Inspector-General’s Office, Army of Virginia
Washington, D.C., August 12, 1862

No. 83
To Whom it may Concern:

Know ye, that the bearers, Miss Barton and two friends, have permission to pass within the lines of this army for the purpose of supplying the sick and wounded. Transportation will be furnished by Government boat and rail.

By command of Major-General Pope
R. Jones, Asst. Inspector-General

It is said that when Clara Barton finally succeeded in getting permission to go to the front, she broke down and burst into tears. That is possible, but her diary shows no sign of her emotion. Nor is it true, as has been affirmed, that, as soon as she received her passes, she rushed immediately to the front. Her self-possession and deliberate action at this moment of triumph are thoroughly characteristic of her. Instead of going to the front, she went to New Jersey and New England, as has already been intimated. She had no intention of going to the front until she had assurance of supplies which she could take with her and could continue to receive. She was no love-lorn, sentimental maiden, going with unreckoning and hysterical ardor into conditions which she did not understand. She was forty years old, and she knew what hospitals were. She also knew a good deal about official red tape and the reasonable unwillingness of surgeons to have any one around the hospital unless she could earn her keep. With a pocket full of passes which she now possessed, she could go almost anywhere. To be sure, it was necessary to get special passes for particular objects, but in general all she had to do was to present these blanket credentials, and particular permission for a specific journey was promptly forthcoming. Indeed, she seldom needed that when her lines of operation were definitely established, but at the beginning she took no chances. Among the other friends whom she gained while she was procuring these certificates was Assistant Quartermaster-General D. H. Rucker. He proved an unfailing friend. Never thereafter did she go to him in vain with any request for transportation for herself or her goods.

Her first notable expedition in supplies started from Washington on Sunday, August 3, 1862, just as the people were going to church. Frequent mention has been made of the fact that this occurred on Sunday, and some incorrect inferences have been drawn from it. Clara Barton had too large a conception of the sacredness of her task to have waited until Monday for a thing that needed to be done on Sunday. On the other hand, she had too much religion of her own, and too much regard for other people’s religion, to have chosen deliberately the day and hour when people were going to church as that on which she would mount a loaded truck and conspicuously take her journey to the boat. She began her arrangements to go to Fredericksburg on Wednesday, July 30th, as her diary shows. But it was Friday afternoon before her arrangements were complete, including the special passes which she had to procure from General Polk’s headquarters. Saturday she started, but the boat was withdrawn, and it was due to this delay that she rode on top of her load on Sunday morning. She was taking no chances concerning her load of provisions; she knew that her welcome at the front and her efficiency there depended upon her getting her supplies there as well as herself. So she climbed over the wheel and sat beside the mule-driver as he carted her provisions to the dock. The boat conveyed her to Acquia Creek where she stayed all night, being courteously treated by the quartermaster. On Monday she went on to Fredericksburg, where she visited the general hospital, located in a woolen factory. There she witnessed her first amputation. The next day she visited the camp of the 21st Massachusetts. She distributed her supplies, and found where more were needed. Returning, she reached Washington at six o’clock Tuesday night. The next few days she had conferences with the Sanitary Commission, and suggested some improvement in the methods of supplying the hospitals.

She found the Sanitary Commission quite ready to coöperate with her, and obtained from them without difficulty some stores for the 8th and 11th Connecticut Regiments. She took time to write the story of her visit to Fredericksburg, and to secure its full value in additional supplies.

This was the way she spent her time for a full month after she secured her passes. She visited the friends who were to supply her with the articles she was to need; she visited the front and personally oversaw the method of distributing supplies; she placed herself in sympathetic relationship with the Sanitary Commission, whose work was next of kin to her own, and she wrote letters that were to bring her a still larger volume of resources for her great work. A more businesslike, methodical, or sensible method of procedure could not be imagined than that which her diary and letters disclose.

