Whether she was able to visit her cousin or not on her return from Alexandria, we do not know. Her diary for the latter part of the year 1862 ceases to be consecutive. It contains not the record of her own comings and goings, but names of wounded soldiers, memoranda of letters to write for men who had died, and other data of this character. Her entry for Saturday, August 30, 1862, is significant. It reads:
Visited Armory Hospital. Took comb to Sergeant Field, of Massachusetts 21st. On my way saw everybody going to wharf. I went.
That was her last record for more than a week. We know what was taking the people to the wharf. We know what sad sights awaited those who made their way to the Potomac. We know the sad procession that came over the long bridge; the second battle of Bull Run had been fought. After the first battle of Bull Run there was nothing she could do but stay in Washington and write her father such distracting news that she had to stop. The situation was different now; Clara Barton knew where she was needed, and she had authority to go. No time was wasted now in special passes. She had proved the value of her worth at Cedar Mountain.
That very night she was in a box car on her way to the battle-field.
Shortly after the second battle of Bull Run, Clara Barton wrote the following account to a friend, and later revised it as a part of one of her war lectures. It is, in some respects, the most vivid of all her recitals of experiences on battle-fields:
Our coaches were not elegant or commodious; they had no windows, no seats, no platforms, no steps, a slide door on the side was the only entrance, and this higher than my head. For my manner of attaining my elevated position, I must beg of you to draw on your own imaginations and spare me the labor of reproducing the boxes, barrels, boards, and rails, which, in those days, seemed to help me up and on in the world. We did not criticize the unsightly helpers and were only too thankful that the stiff springs did not quite jostle us out. This description need not be limited to this particular trip or train, but will suffice for all that I have known in army life. This is the kind of conveyance by which your tons of generous gifts have reached the field with the precious freights. These trains, through day and night, sunshine and rain, heat and cold, have thundered over heights, across plains, through ravines, and over hastily built army bridges ninety feet across the rocky stream beneath.
At ten o’clock Sunday (August 31) our train drew up at Fairfax Station. The ground, for acres, was a thinly wooded slope—and among the trees, on the leaves and grass, were laid the wounded who were pouring in by scores of wagonloads, as picked up on the field under the flag of truce. All day they came, and the whole hillside was covered. Bales of hay were broken open and scattered over the ground like littering for cattle, and the sore, famishing men were laid upon it.
And when the night shut in, in the mist and darkness about us, we knew that, standing apart from the world of anxious hearts, throbbing over the whole country, we were a little band of almost empty-handed workers literally by ourselves in the wild woods of Virginia, with three thousand suffering men crowded upon the few acres within our reach.
After gathering up every available implement or convenience for our work, our domestic inventory stood, two water buckets, five tin cups, one camp kettle, one stewpan, two lanterns, four bread knives, three plates, and a two-quart tin dish, and three thousand guests to serve.
You will perceive, by this, that I had not yet learned to equip myself, for I was no Pallas, ready armed, but grew into my work by hard thinking and sad experience. It may serve to relieve your apprehension for the future of my labors if I assure you that I was never caught so again.
You have read of adverse winds. To realize this in its full sense you have only to build a camp-fire and attempt to cook something on it.
There is not a soldier within the sound of my voice but will sustain me in the assertion that, go whichsoever side of it you will, wind will blow the smoke and flame directly in your face. Notwithstanding these difficulties, within fifteen minutes from the time of our arrival we were preparing food and dressing wounds. You wonder what, and how prepared, and how administered without dishes.
You generous thoughtful mothers and wives have not forgotten the tons of preserves and fruits with which you filled our hands. Huge boxes of these stood beside that railway track. Every can, jar, bucket, bowl, cup or tumbler, when emptied, that instant became a vehicle of mercy to convey some preparation of mingled bread and wine or soup or coffee to some helpless, famishing sufferer, who partook of it with the tears rolling down his bronzed cheeks and divided his blessings between the hands that fed him and his God. I never realized until that day how little a human being could be grateful for, and that day’s experience also taught me the utter worthlessness of that which could not be made to contribute directly to our necessities. The bit of bread which would rest on the surface of a gold eagle was worth more than the coin itself.
But the most fearful scene was reserved for the night. I have said that the ground was littered with dry hay and that we had only two lanterns, but there were plenty of candles. The wounded were laid so close that it was impossible to move about in the dark. The slightest misstep brought a torrent of groans from some poor mangled fellow in your path.
