CHAPTER XIII
CLARA BARTON TO THE FRONT
When the author of this volume was a schoolboy, the advanced readers in the public schools partook largely of a patriotic character, and the rhetorical exercises of Friday afternoons contained recitations and declamations inspired by the great Civil War. The author remembers a Friday when he came upon the platform with his left arm withdrawn from his coat-sleeve and concealed inside the coat, while he recited a poem of which he still remembers certain lines:
My arm? I lost it at Cedar Mountain;
Ah, little one, that was a dreadful fight;
For brave blood flowed like a summer fountain,
And the cannon roared till the fall of night.
Nay, nay! Your question has done me no harm, dear,
Though it woke for the moment a thrill of pain;
For whenever I look at my stump of an arm here,
I seem to be living that day again.
The poem went on to relate the scenes of the battle, the desperate charge, the wound, the amputation, and now the necessity of earning a livelihood by the peddling of needles, pins, and other inexpensive household necessities. It was a poem with rather large dramatic possibilities, and the author utilized them according to the best of his then ability. Since that Friday afternoon in his early boyhood he has always thought of Cedar Mountain as a battle in which he had something of a share. If he had really been there and had lost an arm in the manner which the poem described, one of the things he would have been almost certain to remember would have been the presence there of Clara Barton. She afterward told of it in this simple fashion:
When our armies fought on Cedar Mountain, I broke the shackles and went to the field. Five days and nights with three hours’ sleep—a narrow escape from capture—and some days of getting the wounded into hospitals at Washington brought Saturday, August 30. And if you chance to feel that the positions I occupied were rough and unseemly for a woman—I can only reply that they were rough and unseemly for men. But under all, lay the life of the Nation. I had inherited the rich blessing of health and strength of constitution—such as are seldom given to woman—and I felt that some return was due from me and that I ought to be there.
The battle of Cedar Mountain, also called Cedar Run and Culpeper, was fought on Saturday, August 9, 1862. Stonewall Jackson, as directed by General Lee, moved to attack Pope before McClellan could reënforce him. The corps attack was under command of General Banks, and the Confederates were successful. The Federal losses were 314 killed, 1465 wounded, and 622 missing. News of the battle reached Washington on Monday. Clara Barton’s entry for that day contains no suggestion of the heroic; no appearance of consciousness that she was beginning for herself and her country, and the civilized world, a new epoch in the history of woman’s ministration to men wounded on the battle-field:
Monday, August 11, 1862. Battle at Culpeper reached us. Went to Sanitary Commission. Concluded to go to Culpeper. Packed goods.
The next day she went to General Pope’s headquarters and got her pass, General Rucker accompanying her. The remainder of the day she spent in completing her arrangements and in conference with Gardiner Tufts, of Massachusetts, an agent sent by the State to look after Massachusetts wounded. That night she went to Alexandria, which was as far as she could get, and the next morning she resumed her journey and arrived at Culpeper at half-past three in the afternoon.
The next days were busy days. It is interesting to find in her diary that she ministered not only to the Union, but also to the Confederate wounded. For several days she had little rest. When she returned to Washington later in the month, she was not permitted to remain. She learned that her cousin, Corporal Poor, had been brought to a hospital in the city, but she was unable to visit him, being called to minister to the wounded who were being brought to Alexandria as the result of the fighting that followed Cedar Mountain. Her hastily written note is not dated, but the time is in the latter part of August, 1862:
My own darling Cousin:
I was almost (all-but) ready to come to you, and then came this bloody fight at Culpeper and the State agent for Massachusetts comes and claims me to go to Alexandria where 600 wounded are to be brought in to-day, and I may have to go on further. I hope to be back yet in time to come to you this week; if not I will write you.
I am distressed that I cannot come to you to-morrow as I had intended.
I hope you are as well as when I last heard. I should have written, but I thought to come so soon.
I must leave now. My wagon waits for me.
God bless you, my poor dear Cousin, and I will see you if the rebels don’t catch me.
Good-bye,
Your affec. cousin
Clara