SPRING OF 1863
The events we have been describing bring Miss Barton to the end of 1862. The greater part of the year 1863 was spent by her in entirely different surroundings. Believing that the most significant military events of that year would be found in connection with a campaign against Charleston, South Carolina, and that the Army of the Potomac, which she had thus far accompanied, was reasonably well cared for in provisions which were in large degree the result of her establishment, she began to consider the advisability of going farther south.
Her reasons for this were partly military and partly personal. The military aspect of the situation was that she learned in Washington that the region about Charleston was likely to be the place of largest service during the year 1863. On the personal side was first her great desire to establish communication with her brother Stephen, who still was in North Carolina. When Charleston was captured, the army could move on into the interior. If she were somewhere near, she could have a part in the rescue of her brother, and she had reason to believe that he might have need of her service after his long residence within the bounds of the Confederacy. Her brother David received a commission in the Quartermaster’s Department, and he was sent to Hilton Head in the vicinity of Charleston. Her cousin, Corporal Leander T. Poor, in the Engineers’ Department, was assigned there, partly through her influence. It seemed as though that field promised to her every possible opportunity for public and private usefulness. There she could most largely serve her country; there she could have the companionship of her brother David and her cousin, Leander Poor; there she could most probably establish communications with Stephen, who might be in great need of her assistance. It is difficult to see how in the circumstances she could have planned with greater apparent wisdom. If in any respect the outcome failed to justify her expectations, it was because she was no wiser with respect to the military developments of the year 1863 than were the highest officials in Washington. Her request for permission to go to Port Royal was written early in 1863, and was addressed to the Assistant Secretary of War.
This request was promptly granted, and she was soon planning for a change of scene. The first three months of 1863, however, were spent in Washington, and we have few glimpses of her activities. In the middle of January she rejoined the army, acting on information which led her to believe that a battle was impending.
It should be stated that Clara Barton’s diaries are most fragmentary where there is most to record. She was much given to writing, and, when she had time, enjoyed recording in detail almost everything that happened. She was accustomed to record the names of her callers, and the persons from whom she received, and those to whom she sent, letters; her purchases with the cost of each; her receipts and expenditures; her repairs to her wardrobe, and innumerable other little items; but a large proportion of the most significant events in her public life are not recorded in her diaries, or, if recorded at all, are merely set down in catchwords, and the details are given, if at all, in her letters. Of this expedition in the winter of 1863 we have no word either in her diary, which she probably left in Washington, or in her letters which she may have been too busy to write, or which, if written, have not been preserved. Our knowledge of her departure upon this expedition is contained in a letter from her nephew Samuel Barton:
Surgeon-General’s Office
Washington City, D.C., January 18th, 1863My dear Cousin Mary:
Your very acceptable letter, with Ada’s and Ida’s, was received last Thursday evening. I could not answer sooner, for I have been quite busy evenings ever since it was received. Aunt Clara left the city this morning for the army. Her friend, Colonel Rucker, the Assistant Quartermaster-General, told her last Thursday that the army were about to move and they were expecting a fight and wanted her to go if she felt able, so this morning she, Mr. Welles, who always goes with her to the battles, and Mr. Doe, a Massachusetts man, took the steamboat for Acquia Creek, where they will take the cars for Falmouth and there join the army. Colonel Rucker gave her two new tents, and bread, flour, meal, and a new stove, and requested her to telegraph to him for anything she wanted and he would send it to her. Aunt Sally left for Massachusetts last Thursday evening....
Sam Barton
In the State House in Boston is the battle-flag of the 21st Massachusetts, stained with the blood of Sergeant Thomas Plunkett. Both his arms were shot away in the battle of Fredericksburg, but he planted the flagstaff between his feet and upheld the flag with his two shattered stumps of arms. Massachusetts has few relics so precious as this flag. Clara Barton was with him at Fredericksburg and ministered to him there, and remained his lifelong friend. In many ways she manifested her interest in him, rendering her aid in a popular movement which secured him a purse of $4000. Sergeant Plunkett was in need of a pension, and Clara Barton addressed to the Senate’s Committee on Military Affairs a memorial on his behalf. It was written on Washington’s Birthday, after her return from the field:
Washington, D.C., Feb. 22nd, ’63
To the Members of the
Military Committee, U.S. Senate.
Senators:Nothing less than a strong conviction of duty owed to one of the brave defenders of our Nation’s honor could induce me to intrude for a moment upon the already burdened, and limited term of action yet remaining to your honorable body.
During the late Battle of Fredericksburg, the 21st Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers were ordered to charge upon a battery across an open field; in the terrible fire which assailed them, the colors were three times in quick succession bereft of their support; the third time they were seized by Sergeant Thomas Plunkett, of Company E, and borne over some three hundred yards of open space, when a shell from the enemy’s battery in its murderous course killed three men of the regiment and shattered both arms of the Sergeant. He could no longer support the colors upright, but, planting his foot against the staff, he endeavored to hold them up, while he strove by his shouts amid the confusion to attract attention to their condition; for some minutes he sustained them against his right arm torn and shattered just below the shoulder, while the blood poured over and among the sacred folds, literally obliterating the stripes, leaving as fit emblem of such heroic sacrifice only the crimson and the stars. Thus drenched in blood, and rent by the fury of eight battles, the noble standard could be no longer borne, and, while its gallant defender lay suffering in field hospital from amputation of both arms, it was reverently wrapped by Colonel Clark and returned to the State House in Boston, with the request that others might be sent them; the 21st had never lost their colors, but they had worn them out.
The old flag and its brave bearer are alike past their usefulness save as examples for emulation and titles of glory for some bright page of our Nation’s history, and, while the one is carefully treasured in the sacred archives of the State, need I more than ask of this noble body to put forth its protecting arm to shelter, cherish, and sustain the other? If guaranty were needful for the private character of so true a soldier, it would have been found in the touching address of his eloquent Colonel (Clark) delivered on Christmas beside the stretcher waiting at the train at Falmouth to convey its helpless burden to the car, whither he had been escorted not only by his regiment, but his General. The tears which rolled over the veteran cheeks around him were ample testimony of the love and respect he had won from them, and to-day his heart’s deepest affections twine round his gallant regiment as the defenders of their country.