Consequently here were seen persons of all grades, from the careful man of God who walked with a prayer upon his lips to the careless driver hunting for his lost whip—each wandering about among this hay with an open flaming candle in his hand.
The slightest accident, the mere dropping of a light could have enveloped in flames this whole mass of helpless men.
How we watched and pleaded and cautioned as we worked and wept that night! How we put socks and slippers upon their cold damp feet, wrapped your blankets and quilts about them, and when we had no longer these to give, how we covered them in the hay and left them to their rest!
On Monday (September 1) the enemy’s cavalry appeared in the wood opposite and a raid was hourly expected. In the afternoon all the wounded men were sent off and the danger became so imminent that Mrs. Fales thought best to leave, although she only went for stores. I begged to be excused from accompanying her, as the ambulances were up to the fields for more, and I knew I should never leave a wounded man there if I were taken prisoner forty times. At six o’clock it commenced to thunder and lighten and all at once the artillery began to play, joined by the musketry about two miles distant. We sat down in our tent and waited to see them break in, but Reno’s forces held them back. The old 21st Massachusetts lay between us and the enemy and they could not pass. God only knows who was lost, I do not, for the next day all fell back. Poor Kearny, Stephen, and Webster were brought in, and in the afternoon Kearny’s and Heintzelman’s divisions fell back through our camp on their way to Alexandria. We knew this was the last. We put the thousand wounded men we then had into the train. I took one carload of them and Mrs. M. another. The men took to the horses. We steamed off, and two hours later there was no Fairfax Station. We reached Alexandria at ten o’clock at night, and, oh, the repast which met those poor men at the train. The people of the island are the most noble I ever saw or heard of. I stood in my car and fed the men till they could eat no more. Then the people would take us home and feed us, and after that we came home. I had slept one and one half hours since Saturday night and I am well and strong and wait to go again if I have need.
Immediately after the second Bull Run, or Manassas, followed the battle of Chantilly. It was a woeful battle for the Federal cause. The Confederates were completely successful. Pope’s army retreated to Washington in almost as great a state of panic as had characterized the army of McDowell in the previous year. Nothing saved Washington from capture but the fact that the Confederate forces had been so reduced by continuous fighting that they were unable to take advantage of their success. But they had captured the Federal wagon trains; had inflicted far greater losses than they had themselves endured, and were in so confident a frame of mind that Lee immediately prepared to cross the Potomac, invade the North, and bring the war, as he hoped, to a speedy end. It was under these conditions that Clara Barton continued her education at the battle-front.
Among many other experiences on the field of Chantilly, Miss Barton recalled these incidents:
The slight, naked chest of a fair-haired lad caught my eye, and dropping down beside him, I bent low to draw the remnant of his torn blouse about him, when with a quick cry he threw his left arm across my neck and, burying his face in the folds of my dress, wept like a child at his mother’s knee. I took his head in my hands and held it until his great burst of grief passed away. “And do you know me?” he asked at length; “I am Charley Hamilton who used to carry your satchel home from school!” My faithful pupil, poor Charley. That mangled right arm would never carry a satchel again.
About three o’clock in the morning I observed a surgeon with his little flickering candle in hand approaching me with cautious step far up in the wood. “Lady,” he said as he drew near, “will you go with me? Out on the hills is a poor distressed lad, mortally wounded and dying. His piteous cries for his sister have touched all our hearts and none of us can relieve him, but rather seem to distress him by our presence.”
By this time I was following him back over the bloody track, with great beseeching eyes of anguish on every side looking up into our faces saying so plainly, “Don’t step on us.”
“He can’t last half an hour longer,” said the surgeon as we toiled on. “He is already quite cold, shot through the abdomen, a terrible wound.” By this time the cries became plainly audible to me.
“Mary, Mary, sister Mary, come,—oh, come, I am wounded, Mary! I am shot. I am dying—oh, come to me—I have called you so long and my strength is almost gone—Don’t let me die here alone. Oh, Mary, Mary, come!”
Of all the tones of entreaty to which I have listened—and certainly I have had some experience of sorrow—I think these, sounding through that dismal night, the most heart-rending. As we drew near, some twenty persons, attracted by his cries, had gathered around and stood with moistened eyes and helpless hands waiting the change which would relieve them all. And in the midst, stretched upon the ground, lay, scarcely full grown, a young man with a graceful head of hair, tangled and matted, thrown back from a forehead and a face of livid whiteness. His throat was bare. His hands, bloody, clasped his breast, his large, bewildered eyes turning anxiously in every direction. And ever from between his ashen lips pealed that piteous cry of “Mary! Mary! Come.”
