Is more than armies to the public weal.
A sister and family followed me to Washington that I should not be quite alone in that slave city, for up to 1860 they bought and sold slaves at the Capital. Clara Barton.
When I think, I fear how supreme an International Court must have been to be able to induce the Southerners to liberate the slaves, or to convince them that “mudsills” and “greasy mechanics” and “horned yankees” are a people entitled to sufficient respect to be treated on fair international grounds. Clara Barton.
ENLISTED MEN FIRST—THE COLONEL’S LIFE SAVED
In ancient Greece, in the Roman Empire, in Europe through the middle ages, in the more modern chivalry of “Dixie,” among soldiers no slave, no servant—none but a gentleman carried a gun to kill. Killing in war time was the occupation of “gentlemen” only. For the first time in the history of the Centuries—in 1863—the ex-slave alongside the “gentlemen” on the battlefield, fought for human rights. It was at the battle of Fort Wagner on Morris Island; Colonel Shaw had led his “colored regiment” to that field of slaughter.
The first woman nurse on any battlefield, a veteran nurse at the front, was there,—the only woman present among the thousands of boys in blue. The chivalric southern soldiers hated the “mudsills,” the “greasy mechanics” and the “horned yankees,” but with a still more deadly hatred the “nigger in blue”—the ex-slave now marshalled in battle array against his former master. The onslaught there amidst the whizzing of bullets and bursting of shells is pictured as the “orgy of hell.”
The Colonel while leading that colored regiment was among the wounded. “Miss Barton, Colonel Shaw is lying on a dissecting table. His leg has been taken off. His life is ebbing away; won’t you go to him?”
Bearing the bandage, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to the wounded I go—
Miss Barton replied: “Officers generally have friends enough to see that their wants are attended to, while the poor enlisted men are neglected. I will go to see the Colonel as soon as I have attended to my charges here.” When she was through with the wounded enlisted men, Clara Barton gave her attention to the Colonel, and through her services his life was saved.