Clara Barton was familiar with these organizations, and, especially in the latter part of the war, often worked alongside them. But though she wrote publicly that their labor was always in “perfect accord, mutual respect and friendliness,” she chose to work alone rather than align herself too closely with the commissions. Barton’s natural leadership and difficulty in working with others prompted her to remain independent, where she would not be “compromised by them in the least.” Furthermore, she secretly scorned the commissions’ work, which she thought inexperienced and impractical: “an old fudge” she called the Sanitary Commission in her journal.
Barton also chose not to work with Dorothea Dix’s “Department of Female Nurses.” A compulsive humanitarian worker, Dix had volunteered her services to the War Department at the opening of hostilities. Her offer was accepted and Dix began the impossible task of collecting supplies, selecting nurses, and supervising hospitals for the Union army. Dix was a perfectionist and her dogmatic and strident opinions won her few friends. But her sharp altercations with physicians and officers resulted more from frustration because she could not relieve the massive misery, than from an over-bearing personality. Feeling that she had failed to achieve her mission, Dix wrote at war’s end: “This is not the work I would have my life judged by.”
The use of female nurses was an innovation during the Civil War and Dix was anxious for the women under her to be taken seriously. Fearful that nursing would become a sport among adventurous young women, she laid down stringent and inflexible rules for nurses. These rules would have greatly hampered Clara Barton’s independent spirit and this is one reason she chose not to join Dix’s force.
In addition to the official organizations there were numerous “unsung heroes” during the Civil War. Most notable were the religious orders such as the Sisters of Charity who calmly defied the army’s restrictions and worked both at the front and in hospitals. Despite the fact that such diverse groups inevitably caused conflicts and jealousies, the Civil War provided a field large enough for all of the humanitarian organizations which labored in it.
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Walt Whitman
While aiding others, Barton, for a time, forgot herself. Her “work and words,” she insisted, were solely bound up in “the individual soldier—what he does, sees, feels, or thinks in ... long dread hours of leaden rain and iron hail.” As she gained self-confidence and acclaim, she shed her morbid introspection. Once when she was asked if her work had been interesting, she gave a revealing reply: “When you stand day and night in the presence of hardship and physical suffering, you do not stop to think about the interest. There is no time for that. Ease pain, soothe sorrow, lessen suffering—this is your only thought day and night. Everything, everything else is lost sight of—yourself and the world.”
In April 1863, Barton transferred her base from Washington to Hilton Head Island off the coast of South Carolina. She had been advised that a major siege of Charleston would be attempted and believed she could be most useful there. She also hoped to be closer to her brothers: Stephen lived behind Confederate lines in North Carolina, and David had been sent by the army to Hilton Head in the early days of 1863.
During the eight-month siege of Charleston, she worked on the battlefields of Morris Island and Fort Wagner and helped nurse soldiers dying of malaria and other tropical fevers. Charleston proved to be a less active spot than anticipated, however, and this fact, coupled with a growing rift between Barton and hospital authorities, led her to leave the area in January 1864. She returned to Washington, where she continued to gather supplies as she awaited her next chance for service.
Her chance came in May 1864, when “the terrible slaughter of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania turned all pitying hearts once more to Fredericksburg.” Here she witnessed some of the most frightening scenes she ever encountered. Fifty thousand men were killed or wounded in the Wilderness Campaign. “I saw many things that I did not wish to see and I pray God I may never see again,” she told a friend. Rain turned the red clay soil of Virginia to deep mud, and hundreds of army wagons, crowded full of wounded and suffering men, were stuck in a tremendous traffic jam. “No hub of a wheel was in sight and you saw nothing of any animal below its knees.”