I approached him unobserved, and, motioning the lights away, I knelt by him alone in the darkness. Shall I confess that I intended if possible to cheat him out of his terrible death agony? But my lips were truer than my heart, and would not speak the word “Brother,” I had willed them to do. So I placed my hands upon his neck, kissed his cold forehead, and laid my cheek against his.
The illusion was complete; the act had done the falsehood my lips refused to speak. I can never forget that cry of joy. “Oh, Mary! Mary! You have come? I knew you would come if I called you and I have called you so long. I could not die without you, Mary. Don’t cry, Darling, I am not afraid to die now that you have come to me. Oh, bless you. Bless you, Mary.” And he ran his cold, blood-wet hands about my neck, passed them over my face, and twined them in my hair, which by this time had freed itself from fastenings and was hanging damp and heavy upon my shoulders. He gathered the loose locks in his stiffened fingers and holding them to his lips continued to whisper through them, “Bless you, bless you, Mary!” And I felt the hot tears of joy trickling from the eyes I had thought stony in death. This encouraged me, and, wrapping his feet closely in blankets and giving him such stimulants as he could take, I seated myself on the ground and lifted him on my lap, and drawing the shawl on my own shoulders also about his I bade him rest.
I listened till his blessings grew fainter, and in ten minutes with them on his lips he fell asleep. So the gray morning found us; my precious charge had grown warm, and was comfortable.
Of course the morning light would reveal his mistake. But he had grown calm and was refreshed and able to endure it, and when finally he woke, he seemed puzzled for a moment, but then he smiled and said: “I knew before I opened my eyes that this could n’t be Mary. I know now that she could n’t get here, but it is almost as good. You’ve made me so happy. Who is it?”
I said it was simply a lady who, hearing that he was wounded, had come to care for him. He wanted the name, and with childlike simplicity he spelled it letter by letter to know if he were right. “In my pocket,” he said, “you will find mother’s last letter; please get it and write your name upon it, for I want both names by me when I die.”
“Will they take away the wounded?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “the first train for Washington is nearly ready now.” “I must go,” he said quickly. “Are you able?” I asked. “I must go if I die on the way. I’ll tell you why; I am poor mother’s only son, and when she consented that I go to the war, I promised her faithfully that if I were not killed outright, but wounded, I would try every means in my power to be taken home to her dead or alive. If I die on the train, they will not throw me off, and if I were buried in Washington, she can get me. But out here in the Virginia woods in the hands of the enemy, never. I must go!”
I sent for the surgeon in charge of the train and requested that my boy be taken.
“Oh, impossible, madam, he is mortally wounded and will never reach the hospital! We must take those who have a hope of life.” “But you must take him.” “I cannot”—“Can you, Doctor, guarantee the lives of all you have on that train?” “I wish I could,” said he sadly. “They are the worst cases; nearly fifty per cent must die eventually of their wounds and hardships.”
“Then give this lad a chance with them. He can only die, and he has given good and sufficient reasons why he must go—and a woman’s word for it, Doctor. You take him. Send your men for him.” Whether yielding to argument or entreaty, I neither knew nor cared so long as he did yield nobly and kindly. And they gathered up the fragments of the poor, torn boy and laid him carefully on a blanket on the crowded train and with stimulants and food and a kind-hearted attendant, pledged to take him alive or dead to Armory Square Hospital and tell them he was Hugh Johnson, of New York, and to mark his grave.
Although three hours of my time had been devoted to one sufferer among thousands, it must not be inferred that our general work had been suspended or that my assistants had been equally inefficient. They had seen how I was engaged and nobly redoubled their exertions to make amends for my deficiencies.
Probably not a man was laid upon those cars who did not receive some personal attention at their hands, some little kindness, if it were only to help lift him more tenderly.
This finds us shortly after daylight Monday morning. Train after train of cars was rushing on for the wounded, and hundreds of wagons were bringing them in from the field still held by the enemy, where some poor sufferers had lain three days with no visible means of sustenance. If immediately placed upon the trains and not detained, at least twenty-four hours must elapse before they could be in the hospital and properly nourished. They were already famishing, weak and sinking from loss of blood, and they could ill afford a further fast of twenty-four hours. I felt confident that, unless nourished at once, all the weaker portion must be past recovery before reaching the hospitals of Washington. If once taken from the wagons and laid with those already cared for, they would be overlooked and perish on the way. Something must be done to meet this fearful emergency. I sought the various officers on the grounds, explained the case to them, and asked permission to feed all the men as they arrived before they should be taken from the wagons. It was well for the poor sufferers of that field that it was controlled by noble-hearted, generous officers, quick to feel and prompt to act.