A moment’s reflection will obviate the necessity of any suggestions in reference to the provisions needful for his future support; it is only to be remembered that he can nevermore be unattended, a common doorknob is henceforth as formidable to him as a prison bolt. His little pension as a Sergeant would not remunerate an attendant for placing his food in his mouth, to say nothing of how it shall be obtained for both of them.
For the sake of formality merely, for to you gentlemen I know the appeal is needless, I will close by praying your honorable body to grant to Sergeant Plunkett such pension as shall in your noble wisdom be ample for his future necessities and a fitting tribute to his patriotic sacrifice.
C. B.
The assignment of her brother David to duty in the vicinity of Charleston was the event which decided her to ask for a transfer to that field, or rather for permission to go there with supplies.
It must be remembered that Miss Barton’s service was a voluntary service. She was not an army nurse, and had no intention of becoming one. The system of army nurses was under the direct supervision of Dorothea Lynde Dix, a woman from her own county, and one for whom she cherished feelings of the highest regard, but under whom she had no intention of working. Indeed, it is one of the fine manifestations of good sense on the part of Clara Barton that she never at any time attempted what might have seemed an interference with Miss Dix, but found for herself a field of service, and developed it according to a method of her own. It will be well at this time to give some account of Miss Dix, and a little outline of her great work in its relation to that of Clara Barton.
Dorothea Lynde Dix was born April 4, 1802, and died July 17, 1887. She was twenty-nine years older than Clara Barton, and their lives had many interesting parallels. Until the publication of her biography by Francis Tiffany in 1890, it was commonly supposed that she was born in Worcester County, Massachusetts, where she spent her childhood. But her birth occurred in Maine. Unlike Clara Barton she had no happy home memories. Her father was an unstable, visionary man, and it was on one of his frequent and futile migrations that she was born. Her biographer states that her childhood memories were so painful that “in no hour of the most confidential intimacy could she be induced to unlock the silence which, to the very end of life, she maintained as to all the incidents of her early days.” She had no happy memories of association with school or church, or sympathetic friends. The background of her childhood memory was of poverty with a lack of public respect for a father who, though of good family, led an aimless, shiftless, wandering life. Unhappily, he was a religious fanatic, associated with no church, but issuing tracts which he paid for with money that should have been used for his children, and, to save expense, required her to paste or stitch. She hated the employment and the type of religion which it represented. She broke away from it almost violently and went to live with her grandmother in Boston.
There she fell under the influence of William Ellery Channing, and was born again. To her through his ministry came the spirit that quickened and gave life to her dawning hope and aspiration.
How she got her education we hardly know, but she began teaching, as Clara Barton did, when she was fifteen years of age. And like Clara Barton she became a pioneer in certain forms of educational work. Dorothea Dix opened a school “for charitable and religious uses,” above her grandmother’s barn, and in time she inherited property which made her independent, so that she was able to devote herself to a life of philanthropy.
In 1837, being then thirty-five years of age, and encouraged by her pastor, Dr. Channing, in whose home she spent much of her time, she launched forth upon her career of devotion to the amelioration of the condition of convicts, lunatics, and paupers. In her work for the insane she was especially effective. She traveled in nearly all of the States of the Union, pleading for effective legislation to promote the establishment of asylums for the insane. Like Clara Barton she found an especially fruitful field of service in New Jersey; the Trenton Asylum was in a very real sense her creation. The pauper, the prisoner, and especially the insane of our whole land owe her memory a debt of lasting gratitude.
By 1861 her reputation was well established. She was then almost sixty years of age and had gained the well-merited confidence of the medical profession. She was on her way from Boston to Washington, and was spending a few days at the Trenton Asylum, when the Sixth Massachusetts was fired upon in Baltimore on April 19, 1861. Like Clara Barton she hastened immediately to the place of service. On the very next day she wrote to a friend: “I think my duty lies near military hospitals for the present. This need not be announced. I have reported myself and some nurses for free service at the War Department, and to the Surgeon-General.” Her offer was accepted with great heartiness and with ill-considered promptness. She was appointed “Superintendent of Female Nurses.” She was authorized “to select and assign female nurses to general or permanent military hospitals; they not to be employed without her sanction and approval except in case of urgent need.”
Whether the United States contained any woman better qualified to undertake such a task as this than Dorothea Dix may be questioned. Certainly none could have been found with more of experience or with a higher consecration. It was an impossible task for any one, and, while Miss Dix was possessed of some of the essential qualities, she did not possess them all. Her biographer very justly says:
The literal meaning, however, of such a commission as had thus been hastily bestowed on Miss Dix—applying, as it did to the women nurses of the military hospitals of the whole United States not in actual rebellion—was one which, in those early days of the war, no one so much as began to take in.... Such a commission—as the march of events was before long to prove—involved a sheer, practical impossibility. It implied, not a single-handed woman, nearly sixty and shattered in health, but immense organized departments at twenty different centers.”[8]
The War Department acted upon what must have appeared a wise impulse in turning this whole matter of women nurses over to the authority of a woman known in all the States—as Miss Dix was known—and possessing the confidence of the people of the whole country. But she was not only sixty years of age and predisposed to consumption, and at that time suffering from other ailments, but she had never learned to delegate responsibility to her subordinates. It had been well for Clara Barton if she had known better how to set others to work, but she knew how better than Dorothea Dix and was twenty years younger. Indeed, Clara Barton was younger at eighty than Dorothea Dix was at sixty, but she herself suffered somewhat from this same limitation. Dorothea Dix could not be everywhere, and with her system she needed to be everywhere, just as Clara Barton under her system had to be at the very front in direct management of her own line of activities. But Dorothea Dix, besides needing to be simultaneously on twenty battle-fields, had to be where she could examine and sift out and prepare for service the chosen from among a great many thousand women applying for the privilege of nursing wounded soldiers, and ranging all the way from sentimental school-girls to sickly and decrepit grandmothers. Again, Mr. Tiffany says:
Women nurses were volunteering by the thousands, the majority of them without the experience or health to fit them for such arduous service. Who should pass on their qualifications, who station, superintend, and train them? Now, under the Atlas weight of care and responsibilities so suddenly thrust on Miss Dix, the very qualifications which had so preëminently fitted her for the sphere in which she had wrought such miracles of success began to tell against her. She was nearly sixty years old, and with a constitution sapped by malaria, overwork, and pulmonary weakness. She had for years been a lonely and single-handed worker, planning her own projects, keeping her own counsel, and pressing on, unhampered by the need of consulting others, toward her self-chosen goal. The lone worker could not change her nature. She tried to do everything herself, and the feat before long became an impossibility. At length she came to recognize this, again and again exclaiming in her distress, “This is not the work I would have my life judged by.”
By that, however, in part her life-work must be judged, and, in the main, greatly to her advantage and wholly to her honor. We can see, however, the inevitable limitations of her work. Up to that time, she had dealt with small groups of subordinates from whom she could demand and secure some approach to perfection of organization and discipline. This she could not possibly secure in her present situation. Again we quote the discriminating words of her biographer:
But in war—especially in a war precipitately entered into by a raw and inexperienced people—all such perfection of organization and discipline is out of the question. If a good field hospital is not to be had, the best must be made of a bad one. If a skillful surgeon is not at hand, then an incompetent one must hack away after his own butcher fashion. If selfish and greedy attendants eat up and drink up the supplies of delicacies and wines for the sick, then enough more must be supplied to give the sick the fag end of a chance. It is useless to try to idealize war.... All this, however, Miss Dix could not bring herself to endure. Ready to live on a crust, and to sacrifice herself without stint, her whole soul was on fire at the spectacles of incompetence and callow indifference she was doomed daily to witness. She became overwrought, and lost the requisite self-control.... Inevitably she became involved in sharp altercations with prominent medical officials and with regimental surgeons.[9]
It is necessary to recall this in order to understand Clara Barton’s attitude toward the established military hospitals. She was not, in any narrow or technical term, a hospital nurse. She stood ready to assist the humblest soldier in any possible need, and to work in any hospital at any task howsoever humble, if that was where she could work to advantage. But she knew the hospitals in and about Washington too well not to appreciate these infelicities. She had no intention whatever of becoming a cog in that great and unmanageable machine.
Clara Barton held Dorothea Dix in the very highest regard. In all her diaries and letters and in her memoranda of conversations which her diaries sometimes contain, there is no word concerning Dorothea Dix that is not appreciative. In 1910 the New York “World” wired her a request that she telegraph to that newspaper, at its expense, a list of eight names of women whom she would nominate for a Woman’s Hall of Fame. The eight names which she sent in reply to this request were Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone Blackwell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Dana Gage, Maria Mitchell, Dorothea Dix, and Mary A. Bickerdyke. It was a fine indication of her broad-mindedness that she should have named two women, Dorothea Dix and Mother Bickerdyke, who should have won distinction in her own field and might have been deemed her rivals for popular affection. If Clara Barton was capable of any kind of jealousy, it was not a jealousy that would have thought ever to undermine or belittle a woman like Dorothea Dix. Few women understood so well as Clara Barton what Dorothea Dix had to contend with. Her contemporary references show how fully she honored this noble elder sister, and how loyally she supported her.
At the same time, Clara Barton kept herself well out from under the administration and control of Miss Dix. In some respects the two women were too much alike in their temperament for either one to have worked well under the other. For that matter, neither one of them greatly enjoyed working under anybody. It is at once to the credit of Clara Barton’s loyalty and good sense that she went as an independent worker.
But the hospitals in and about Washington were approaching more and more nearly something that might be called system, and that system was the system of Dorothea Dix. Clara Barton had all the room she wanted on the battle-field. There was no great crowd of women clamoring to go with her when under fire she crossed the bridge at Fredericksburg. But by the spring of 1863 it began to be less certain that there was going to be as much fighting as there had been in the immediate vicinity of Washington. There was a possibility that actual field service with the Army of the Potomac was going to be less, and that the base hospitals with their organized system would be able to care more adequately for the wounded than would the hospitals farther south where the next great crisis seemed to be impending.
These were among the considerations in the mind of Clara Barton when she left the Army of the Potomac—“my own army,” as she lovingly called it—and secured her transfer to Hilton Head, near Charleston.
[8] Tiffany, Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix, 336, 337.
[9] Tiffany, 338, 339.
CHAPTER XVI
THE ATTEMPT TO RECAPTURE FORT SUMTER
I am confounded! Literally speechless with amazement! When I left Washington every one said it boded no peace; it was a bad omen for me to start; I never missed finding the trouble I went to find, and was never late. I thought little of it. This P.M. we neared the dock at Hilton Head and the boat came alongside and boarded us instantly. The first word was, “The first gun is to be fired upon Charleston this P.M. at three o’clock.” We drew out watches, and the hands pointed three to the minute. I felt as if I should sink through the deck. I am no fatalist, but it is so singular.
Thus wrote Clara Barton in her journal on Tuesday night, April 7, 1863, the night of her arrival at Port Royal. She had become so expert in learning where there was to be a battle that her friends looked upon her as a kind of stormy petrel and expected trouble as soon as she arrived. She had come to Hilton Head in order to be on hand when the bombardment of Charleston should occur, and the opening guns of the bombardment were her salute as her boat, the Arogo, warped up to the dock. Everything seemed to indicate that she had come at the very moment when she was needed.
But the following Saturday the transports which had loaded recruits at Hilton Head, ready to land and capture Charleston as soon as the guns had done their work, returned to Hilton Head and brought the soldiers back. Her diary that morning recorded that the Arogo returning would stop off at Charleston for dispatches, but her entry that night said:
In the P.M., much to the consternation of everybody, the transports laden with troops all hove in sight. Soon the harbor was literally filled with ships and boats, the wharf crowded with disembarking troops with the camp equipage they had taken with them. What had they returned for? was the question hanging on every lip. Conjecture was rife; all sorts of rumors were afloat; but the one general idea seemed to prevail that the expedition “had fizzled,” if any one knows the precise meaning and import of that term. Troops landed all the evening and perhaps all night, and returned to the old camping grounds. The place is alive with soldiers. No one knows why he is here, or why he is not there; all seem disappointed and chagrined, but no one is to blame. For my part, I am rather pleased at the turn it has taken, as I thought from the first that we had “too few troops to fight and too many to be killed.” I have seen worse retreats if this be one.
“Fizzled” appears to have been a new word, but the country had abundant opportunity to learn its essential meaning. The expedition against Charleston was one of several that met this inglorious end, and the flag was not raised over Sumter until 1865.
Now followed an interesting chapter in Clara Barton’s career, but one quite different from anything she had expected when she came to Hilton Head. After the “fizzle” in early April, the army settled down to general inactivity. Charleston must be attacked simultaneously by land and sea and reduced by heavy artillery fire before the infantry could do anything. There was nothing for Clara Barton to do but to wait for the battle which had been postponed, but was surely coming. She distributed her perishable supplies where they would do the most good, and looked after the comfort of such soldiers as needed her immediate ministration. But the wounded were few in number and the sick were in well-established hospitals where she had no occasion to offer her services.
Moreover, she found the situation here very different from what she had seen only a few miles from Washington. There were no muddy roads between Hilton Head and New York Harbor. The Arogo was a shuttle moving back and forward every few days, and in time another boat was added. There was a regular mail service between New York and Hilton Head, and every boat took officers and soldiers going upon, or returning from, furloughs, and the boats from New York brought nurses and supplies. The Sanitary Commission had its own dépôt of supplies and a liberal fund of money from which purchases could be made of fruits and such other local delicacies as were procurable. It is true, as Miss Barton was afterward to learn, that the hospital management left something to be desired, and that fewer delicacies were purchased than could have been. But that was distinctly not her responsibility, nor did she for one moment assume it to be such. She came into conflict with official red tape quite soon enough in her own department, without intruding where she did not belong. She settled down to await the time when she should be needed for the special work that had brought her to Hilton Head. That time came, but it did not come soon, and its delay was the occasion of very mixed emotions on her part.
Clara Barton came to Hilton Head with a reputation already established. She no longer needed to be introduced, nor was there any difficulty in her procuring passes to go where she pleased, excepting as she was sometimes refused out of consideration for her own personal safety. But not once while she was in Carolina was she asked to show her passes. When she landed, she found provision made for her at regimental headquarters. Colonel J. G. Elwell, of Cleveland, to whom she reported, was laid up at this time with a broken leg. She had him for a patient and his gratitude continued through all the subsequent years. Her journal described him as a noble, Christian gentleman, and she found abundant occasion to admire his manliness, his Christian character, his affection for his wife and children, his courtesy to her, and later, his heroism as she witnessed it upon the battle-field. The custody of her supplies brought her into constant relations with the Chief Quartermaster, Captain Samuel T. Lamb, for whom she cherished a regard almost if not quite as high as that she felt for Colonel, afterward General, Elwell. Her room was at headquarters, under the same roof with these and other brave officers, who vied with each other in bestowing honors and kindnesses upon her. As Colonel Elwell was incapacitated for service, she saw him daily, and the care of her supplies gave her scarcely less constant association with Captain Lamb. General Hunter called upon her, paid her high compliments, issued her passes and permits, and offered her every possible courtesy. Her request that her cousin, Corporal Leander Poor, be transferred to the department over which her brother David presided, met an immediate response. The nurses from the hospital paid her an official call, and apparently spoke very gracious words to her, for she indicates that she was pleased with something they said or did. Different officers sent her bouquets; her table and her window must have been rather constantly filled with flowers. More than once the band serenaded her, and between the musical numbers there was a complimentary address which embarrassed, even more than it pleased her, in which a high tribute was paid “To Clara Barton, the Florence Nightingale of America.”
The officers at headquarters had good saddle horses, and invited her to ride with them. If there was any form of exercise which she thoroughly enjoyed, it was horseback riding. She procured a riding-skirt and sent for her sidesaddle, which the Arogo in due time brought to her. So far nothing could have been more delightful. The very satisfaction of it made her uncomfortable. She hoped that God would not hold her accountable for misspent time, and said so in her diary.
Lest she should waste her time, she began teaching some negro boys to read, and sought out homesick soldiers who needed comfort. Whenever she heard of any danger or any likelihood of a battle anywhere within reach, she conferred with Colonel Elwell about going there. He was a religious man, and she discussed with him the interposition of Divine Providence, and the apparent indication that she was following a Divine call in coming to Hilton Head exactly when she did. But no field opened immediately which called for her ministrations. She felt sometimes that it would be a terrible mistake if she had come so far away from what really was her duty, when she wrote: “God is great and fearfully just. Truly it is a fearful thing to fall into His hands; His ways are past finding out.” Still she could not feel responsible for the fact that no great battle had occurred in her immediate vicinity. Each time the Arogo dropped anchor, she wondered if she ought to return on her; but each time it seemed certain that it was not going to be very long until there was a battle. So she left the matter in God’s hands. She wrote: “It will be wisely ordered, and I shall do all for the best in the end. God’s will, not mine, be done. I am content. How I wish I could always keep in full view the fact and feeling that God orders all things precisely as they should be; all is best as it is.”
On Sunday she read Beecher’s sermons and sometimes copied religious poetry for Colonel Elwell, who, in addition to his own disability, had tender memories of the death of his little children, and many solicitous thoughts for his wife.
In some respects she was having the time of her life. A little group of women, wives of the officers, gathered at the headquarters, and there grew up a kind of social usage. One evening when a group of officers and officers’ wives were gathered together, one of the ladies read a poem in honor of Clara Barton. One day, at General Hunter’s headquarters and in his presence, Colonel Elwell presented her with a beautiful pocket Bible on behalf of the officers. If she needed anything to increase her fame, that need was supplied when Mr. Page, correspondent of the New York “Tribune,” whom she remembered to have met at the Lacy house during the battle of Fredericksburg, arrived at Hilton Head, and he, who had seen every battle of the Army of the Potomac except Chancellorsville, told the officers how he had heard General Patrick, at the battle of Fredericksburg, remonstrate with Miss Barton on account of her exposing herself to danger, saying afterward that he expected to see her shot every minute. The band of a neighboring regiment came over and serenaded her. Her windows were filled with roses and orange blossoms, and she wrote in her diary: “I do not deserve such friends as I find, and how can I deserve them? I fear that in these later years our Heavenly Father is too merciful to me.”
It would have been delightful if she could only have been sure that she was doing her duty. Surrounded by appreciative friends, bedecked with flowers, serenaded and sung to, and with a saddled horse at her door almost every morning and at least one officer if not a dozen eager for the joy and honor of a ride with her, only two things disturbed her. The first was that she still had no word from Stephen, and the other was the feeling that, unless the Lord ordained a battle in her vicinity before long, she ought to be back with what she called “my own army.”
Clara Barton’s diary displays utter freedom from cant. She was not given to putting her religious feelings and emotions down on paper. But in this period she gave much larger space to her own reflections than was her custom when more fully occupied. She was feeling in a marked degree the providential aspects of her own life; she was discussing with Christian officers their plans for what Colonel Elwell called his “soldier’s church.” Her religious nature found expression in her diary more adequately than she had usually had time to express.
Toward the end of her period of what since has been termed her watchful waiting, she received a letter from a friend, an editor, who felt that the war had gone on quite long enough, and who wished her to use her influence in favor of an immediate peace. Few people wanted peace more than Clara Barton, but her letter in answer to this request shows an insight into the national situation which at that time could hardly have been expected:
Hilton Head, S.C., June 24th, 1863
T. W. Meighan, Esq.,
My kind friend, your welcome letter of the 6th has been some days in hand. I did not get “frightened.” I am a U.S. soldier, you know, and therefore not supposed to be susceptible to fear, and, as I am merely a soldier, and not a statesman, I shall make no attempt at discussing political points with you. You have spoken openly and frankly, and I have perused your letter and considered your sentiments with interest, and, I believe, with sincerity and candor, and, while I observe with pain the wide difference of opinion existing between us, I cannot find it in my heart to believe it more than a matter of opinion. I shall not take to myself more of honesty of purpose, faithfulness of zeal, or patriotism, than I award to you. I have not, aye! never shall forget where I first found you. The soldier who has stood in the ranks of my country’s armies, and toiled and marched and fought, and fallen and struggled and risen, but to fall again more worn and exhausted than before, until my weak arm had greater strength than his, and could aid him, and yet made no complaint, and only left the ranks of death when he had no longer strength to stand up in them—is it for me to rise up in judgment and accuse this man of a want of patriotism? True, he does not see as I see, and works in a channel in which I have no confidence, with which I have no sympathy, and through which I could not go; still, I must believe that in the end the same results which would gladden my heart would rejoice his.
Where you in prospective see peace, glorious, coveted peace, and rest for our tired armies, and home and happiness and firesides and friends for our war-worn heroes, I see only the beginning of war. If we should make overtures for “peace upon any terms,” then, I fear, would follow a code of terms to which no civilized nation could submit and present even an honorable existence among nations. God forbid that I should ask the useless exposure of the life of one man, the desolation of one more home; I never for a moment lose sight of the mothers and sisters, and white-haired fathers, and children moving quietly about, and dropping the unseen, silent tear in those far-away saddened homes, and I have too often wiped the gathering damp from pale, anxious brows, and caught from ashy, quivering lips the last faint whispers of home, not to realize the terrible cost of these separations; nor has morbid sympathy been all,—out amid the smoke and fire and thunder of our guns, with only the murky canopy above, and the bloody ground beneath, I have wrought day after day and night after night, my heart well-nigh to bursting with conflicting emotions, so sorry for the necessity, so glad for the opportunity of ministering with my own hands and strength to the dying wants of the patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine. If my poor life could have purchased theirs, how cheerfully and quickly would the exchange have been made; more than this I could not do, deeper than this I could not feel, and yet among it all it has never once been in my heart, or on my lips, to sue to our enemies for peace. First, they broke it without cause; last, they will not restore it without shame. True, we may never find peace by fighting, certainly we never shall by asking. “Independence?” They always had their independence till they madly threw it away; if there be a chain on them to-day it is of their own riveting. I grant that our Government has made mistakes, sore ones, too, in some instances, but ours is a human government, and like all human operations liable to mistakes; only the machinery and plans of Heaven move unerringly and we short-sighted mortals are, half our time, fain to complain of these. I would that so much of wisdom and foresight and strength and power fall to our rulers as would show them to-morrow the path to victory and peace, but we shall never strengthen their hands or incite their patriotism by deserting and upbraiding them. To my unsophisticated mind, the Government of my country is my country, and the people of my country, the Government of my country as nearly as a representative system will allow. I have taught me to look upon our “Government” as the band which the people bind around the bundle of sticks to hold it firm, where every patriot hand must grasp the knot the tighter, and our “Constitution” as a symmetrical framework unsheltered and unprotected, around which the people must rally, and brace and stay themselves among its inner timbers, and lash and bind and nail and rivet themselves to its outer posts, till in its sheltered strength it bids defiance to every elemental jar,—till the winds cannot rack, the sunshine warp, or the rains rot, and I would to Heaven that so we rallied and stood to-day. If our Government is “too weak” to act vigorously and energetically, strengthen it till it can. Then comes the peace we all wait for as kings and prophets waited,—and without which, like them, we seek and never find.
Pardon me, my good friend, I had never thought to speak at this length, or, indeed, any length upon this strangely knotted subject, so entirely out of my line. My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses—and again I ask you to pardon, not so much what I have said, as the fact of my having said anything in relation to a subject of which, upon the very nature of things, I am supposed to be profoundly ignorant.
With thanks for favors, and hoping to hear from you and yours as usual,
I remain as ever
Yours truly
Clara Barton
I am glad to hear from your wife and mother, and I am most thankful for your cordial invitation to visit you, which I shall (if I have not forfeited your friendship by my plainness of speech, which I pray I may not) accept most joyously, and I am even now rejoicing in prospect over my anticipated visit. We are not suffering from heat yet, and I am enjoying such horseback rides as seldom fall to the lot of ladies, I believe. I don’t know but I should dare ride with a cavalry rider by and by, if I continue to practice. I could at least take lessons. I have a fine new English leaping saddle on the way to me. I hope you will endeavor to see to it that the rebel privateers shall not get hold of it. I could not sustain both the loss and disappointment, I fear.
Love to all.
Yours
C. B.
While Miss Barton was engaged in these less strenuous occupations she issued a requisition upon her brother in the Quartermaster’s Department for a flatiron. She said: “My clothes are as well washed as at home, and I have a house to iron in if I had the iron. I could be as clean and as sleek as a kitten. Don’t you want a smooth sister enough to send her a flatiron?”
In midsummer, hostilities began in earnest. On July 11 an assault on Fort Wagner was begun from Morris Island, and was followed by a bombardment, Admiral Dahlgren firing shells from his gunboats, and General Gillmore opening with his land batteries. Then followed the charge of the black troops under Colonel R. G. Shaw, and the long siege in which the “swamp angel,” a two-hundred-pounder Parrott, opened fire on Charleston. It was then that Clara Barton found what providential leading had brought her to this place. Not from a sheltered retreat, but under actual fire of the guns she ministered to the wounded and the dying. All day long under a hot sun she boiled water to wash their wounds, and by night she ministered to them, too ardent to remember her need of sleep. The hot winds drove the sand into her eyes, and weariness and danger were ever present. But she did her work unterrified. She saw Colonel Elwell leading the charge, and he believed that not only himself, but General Voris and Leggett would have died but for her ministrations.
Follow me, if you will, through these eight months [Miss Barton said shortly afterward]. I remember eight months of weary siege—scorched by the sun, chilled by the waves, rocked by the tempest, buried in the shifting sands, toiling day after day in the trenches, with the angry fire of five forts hissing through their ranks during every day of those weary months.
This was when your brave old regiments stood thundering at the gate of proud rebellious Charleston.... There, frowning defiance, with Moultrie on her left, Johnson on her right, and Wagner in front, she stood hurling fierce death and destruction full in the faces of the brave band who beleaguered her walls.
Sumter, the watch-dog, that stood before her door, lay maimed and bleeding at her feet, pierced with shot and torn with shell, the tidal waves lapping his wounds. Still there was danger in his growl and death in his bite.”[10]
One summer afternoon our brave little army was drawn up among the island sands and formed in line of march. For hours we watched. Dim twilight came, then the darkness for which they had waited, while the gloom and stillness of death settled down on the gathered forces of Morris Island. Then we pressed forward and watched again. A long line of phosphorescent light streamed and shot along the waves ever surging on our right.
I remember so well these islands, when the guns and the gunners, the muskets and musketeers, struggled for place and foothold among the shifting sands. I remember the first swarthy regiments with their unsoldierly tread, and the soldierly bearing and noble brows of the patient philanthropists who volunteered to lead them. I can see again the scarlet flow of blood as it rolled over the black limbs beneath my hands and the great heave of the heart before it grew still. And I remember Wagner and its six hundred dead, and the great-souled martyr that lay there with them when the charge was ended and the guns were cold.
Vividly she went on to describe the siege of Fort Wagner from Morris Island, thus:
I saw the bayonets glisten. The “swamp angel” threw her bursting bombs, the fleet thundered its cannonade, and the dark line of blue trailed its way in the dark line of belching walls of Wagner. I saw them on, up, and over the parapets into the jaws of death, and heard the clang of the death-dealing sabers as they grappled with the foe. I saw the ambulances laden down with agony, and the wounded, slowly crawling to me down the tide-washed beach, Voris and Cumminger gasping in their blood. And I heard the deafening clatter of the hoofs of “Old Sam” as Elwell madly galloped up under the walls of the fort for orders. I heard the tender, wailing fife, the muffled drum and the last shots as the pitiful little graves grew thick in the shifting sands.
Of this experience General Elwell afterward wrote:
I was shot with an Enfield cartridge within one hundred and fifty yards of the fort and so disabled that I could not go forward. I was in an awful predicament, perfectly exposed to canister from Wagner and shell from Gregg and Sumter in front, and the enfilade from James Island. I tried to dig a trench in the sand with my saber, into which I might crawl, but the dry sand would fall back in place about as fast as I could scrape it out with my narrow implement. Failing in this, on all fours I crawled toward the lee of the beach, which was but a few yards off.... A charge of canister all around me aroused my reverie to thoughts of action. I abandoned the idea of taking the fort and ordered a retreat of myself, which I undertook to execute in a most unmartial manner on my hands and knees spread out like a turtle.
After working my way for a half-hour and making perhaps two hundred yards, two boys of the 62d Ohio found me and carried me to our first parallel, where had been arranged an extempore hospital. After resting awhile I was put on the horse of my lieutenant-colonel, from which he had been shot that night, and started for the lower end of the island one and a half miles off, where better hospital arrangements had been prepared. Oh, what an awful ride that was! But I got there at last, by midnight. I had been on duty for forty-two hours without sleep under the most trying circumstances and my soul longed for sleep, which I got in this wise: an army blanket was doubled and laid on the soft side of a plank with an overcoat for a pillow, on which I laid my worn-out body.
And such a sleep! I dreamed that I heard the shouts of my boys in victory, that the rebellion was broken, that the Union was saved, and that I was at my old home and that my dear wife was trying to soothe my pain....
My sleepy emotions awoke me and a dear, blessed woman was bathing my temples and fanning my fevered face. Clara Barton was there, an angel of mercy doing all in mortal power to assuage the miseries of the unfortunate soldiers.
While she was still under fire, but after the stress of the first assault, she found time to send a little note which enables us to identify with certainty her headquarters. Her work was not done in the shelter of any of the base hospitals in the general region of Charleston, it was with the advance hospital and under fire.
The midsummer campaign left Clara Barton desperately sick. She came very near to laying down her life with the brave men for whose sake she had freely risked it. What with her own sickness and the strenuous nature of her service, there is only a single line in her diary (on Thanksgiving Day) between July 23 and December 1. On July 22 she personally assisted at two terrible surgical operations as the men were brought directly in from the field. The soldiers were so badly wounded she wanted to see them die before the surgeon touched them. But the surgeons did their work well, and, though it was raining and cold, she covered them with rubber blankets and was astonished to find how comfortable they came to be. She returned to see them in the evening and they were both sleeping soundly. On the following day, the day of her last entry for the summer, she reported the wounded under her care as doing well; also, that she had now a man detailed to assume some of the responsibility for the food of the wounded. Fresh green corn was available, and she was having hominy cooked for men who had had quite too much of salt pork. She was arranging the meals, but had other people to serve them.
Then Clara Barton dropped; her strength gave out. Overcome with fatigue and sick with fever, she lay for several weeks and wrote neither letters nor in her journal.
By October she was ready to answer Annie Childs’s thoughtful inquiry about her wardrobe. There were two successive letters two weeks apart that consisted almost wholly of the answers she made to the question wherewithal she should be clothed. Lest we should suppose Clara Barton to be an institution and not a wholly feminine woman, it is interesting to notice her concern that these dresses be of proper material and suitably made.
