleton, and I knew he was lying at the very edge of his ward, tents, of course,—delicate little fellow, about fifteen,—and I couldn’t withstand the desire to shield him, and sent through the storm and had him brought, bed and all, and stored in my lower room, and there he lay like a little kitten, so happy, till about noon the next day, when his father, one of the wealthy merchants of Suffolk, came for him. He had just heard of his illness, had searched through the damp tents for him and finally traced him to me. The unexpected sight of his little boy, sheltered, warm, and fed, nearly deprived him of speech, but when those pale lips said, “Auntie—father—this is my Auntie; doesn’t she look like mother?” It was too much. Women’s and children’s tears amount to little, but the convulsive sobs of a strong man are not forgotten in an hour.

Well, I have made a queer beginning of this letter. One would have supposed I should have made it my first duty to speak of the nice box that came to me, from you, by Mrs. Rich, and how choice I was of it, and did not take it with me the first time I went for fear I might not find the most profitable spot to use it in just then till I had found my field. As good luck would have it, it did not take long to find my field of operations; and nothing but want of time to write has prevented me from acknowledging the box many times, and expressing the desire that others might follow it. I can form no estimate of what I would and should have made use of during the campaign thus far, if I had had it to use. I doubt if you at home could realize the necessities if I could describe every one accurately, and now the cold weather approaches, they will increase in some respects. The army is filling up with new troops to a great degree and the nights are getting cold....

I was rejoiced to hear from Lieutenant Hitchcock and that he is doing well. You are favored in so pleasant a correspondent as I know he must be, and what a comfort to his wife to have him home so soon. I hope his wound will not disable him very much. Please give my love and congratulations to them when you write. Poor fellows! how sorry I was to see them lying there under the trees, so cut and mangled. Poor Captain Clark! Do you know if he is alive? the surgeons told me he couldn’t survive. I went up again to see them, a day or two after they all left. Colonel Gould had gone the day before. Yes! I lost one friend. Poor Gardner! He fought bravely and died well, they said, and laid his mangled body at the feet of his foe. I feel sad when I think of it all. “Tired a little”—not tired of the war, but tired of our sacrifices.

I passed a most pleasant hour with Lieutenant Hitchcock. It seemed so comfortable and withal so quaint and strange to sit down under the sighing pines of Virginia away out in the woods in the war of the guns and talk of you. I have asked a great many times for Mr. Chamberlain and only heard twice—he was well each time, but this was not lately. I shall surely go to him if I get near the dear old regiment (21st regiment)—that is more than I ever said of any other regiment in the service. I am a stranger to them now, I know, after all their changes; few of them ever heard of me, and yet the very mention of the number calls up all the old-time love and pride I ever had. I would divide the last half of my last loaf with any soldier in that regiment, though I had never seen him. I honor him for joining it, be he who he may; for he knew well if he marched and fought with that regiment he had undertaken no child’s play, and those who measured steel with them knew it as well.

The Oxford ladies at work for me again!! I am very glad if they have the confidence to do so. I had thought, perhaps, my style of labor was not approved by them; but I could not help it. I knew it was rough, but I thought it none the less necessary. If they do so far approve as to send me the proceeds of some of their valuable labors, it will be an additional stimulant to me to persevere.

Do you know I am thinking seriously of remaining “out” the winter unless the campaign should come to a sudden and decisive stand, and nothing be done and no one exposed.

You know that my range here is very extended; this department is large, and I am invited by General Butler to visit every part of it, and all medical and other officers within the department are directed to afford me every facility in their power. But so little inclination do they display to thwart me that I have never shown my “pass and order” to an officer since I have been in the department. I have had but one trouble since I came, and that has been to extend my labor without having the point that I leave miss me.

We have now in the 10th Corps two main hospitals and no regimental hospital; the “base,” where I am at present, about four miles from the extreme front, and the “Flying” Hospital three miles farther up—in the rear of the front line of works. The most skillful operators are always here, and all the surgeons at that post are my old-time personal friends. Dr. Barlow I worked with at Cedar Mountain and through Pope’s retreat, and again on Morris Island; and he says, if I am going to desert my old friends now, just say so, that’s all. And I have stood by Dr. Porter all summer, and Porter says he will share me some with the upper hospital, but I must not leave the Corps on any condition whatever. And yet the surgeon in charge of one of the largest corps in General Grant’s army at City Point came for me one day last week and would hardly be denied; wanted me to help him “run” his hospital—“not to touch a bit of the work.” I begin to think I can “keep a hotel,” but I didn’t think so a year ago. Well, I have told you all this to show you how probable it is that I shall find it difficult to get off the field this fall or even winter.

And thank you many times for your sisterly invitation to spend some portion of the winter with you. I should be most happy to do so, but it is a little doubtful if I get north of Washington this winter, unless the war ends suddenly, and I am beginning to study my duty closely. I can go to the Flying Hospital, and be just along with the active army; and then, if I had a sufficient quantity of good suitable supplies, I could keep the needy portion of a whole corps comfortably supplied; and being connected with the hospital and convalescent camp, conversant with the men, surgeons, and nurses, I could meet their wants more timely and surely than any stranger or outside organization of men could do. And ladies, most of the summer workers, will draw off, with the cool nights; men who have been accustomed to feather beds, will seek them if they can when the frost comes. Nevertheless the troops will need the same care—good warm shirts, socks, drawers, and mittens, and the sick will need the same good, well-cooked diet that they did in summer; and yet it would try me dreadfully to be among them in the cold and nothing comfortable to give them. And this corps especially never passed a winter north of South Carolina and they will nearly freeze, I fear. I have scraped together and given already the last warm article I have just for the few frosty nights we have had. I haven’t a pair of socks or shirts or drawers for a soldier in my possession. I shall look with great anxiety now for anything to reach me, for I shall require it both on account of the increased severity of the weather and my proposed extended field of labor. I have the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry on hand, and they have a hospital of their own and a good many sick. I gave them, one day last week, the last delicacy I possessed; it was but little—some New York and New Jersey fruits; nothing from Massachusetts for them. I was sorry; I wish I had. If I go to the Flying Hospital it will be entirely destitute of all but soldier’s blankets and rations, not a bedsack or pillow, sheet or pillowcase, or stove or tin dishes, except cups and plates. Now, I should want some of all these things, and if I go I must write to some of the friends of the soldiers the wants I see, and if they are disposed they can place it in my power to make them comfortable, independent of army regulations. You know this front hospital is for operations in time of battle, and subject to move at an hour’s notice, or when the shot might reach it, or the enemy press too near, and must not be encumbered with baggage. Ask Lieutenant Hitchcock to explain it to you, and he will also tell you how useful a private supply connected with it might be, what comfort there would be in it, and how I could distribute from such a point to the troops along the front. Now, with my best regards to the good ladies of Oxford, I am done about soldiers and hospitals.

Oh, if I had time to write! I have material enough, “dear knows,” but I cannot get time to half acknowledge favors received. If some one would come and act as scribe for me, I might be the means of relating some interesting incidents; but I have not even a cook or orderly, not to say a clerk. I do not mean that I cannot have the two former, but I do not use them myself at all when I hold them in detail. I immediately get them at work for some one who I think needs them more. I am glad you see my Worcester friends. You visited at Mr. Newton’s, I suppose. I hope they are well. Please give my love to them....

We are firing a salute for something at this minute, don’t yet know what. We fired one over the fall of Atlanta; solid shot and shell with the guns pointed toward Petersburg. Funny salutes we get up here. Yesterday morn we had terrible firing along the whole line, but it amounted to only an artillery duel. Yet it brought us fourteen wounded, three or four mortally. What a long letter I have written you and I am not going to apologize and I know you are not tired even if it is long, you are glad of it, and so am I, although it is not very interesting.

Please give my kindly and high regards to Miss Sanford and Mrs. Burleigh, Colonel De Witt, also, and all inquiring friends and write soon to your affectionate

Sis
Clara

This letter was copied by Annie Childs, and bears this note in the handwriting of Annie Childs:

I have my friend Clara’s permission to show any portion of her “poor scrawls” that I think would interest the excellent ladies who are laboring so faithfully for the good and comfort of the soldiers, and trust to their charity to overlook imperfections. Many portions of the above are copied for the benefit of persons in Worcester and other places, as I could not get time to write many copies like this, which is three fourths of my letter from her.

Annie E. Childs

It must have been something of a relief to Clara Barton to be working in a definite sphere under military authority, and not as a volunteer worker. Not that she regretted for a moment the method of her previous activity. She would never have worked cheerfully as a part of the organization commanded by Miss Dix. She had too clear ideas of her own, and saw the possibilities of too large a work for her to be content with any sort of long-range supervision. All the women who really achieved large success at the front were individualists. “Mother” Bickerdyke, for instance, took no orders from any one. General Sherman was accustomed to say of her that she ranked him. But Miss Barton’s field for volunteer service was now limited. The war was closing in, and nearing its end. Clara Barton wisely accepted a definite appointment and took up her work with the army of General Butler. How highly he esteemed her service is shown by his lifelong friendship for her, and his appointment of her to be matron of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women.

Clara Barton knew, before she went to the Army of the James, how impossible it was to obtain ideal conditions in a military hospital. She must have been very glad that she had refused to criticize the hospitals at Hilton Head, even when she knew that things were going wrong. She had her own experience with headstrong surgeons and incompetent nurses. But on the whole her experience in the closing days of the war was satisfactory.

One incident which she had looked forward to with eager longing, and had almost given up, occurred while she was with the Army of the James. Her brother Stephen was rescued.