They at once saw the propriety of my request and gave orders that all wagons should be stayed at a certain point and only moved on when every one had been seen and fed. This point secured, I commenced my day’s work of climbing from the wheel to the brake of every wagon and speaking to and feeding with my own hands each soldier until he expressed himself satisfied.
Still there were bright spots along the darkened lines. Early in the morning the Provost Marshal came to ask me if I could use fifty men. He had that number, who for some slight breach of military discipline were under guard and useless, unless I could use them. I only regretted there were not five hundred. They came,—strong, willing men,—and these, added to our original force and what we had gained incidentally, made our number something over eighty, and, believe me, eighty men and three women, acting with well-directed purpose, will accomplish a good deal in a day. Our fifty prisoners dug graves and gathered and buried the dead, bore mangled men over the rough ground in their arms, loaded cars, built fires, made soup, and administered it. And I failed to discern that their services were less valuable than those of the other men. I had long suspected, and have been since convinced, that a private soldier may be placed under guard, court-martialed, and even be imprisoned without forfeiting his honor or manliness; that the real dishonor is often upon the gold lace rather than the army blue.
At three o’clock the last train of wounded left. All day we had known that the enemy hung upon the hills and were waiting to break in upon us....
At four o’clock the clouds gathered black and murky, and the low growl of distant thunders was heard while lightning continually illuminated the horizon. The still air grew thick and stifled, and the very branches appeared to droop and bow as if in grief at the memory of the terrible scenes so lately enacted and the gallant lives so nobly yielded up beneath their shelter.
This was the afternoon of Monday. Since Saturday noon I had not thought of tasting food, and we had just drawn around a box for that purpose, when, of a sudden, air and earth and all about us shook with one mingled crash of God’s and man’s artillery. The lightning played and the thunder rolled incessantly and the cannon roared louder and nearer each minute. Chantilly with all its darkness and horrors had opened in the rear.
The description of this battle I leave to those who saw and moved in it, as it is my purpose to speak only of events in which I was a witness or actor. Although two miles distant, we knew the battle was intended for us, and watched the firing as it neared and receded and waited minute by minute for the rest.
With what desperation our men fought hour after hour in the rain and darkness! How they were overborne and rallied, how they suffered from mistaken orders, and blundered, and lost themselves in the strange mysterious wood. And how, after all, with giant strength and veteran bravery, they checked the foe and held him at bay, is an all-proud record of history.
And the courage of the soldier who braved death in the darkness of Chantilly let no man question.
The rain continued to pour in torrents, and the darkness became impenetrable save from the lightning leaping above our heads and the fitful flash of the guns, as volley after volley rang through the stifled air and lighted up the gnarled trunks and dripping branches among which we ever waited and listened.
In the midst of this, and how guided no man knows, came still another train of wounded men, and a waiting train of cars upon the track received them. This time nearly alone, for my worn-out assistants could work no longer, I continued to administer such food as I had left.
Do you begin to wonder what it could be? Army crackers put into knapsacks and haversacks and beaten to crumbs between stones, and stirred into a mixture of wine, whiskey, and water, and sweetened with coarse brown sugar.
Not very inviting you will think, but I assure you it was always acceptable. But whether it should have been classed as food, or, like the Widow Bedott’s cabbage, as a delightful beverage, it would puzzle an epicure to determine. No matter, so it imparted strength and comfort.
The departure of this train cleared the grounds of wounded for the night, and as the line of fire from its plunging engines died out in the darkness, a strange sensation of weakness and weariness fell upon me, almost defying my utmost exertion to move one foot before the other.
A little Sibley tent had been hastily pitched for me in a slight hollow upon the hillside. Your imaginations will not fail to picture its condition. Rivulets of water had rushed through it during the last three hours. Still I attempted to reach it, as its white surface, in the darkness, was a protection from the wheels of wagons and trampling of beasts.
Perhaps I shall never forget the painful effort which the making of those few rods and the gaining of the tent cost me. How many times I fell, from sheer exhaustion, in the darkness and mud of that slippery hillside, I have no knowledge, but at last I grasped the welcome canvas, and a well-established brook, which washed in on the upper side at the opening that served as door, met me on my entrance. My entire floor was covered with water, not an inch of dry, solid ground.