How she felt about going to the front at this time is finely set forth in a letter to her cousin, Corporal Leander A. Poor, who was sick in a hospital at Point Lookout, Maryland, and whom she succeeded in getting transferred to a hospital in Washington. She did not expect to be there when he arrived, for she was committed to her plan of getting to the front. Not that she expected to stay continuously; it was her purpose to come and go; to get relief directly where it was needed, and to keep her lines of communication open. This letter shows that she labored under no delusion concerning the difficulties of transportation. She was going in with her eyes open.

Washington, D.C., Aug. 2, 1862
Saturday P.M.

Oh, my dearest Couz:

Can you believe it! that this afternoon’s mail takes an order from the Surgeon-General for you to report in Washington (provided the state of your health will permit)? I have just seen the order written.

You are to report to Dr. Campbell, Medical Director, and he is to assign you to some hospital. Now I want you assigned near me, but am not certain that I can influence it in the least,—but I’ll try! I can tell you the ropes and you can help pull them when you go to report.

At the Medical Director’s, I have an especial friend in the person of Dr. Sheldon, one of the chargés des affaires of the Institution. I will acquaint him with the facts before your arrival either by a personal interview or a note, and then, when you go to report to Dr. Campbell, see first, if possible, Dr. Sheldon, and ask him if he can assist you in getting assigned to some hospital near me (7th Street) or in the vicinity of the Post-Office, he knows my residence, having called upon me.

My choice would be the “Armory Square,” a new hospital on 7th Street a few rods the other side of the Avenue from me, on the way to the Arsenal, you will recollect, just opposite the Smithsonian Institute, on the east side of 7th. This is designed as a model hospital, but perhaps one difficulty will be that it is intended more exclusively for extreme cases, or desperately wounded who can be conveyed but little distance from the boat. There are in it now, however, some very slight cases, some whom I visit every day. The chaplain, E. W. Jackson, is from Maine, near Portland,—and I would not be surprised if more Maine men were in charge there, too.

After this I have not much choice in any of the hospitals near me. E Street Church is near, and so many of the churches, and perhaps being less in magnitude they are less strict. I don’t even know if you will be allowed to see me before making your report to the Medical Director, and there is one bare possibility that I may be out on a scout when you arrive. Lord knows the condition of our poor wretched soldiers down in the army; all communication cut off to and from, they must be dying from want of care, and I am promised to go to them the first moment access can be had, but this would not discourage you, for I should come home again when the poor fellows were a little comfortable.

I am not certain when you can come, probably not until some Government boat comes up; one went down yesterday, and if I had had your order then, I should have come for you, but to start in one now after this I might miss you, as they only go some once a week or so.

All sorts of rumors in town,—that we are whipping the rebels, they are whipping us, Jackson defeated, Pope defeated. But one thing I do suppose to be true, viz., that our army is isolated, cut off from supplies of food, and that we cannot reach them with more until they fight their way out. This is not generally believed or understood, but your cousin both understands and believes it. People talk like children about “transporting supplies” as if it were the easiest thing imaginable to transport supplies by wagon thirty miles across a country scouted by guerrilla bands. Our men must be on part rations, tired and hungry, fighting like tigers, and dying like dogs. There! Doesn’t that sound impatient. I won’t speak again.

Of course you will write me instantly and tell me if you are able to come, and when as nearly as possible, etc., etc.

I will enclose $5.00 lest you may need and not have.

Your affectionate Cousin

Clara H. Barton
Washington, D.C.

Thus did Clara Barton at her father’s death-bed consecrate herself to a work more difficult than any woman had at that time undertaken for the relief of suffering caused by the war. Other women were equally brave; others, equally tender in their personal ministrations; but Clara Barton knew the difficulties of transportation and the awful agonies and loss of life endured by men through neglect and delay and the distance of the hospital from the battle-field. She was ready to carry relief right behind the battle lines. She had not long to wait for her opportunity.

[6] From James Russell Lowell’s second series of “Biglow Papers,” then appearing in the Atlantic.

[7] A reference to Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” then new.