It was a pathetic rescue. He was captured by the Union army, and robbed of a considerable sum of money which had been in his possession. When he was brought within the Union lines, he was sick, and he suffered ill treatment after his capture. The date of his capture was September 25, 1864. It was some days before Miss Barton learned about it. She then reported the matter to General Butler, and it was at once ordered that Stephen be brought to his headquarters with all papers and other property in his possession at the time of his capture. The prisoner was sent and such papers as had been preserved, but the money was not recovered. Two long letters, written by Stephen Barton from the hospital, tell the story of his life within the Confederate lines, and it is a pathetic story.

Stephen Barton was treated with great kindness while he remained in the hospital at Point of Rock. He was there during the assault on Petersburg, and well toward the end of the campaign against Richmond. Then he was removed to Washington, where, on March 10, 1865, he died. Miss Barton had the satisfaction of ministering to him during those painful days, and she afterward wrote down her recollection of a prayer he offered one night after a battle in front of Richmond:

An hour with my dear noble brother Stephen, during a night after a battle in front of Richmond.

Clara Barton

My brother Stephen, when with me in front of Richmond

Hearing a voice I crept softly down my little confiscated stairway and waited in the shadows near his bedside. He had turned his face partly into his pillow and, resting it upon his hands, was at prayer. The first words which my ear caught distinctly were, “O God, whose children we all are, look down with thine eye of justice and mercy upon this terrible conflict, and weaken the wrong and strengthen the right till this unequal contest close. O God, save my Country. Bless Abraham Lincoln and his armies.” A sob from me revealed my presence. He started, and, raising his giant skeleton form until he rested upon his elbow, he said, “I thought I was alone.” Then, turning upon me a look of mingled anxiety, pity, and horror, which I can never describe, he asked hastily, “Sister, what are those incessant sounds I hear? The whole atmosphere is filled with them; they seem like the mingled groans of human agony. I have not heard them before. Tell me what it is.” I could not speak the words that would so shock his sensitive nature, but could only stand before him humbled and penitent as if I had something to do with it all, and feel the tears roll over my face. My silence confirmed his secret suspicions, and raising himself still higher, and every previous expression of his face intensifying tenfold, he exclaimed, “Are these the groans of wounded men? Are they so many that my senses cannot take them in?—that my ear cannot distinguish them?” And raising himself fully upright and clasping his bony hands, he broke forth in tones that will never leave me. “O our God, in mercy to the poor creatures thou hast called into existence, send down thine angels either in love or wrath to stay this strife and bid it cease. Count the least of these cries as priceless jewels, each drop of blood as ruby gems, and let them buy the Freedom of the world. Clothe the feet of thy messengers with the speed of the lightning and bid them proclaim, through the sacrifices of a people, a people’s freedom, and, through the sufferings of a nation, a nation’s peace.” And there, under the guns of Richmond, amid the groans of the dying, in the darkling shadows of the smoky rafters of an old negro hut by the rude chimney where the dusky form of the bondman had crouched for years, on the ground trodden hard by the foot of the slave, I knelt beside that rough couch of boards and sobbed “Amen” to the patriot prayer that rose above me.

---

The stolen money was never restored. Stephen struggled on a few weeks longer, alternating, hoping, and despairing, suffering from the physical abuse he had received, crushed in spirit, battling with disease and weakness as only a brave man can, worrying over his unprotected property and his debts in the old home he never reached, watching the war, and praying for the success of the Union armies, and died without knowing—and God be praised for this—that the reckless torches of that same Union army would lay in ashes and ruins the result of the hard labor of his own worn-out life and wreck the fortunes of his only child.

Although doubting and fearing, we had never despaired of his recovery, until the morning when he commenced to sink and we saw him rapidly passing away. He was at once aware of his condition and spoke of his business, desiring that, first of all, when his property could be reached, his debts should be faithfully paid. A few little minutes more and there lay before us, still and pitiful, all that remained to tell of that hard life’s struggle and battle, which had failed most of all through a great-hearted love for humanity, his faithfulness to what he conceived to be his duty, and his readiness to do more for mankind than it was willing to do for itself.

Clara Barton did not long continue in hospital service after the immediate need was passed. With the firing of the last gun she returned to Washington. One chapter in her career was closed. Another and important work was about to open, and she already had it in mind. But the work she had done was memorable, and its essential character must not be forgotten.

Clara Barton was more and other than a hospital nurse. She was not simply one of a large number of women who nursed sick soldiers. She did that, hastening to assist them at the news of the very first bloodshed, and continuing until Richmond had fallen. Hers was the distinction of doing her work upon the actual field of battle; of following the cannon so as to be on the ground when the need began; of not waiting for the wounded soldier to be brought to the hospital, but of conveying the hospital to the wounded soldier. Others followed her in this good work; others accompanied her and were her faithful associates, but she was, in a very real sense, the soul and inspiration of the movement which carried comfort to wounded men while the battle was still in progress. She was not, in any narrow sense, a hospital nurse; she was, as she has justly been called, “the angel of the battle-field.”

One characteristic of Clara Barton during these four years deserves mention and emphasis because her independent position might have made it easy for her to assume a critical attitude toward those who worked under the regular organization or through different channels. In all her letters, in all the entries in her diaries, there is found no hint of jealousy toward any of the women who worked as nurses in the hospitals, or under the Sanitary or Christian Commission.

Clara Barton from her childhood was given to versifying. She was once called upon to respond to a toast to the women who went to the front. She did it in rhyme as follows:

TOAST

“THE WOMEN WHO WENT TO THE FIELD”

The women who went to the field, you say,
The women who went to the field; and pray
What did they go for? just to be in the way!—
They’d not know the difference betwixt work and play,
What did they know about war anyway?
What could they do?—of what use could they be?
They would scream at the sight of a gun, don’t you see?
Just fancy them round where the bugle notes play,
And the long roll is bidding us on to the fray.
Imagine their skirts ’mong artillery wheels,
And watch for their flutter as they flee ’cross the fields
When the charge is rammed home and the fire belches hot;—
They never will wait for the answering shot.
They would faint at the first drop of blood, in their sight.
What fun for us boys,—(ere we enter the fight;)
They might pick some lint, and tear up some sheets,
And make us some jellies, and send on their sweets,
And knit some soft socks for Uncle Sam’s shoes,
And write us some letters, and tell us the news.
And thus it was settled by common consent,
That husbands, or brothers, or whoever went,
That the place for the women was in their own homes,
There to patiently wait until victory comes.
But later, it chanced, just how no one knew,
That the lines slipped a bit, and some ’gan to crowd through;
And they went,—where did they go?—Ah; where did they not?
Show us the battle,—the field,—or the spot
Where the groans of the wounded rang out on the air
That her ear caught it not, and her hand was not there,
Who wiped the death sweat from the cold clammy brow,
And sent home the message;—“’Tis well with him now”?
Who watched in the tents, whilst the fever fires burned,
And the pain-tossing limbs in agony turned,
And wet the parched tongue, calmed delirium’s strife
Till the dying lips murmured, “My Mother,” “My Wife”!
And who were they all?—They were many, my men;
Their record was kept by no tabular pen:
They exist in traditions from father to son.
Who recalls, in dim memory, now here and there one.—
A few names were writ, and by chance live to-day;
But’s a perishing record fast fading away.
Of those we recall, there are scarcely a score,
Dix, Dame, Bickerdyke,—Edson, Harvey, and Moore,
Fales, Whittenmeyer, Gilson, Safford and Lee,
And poor Cutter dead in the sands of the sea;
And Frances D. Gage, our “Aunt Fanny” of old,
Whose voice rang for freedom when freedom was sold.
And Husband, and Etheridge, and Harlan and Case,
Livermore, Alcott, Hancock, and Chase,
And Turner, and Hawley, and Potter, and Hall.
Ah! the list grows apace, as they come at the call:
Did these women quail at the sight of a gun?
Will some soldier tell us of one he saw run?
Will he glance at the boats on the great western flood,
At Pittsburg and Shiloh, did they faint at the blood?
And the brave wife of Grant stood there with them then,
And her calm, stately presence gave strength to his men.
And Marie of Logan; she went with them too;
A bride, scarcely more than a sweetheart, ’tis true.
Her young cheek grows pale when the bold troopers ride.
Where the “Black Eagle” soars, she is close at his side,
She staunches his blood, cools the fever-burnt breath,
And the wave of her hand stays the Angel of Death;
She nurses him back, and restores once again
To both army and state the brave leader of men.
She has smoothed his black plumes and laid them to sleep,
Whilst the angels above them their high vigils keep:
And she sits here alone, with the snow on her brow—
Your cheers for her comrades! Three cheers for her now.
And these were the women who went to the war:
The women of question; what did they go for?
Because in their hearts God had planted the seed
Of pity for woe, and help for its need;
They saw, in high purpose, a duty to do,
And the armor of right broke the barriers through.
Uninvited, unaided, unsanctioned ofttimes,
With pass, or without it, they pressed on the lines;
They pressed, they implored, till they ran the lines through,
And this was the “running” the men saw them do.
’Twas a hampered work, its worth largely lost;
’Twas hindrance, and pain, and effort, and cost:
But through these came knowledge,—knowledge is power.—
And never again in the deadliest hour
Of war or of peace, shall we be so beset
To accomplish the purpose our spirits have met.
And what would they do if war came again?
The scarlet cross floats where all was blank then.
They would bind on their “brassards” and march to the fray,
And the man liveth not who could say to them nay;
They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,
The nurses, consolers, and saviors of men.

