She was not yet sure that slavery ought to be interfered with where it was, but she was with the party that opposed its further extension, and this imperiled her future as a clerk if James Buchanan was elected. Just before the November election, she wrote to Julia, David’s wife:

Washington, D.C., Nov. 2nd, 1856
Sunday Evening

Dear Sister Julia:

Your looked-for letter came safe to hand; you may well suppose we were anxious to hear from you considering the alarming nature of the one which had preceded it. Stephen must have had a very distressing time, but I am so glad to know that he is relieved and has decided to let some one else be his judge in reference to getting out. I hope he will continue firm in the faith and venture nothing; it is of no use to strive against nature; he must have time to recruit and he has no idea of the time and care it will require to rid his system of the troublesome disease which has fastened upon him. I am glad you have found a physician there who knew how to name his disease. I have known all the time, since the first time he wrote me of his illness in Carolina, what the trouble was, and said when I was at home that he had the dumb chills, but no one would believe an ignoramus like me. I have no doubt but he had had his ague fits regularly since his first attack without ever once mistrusting the real cause of his bad feelings. People say there are two classes of community that the shaking ague never attacks, viz., those who are too lazy to shake and those who will not stop. Stephen belongs to the latter and I to the former, so we must have dumb ague if any. I am glad that father is better, and hope I shall not hear of David’s getting down again this winter; he must keep well enough to come out and see us. We are all very well, only that I have a slight cold, which will wear off, I guess. The weather is delightful, but getting quite cool. We saw a few flakes of snow last Friday, but one would never mistrust it by the Indian summer haze which is spread over the city this evening.

We are all dreading the confusion of day after to-morrow night, when the election returns are made. There will be such an excitement, but the Democrats are the most certain set of men that I ever saw; their confidence of success in the approaching contest is unbounded. Judge Mason has gone to Iowa to vote, and Mr. Stugert (our chief clerk) will leave the city to-morrow night in order to reach Pennsylvania in time the next day. He is one of Mr. Buchanan’s most intimate friends. He called to take me to Georgetown one evening last week, and during the evening he conversed respecting the approaching election. His spirits were unbounded, and his confidence in the right results of the election as unbounded. He wished me to say I would be commissioner and chief clerk for him until his return, but I declined the honor, declaring myself a Freemonter. This he would not hear a word of and walked all around the parlors in company with the Reverend Mr. Halmead assuring all the company that I was an “old school Loco,” “dyed in the wool,” and my father before me was the same, and requested them to place no confidence in anything I might say on the present occasion, as the coffee was exceedingly strong and he passed my cup up five times. I thought this latter three fifths of a mistake, but could not quite tell.

Lo, Bubby [Stephen, her nephew] says he will come to Washington. Well, he must go and ask Colonel De Witt to make him a page, and if the Colonel can do it, Bub can come and stay; he is large enough to carry letters and papers about the House, and do little errands for the Members. I guess he had best ask the Colonel and see what he says about it. Irving is getting ready to take our mail to the office and I must hasten to close my scrawl for the present. I had intended to write to Stephen to-day, but it is rather late; I may get time the first of the week, although I have a heavy week’s business in contemplation. How I wish I could drop in and see you all to-night, but that cannot be just yet. Please give my love to “Grandpa” [her father] and then all the others in succession as they come along, down to Dick [the horse]; is he as nice as ever? I want to see him too. Please remember me to Elvira and Mrs. Aborn, and write me soon again.

Tell Stephen he is a nice fellow to mind so well, and he must keep doing so. Irving is ready.

So good-bye.

Your affectionate sister

Clara

The country was steadily drifting toward war, and Clara Barton felt the danger of it. Although she was convinced that slavery ought not to be extended further, she was not yet an abolitionist, and she felt that violent agitators were taking upon themselves a serious risk in bringing the Nation to the very brink of bloodshed. She did not approve of the John Brown raid, and she was greatly concerned about the meetings that were held that seemed to her calculated to induce riot. She had her convictions, and was never afraid to speak them boldly, but she said, “It will be a strange pass when the Bartons get fanatical, and cannot abide by and support the laws they live under.” A neighbor who had been with Stephen in Carolina was driven away on account of utterances that followed the John Brown raid. She wrote to her brother Stephen at this time—the letter is not dated—and gave the fullest account of her own feelings and convictions concerning the issues then before the country, having in special mind the duty of Northern people resident in the South to be considerate of the conditions under which Southern people had to live. It is a very interesting letter, and the author of this volume could wish that it had been in his possession while Clara Barton was living, that he might have asked her to what extent her views changed in the years that followed:

I have not seen Mr. Seaver since his return, and regret exceedingly that there should have been any necessity for such a termination to his residence in the South. I should not have supposed that he would have felt it his duty to uphold such a cause as “Harper’s Ferry,” and if he did not, it is a pity he had the misfortune to make it appear so. Of course I could not for a moment believe him a dangerous man, hostile to either human life, rights, or interests, or antagonistic to the community among whom he resided, but if they felt him to be so, I do not by any means blame them for the course they took. Situated as they are, they have a right to be cautious, and adopt any measures for safety and quiet which their own judgment may suggest. They have a right even to be afraid, and it is not for the North, who in no way share in the danger, to brand them as cowards; they are the same that people the world over are and would be under the circumstances. Unorganized men everywhere are timid, easy and quick to take alarm. It is only when bodies of men are organized and disciplined, and prepared to defend themselves against expected dangers, that they stand firm and unshrinking, and face death unmoved. Occasionally we hear that you have been or will be requested to leave—this amuses me. It would be singular, indeed, if in all this time your Southern friends had not learned you well enough to tolerate you. It will be a strange pass when the Bartons get fanatical, and cannot abide by and support the laws they live under, and mind their own business closely enough to remain anywhere they may chance to be. I am grieved and ashamed of the course which our Northern people have taken relative to the John Brown affair. Of their relief societies, and mass meetings and sympathetic gatherings, I can say nothing, for I have never witnessed one, and never shall. From the first they seemed to me to be wrong and ill-advised, and had a strained and forced appearance; and the longer they are persisted in, and the greater extent to which they are carried, the more ridiculous they become in my sight. If they represented the true sentiments and feeling of the majority of candid thinking men at the North, it would savor more of justice, but this I believe to be very far from the facts. Their gatherings and speechifyings serve the purpose of a few loud-mouthed, foaming, eloquent fanatics, who would be just as ready in any other cause as this. They preach for notoriety and oratorical praise, fearlessly and injudiciously, with characters long stamped and nothing to lose. It matters little to them that every rounded sentence which falls from their chiseled lips, every burst of eloquence which “brings down the house,” drives home one more rivet in slavery’s chain; if slavery be an evil, they are but helping it on; it is only human nature that it should be so, and so plain a fact “that the wayfaring man cannot err therein.” Nature, and cause and effect, are, I suppose, much the same the world over, and if our Southern neighbors clasp their rights all the firmer, when assailed, and plant the foot of resistance toe to toe with the foot of aggression, it is not for us to complain of it; what differently should we ourselves do? That slavery be an evil I am neither going to affirm nor deny; let those pass judgment whom greater experience and observation have made capable of judging; but allowing the affirmative in its most exaggerated form, could it possibly be equal to the pitiful scene of confusion, distrust, and national paralysis before and around us at the present hour, with the prospect of all the impending danger threatening our vast Republic? Men talk flippantly of dissolving the Union. This may happen, but in my humble opinion never till our very horses gallop in human blood.

But I must hold or I shall get to writing politics to you, and you might tell me, as old Mr. Perry of New Jersey did Elder Lampson when he advised him to leave off drinking whiskey and join the Temperance Society. After listening long and patiently until the Elder had finished his remarks, he looked up very, very benignly with, “Well, Elder, your opinions are very good, and probably worth as much to yourself as anybody.”

Lincoln was elected and duly inaugurated. Clara heard the inauguration address and liked it. She witnessed nothing in the ceremony of inauguration which seemed immediately threatening. So far as she could discover, no one present had any objection to permitting the new President to live. There were rumors that Eli Thayer, of Worcester, who had done more than any other man to make Kansas a free State, was to be Commissioner of Patents. That was delightful news for her. It meant not only an assured position, but an opportunity of service undisturbed by needless annoyances. She had an invitation to the inauguration ball, but had to decline that dreary function on account of a cold. On the day following the inauguration, she wrote to Annie Childs, sister of Frances, her account of the day’s events:

Washington City, March 5th, 1861

My Dear Annie:

I have just a few minutes before dinner for which I have no positive call, and I am going to inflict them on you. Of course you will not expect an elaborate letter, for I by no means feel competent to the task to-day if I had the time.

The 4th of March has come and gone, and we have a live Republican President, and, what is perhaps singular, during the whole day we saw no one who appeared to manifest the least dislike to his living. We had a crowd, of course, but not so utterly overwhelming as had been anticipated; everywhere seemed to be just full, and no more, which was a very pleasant state of affairs. The ceremony was performed upon the East Capitol steps facing Capitol Hill, you remember. The inaugural address was first delivered in a loud, fine voice, which was audible to many, or a majority of the assemblage. Only a very few of the United States troops were brought to the Capitol at all, but were in readiness at their quarters and other parts of the city; they were probably not brought out, lest it look like menace. Great pains appeared to be taken to avoid all such appearances, and indeed a more orderly crowd I think I never saw and general satisfaction expressed at the trend and spirit of the Address. Of course, it will not suit your latitude quite as well, but I hope they may find it endurable.

It is said that the Cabinet is formed and has been or will be officially announced to-day. And there is some prospect of the Honorable Eli Thayer being appointed Commissioner of Patents. Only think of it! Isn’t it nice if it is true? Mr. Suydam has been spending the week with us; left this morning. Mrs. Suydam is better, he says. Mr. Starr is here.

We have had the most splendid spring weather you ever saw for two weeks past, no rain, but bright sunshine; it has been frightfully dusty some of the time and this day is one apparently borrowed from Arabia, by the clouds of sand.

I hear from you sister sometimes, but not until I have almost lost trace of her each time, but I am, of course, most to blame. I hope your business has revived with the approach of spring, as it doubtless has. You will not be surprised if I tell you that I am in a hopeless state of semi-nudity, just clear the law and nothing more. Sally told me on her return that you would have come out and stayed with us some this winter if you had thought it could have been made to pay, but as usual I knew nothing of this until it was too near spring to think of your leaving your business. How glad I should have been to have had you here a month or two, and I think I could have relieved you of the most of expense to say the least of it, if you were not doing much at home, and what a comfort it would have been to me to get right in the clothing line. Will there ever be another time that you would think you could leave, and come to Washington if I should remain?

Where is Fannie? Is she having a vacation now? Please give my love to her, and all inquiring friends, reserving a large share for yourself, and believe me,

As ever, your loving friend

Clara

Everybody would send love if they knew I were writing. I cannot report the Inauguration Ball personally, as I was not present; after a delightful invitation could not go. I have been having a very bad cold for a few days and a worse cough than I ever had, but I hope to get over it soon. I did not attend the last Levee.

[4] Mary—Mrs. Mamie Barton Stafford, daughter of David.

[5] Bubby—Stephen E. Barton, son of David, Miss Barton’s brother.

CHAPTER XI
THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM

The unit of Massachusetts history is eighty-six years. As a considerable part of American history relates to Massachusetts, or traces its origin from there, the same unit measures much of the life of the Nation itself. It begins in the year 1603 when Queen Elizabeth died, and King James came to the throne, and the season was the spring. It was King James who determined to make the Puritans conform or to harry them out of his kingdom. He did not succeed in making them conform, but he harried the Pilgrims into Holland whence they came to Plymouth Rock. For eighty-six years Massachusetts was managed under a colonial government, whose last days were those of a province with a royal governor in control. It was on the 19th of April, 1689, that this royal governor, whose name was Andros, looked out through the port-hole of the ship on which he was a prisoner, and saw the sun rise over Boston Harbor prior to his enforced return to England. That was the end of provincial governors in New England, and the beginning of the assertion of the doctrine of independence. Eighty-six years later to a day, a little band of Massachusetts soldiers stood in a line on the green at Lexington, and on the same day a larger company mustered by the bridge in Concord, and the Revolutionary War began. Eighty-six years later to a day, the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, hastening through Baltimore in response to President Lincoln’s call for troops, was fired upon, and the first blood was shed in a long and cruel war which did not end until it was decided that the house which was divided against itself was no longer to be divided; that this was to be one nation and that nation a free nation.