The dresses arrived with rather surprising promptness, and they fitted with only minor alterations which she described in detail to Annie. Toward the end of October she had occasion to write again to Annie thanking the friends who had remembered her so kindly, and expressing in her letter the feeling, which she so often recorded in her diary, that she was not doing as much as she ought to merit the kindness of her friends. In another letter a few days later, she told of one use she was making of her riding-skirt; she was furnishing a hospital at Fort Mitchell, seven miles away, and her ride to that hospital combined both business and pleasure.
About this time she gathered some trophies and sent to Worcester for the fair. They were exhibited and sold to add to the resources of the good people who were providing in various ways for the comfort of the soldiers. At this time she wrote to other organizations who had sent her supplies, telling of the good they had done.
But again she fell upon a time of relative inactivity. There were no more battles to be fought immediately. She again wondered if she had any right to stay in a place where everything was so comfortable, especially as Annie Childs had written to her that the Worcester and Oxford women would not permit her to bear any part of the expense for the new clothes that had been made for her.
About this time her brother David received a letter from Stephen which showed that it was useless for her to stay where she was with any present expectation of securing his relief. He was still remaining with his property unmolested by both sides, and thought it better to continue there than run what seemed to him the larger risks of leaving.
One of the most interesting and in its way pathetic entries in her diary at this season, is a long one on December 5, 1863. Miss Barton had collided with official arrogance, and had unhappy memories of it. She probably would have said nothing about it had she not been appealed to by one of the women at the headquarters to do something to improve conditions at the regular hospital. And that was something which Clara Barton simply could not do. She knew better than almost any one else how much those hospitals lacked of perfection. She herself did not visit them, excepting as she went there to return official calls. She had made it plain to those in charge that she had not come to interfere with any form of established work, but to do a work of her own in complete sympathy and coöperation with theirs. She knew that Dorothea Dix had undertaken an impossible task. She saw some nurses near to where she was who were much more fond of spending pleasant evenings at headquarters than they were of doing the work for which they were supposed to have come down. But she also knew that even such work as she was doing was looked upon by some of them with feelings of jealousy, as work outside of the general organization, yet receiving from the public a confidence and recognition not always accorded their own. One night, after one of the officer’s wives had poured out her soul to Clara Barton, she poured out her soul to her diary. It is a very long entry, but it treats of some highly important subjects:
I moved along to the farther end of the piazza and found Mrs. D., who soon made known to me the subject of her desires. As I suspected, the matter was hospitals. She has been visiting the hospital at this place and has become not only interested, but excited upon the subject; the clothing department she finds satisfactory, but the storeroom appears empty and a sameness prevailing through food as provided which seems to her appalling for a diet for sick men. She states that they have no delicacies such as the country at the North are flooding hospitals with; that the food is all badly cooked, served cold, and always the same thing—dip toast, meat cooked dry, and tea without milk, perhaps once a week a potato for each man, or a baked apple. She proposed to establish a kitchen department for the serving of proper food to these men, irrespective of the pleasure of the “Powers that Be.” She expects opposition from the surgeons in charge and Mrs. Russell, the matron appointed and stationed by Miss Dix, but thinks to commence by littles and work herself in in spite of opposition, or make report direct to Washington through Judge Holt, and other influential friends and obtain a carte blanche from Secretary Stanton to act independently of all parties. She wished to know if I thought it would be possible to procure supplies sufficient to carry on such a plan, and people to cook and serve if it were once established and directed properly. She had just mailed a letter to Miss Dame calling upon her to stir people at the North and make a move if possible in the right direction. She said General Gillmore took tea with her the evening previous and inquired with much feeling, “How are my poor boys?” She desired me to attend church at the hospital to-morrow (Sunday) morning; not with her, but go, pass through, and judge for myself. In the meantime the Major came in and the subject was discussed generally. I listened attentively, gave it as my opinion that there would be no difficulty in obtaining supplies and means of paying for the preparation of them, but of the manner and feasibility of delivering and distributing them among the patients I said nothing. I had nothing to say. I partly promised to attend church the next morning, and retired having said very little. What I have thought is quite another thing. I have no doubt but the patients lack many luxuries which the country at large endeavors to supply them with, and supposes they have, no doubt; but men suffer and die for the lack of the nursing and provisions of the loved ones at home. No doubt but the stately, stupendous, and magnificent indolence of the “officers in charge” embitters the days of the poor sufferers who have become mere machines in the hands of the Government to be ruled and oppressed by puffed-up, conceited, and self-sufficient superiors in position. No doubt but a good, well-regulated kitchen, presided over with a little good common sense and womanly care, would change the whole aspect of things and lengthen the days of some, and brighten the last days of others of the poor sufferers within the thin walls of this hospital. I wish it might be, but what can I do? First it is not my province; I should be out of place there; next, Miss Dix is supreme, and her appointed nurse is matron; next, the surgeons will not brook any interference, and will, in my opinion, resent and resist the smallest effort to break over their own arrangements. What others may be able to do I am unable to conjecture, but I feel that my guns are effectually silenced. My sympathy is not destroyed, by any means, but my confidence in my ability to accomplish anything of an alleviating character in this department is completely annihilated. I went with all I had, to work where I thought I saw greatest need. A man can have no greater need than to be saved from death, and after six weeks of unremitting toil I was driven from my own tents by the selfish cupidity or stupidity of a pompous staff surgeon with a little accidental temporary authority, and I by the means thrown upon a couch of sickness, from which I barely escaped with my life. After four weeks of suffering most intense, I rose in my weakness and repaired again to my post, and scarcely were my labors recommenced when, through the same influence or no influence brought to bear upon the General Commanding, I was made the subject of a general order, and commanded to leave the island, giving me three hours in which to pack, remove, and ship four tons of supplies with no assistance that they knew of but one old female negro cook. I complied, but was remanded to Beaufort to labor in the hospitals there. With this portion of the “order” I failed to comply, and went home to Hilton Head and wrote the Commanding General a full explanation of my position, intention, proposed labors, etc., etc., which brought a rather sharp response, calling my humanity to account for not being willing to comply with his specified request, viz. to labor in Beaufort hospitals; insisting upon the plan as gravely as if it had been a possibility to be accomplished. But for the extreme ludicrousness of the thing I should have felt hurt at the bare thought of such a charge against me and from such a quarter. The hospitals were supplied by the Sanitary Commission, Miss Dix holding supremacy over all female attendants by authority from Washington, Mrs. Lander claiming, and endeavoring to enforce the same, and scandalizing through the Press—each hospital labeled, No Admittance, and its surgeons bristling like porcupines at the bare sight of a proposed visitor. How in reason’s name was I “to labor there”? Should I prepare my food and thrust it against the outer walls, in the hope it might strengthen the patients inside? Should I tie up my bundle of clothing and creep up and deposit it on the doorstep and slink away like a guilty mother, and watch afar off to see if the master of the mansion would accept or reject the “foundling”? If the Commanding General in his wisdom, when he assumed the direction of my affairs, and commanded me where to labor, had opened the doors for me to enter, the idea would have seemed more practical. It did not occur to me at the moment how I was to effect an entrance to these hospitals, but I have since thought that I might have been expected to watch my opportunity some dark night, and STORM them, although it must be confessed that the popularity of this mode of attack was rather on the decline in this department at that time, having reached its height very soon after the middle of July.
One other uncomfortable experience Clara Barton had at this time. When she first began her work for the relief of the soldiers, she went forth from Washington as a center and still kept up her work in the Patent Office. When she found that this work was to take all her time, she approached the Commissioner of Patents and asked to have her place kept for her, but without salary. He refused this proposal, and said her salary should continue to be paid. The other clerks, also, were in hearty accord with this proposal, and offered to distribute her work among them. But as the months went by, this grew to be a somewhat laborious undertaking. The number of women clerks in the Patent Office had increased as so many of the men were in the army. There were twenty of these women clerks, some of whom had never known Clara Barton, and they did not see any reason why she should be drawing a salary and winning fame for work which they were expected to do. Moreover, the report became current that she was drawing a large salary for her war work in addition. The women in the Patent Office drew up a “round robin” demanding that her salary cease. This news, with the report that the Commissioner had acted upon the request, came to her while she had other things to trouble her. Had the salary ceased because she was no longer doing the work, it would have been no more than she had herself proposed. But when her associates, having volunteered to do the work for her that her place might be kept and her support continued, became the agents for the dissemination of a false report, she was hurt and indignant.
To the honor of Judge Holloway and his associates in the Patent Office, be it recorded that she received a letter from Judge Holloway that she had been misinformed about the termination of her salary; there had, indeed, been such a rumor and request, but he would not have acted on it without learning the truth, and did not credit it. Her desk would await her return if he continued as Commissioner.
A few days before Christmas another pleasant event occurred. Her nephew Stephen, whom she had continued to call “Bub,” arrived in uniform. Though hardly fifteen, he had enlisted in the telegraph corps, and was sent to be with her. He became her closest friend in an intimacy of relation that did not cease until her eyes closed in death; and then, in her perfect confidence in him, she appointed him her executor.
A letter in this month reviews the experiences of her sojourn at Hilton Head:
Hilton Head, S.C.
Wednesday, December 9th, 1863Mr. Parker,
My dear kind Friend:It would be impossible for me to tell how many times I have commenced to write you. Sometimes I have put my letter by because we were doing so little there was nothing of interest to communicate; at other times, because there was so much I had not time to tell it, until some greater necessity drew me away, and my half-written letter became “rubbish” and was destroyed. And now I have but one topic which is of decided interest to me, and that is so peculiarly so that I will hasten to speak of it at once. After almost a year’s absence, I am beginning to think about once more coming home, once more meeting the scores of kind friends I have been from so long; and the nearer I bring this object to my view, the brighter it appears. The nearer I fancy the meeting, the dearer the faces and the kinder the smiles appear to me and the sweeter the welcome voices that fall upon my ear. Not that I have not found good friends here. None could have been kinder. I came with one brother, loving, kind, and considerate; I have met others here scarcely less so, and those, too, with whom rested the power to make me comfortable and happy, and I have yet to recall the first instance in which they have failed to use their utmost endeavor to render me so, and while a tear of joy glistens in my eye at the thought of the kind friends I hope so soon to meet, there will still linger one of regret for the many of those I leave.
Eight months and two days ago we landed at the dock in this harbor. When nations move as rapidly as ours moves at present, that is a long time, and in it as a nation we have done much, gained much, and suffered much. Still much more remains to be done, much more acquired, and I fear much more suffered. Our brave and noble old Army of Virginia still marches and fights and the glorious armies of the West still fight and conquer; our soldiers still die upon the battle-field, pine in hospitals, and languish in prison; the wives and sisters and mothers still wait, and weep and hope and toil and pray, and the little child, fretting at the long-drawn days, asks in tearful impatience, “When will my papa come?”
The first sound which fell upon my ear in this Department was the thunder of our guns in Charleston Harbor, and still the proud city sits like a queen and dictates terms to our army and navy. Sumter, the watch-dog that lay before her door, fell, maimed and bleeding, it is true; still there is defiance in his growl, and death in his bite, and pierced and prostrate as he lies with the tidal waves lapping his wounds, it were worth our lives, and more than his, to go and take him.
We have captured one fort—Gregg—and one charnel house—Wagner—and we have built one cemetery, Morris Island. The thousand little sand-hills that glitter in the pale moonlight are a thousand headstones, and the restless ocean waves that roll and break upon the whitened beach sing an eternal requiem to the toil-worn, gallant dead who sleep beside.
As the year drew to a close, the conviction grew stronger that her work in this field was done. Charleston still resisted attempts to recapture it. Sumter, though demolished, was in the hands of the Confederates. There was no prospect of immediate battle, and unless there was fresh bloodshed there was no imperative call for her. Moreover, little jealousies and petty factions grew up around the hospitals and headquarters, where there were few women and many men, and there were rumors of mismanagement which she must hear, but not reply to. She had many happy experiences to remember, and she left a record of much good done. But her work was finished at that place. In her last entries in her diary she is disposing of her remaining stores, packing her trunk, and when, after a rather long interval, we hear from her again, she is in Washington.
[10] Fort Sumter, fiercely bombarded July 24, repulsed an assault against it on September 8, and was not completely silenced until October 26.