CHAPTER XIX
ANDERSONVILLE AND AFTER

Clara Barton’s name continued on the roll of clerks in the Patent Office until August, 1865. She drew her salary as a clerk throughout the period of the Civil War, and it was the only salary that she drew during that time. Out of it she paid the clerk who took her place during the latter months of her employment, and also the rent of the room in Washington, where she stored her supplies and now and then slept. When she was at the front, she shared the rations of the army. Most of the time her food was the food of the officers of the division where she was at work. Much of the time it was the humble fare of the common soldier. Mouldy and even wormy hardtack grew to be quite familiar to her, and was eaten without complaint.

As the end of the war drew near, she discovered a field of service in which her aid was greatly needed. Every battle in the Civil War had, in addition to its list of known dead and wounded, a list of “missing.” Some of these missing soldiers were killed and their bodies not found or identified. Of the 315,555 graves of Northern troops, only 172,400 were identified. Almost half of the soldiers buried in graves known to the quartermaster of the Federal army were unidentified; 143,155 were buried in graves known to be the graves of soldiers, but with no soldier’s name to mark them. Besides these there were 43,973 recorded deaths over and above the number of graves. The total of deaths recorded was 359,528, while the number of graves, as already stated, was 315,555. As a mere matter of statistics, this may not seem to mean very much, but it actually means that nearly two hundred thousand homes received tidings of the death of a father, son, or brother, and did not know where that loved one was buried. This added to grief the element of uncertainty, and in many cases of futile hope.

Moreover, there were many other thousands of men reported missing of whom no certain knowledge could be obtained at the close of the Civil War. Some were deserters, some were bounty-jumpers, some were prisoners, some were dead. Clara Barton received countless letters of inquiry. From all over the country letters came asking whether in any hospital she had seen such and such a soldier.

Clearly foreseeing that the end of the war was in sight, Clara Barton, who had gone from City Point, where she was serving with General Butler’s army, to Washington, where she witnessed the death of her brother Stephen, brought to the attention of President Lincoln the necessity of instituting some agency for the finding of missing soldiers. She knew what her own family had suffered in the anxious months when Stephen was immured within the Confederate lines, and his relatives did not know whether he was living or dead. President Lincoln at once approved her plan, and issued a letter advising the friends of missing soldiers to communicate with Miss Barton at Annapolis, where she established her headquarters. President Lincoln’s letter was dated March 11, 1865, the day following the death of her brother Stephen. This was followed, March 25, by a letter from General Hitchcock:

Washington, D.C., March 25, 1865

For the Commanding Officer at Annapolis, Md.
Sir:

The notice, which you have doubtless seen, over the name of Miss Barton, of Massachusetts, proffering her services in answering inquiries with respect to Union officers and soldiers who have been prisoners of war (or who remain so), was made by my authority under the written sanction of His Excellency the President.

The purpose is so humane and so interesting in itself that I beg to recommend Miss Barton to your kind civilities, and to say that any facilities which you may have it in your power to extend to her would be properly bestowed, and duly appreciated, not only by the lady herself, but by the whole country which is interested in her self-appointed mission.

With great resp. your obt. servant

(Signed) E. A. Hitchcock
Maj. Gen’l. Vols.

Although she was backed by the authority of the President, it took the War Department two months to establish Clara Barton in her work at Annapolis with the title “General Correspondent for the Friends of Paroled Prisoners.” A tent was assigned her, with furniture, stationery, clerks, and a modest fund for postage. By the time she was established at Annapolis, she found bushels of mail awaiting her, and letters of inquiry came in at the rate of a hundred a day. To bring order out of this chaos, and establish a system by which missing soldiers and their relatives could be brought into communication with each other, called for swift action and no little organizing skill. For a time difficulties seemed to increase. Discharged prisoners returned from the South by thousands. In some cases there was no record, in others the record was defective. Inquiries came in much faster than information in response to them.

Notwithstanding all the difficulties, Clara Barton had a long list of missing men ready for publication by the end of May. Then the question rose how she was to get it published. It was not wholly a matter of expense, though this was an important item. There was only one printing office in Washington which had type enough, and especially capitals enough, to set up such a roll as at that time she had ready. In this emergency she appealed directly to the President of the United States, asking that the roll be printed at the Government Printing Office. Her original letter to President Johnson is in existence, together with a series of endorsements, the last of them by Andrew Johnson himself. General Rucker was the first official to endorse it, Major-General Hitchcock added his commendation, General Hoffman followed, then came General Grant, and last of all the President:

Washington, D.C., May 31st, 1865

His Excellency
President of the United States
Sir:

May I venture to enclose for perusal the within circular in the hope that it may to a certain extent explain the object of the work in which I am engaged. The undertaking having at its first inception received the cordial and written sanction of our late beloved President, I would most respectfully ask for it the favor of his honored successor.

The work is indeed a large one; but I have a settled confidence that I shall be able to accomplish it. The fate of the unfortunate men failing to appear under the search which I shall institute is likely to remain forever unrevealed.

My rolls are now ready for the press; but their size exceeds the capacity of any private establishment in this city, no printer in Washington having forms of sufficient size or a sufficient number of capitals to print so many names.

It will be both inconvenient and expensive to go with my rolls to some distant city each time they are to be revised. In view of this fact I am constrained to ask our honored President, when he shall approve my work, as I must believe he will, to direct that the printing may be done at the Government Printing Office.

I may be permitted to say in this connection that the enclosed printed circular appealing for pecuniary aid did not originate in any suggestion of mine, but in the solicitude of personal friends, and that thus far, in whatever I may have done, I have received no assistance either from the Government or from individuals. A time may come when it will be necessary for me to appeal directly to the American People for help, and in that event, such appeal will be made with infinitely greater confidence and effect, if my undertaking shall receive the approval and patronage of Your Excellency.

I have the honor to be, Sir

Most respectfully

Your obedient servant
Clara Barton

LETTER TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON

Official endorsements on back of her letter

Chief Quartermaster’s Office
Depot of Washington

June 2, 1865

I most heartily concur in the recommendations on this paper. I have known Miss Barton for a long time and it gives me great pleasure to aid her in her good works.

F. H. Rucker
Brig. Gen’l & Chf. Q.M.

The undersigned, with a full understanding of the benevolent purpose of Miss Barton and of its deep interest for the public, most cordially commends it to the approval of the President of the United States.

E. A. Hitchcock
Maj. Gen. Vol.

June 2, 1865

I most heartily concur in the foregoing recommendations.

W. Hoffman
Com. Gen’l Pris.

Respectfully recommended that the printing asked for be authorized at the Government Printing Office. The object being a charitable one, to look up and ascertain the fate of officers and soldiers who have fallen into the hands of the enemy and have never been restored to their families and friends, is one which Government can well aid.

U. S. Grant
L.G.
June 2d, 1865.

June 3d, 1865

Let this printing be done as speedily as possible consistently with the public interest.

Andrew Johnson
Prest. U.S.

To Mr. Defrees
Supt. Pub. Printing

ENDORSEMENTS ON MISS BARTON’S LETTER TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON

On the same date, June 2, 1865, Miss Barton received a pass from General Grant commending her to the kind consideration of all officers and instructing them to give her all facilities that might be necessary in the prosecution of her mission. By General Grant’s order, there was also issued to her transportation for herself and two assistants on all Government railroads and transports:

Headquarters Armies of the United States

Washington, D.C., June 2d, 1865

The bearer hereof, Miss Clara Barton, who is engaged in making inquiries concerning the fate of soldiers reported as missing in action, is commended to the kind consideration of all officers of the military service, and she will be afforded by commanders and others such facilities in the prosecution of her charitable mission as can properly be extended to her.

U. S. Grant
Lieut. General Comdg.

Headquarters Armies of the United States

Washington, D.C., June 2nd, 1865

Miss Clara Barton, engaged in making inquiries for soldiers reported as missing in action, will be allowed, until further orders, with her assistants, not to exceed two in number, free transportation on all Government railroads and transports.

By Command of Lieut.-General Grant

T. S. Breck
Asst. Adjt. Gen’l.

Clara Barton had learned the value of publicity. She knew that the Press could be counted upon to assist an undertaking so near to the hearts of all readers of the papers. She therefore arranged her lists by States, and sent the list of each State to every newspaper in the State with the request for its free publication. Before long she had established definite connections with scores of newspapers which responded favorably to her request. No one read these lists more eagerly than recently discharged men, including prisoners and men released from hospitals. In innumerable instances these men wrote to her to give information of the death or survival, with location, of some comrade whose name had been published in one of her lists.

Sometimes she succeeded not only beyond her own expectation, but beyond the desire of the man who was sought. Occasionally a soldier who went into voluntary obscurity at the end of the war found himself unable to remain in as modest a situation as he had chosen for himself. A few letters are found of men who indignantly remonstrated against being discovered by their relatives. One such case will serve as an illustration. The first of the following letters is from the sister of a missing soldier. The second, six months later, is a protest from the no longer missing man, and the third is Clara’s indignant reply to him:

Lockport, N.Y., April 17th, 1865

Miss Clara Barton
Dear Madam:

Seeing a notice in one of our village papers stating that you can give information concerning soldiers in the army or navy, you will sincerely oblige me if you can give any intelligence of my brother, Joseph H. H——, who was engaged in the 2nd Maryland Regiment under General Goldsborough, and from whom we have not heard in nearly two years. His mother died last winter, to whom his silent absence was, I assure you, a great grief, and to whom I promised to make all inquiries in my power, so that I might if possible learn my brother’s fate. I would most willingly remunerate you for all trouble.

Yours respectfully

E—— H——

Springfield, Ills., Oct. 16, 1865

Miss Clara Barton,
Washington, D.C.
Madam:

I have seen my name on a sheet of paper somewhat to my mortification, for I would like to know what I have done, so that I am worthy to have my name blazoned all over the country. If my friends in New York wish to know where I am, let them wait until I see fit to write them. As you are anxious of my welfare, I would say that I am just from New Orleans, discharged, on my way North, but unluckily taken with chills and fever and could proceed no farther for some time at least. I shall remain here for a month.

Respectfully, your obt. servt.

J—— H. H——

Mr. J—— H. H——
Sir:—

I enclose copies of two letters in my possession. The writer of the first I suppose to be your sister. The lady for whose death the letter was draped in mourning I suppose to have been your mother. Can it be possible that you were aware of that fact when you wrote that letter? Could you have spoken thus, knowing all?

The cause of your name having been “blazoned all over the country” was your unnatural concealment from your nearest relatives, and the great distress it caused them. “What you have done” to render this necessary I certainly do not know. It seems to have been the misfortune of your family to think more of you than you did of them, and probably more than you deserve from the manner in which you treat them. They had already waited until a son and brother possessing common humanity would have “seen fit” to write them. Your mother died waiting, and the result of your sister’s faithful efforts to comply with her dying request “mortify” you. I cannot apologize for the part I have taken. You are mistaken in supposing that I am “anxious for your welfare.” I assure you I have no interest in it, but your accomplished sister, for whom I entertain the deepest respect and sympathy, I shall inform of your existence lest you should not “see fit” to do so yourself.

I have the honor to be, sir

Clara Barton

Such letters as the foregoing remind us that not all the cases of missing soldiers were purely accidental. There were instances where men went to war vowing loyalty to the girls they left behind them, and who formed other ties. There were cases where men formed wholly new associations and deliberately chose to begin anew and let the past be buried. But there were thousands of instances in which the work of Clara Barton brought her enduring gratitude. In very large proportion these missing men were dead. The testimony of a comrade who had witnessed the death on the battle-field or in prison set at rest any suspicion of desertion or any other form of dishonor. In other cases, where the soldier was alive, but had grown careless about writing, her timely reminder secured a prompt reunion and saved a long period of anxiety. Letters like the following came to her to the end of her life:

Greenfield, Mass., Sept. 25, 1911

Miss Clara Barton
Oxford, Mass.
My dear Miss Barton:

I am a stranger to you, but you are far from being a stranger to me. As a member of the old Vermont Brigade through the entire struggle, I was familiar with your unselfish work at the front through those years when we were trying to restore a broken Union, and being a prisoner of war at Andersonville at its close, my mother, not knowing whether I was alive, appealed to you for information.

Two letters bearing your signature (from Annapolis, Maryland) are in my possession, the pathos of one bearing no tidings, and the glad report of my arrival about the middle of May, 1865.

The thankful heart that received them has long been stilled, but the letters have been preserved as sacred relics.

I also have a very vivid recollection of your earnest appeal to us to notify our friends of our arrival by first mail for their sake.

If to enjoy the gratitude of a single heart be a pleasure, to enjoy the benediction of a grateful world must be sweet to one’s declining years. To have earned it makes it sublime.

I have also another tie which makes Oxford seem near to me. An old tent-mate, a member of our regimental quartette, a superb soldier and a very warm friend, lies mouldering there these many years. He survived, I think, more than thirty battles only to die of consumption in January, 1870. Whenever I can I run down from Worcester to lay a flower on George H. Amidon’s grave.

I write not to tax you with a reply, but simply to wish for you all manner of blessings.

Yours truly

F. J. Hosmer
Co. I, 4th Vt.

Her headquarters at this time was theoretically at Arlington where she had a tent. Arlington was the headquarters receiving and discharging returned prisoners. But much of her work was in Washington, and the constant journeys back and forth caused her to ask for a conveyance. She made her application to General William Hoffman, Commissary-General of prisoners, on June 16, 1865. Her request went the official rounds, and by the 25th of October a horse was promised as soon as a suitable one could be found. It is to be hoped that within a year or two a horse either with sidesaddle or attached to a wheeled conveyance was found tethered in front of her bare lodging on the third floor of No. 488½ 7th Street, between D and E:

Washington, D.C., June 16th, 1865

Brig.-Gen’l. Wm. Hoffman
Commsy Gen’l of Prisoners
General:

It would not appear so necessary to explain to you the nature of my wants, as to apologize for imposing them upon you, but your great kindness to me has taught me not to fear the abuse of it in any request which seems needful.

If I say that in my present undertaking I find the duties of each day quite equal to my strength, and often of a character which some suitable mode of conveyance at my own command like the daily use of a Government wagon would materially lighten, I feel confident that you would both comprehend and believe me, but if I were to desire you to represent my wishes to the proper authorities and aid in obtaining such a facility for me, I may have carried my request to a troublesome length and could only beg your kind pardon for the liberty taken which I would most humbly and cheerfully do.

With grateful respect,

I am, General
Very truly yours

Clara Barton

Headquarters Military District of Washington
Washington, D.C., October 25, 1865

Miss Clara Barton:

I have conferred with General Wadsworth on the subject of obtaining a horse for your use, and he has directed that I place a horse at your disposal as soon as a suitable one can be found.

Very respectfully
Yr. Obt. Svt.

John P. Sherburne
Asst. Adjt. Gen’l.

For four years Clara Barton carried on this important work for missing soldiers. She spared neither her time nor her purse. At the outset there was no appropriation that covered the necessary expenses of such a quest, and the work was of a character that would not wait. From the beginning of the year 1865 to the end of 1868 she sent out 63,182 letters of inquiry. She mailed printed circulars of advice in reply to correspondents to 58,693 persons. She wrote or caused to be written 41,855 personal letters. She distributed to be posted on bulletin boards and in public places 99,057 slips containing printed rolls. According to her estimate at the end of this heavy task, she succeeded in bringing information, not otherwise obtainable, to not less than 22,000 families of soldiers.

How valuable this work was then believed to be is shown in the fact that Congress, after an investigation by a committee which examined in detail her method and its results and the vouchers she had preserved of her expenses, appropriated to reimburse her the sum of $15,000.

It soon became evident that one of the most important fields for investigation was such record as could be found of the Southern prisons, especially Andersonville. To Andersonville her attention was directed through a discharged prisoner, Dorence Atwater, of Connecticut. He was in the first detachment transferred, the latter part of February, 1864, to the then new prison of Andersonville, and because of his skillful penmanship was detailed to keep a register of deaths of the prisoners. He occupied a desk next to that of General Wirz, the Confederate officer commanding the prison. Here, at the beginning of 1865, he made up a list of nearly thirteen thousand Union prisoners who died in that year, giving the full name, company and regiment, date and cause of death. Besides the official list he made another and duplicate list, which he secreted in the lining of his coat, and was able to take with him on his discharge.

At the close of the war he returned to his home in Terryville, Connecticut, where he was immediately stricken with diphtheria. Weakened and emaciated by his imprisonment, he nearly died of this acute attack. Before he was fully recovered, he was summoned to Washington, and his rolls were demanded by the Government. He gave them up and they were copied in Washington, but were not published. He wrote to Clara Barton informing her of these rolls and affirmed that by means of them he could identify almost every grave in Andersonville Prison. Clara Barton was greatly interested, and proposed to Secretary Stanton that she be sent to Andersonville and that Dorence Atwater accompany her. She proposed that there should go with them a number of men equipped with material for enclosing the cemetery with a fence, and for the marking of each grave with a suitable headboard.

Secretary Stanton received this suggestion not only with approval, but with enthusiasm. Miss Barton wrote the account of her interview with him on some loose sheets for her diary. The sheets were at least three in number, and only the second sheet is preserved. This sheet, however, covers the personal interview with Secretary Stanton. It was written at the time, and manifests his keen interest in her enterprise and desire to carry it through promptly and effectively:

On entering General Hardy’s room, he asked my business. I said, “I didn’t know, sir. I supposed I had some, as the Secretary sent for me.” “Oh,” he said, “you are Miss Barton. The Secretary is very anxious to see you,” and sent a messenger to announce me. Mr. Stanton met me halfway across the room with extended hand, and said he had taken the liberty to send for me to thank me for what I had done both in the past, and in my present work; that he greatly regretted that he had not known of me earlier, as from all he now learned he feared I had done many hard things which a little aid from him would have rendered comparatively easy, but that especially now he desired to thank me for helping him to think; that it was not possible for him to think of everything which was for the general good, and no one knew how grateful he was to the person who put forth, among all the impracticable, interested, wild, and selfish schemes which were continually crowded upon him, one good, sensible, practical, unselfish idea that he could take up and act upon with safety and credit. You may believe that by this time my astonishment had not decreased. In the course of the next twenty minutes he informed me that he had decided to invite me (for he could not order me) to accompany Captain Moore, with Atwater and his register, to Andersonville, and see my suggestions carried out to my entire satisfaction; that unlimited powers as quartermaster would be given Captain Moore to draw upon all officers of the Government in that vicinity for whatever would be desired; that a special boat would be sent with ourselves and corps of workmen, and to return only when the work was satisfactorily accomplished. To call the next day and consult with him farther in....

If Miss Barton’s horse, which she had asked for in June, had gotten to her door more promptly than is customary in such matters of official routine, he might have grown hungry waiting for her return. As we have already noticed, permission to have the horse assigned was granted in October, which left the summer free for the Andersonville expedition. Fortunately, no long interval elapsed after Secretary Stanton’s approval of the plan before the starting of the expedition. On July 8 the propeller Virginia, having on board headboards, fencing material, clerks, painters, letterers, and a force of forty workmen, under command of Captain James M. Moore, Quartermaster, left Washington for Andersonville, by way of Savannah. On board also were Dorence Atwater and Clara Barton. They reached Savannah on July 12, and remained there seven days, arriving at Andersonville on July 25.

Her first impressions were wholly favorable. The cemetery was in much better condition than she had been led to fear. As the bodies had been buried in regular order, and Dorence Atwater’s lists were minute as to date and serial number, the task of erecting a headboard giving each soldier’s name, state, company, regiment, and date of death, appeared not very difficult. On the second night of her stay in Andersonville she wrote to Secretary Stanton of the success of the undertaking and suggested that the grounds be made a national cemetery. She assured him that for his prompt and humane action in ordering the marking of these graves the American people would bless him through long years to come. She was correct in her prediction. But for her proposal and Mr. Stanton’s prompt coöperation and Dorence Atwater’s presence with the list, hundreds if not thousands of graves now certainly are identified at Andersonville which would have needed to be marked “Unknown”:

Hon. E. M. Stanton
Sec’y. of War, United States
Sir:

It affords me great pleasure to be able to report to you that we reached Andersonville safely at 1 o’clock P.M. yesterday, 25th inst. Found the grounds undisturbed, the stockade and hospital quarters standing protected by order of General Wilson.

We have encountered no serious obstacle, met with no accident, our entire party is well, and commenced work this morning. Any misgivings which might have been experienced are happily at an end; the original plan for identifying the graves is capable of being carried out to the letter. We can accomplish fully all that we came to accomplish, and the field is wide and ample for much more in the future. If desirable, the grounds of Andersonville can be made a National Cemetery of great beauty and interest. Be assured, Mr. Stanton, that for this prompt and humane action of yours, the American people will bless you long after your willing hands and mind have ceased to toil for them.

With great respect,

I have the honor to be, Sir
Your very obedient servant

Clara Barton

Andersonville, Ga.
July 26th, 1865

The remaining period of her work in Andersonville was fruitful in the accomplishment of all the essential results for which she had undertaken the expedition, but it resulted in strained relations between one of the officers of the expedition and Dorence Atwater, and Clara Barton came to the defense of Atwater. During her absence at Andersonville, two letters were published in a Washington paper, over her signature, alleged to have been written by her to her Uncle James. She had no Uncle James, and wrote no such letters; and she attributed the forgery, correctly or incorrectly, to this officer. Her official report to the Secretary of War contains a severe arraignment of that officer, whom she never regarded with any favor.

This is all that need be recorded of Clara Barton’s great work at Andersonville, of which a volume might easily be made. She saw the Union graves marked. Out of the almost thirteen thousand graves of Union soldiers at Andersonville four hundred and forty were marked “Unknown” when she finished her work, and they were unknown only because the Confederate records were incomplete. She saw the grounds enclosed and protected, and with her own hands she raised the United States flag for the first time since their death above these men who had died for it.

But this expedition involved trouble for Atwater. When he handed over his rolls to the Government it was with the earnest request that steps be taken immediately to mark these graves. His request and the rolls had been pigeonholed. Then he had learned of Clara Barton’s great work for missing soldiers and wrote her telling her that the list he had made surreptitiously and preserved with such care was gathering dust, while thirteen thousand graves were fast becoming unidentifiable. She brought this knowledge to Secretary Stanton as has already been set forth, and Stanton ordered the rolls to be produced and sent on this expedition for Atwater’s use in identification.

Dorence Atwater had enlisted at the age of sixteen in the year 1862. He was now under twenty, but he was resolute in his determination that the lists which he had now recovered should not again be taken from him. On his return from Andersonville the rolls which he had made containing the names of missing soldiers disappeared. He was arrested and questioned, and replied that the rolls were his own property. He was sent to prison in the Old Capital, was tried by a court-martial, adjudged guilty of larceny, and sentenced to be confined for eighteen months at hard labor in the State Prison at Auburn, New York, fined three hundred dollars, and ordered to stand committed until the rolls were returned.

Atwater made no defense, but issued a statement which Clara Barton probably prepared for him:

I am charged with and convicted of theft, and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment, and after that time until I shall have paid my Government three hundred dollars. I have called no witnesses, made no appeal, adduced no evidence. A soldier, a prisoner, an orphan, and a minor, I have little with which to employ counsel to oppose the Government of the United States.

Whatever I may have been convicted of, I deny the charge of theft. I took my rolls home with me that they might be preserved; I considered them mine; it had never been told or even hinted to me that they were not my own rightful, lawful property. I never denied having them, and I was not arrested for stealing my rolls, but for having declared my intention of appealing to higher authority for justice. I supposed this to be one of the privileges of an American citizen, one of the great principles of the Government for which we had fought and suffered; but I forgot that the soldier who sacrificed his comforts and risked his life to maintain these liberties was the only man in the country who would not be allowed to claim their protection.

My offense consists in an attempt to make known to the relatives and friends the fate of the unfortunate men who died in Andersonville Prison, and if this be a crime I am guilty to the fullest extent of the law, for to accomplish it I have risked my life among my enemies and my liberty among my friends.

Since my arrest I have seen it twice publicly announced that the record of the dead of Andersonville would be published very soon; one announcement apparently by the Government, and one by Captain James M. Moore, A.G.M. No such intimation was ever given until after my arrest, and if it prove that my imprisonment accomplishes that which my liberty could not, I ought, perhaps, to be satisfied. If this serves to bring out the information so long and so cruelly withheld from the people, I will not complain of my confinement, but when accomplished, I would earnestly plead for that liberty so dear to all, and to which I have been so long a stranger.

I make this statement, which I would confirm by my oath if I were at liberty, not as appealing to public sympathy for relief, but for the sake of my name, my family, and my friends. I wish it to be known that I am not sentenced to a penitentiary as a common thief, but for attempting to appeal from the trickery of a clique of petty officers.

Dorence Atwater

On September 25, 1865, just one month from the day when he returned from Andersonville from the marking of the soldiers’ graves, Dorence Atwater, as Clara Barton records, “was heavily ironed, and under escort of a soldier and captain as guard, in open daylight, and in the face of his acquaintances, taken through the streets of Washington to the Baltimore depot, and placed upon the cars, a convict bound to Auburn State Prison.”

Clara Barton had moved heaven and earth to save Dorence from imprisonment; had done everything excepting to advise him to give up the rolls. She knew so well what the publication of those names meant to thirteen thousand anxious homes, she was willing to see Dorence go to prison rather than that should fail. Secretary Stanton was out of Washington when Dorence was arrested. She followed him to West Point and had a personal interview, which she supplemented by a letter:

Roe’s Hotel, West Point, September 5th, 1865

Hon. E. M. Stanton
Sec’y. of War, U.S.A.
My Honored Friend:

Please permit me before leaving to reply to the one kind interrogatory made by you this morning, viz: “What do you desire me to do in the case?” Simply this, sir,—do nothing, believe nothing, sanction nothing in this present procedure against Dorence Atwater until all the facts with their antecedents and bearings shall have been placed before you, and this upon your return (if no one more worthy offer) I promise to do, with all the fairness, truthfulness, and judgment that in me lie.

There is a noticeable haste manifested to dispose of the case in your absence which leads me to fear that there are those who, to gratify a jealous whim, or serve a personal ambition, would give little heed to the dangers of unmerited public criticism they might thus draw upon you, while young Atwater, honest and simple-hearted, both loving and trusting you, has more need of your protection than your censure.

With the highest esteem, and unspeakable gratitude,

I am, sir

Clara Barton

Failing to secure the release of Dorence by appeal to Secretary Stanton, who was not given to interference with military courts, Clara Barton tried the effect of public opinion and also sought to arouse the military authority of the State of Connecticut. Two letters of hers are preserved addressed to friends in the newspaper world, but they did not immediately accomplish the release of Dorence.

Clara Barton was not a woman to desist in an effort of this kind. She had set about to procure the release of Dorence Atwater; she had the support of Senator Henry Wilson and of General B. F. Butler, and she labored day and night to enlarge the list of influential friends who should finally secure his freedom. She surely would have succeeded. While the Government saw no convenient way of issuing him a pardon until he returned the missing rolls, public sentiment in his favor grew steadily under her insistent propaganda. At the end of two months’ imprisonment, he was released under a general order which discharged from prison all soldiers sentenced there by court-martial for crimes less than murder. Even after the issue of the President’s general order, Atwater was detained for a little time until Clara Barton made a personal visit to Secretary Stanton and informed him that Dorence was still in prison and secured the record of his trial for future use.

Then she set herself to work to secure the publication of his rolls. He must copy them and rearrange them by States and in alphabetical order, a task of no light weight, and must then arrange with some responsible newspaper to undertake to secure their publication. Moreover, this must be done quickly and quietly, for she believed that Dorence still had an enemy who would thwart the effort if known.

The large task of copying the rolls and rearranging the names required some weeks. When it was finished, Clara Barton, who had previously thought of the New York “Times” as a possible medium of publicity on account of an expression of interest which it had published, and even had considered the unpractical idea of simultaneous publication in a number of papers, turned instead to Horace Greeley. She wrote to him in January, 1866, and then went to New York and conferred with him.

Greeley told her that the list was quite too long for publication in the columns of any newspaper. The proper thing to do, as he assured her, was to bring it out in pamphlet form at a low price, and, on the day of publication, to exploit it as widely as possible through the columns of the “Tribune.” To get the list in type, read the proof, print the edition, and have it ready for delivery required some days if not weeks. Valentine’s Day was fixed as that upon which the list was to appear. On February 14, 1866, the publication occurred.

Horace Greeley was a good advertiser. All through the advertising pages of the “Tribune” on that day appeared the word “Andersonville” in a single line of capitals, varied here and there by “Andersonville; See Advertisement on 8th page.” No one who read that day’s “Tribune” could escape the word “Andersonville.” The editorial page contained the following paragraph:

We have just issued a carefully compiled List of the Union Soldiers Buried at Andersonville—arranged alphabetically under the names of their respective States, and containing every name that has been or can be recovered. Aside from the general and mournful interest felt in these martyrs personally, this list will be of great importance hereafter in the settlement of estates, etc. A copy should be preserved for reference in every library, however limited. It constitutes a roll of honor wherein our children’s children will point with pride to the names of their relatives who died that their country might live. See advertisement.

The eighth page contained a half-page article by Clara Barton, telling in full of the marking of the Andersonville graves. This article was hailed with nation-wide interest, and the pamphlet had an enormous circulation, bringing comfort to thousands of grief-stricken homes.

Dorence Atwater never recovered from his treatment at the hands of the United States Government. For many years the record of the court-martial stood against him, and his status was that of a released prisoner still unpardoned. His spirit became embittered, and he said that the word “soldier” made him angry, and the sight of a uniform caused him to froth at the mouth. The Government gave him a consulship in the remote Seychelles Islands, and later transferred him to the Society Islands in the South Pacific. He died in November, 1910, and his monument is erected near Papeete on the Island of Tahiti.

CHAPTER XX
ON THE LECTURE PLATFORM

At the close of the Civil War, Clara Barton wanted to write a book. Other women who had engaged in war work were writing books, and the books were being well received. She had as much to tell as any other one woman, and she thought she would like to tell it.

In this respect she was entirely different from Miss Dorothea Dix. She met Miss Dix now and then during the war, and made note of the fact in her diary, but either because these meetings occurred in periods when she was too busy to make full record, or because nothing of large importance transpired between them, she gives no extended account of them. Miss Dix was superintendent of female nurses, and Miss Barton was doing an independent work, so there was little occasion for them to meet. But all her references to Miss Dix which show any indication of her feeling manifest a spirit of very cordial appreciation of Dorothea Dix’s work. Miss Dix managed her work in her own line, insisting that nurses whom she appointed should be neither young nor good-looking, and fighting her valiant battles with quite as much success as in general could have been expected. But Dorothea Dix had no desire for publicity. She shrank from giving to the world any details of her own life, partly because of her unhappy childhood memories, and partly because she did not believe in upholding in the mind of young women the successful career of an unmarried woman. Accepting as she did her own lonely career, and making it a great blessing to others, she did not desire that young women should emulate it or consider it the ideal life. She wished instead that they should find lovers, establish homes, and become wives and mothers.

Clara Barton, too, had very high regard for the home, and she saw quite enough of the folly of sentimental young women who were eager to rush to the hospitals and nurse soldiers, but she did not share Miss Dix’s fear of an attractive face, and she knew rather better than Miss Dix the value of publicity. Timid as she was by nature, she had discovered the power of the Press. She had succeeded in keeping up her supply of comforts for wounded soldiers largely by the letters which she wrote to personal friends and to local organizations of women in the North. She made limited but effective use of the newspaper for like purposes. At first she did not fully realize her own gift as a writer. Once or twice she bemoaned in her diary the feebleness of her descriptive effort. If she could only make people see what she had actually seen, she could move their hearts, and the supply of bandages and delicacies for her wounded men would be unfailing.

Her search for missing soldiers led her to a larger utilization of the Press, and gave her added confidence in her own descriptive powers. Her name was becoming more and more widely known, and she thought a book by her, if she could procure means to publish it, would afford her opportunity for self-expression and quite possibly be financially profitable.

On this subject she wrote two letters to Senator Henry Wilson. They are undated, and it is probable that she never sent either of them, but they show what was in her heart. One of these reads as follows:

My always good Friend:

Among all the little trials, necessities, and wants, real or imaginary, that I have from time to time brought and laid down at your feet, or even upon your shoulders, your patience has never once broken, or if it did your broad charity concealed the rent from me, and I come now in the hope that this may not prove to be the last feather. It is not so much that I want you to do anything as to listen and advise, and it may be all the more trying as I desire the advice to be plain, candid, and honest even at the risk of wounding my pride.

Perhaps no previous proposition of mine, however wild, has ever so completely astonished you as the present is liable to do. Well, to end suspense. I am desirous of writing a book. You will very naturally ask two questions—what for and what of. In reply to the first. The position which I have assumed before the public renders some general exposition necessary. They require to be made acquainted with me, or perhaps I might say they should either be made to know more of me or less. As it is, every one knows my name and something of what I am or have been doing, but not one in a thousand has any idea of the manner in which I propose to serve them. Out of six thousand letters lying by me, probably not two hundred show any tolerably clear idea of the writer as to what use I am to make of that very letter. People tell me the color of the hair and eyes of the friends they have lost, as if I were expected to go about the country and search them. They ask me to send them full lists of the lost men of the army; they tell me that they have looked all through my list of missing men and the name of their son or husband or somebody’s else is not on it, and desire to be informed why he is made an exception. They suppose me a part of the Government and it is my duty to do these things, or that I am carrying on the “business” as a means of revenue and ask my price, as if I hunted men at so much per head. But all suppose me either well paid or abundantly able to dispense with it; and these are only a few of the vague ideas which present themselves in my daily mail. A fair history of what I have done and desire to do, and a plain description of the practical working of my system, would convince people that I am neither sorceress nor spiritualist and would appall me with less of feverish hope and more of quiet, potent faith in the final result.

Then there is all of Andersonville of which I have never written a word. I have not even contradicted the base forgeries which were perpetrated upon me in my absence. I need not tell you how foully I am being dealt by in this whole matter and the crime which has grown out of the wickedness which overshadows me. I need to tell some plain truths in a most inexpensive manner, that the whole country shall not be always duped and honest people sacrificed that the ambition of one man be gratified. I do not propose controversy, but I have a truth to speak; it belongs to the people of our country and I desire to offer it to them.

And lastly, if a suitable work were completed and found salable and any share of proceeds fell to me, I need it in the prosecution of the work before me.

Next—What of? The above explanation must have partially answered that I would give the eight months’ history of my present work, and I think I might be permitted by the writers to insert occasionally a letter sent me by some noble wife or mother, and there are no better or more touching letters written.

I would show how the expedition to Andersonville grew out of this very work; how inseparably connected the two were; and how Dorence Atwater’s roll led directly to the whole work of identifying the graves of the thirteen thousand sleeping in that city of the dead.

I would endeavor to insert my report of the expedition now with the Secretary. I have some materials from which engravings could be made, I think, of the most interesting features of Andersonville, and my experiences with the colored people while there I believe to have been of exceeding interest. I would like to relate this. You recollect I have told you that they came from twenty miles around to see me to know if Abraham Lincoln was dead and if they were free. This, if well told, is a little book of itself. And if still I lack material I might go back a little and perhaps a few incidents might be gleaned from my last few years’ life which would not be entirely without interest. I think I could glean enough from this ground to eke out my work, which I would dedicate to the survivors of Andersonville and the friends of the missing men of the United States Army. I don’t know what title I would give it.

Now, first, I want your yes or no. If the former, I want your advice still further. Who can help me do all this? I have sounded among my friends, and all are occupied; numbers can write well, but have no knowledge of book-making which I suppose to be a trade in itself and one of which I am entirely ignorant. I never attempted any such thing myself and have no conceit of my own ability as a writer. I don’t think I can write, but I would try to do something at it; might do more if there were time, but this requires to be done at once. I want a truthful, easy, and I suppose touching rather than logical book, which it appears to me would sell among the class of persons to whom I should dedicate it, and their name is legion. Now, it is no wonder that I have found no one ready to take hold and help me carry this on when it is remembered that I have not ten thousand dollars to offer them in advance, but must ask that my helper wait and share his remuneration out of the profits. If he knew me, he would know that I would not be illiberal, especially as pecuniary profit is but a secondary consideration. It is of greater importance to me that I bring before the country and establish the facts that I desire than that I make a few thousand dollars out of it, but I would like to do both if I could, but the first if not the last. But I want to stand as the author and it must be my book, and it should be in very truth if I had the time to write it. I want no person to reap a laurel off it (dear knows I have had enough of that of late), but the man or woman who could and would take hold and work side by side with me in this matter, making it a heart interest, and having my interest at heart, be unselfish and noble with me as I think I would be with them, should reap pecuniary profit if there were any to reap. An experienced book-maker or publisher would understand if such a work would sell—it seems to me that it would.

Now, can you point me to any person who could either help me do this or be so kind as to inform me that I must not attempt it?

It will be noted that in this letter she indicates her present lack of means to publish such a book as she had in mind. She had not always lacked means for such an object. While her salary as a teacher had never been large, she had always saved money out of it. The habit of New England thrift was strong upon her, and her investments were carefully made so that her little fund continually augmented. Her salary in the Patent Office was fourteen hundred dollars, and for a time sixteen hundred dollars, and though she paid a part of it to her substitute during the latter portion of the war, she was able to keep up the rental of her lodging and meet her very modest personal expenses without drawing upon her savings. The death of her father brought to her a share in his estate, and this was invested in Oxford, conservatively and profitably. When she began her search for missing soldiers, therefore, she had quite a little money of her own. She began that work of volunteer service, expecting it to be supported as her work in the field had been supported, by the free gifts of those who believed in the work. When a soldier or a soldier’s mother or widow sent her a dollar, she invariably returned it.

As the work proceeded, she was led to believe that Congress would make an appropriation to reimburse her for her past expenditures, and add a sufficient appropriation for the continuance of the work. She had two influential friends at court, Senator Henry Wilson, her intimate and trusted friend, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate, and General Benjamin F. Butler, with whose army she had last served in the field.

She knew very well how laws were passed and official endorsements secured. She frequently interceded with her friends in high places on behalf of people or causes in whom she believed. She, in common with Miss Dix, had altercations with army surgeons, yet her diary shows her working hard to secure for them additional recognition and remuneration. On Sunday, January 29, 1865, she attempted to attend the third anniversary of the Christian Commission, but the House of Representatives was packed; thousands, she says, were turned away. That afternoon or evening Senator Wilson called on her and she talked with him concerning army surgeons: “I spoke at length with Mr. Wilson on the subject of army surgeons. I think their rank will be raised. I believe I will see Dr. Crane in the morning and make an effort to bring Dr. Buzzell here to help frame the bill.”

She did exactly what she believed she would do; saw Dr. Crane, got her recommendation that Dr. Buzzell be allowed to come, and then went to the Senate. The thing she labored for was accomplished, though it called for considerable added effort.

About this same time she had a visit from a woman who was seeking to obtain the passage of a special act for her own benefit. She shared Clara Barton’s bed and board, with introduction to Senator Wilson and other influential people, until the bill passed both houses, and still as Miss Barton’s guest continued in almost frantic uncertainty, awaiting the President’s signature. It happened at the very time Clara Barton was very desirous of getting her work for missing soldiers under way. The idea came to her in the night of February 19, 1865:

Thought much during the night, and decided to invite Mr. Brown to accompany me to Annapolis and to offer my services to take charge of the correspondence between the country and the Government officials and prisoners at that point while they continued to arrive.

Mr. Brown called upon her that very day and they agreed to go to Annapolis the next day, which they did. She nursed her brother Stephen, accomplished a large day’s work, did her personal washing at nine o’clock at night, and the next day went to Annapolis. There she met Dorothea Dix; found a captain who deserved promotion, and resolved to get it for him; assisted in welcoming four boatloads of returned prisoners, and defined more clearly in her own mind the kind of work that needed to be done.

The next Sunday Senator Wilson called on her again, and she told him she had offered her services for this work, and wanted the President’s endorsement in order that she might not be interfered with. Senator Wilson offered to go with her to see President Lincoln, and they went next day, but did not succeed in seeing him. She went again next day, this time without Senator Wilson, for he was busy working on the bill for the lady who was her guest, so she sought to obtain her interview with President Lincoln through the Honorable E. B. Washburne, of Illinois. Mr. Washburne agreed to meet her at the White House, and did so, but the President was in a conference preceding a Cabinet meeting, and the Cabinet meeting, which was to begin at noon, was likely to last the rest of the day, so Mr. Washburne took her paper and said he would see the President and obtain his endorsement. She saw Senator Wilson that afternoon, and reported that her papers were still unendorsed, and General Hitchcock was advising her to go on without any formal authority. She was not disposed to do it, for she felt sure that she would no sooner get established than Secretary Stanton would interfere. The difficulty was to get at the President in those crowded days just before his second inaugural, when events both in Washington and in the field were crowding tremendously.

SENATOR HENRY WILSON’S LETTER TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN

Senator Wilson was still interested in what she wanted to do, but was preoccupied. “He had labored all night on Miss B.’s bill.” In fact Clara Barton read the probable fate of her own endeavor. Senator Wilson had given himself with such ardor to the cause of her guest that he had no time to help her. She had borrowed a set of furs to wear when she went to the President. She took them back that afternoon and wrote in her diary: “Very tired; could not reconcile my poor success; I find that some hand above mine rules and restrains my progress; I cannot understand, but try to be patient, but still it is hard. I was never more tempted to break down with disappointment.”

On Thursday, March 2, two days before the inauguration, she went again to see the President. Just as she reached the White House in the rain, she saw Secretary Stanton go in. She waited until 5.15, and Stanton did not come out. She returned home “still more and more discouraged.” Her guest, also, had been out in the rain, but was overjoyed. Her bill had passed the Senate without opposition, and would go to the House next day, if not that very night. Miss Barton wrote in her diary: “I do not tell her how much I am inconvenienced by her using all my power. I have no helper left, and I am discouraged. I could not restrain the tears, and gave up to it.”

It is hardly to be wondered that she almost repented of her generosity in loaning Senator Wilson to her friend when she herself had so much need of him. Nor need she be blamed for lying awake and crying while her guest slept happily on the pillow beside her. She did not often cry.

Just at this time she was doubly anxious, for Stephen, her brother, was nearing his end, and Irving Vassall, her nephew, was having hemorrhages and not long for this world, and her day’s journal shows a multiplicity of cares crowding each day.

Stephen died Friday, March 10. She was with him when he died and mourned for her “dear, noble brother.” She believed he had gone to meet the loved ones on the other side, and she wondered whether her mother was not the first to welcome him. His body was embalmed, and a service was held in Washington, and another in Oxford. Between the time of Stephen’s death and her departure with his body, she received her papers with the President’s endorsement. General Hitchcock presented them to her. She wrote:

We had a most delightful interview. He aided me in drawing up a proper article to be published; said it would be hard, but I should be sustained through such a work, he felt, and that no person in the United States would oppose me in my work; he would stand between me and all harm. The President was there, too. I told him I could not commence just yet, and why, and he said, “Go bury your dead, and then care for others.” How kind he was!

President Johnson later endorsed the work and authorized the printing of whatever matter she required at the Government Printing Office. Her postage was largely provided by the franking privilege. Her work was a great success and the time came in the following October, when it seemed certain her department was to have official status with the payment of all its necessary expenses by the Government. On Wednesday, October 4, she wrote:

Of all my days, this, I suspect, has been my greatest, and I hope my best. About six P.M. General Butler came quickly into my room to tell me that my business had been presented to both the President and Secretary of War, and fully approved by both; that it was to be made a part of the Adjutant-General’s department with its own clerks and expenses, and that I was to be at the head of it, exclusively myself; that he made that a sine qua non, on the ground that it was proper for parents to bring up their own children; that he wished me to make out my own programme of what would be required; and on his return he would overlook it and I could enter at once upon my labor. Who ever heard of anything like this—who but General Butler? He left at 7.30 for home. I don’t know how to comport me.

On that same night she had a very different call, and the only one which the author has found referred to in all her diaries where any man approached her with an improper suggestion. Mingling as she did with men on the battle-field, living alone in a room that was open to constant calls from both men and women, she seems to have passed through the years with very little reason to think ill of the attitude of men toward a self-respecting and unprotected woman. That evening she had an unwelcome call, but she promptly turned her visitor out, went straight to two friends and told them what had been said to her, and wrote it down in her diary as a wholly exceptional incident, and with this brief comment, “Oh, what a wicked man!”

The plan to make her department an independent bureau seemed humanly certain to succeed. When, a few days later, General Butler left Washington without calling to see her, she was surprised, but thought it explained, a few days later, when the Boston “Journal” published an editorial saying that General Butler was to be given a seat in the Cabinet and to make his home in Washington.

But General Butler’s plans failed. He fell into disfavor, and all that he had recommended and was still pending became anathema to the War Department. The bureau was not created, and Clara Barton’s official appointment did not come.

During all this time she had been supporting her work of correspondence out of her own pocket. The time came when she invested in it the very last dollar of her quick assets. Her old friend Colonel De Witt, through whom she had obtained her first Government appointment, had invested her Oxford money. At her request he sent her the last of it, a check for $228. She wrote in her diary: “This is the last of my invested money, but it is not the first time in my life that I have gone to the bottom of my bag. I guess I shall die a pauper, but I haven’t been either stingy or lazy, and if I starve I shall not be alone; others have. Went to Mechanics’ Bank and got my check cashed.”

She certainly had not been lazy, and she never was stingy with any one but herself. Keeping her own expenses at the minimum and living so frugally that she was sometimes thought parsimonious, she saw her last dollar of invested money disappear, and recorded a grim little joke about her poverty and the possibility of starvation. But she shed no tears. In the few times when she broke down and wept, the occasion was not her own privation or personal disappointment, but the failure of some plan through which she sought to be of service to others.

This is a rather long retrospect, but it explains why Clara Barton, when she wanted to publish a book, contemplated the cost of it as an item beyond her personal means. She could have published the book at her own expense had it not been for the money she had spent for others.

Congress did not permit her to lose the money which she had expended. In all her diary and correspondence no expression of fear has been found as to her own remuneration. She thought it altogether likely she could get her money back, but there is no hint that she would have mourned, much less regretted what she had done, if she had never seen her money again.

Sad days came for Clara Barton when she found that General Butler was worse than powerless to aid her work. Heartily desirous of assisting her as he was, his name was enough to kill any measure which he sponsored. When Senator Wilson came to see her, just before Christmas, and told her that the plan was hopeless, she was already prepared for it. He suspected that she was nearly out of money, and tried to make her a Christmas gift of twenty dollars, but she declined. She wakened, on these mornings, “with the deepest feeling of depression and despair that I remember to have known.” But this feeling gave place to another. Waking in the night and thinking clearly, she was able to outline the programme of the next day’s task so distinctly and unerringly that she began to wonder whether the spirit of her noble brother Stephen was not guiding her. She did not think she was a Spiritualist, but it seemed to her that some influence which he was bringing to her from her mother helped to shape her days aright. It was such a night’s meditation that made plain to her that Dorence Atwater, released but not pardoned, must get his list published immediately, and that he must do it without a cent of compensation so that no one should ever be able to say that he had stolen the list in order to profit by it. She found that she did not need many hours’ sleep. If she could rest with an untroubled mind, she could waken and think clearly.

Gradually, her plan to publish a book changed. Instead she would write a lecture. She went to hear different women speakers, and was gratified whenever she found a woman who could speak in public effectively. A woman preacher came to Washington, and she listened to her. Even in the pulpit a woman could speak acceptably. When she traveled on the train, she was surprised and gratified to find how many people knew her, and she came to believe that the lecture platform offered her a better opportunity than the book.

There was one other consideration,—a book would cost money for its publication and the getting of it back was a matter of uncertainty. But the lecture platform promised to be immediately remunerative.

She conferred with John B. Gough. She read to him a lecture which she prepared. Said he, “I never heard anything more touching, more thrilling, in my life.” He encouraged her to proceed.

Thus encouraged, Clara Barton laid out her itinerary, and prepared for three hundred nights upon the platform. Her rates were one hundred dollars per night, excepting where she spoke under the auspices of the Grand Army Post, when her charge was seventy-five.

She took Dorence Atwater with her to look after her baggage and see to her comfort, and exhibit a box of relics which he had brought from Andersonville. She paid his expenses and a salary besides. Sometimes she thought he earned it, and sometimes she doubted it, for he was still a boy and exhibited a boy’s limitations. But she cherished a very sincere affection for him and to the end of her life counted him as one of her own kin.

During this period she had abundant time to write in her diary; for, while there were long journeys, the ordinary distance from one engagement to another was not great. She lectured in the East in various New England cities, in Cooper Institute in New York, and in cities and moderate-sized towns through Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. She had time to record and did record all the little incidents of her journey, together with the exact sum she received for each lecture, with every dime which she expended for travel, hotel accommodation, and incidental expenses. It was a hard but varied and remunerative tour. It netted her some twelve thousand dollars after deducting all expenses.

A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers;
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, as the life-blood ebbed away,
And bent with pitying glances to hear what he might say;
The dying soldier faltered,—as he took that comrade’s hand,—
And said, “I never more shall see my own—my native land.
Take a message and a token to some distant friend of mine,
For I was born at Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine.”

With this quotation from the familiar but effective poem of Mrs. Norton, Clara Barton opened her first public lecture, which she delivered at Poughkeepsie, on Thursday evening, October 25, 1866. The lecture was an hour and a quarter in length as she read it aloud in her room, but required about an hour and a half as she delivered it before a public audience. It was, as she recorded in her diary, “my first lecture,” and “the beginning of remunerative labor” after a long period in which she had been without salary. She knew that it was her first lecture, but the audience did not. She returned from it to the house of Mr. John Mathews, where she was entertained, ate an ice-cream, went to bed and slept well. She received her first fee of one hundred dollars. On Saturday night she spoke in Schenectady, where she received fifty dollars, and found, what many a lecturer has learned, that it was not profitable to cut prices. A diminished fee means less local advertising. The audience was smaller and less appreciative. On Monday evening she spoke in Brooklyn. Theodore Tilton presided and introduced her. There she had an ovation. Mr. Tilton accompanied her to her hotel after the lecture, and she told him that she was just beginning, and asked for his criticism. He told her the lecture contained no flaw for him to mend. She went back to Washington enthusiastic over the success of her new venture. She had spoken three times, and two of the lectures had been a pronounced success. Her expenses had been less than fifty dollars, and she was two hundred dollars to the good.

She found awaiting her in Washington a large number of requests to lecture in different places, and she arranged a New England tour. She began with Worcester and Oxford. She did this with many misgivings, not forgetting the lack of honor for a prophet in his own country. She spoke in Mechanic’s Hall in Worcester, before a full house. She got her hundred dollars, but was not happy over the lecture. In Oxford, however, things went differently. She had a good house, and “the pleasantest lecture I shall ever deliver. Raced home all happy and at rest. My best visit at home.” Here she refused to receive any fee, placing the proceeds of the lecture in the hands of the overseers of the poor.

She lectured at Salem, at Marlborough, and then at Newark, and again returned to Washington convinced that her plan was a success.

Her next tour took her to Geneva and Lockport, New York, Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio, Ypsilanti and Detroit, Michigan, and on the return trip to Ashtabula, Ohio, Rochester and Dansville, New York. Her fee was a hundred dollars in every place excepting Dansville, but her lecture at this last place proved to be of importance. There she learned about the water cure, which later was to have an important influence upon her life. All these lectures on her third trip left a pleasant memory, except the one at Ashtabula, which for some reason did not go well.

She now arranged for a much longer trip. She bought her ticket for Chicago, stopping to lecture at Laporte, Indiana. She reshaped her lecture somewhat for this trip, telling how her father had fought near that town under “Mad” Anthony Wayne. She lectured in Milwaukee, Evanston, Kalamazoo, Detroit, Flint, Galesburg, Des Moines, Rock Island, Muscatine, Washington, Iowa, Dixon, Illinois, Decatur, and Jacksonville. On her way north from Jacksonville, she was in a train wreck in which several people were injured. She also had an experience in an attempt to rob her, and she resolved never to travel by sleeper again when she had to go alone. She was very nearly as good as her word. Very rarely did she make use of a sleeping-car; she traveled by day when she could, and, when unable to do so, sat up in a corner of the seat and rested as best she could.

She lectured at Mount Vernon, Aurora, Belvidere, Rockford, and other Illinois cities, and at Clinton, Iowa.

In most of these cities she was entertained in the homes of distinguished people, Dorence Atwater sometimes staying at the hotel.

In Chicago she had good visits with John B. Gough and Theodore Tilton, both of whom were on the lecture platform, and she herself lectured in the Chicago Opera House.

Other lectures followed in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and so on back to Washington. Then she took another tour through New England. She lectured in New Haven and found the people unresponsive, but she had a good time at Terryville, Connecticut. There Dorence Atwater was at home. It was characteristic of Clara Barton that at this lecture she insisted that Dorence should preside; not only so, but she called it his lecture and gave him the entire proceeds of that and the lecture at New Haven. It was a proud night for this young man, released from his two imprisonments, and she records that he presided well. She lectured again in Worcester and with better results than before, then extended her tour all over New England.

After this she made other long tours through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and States farther west. Now and then she records a disappointing experience, but in the main the results were favorable. She had no difficulty in making a return engagement; everywhere she was hailed as the Florence Nightingale of America. The press comments were enthusiastic; her bank account grew larger than it had ever been.

Clara Barton was now forty-seven years old. For eight years, beginning with the outbreak of the Civil War, she had lived in rooms on the third floor of a business block. The two flights of stairs and the unpretentiousness of the surroundings had not kept her friends away. Her daily list of callers was a long one, and her evenings brought her so many friends that she spoke humorously of her “levees.” But she had begun to long for a home of her own, which she now was well able to afford. Since the appropriation of Congress of fifteen thousand dollars and her earnings from her lectures, all of which she had carefully invested, she possessed not less than thirty thousand dollars in good interest-bearing securities. She had brought from Andersonville a colored woman, Rosa, who now presided over her domestic affairs. She spent a rather cheerless Christmas on her forty-seventh birthday in her old room on 7th Street, and determined not to delay longer. She bought a house. On the outside it looked old and shabby, but inside it was comfortable. On Tuesday, December 29, 1868, she packed her belongings. Next day she records:

December 30, 1868, Wednesday. Moved. Mr. Budd came early with five men. Mr. Vassall, Sally, and myself all worked, and in the midst of a fearful snowstorm and a good deal of confusion, I broke away from my old rooking of eight years and launched out into the world all by myself. Took my first supper in my own whole house at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill.

She had engaged her movers at a stipulated price of six dollars, but she was so happy with the result that she paid them ten dollars, which for a woman of Clara Barton’s careful habits indicated a very large degree of satisfaction.

The next day, assisted by her colored woman Rosa and her negro man Uncle Jarret, and with some help from two kindly neighbors, she set things to rights. It was a stormy day and she was tired, but happy to be in her home. She wrote in her diary: “This is the last day of the year, and I sometimes think it may be my last year. I am not strong, but God is good and kind.”

It is pathetic that the joy of her occupancy of her new home should have been clouded by any forebodings of this character. Her premonition that it might be her last year came very near to being true. Heavy had been the strain upon her from the day when the war began, and the events of the succeeding years had all drawn upon her vitality. What occurred at the height of her success in Bordentown came again to her at the height of her career upon the lecture platform. She rode one night to address a crowded house, and she stood before them speechless. Her voice utterly failed. Her physicians pronounced it nervous prostration, prescribed three years of complete rest, and ordered her to go to Europe.

END OF VOLUME I