One of my lady assistants had previously taken train for Washington and the other, worn out by faithful labors, was crouched upon the top of some boxes in one corner fast asleep. No such convenience remained for me, and I had no strength to arrange one. I sought the highest side of my tent which I remembered was grass-grown, and, ascertaining that the water was not very deep, I sank down. It was no laughing matter then. But the recollection of my position has since afforded me amusement.
I remember myself sitting on the ground, upheld by my left arm, my head resting on my hand, impelled by an almost uncontrollable desire to lie completely down, and prevented by the certain conviction that if I did, water would flow into my ears.
How long I balanced between my desires and cautions, I have no positive knowledge, but it is very certain that the former carried the point by the position from which I was aroused at twelve o’clock by the rumbling of more wagons of wounded men. I slept two hours, and oh, what strength I had gained! I may never know two other hours of equal worth. I sprang to my feet dripping wet, covered with ridges of dead grass and leaves, wrung the water from my hair and skirts, and went forth again to my work.
When I stood again under the sky, the rain had ceased, the clouds were sullenly retiring, and the lightning, as if deserted by its boisterous companions, had withdrawn to a distant corner and was playing quietly by itself. For the great volleying thunders of heaven and earth had settled down on the fields. Silent? I said so. And it was, save the ceaseless rumbling of the never-ending train of army wagons which brought alike the wounded, the dying, and the dead.
And thus the morning of the third day broke upon us, drenched, weary, hungry, sore-footed, sad-hearted, discouraged, and under orders to retreat.
A little later, the plaintive wail of a single fife, the slow beat of a muffled drum, the steady tramp, tramp, tramp of heavy feet, the gleam of ten thousand bayonets on the hills, and with bowed heads and speechless lips, poor Kearny’s leaderless men came marching through
This was the signal for retreat. All day they came, tired, hungry, ragged, defeated, retreating, they knew not whither—they cared not whither.
The enemy’s cavalry, skirting the hills, admonished us each moment that we must soon decide to go from them or with them. But our work must be accomplished, and no wounded men once given into our hands must be left. And with the spirit of desperation, we struggled on.
At three o’clock an officer galloped up to me, with “Miss Barton, can you ride?” “Yes, sir,” I replied.
“But you have no lady’s saddle—could you ride mine?”
“Yes, sir, or without it, if you have blanket and surcingle.”
“Then you can risk another hour,” he exclaimed, and galloped off.
At four he returned at a break-neck speed, and, leaping from his horse, said, “Now is your time. The enemy is already breaking over the hills; try the train. It will go through, unless they have flanked, and cut the bridge a mile above us. In that case I’ve a reserve horse for you, and you must take your chances to escape across the country.”
In two minutes I was on the train. The last wounded man at the station was also on. The conductor stood with a torch which he applied to a pile of combustible material beside the track. And we rounded the curve which took us from view and we saw the station ablaze, and a troop of cavalry dashing down the hill. The bridge was uncut and midnight found us at Washington.
You have the full record of my sleep—from Friday night till Wednesday morning—two hours. You will not wonder that I slept during the next twenty-four.
On Friday (the following), I repaired to Armory Square Hospital to learn who, of all the hundreds sent, had reached that point.
I traced the chaplain’s record, and there upon the last page freshly written stood the name of Hugh Johnson
Turning to Chaplain Jackson, I asked—“Did that man live until to-day?”
“He died during the latter part of last night,” he replied. “His friends reached him some two days ago, and they are now taking his body from the ward to be conveyed to the depot.”
I looked in the direction his hand indicated, and there, beside a coffin, about to be lifted into a wagon, stood a gentleman, the mother, and Sister Mary!
“Had he his reason?” I asked.
“Oh, perfectly.”
“And his mother and sister were with him two days.”
“Yes.”
There was no need of me. He had given his own messages; I could add nothing to their knowledge of him, and would fain be spared the scene of thanks. Poor Hugh, thy piteous prayers reached and were answered, and with eyes and heart full, I turned away, and never saw Sister Mary.
These were days of darkness—a darkness that might be felt.
The shattered bands of Pope and Banks! Burnside’s weary legions! Reënforcements from West Virginia—and all that now remained of the once glorious Army of the Peninsula had gathered for shelter beneath the redoubts and guns that girdled Washington.
How the soldiers remembered these ministrations is shown in letters such as this: