STEPHEN E. BARTON

HER TRUSTED NEPHEW; MY KINSMAN AND FRIEND

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

[Introduction] [xi]
[I.] Her First Attempt at Autobiography [1]
[II.] The Birth of Clara Barton [6]
[III.] Her Ancestry [9]
[IV.] Her Parentage and Infancy [16]
[V.] Her Schools and Teachers [22]
[VI.] The Days of Her Youth [36]
[VII.] Her First Experience as a Teacher [50]
[VIII.] Leaves from Her Unpublished Autobiography [56]
[IX.] The Heart of Clara Barton [76]
[X.] From Schoolroom to Patent Office [89]
[XI.] The Battle Cry of Freedom [107]
[XII.] Home and Country [131]
[XIII.] Clara Barton to the Front [172]
[XIV.] Harper’s Ferry to Antietam [191]
[XV.] Clara Barton’s Change of Base [225]
[XVI.] The Attempt to Recapture Sumter [238]
[XVII.] From the Wilderness to the James [263]
[XVIII.] To the End of the War [282]
[XIX.] Andersonville and After [304]
[XX.] On the Lecture Platform [328]

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

The life of Clara Barton is a story of unique and permanent interest; but it is more than an interesting story. It is an important chapter in the history of our country, and in that of the progress of philanthropy in this country and the world. Without that chapter, some events of large importance can never be adequately understood.

Hers was a long life. She lived to enter her tenth decade, and when she died was still so normal in the soundness of her bodily organs and in the clarity of her mind and memory that it seemed she might easily have lived to see her hundredth birthday. Hers was a life spent largely in the Nation’s capital. She knew personally every president from Lincoln to Roosevelt, and was acquainted with nearly every man of prominence in our national life. When she went abroad, her associates were people of high rank and wide influence in their respective countries. No American woman received more honor while she lived, either at home or abroad, and how worthily she bore these honors those know best who knew her best.