With her brother David, his wife Julia and his four children, Clara was in continuous correspondence. His family lived in the old home, and she kept in constant touch with them. Her sister-in-law Julia was very dear to her, and perhaps the best correspondent in the family.
Her sister Sarah, born March 20, 1811, married, April 17, 1834, Vester Vassall, and died in May, 1874. At the outbreak of the war both the children of this marriage were living. The younger son Irving, died April 9, 1865. The elder son, Bernard Barton Vassall, born October 10, 1835, married, October 26, 1863, Frances Maria Childs, and died March 23, 1894. Mrs. Vassall is still living.
With this family Clara’s relations were those of peculiar intimacy. Her sister and her sister’s children were very dear to her. Irving was a young man of fine Christian character, not physically strong enough to bear arms, and was in Washington in the service of the Government during the war. Bernard married Clara’s dear friend and assistant at Bordentown. He was a soldier and during the war his wife Fannie lived for a considerable time in Washington.
Clara Barton’s mother, Sarah or Sally Stone, born November 13, 1783, died July 10, 1851, aged sixty-eight. Her death occurred while Clara was studying at Clinton, and the expressions of solitude in Clara’s diary at the time of her perplexities over her love affairs, were induced in part, though perhaps unconsciously, by her loneliness after her mother’s death.
Clara’s relations to her father were always those of peculiar nearness and sympathy. In her childhood he was more constantly her companion than her mother ever was. When Clara was away from home, nothing more surely gave her concern than news from her brother or sister that “father,” or from her nieces and nephews that “grandpa,” was not as well as usual. Her diaries and her letters are burdened with her solicitude for him. In the latter part of 1861 his health gave occasion for some concern, but he seemed to recover. She made a journey to Worcester and Oxford in December, but returned to Washington before Christmas, taking with her boxes and trunks of provisions for the soldiers which she wished to deliver if possible at Arlington, so as to be closer to the place of actual need. Her nephew, Irving Vassall, was with her on the return journey. The letter which preserves the account of this expedition is interesting as recording her account of a Sunday spent with the army. What took her there was her determination to deliver her goods to the place of need before she returned to her home in Washington. She was still learning military manners and the ways of camp life, and was giving herself unsparingly to the collection of supplies. She was assisting in hospital work in Washington, and definitely planning to have a hospital there assigned to herself. As yet, apparently, she had no definite plan to go herself directly to the battle-field.
November and the early part of December were mild. Day by day she thanked God for every ray of sunshine, and night by night she lifted up her heart in thanksgiving that the boys, who were sleeping on the bare ground with only single threads of white canvas above them, were not compelled to suffer from the rigors of cold. On December 9, 1861, she wrote the following which was a kind of prayer of thanksgiving for mild weather:
December 9, 1861
The streets are thronged with men bright with tinsel, and the clattering hoofs of galloping horses sound continually in our ears. The weather is bright and warm as May, for which blessing I feel hourly to thank the great Giver of all good gifts, that upon this vast army lying like so many thousand herds of cattle on every side of our bright, beleaguered city, with only the soil, for which they peril life, beneath, and the single threads of white canvas above, watching like so many faithful dogs, held by bonds stronger than death, yet patient and uncomplaining. A merciful God holds the warring, pitiless elements in his firm, benignant grasp, withholds the rigors of early winter, and showers down upon their heads the genial rays of untimely warmth changing the rough winds of December to the balmy breezes of April. Well may we hold thanksgiving and our army unite in prayer and songs of praise to God.
Her diary at this period is irregular, and I have not yet discovered a definite record of her journey from Washington and back, except in her letter to the wife of an army surgeon, which she wrote on the day before Christmas, 1861:
Washington, D.C., December 24th, 1861
My darling Cousin:
How naughtily I have neglected your cheering little letter, but it has been all my hands and none my heart which have done the naughty thing. I have wanted so to write you all the time, and intruders would come between us and would have all my time. It was not always people. Oh, no,—work and care, and an o’ergrown correspondence intruded upon me, but I always solace myself with the thought that, if my friends will only have a little patience with me, it will all come right, and their turn will come at last, and after a time the best of them learn me, and then in my easy, hurrying, slipshod way we come to be correspondents for aye. In the course of a year I say a great deal of nonsense to my correspondents, but I cannot always say it when my head and heart are the fullest of it. But first let me hasten to tell you what cannot fail of being exceedingly gratifying to you, viz., that I am in a “habit” of receiving daily visits from your husband. But I was a long time in getting about it, however. I sent twice to his hotel, the great Pandemonium wherein he is incarcerated, before Sunday, but could get no tidings all the time. I was fearful he was here and I missing him, and then I was almost certain that he was not able to be here; but at length I could risk it no longer and wrote a hurried little note and dropped in the office for him, and sure enough it brought him. I was so glad to see him and so much better too, it is splendid; but then he had been trying to find me, and I in the meantime had, along with all Washington, removed! Just think of it, but I removed out of a burden of care to perfect ease and yet can command just as much room as I desire in case I need, and if I have no need of it am not troubled with it—only that I have the trouble of furnishing, at which Doctor may inform you I am making very slow progress. I have so many things in Massachusetts now that I want; my walls are perfectly bare, not a picture, and I have plenty to furnish them. It is vexatious that I didn’t “know to take them” when I was there. I fear to allow others to pack them.
I suspect that, after the daily letter of your husband, inimitable correspondent and conversationist that he is, there is nothing left for me to relate of our big city, grown up so strangely like a gourd all in a night; places which never before dreamed of being honored by an inhabitant save dogs, cats, and rats, are converted into “elegantly furnished rooms for rent,” and people actually live in them with all the city airs of people really living in respectable houses, and I suspect many of them do not know that they are positively living in sheds, but we, who have become familiar with every old roof years agone, know perfectly well what shelters them. Well, the present aspect of our capital is a wide, fruitful field for description, and I will leave it for the Doctor; he will clothe it in a far richer dress than I could do.
Perhaps you wish to know somewhat about my journey with my big trunks. Well, it was perfectly quiet; nothing like an adventure to enliven until we reached Baltimore, to which I had checked my baggage as the nearest point to Annapolis, for which place I could not get checks, but to which I had determined to go before proceeding to Washington. I delivered my checks to the expressman, took receipts, and gave every conductor on the train to understand that my baggage was to be taken through the city in the same train with myself (for we disconnect and come through Baltimore in horse-cars); but just imagine my vexation when, as our train commenced to move off, I saw my baggage just moving by slow teams up the street in the direction of our train. It had no checks, and I must not become long separated from it; the train was in motion and I could not leave it. I had no idea what would be done with it, whether retained in Baltimore, sent to Annapolis junction, or forwarded to Washington. I had to think fast, and you remember it was Saturday night. Relay House was the nearest station. I left the train there (Irving went on to Washington), and proceeded directly to the telegraph office and telegraphed back to Baltimore describing the baggage and directing it to come on the next train one hour later. They had just time to get it aboard, and on the arrival of the train I found it in the baggage car, took that train, and proceeded “nine miles to the junction,” stopped too late for Annapolis that night, chartered the parlor and sofa,—every room in the house filled with officers,—and as good luck would have it a train (special) ran down from Annapolis the next day about eleven, for a regiment of Zouaves, and I claimed my seat, and went, too, and the first any one knew I presented myself at the Headquarters of the 21st. You will have to imagine the cordial, affable Colonel springing from his seat with both hands extended, the extremely polite Lieutenant-Colonel Maggie, always in full dress with the constantly worn sword, with eyes and hair so much blacker than night, going through a succession of bows and formalities, which I, a simple, home-bred, unsophisticated Yankee didn’t know what upon earth to do with, completely confounded!—till the clear, appreciative, knowing twinkle of our “cute” Major Clark’s eyes set things right again; and almost the last, our honest, modest “Cousin” Fletcher coming up away round on the other side for his word, and not one among them all to whom I could extend a more cordial greeting. Please tell Grandma that he hasn’t broken a limb; his horse fell with him and hurt his shoulder, but it is nearly well now. I was just in time for a seat between the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel at dinner, and accompanying them to the Chapel to listen to the opening discourse of their newly arrived chaplain, Rev. Mr. Ball, Unitarian. He addressed the men with great kindness of manner, beseeching them to come near to him with all their trials, burdens, and temptations, and let him help to bear them. He was strong to bear, patient to hear, and willing to do, and his arm, and his ear, and his heart were theirs for all good purposes. There was many a glistening eye among that thousand waiting men, still as the night of death; for a regiment of soldiers can be the stillest living thing I ever looked at. The 21st are in the main good, true men, and I was glad that a man of gentle speech and kind and loving heart had come among them.
Next morning brought some of our good Worcester ladies from the 25th to our Camp, among whom was the daughter-in-law of your neighbor Mr. Denny. A beautiful coach and span of horses were found, and a cozy, but rather gay, party of us started for the Camp of the 25th, and here we found your excellent pastor, Mr. James, the best specimen of a true soldier that I ever saw; nothing too vast for his mind to grasp, nothing too trivial (if needful) to interest him, cheerful, brave, and tireless, watching like a faithful sentry the wants of every soldier, and apparently more than equal to every emergency. What a small army of such men were sufficient to overcome all our present difficulties! You should see his tent; it was a cold, raw day, more so than any which has followed it, but the moment I was inside I found myself so warm and my feet grew warm as if I were standing over a register, and I could not see where the heat came from; but my curiosity was irrepressible, and I had to ask an explanation of the mystery,—when Mr. James raised a little square iron lid, like the door of a stove (which I believe it was), almost hidden in the ground, in among the dried grass, and to my astonishment revealed a miniature volcano blazing beneath our very feet. The whole ground beneath his tent seemed to be on fire, with currents of air passing through which fed the flame, and took away the smoke. There was, of course, no dampness in the tent, and I could see no reason why it should be less healthy, or comfortable indeed (excepting small space), than any house, and such piles of letters and books and Neddy’s picture over the table, and the quiet little boy, following close and looking up in his master’s face, like any pet, all presented a scene which I wished his intelligent and appreciative wife, at least, could have looked in upon. Oh, yes, I must not “forget” to mention the conspicuous position which Grandma’s mittens occupied upon the table. Mr. James put them on to show what a nice fit they were and wondered what “Grandma” would say if she were to look in upon him in his tent.
Clara Barton was still in Washington through January and apparently through February, 1862. Not always was she able to include pleasant weather among the occasions of her thanksgiving. Every now and again a pitiless storm beat down upon the soldiers, who were poorly provided with tents and blankets. Frequently she met among the soldiers in Washington some of her old pupils. She was never able to look upon armies as mere masses of troops; she had to remember that they were individual men, each capable of suffering pain in his own person, and each of them carrying with him to the front the anxious thought of loved ones at home. This was the burden of a letter which she wrote on January 9, 1862: