Charles E. Simmons, Secretary, 21st Regt. Mass. Vol.
Charles E. Frye, President7 Jaques Avenue,
Worcester, Mass.
September 13th, 1911To Clara Barton
The survivors of the Veteran 21st Massachusetts Regiment, assembled in “Odd Fellows Temple in the City of Worcester,” wish to put on record the day of your coming to us at Bull Run and Chantilly, when we were in our deepest bereavement and loss; how your presence and deeds brought assurance and comfort; and how you assisted us up the hot and rugged sides of South Mountain by your ministry forty-nine years ago to-day, at and over the “Burnside Bridge” at Antietam, then through Pleasant Valley, to Falmouth, and in course of time were across the Rappahannock and storming the heights of Fredericksburg; were with us, indeed, when we recrossed the river and found shelter in our tents—broken, bruised, and sheared. With us evermore in body and spirit, lo, these fifty years. The prayer of the 21st Regiment is, God bless our old and tried friend. It was also voted that we present to Clara Barton a bouquet of flowers.
Charles E. Simmons, Secretary
CHAPTER XIV
HARPER’S FERRY TO ANTIETAM
Clara Barton had now definitely settled the method of her operations. She had demonstrated the practicability of getting to the front early, and had begun to learn what equipment was necessary if she were to perform her work successfully. Washington was still to be her headquarters, her base of supplies, but from Washington as a center she would radiate in any direction where the need was, going by the most direct route and arriving on the scene of conflict as soon as possible after authentic news of the battle. This was in contravention of all established custom, which was for women, if they assisted at all, to remain far in the rear until wounded soldiers were conveyed to them, or until the retreat of the opposing army made it safe for them to come upon the field where the conflict had been. It disheartened her to have to remain in Washington where there was no lack of willing assistance, and wait till it was safe to stir.
Moreover, she did not find her service in the Washington hospitals wholly cheerful. It depressed her to move among the wounded and witness the after effects of the battle, the gangrene, the infection of wounds, and the slow fevers, and to think how much of this might have been avoided if the men could have had relief earlier. An extract from a letter to her sister-in-law, written in the summer of 1862, indicates something of her feeling at this time:
Washington, D.C., June 26th, 1862
My dear Sister Julia:
I cannot make a pleasant letter of this; everything is sad; the very pain which is breathed out in the atmosphere of this city is enough to sadden any human heart. Five thousand suffering men, and room preparing for eight thousand more,—poor, fevered, cut-up wretches, it agonizes me to think of it. I go when I can; to-day am having a visit from a little Massachusetts (Lowell) boy, seventeen, his widowed mother’s only child, whom I found recovering from fever in Mount Pleasant Hospital. It had left him with rheumatism. He was tender, and, when I asked him “what he wanted,” burst in tears and said, “I want to see my mother. She didn’t know when I left.” I appealed to the chief surgeon and applied for his discharge as a native of Massachusetts. It was promised me, and, when the astonished little fellow heard it, he threw himself across the back of his chair and sobbed so he could scarcely get his breath. He had been ordered to another hospital next day; the order was checked; this was a week ago, and yesterday he came to me discharged, and with forty-three dollars and some new clothes. I send him on to-night to his mother as a Sunday present. She knows nothing of it, only that he is suffering in hospital. I am ungrateful to be heavy-hearted when I have been able to do only that little. His name is William Diggles, nephew of Jonas Diggles, tailor of New Sharon, Maine.
Authentic news of battles reached Washington slowly. At first there was no certainty whether a battle was a battle or only a skirmish. Then, when it became certain that a battle had been fought, the first news was almost always unreliable. It would have been a great advantage if Clara Barton could have known where a battle was to be fought. Manifestly, she could not always know. The generals in command did not always know. But there were times when official Washington had premonitory information. She sought to establish relationship with sufficiently high authority to enable her to know in advance where such battles were to be fought as were brought on by a Union offensive. On Saturday night, September 13, 1862, she had secret information that a great battle was about to be fought. A small battle had been fought the day before and it had been disastrous. There had been an engagement at Harper’s Ferry in which the Union army had 44 killed, 173 wounded, and the amazing number of 12,520 missing or captured. She already suspected, and a little later she knew, that that long list of men missing and captured, was more ominous than an added number killed or wounded:
“Our army was weary,” she said, “and lacked not only physical strength, but confidence and spirit. And why should they not? Always defeated! Always on the retreat! I was almost demoralized myself! And I had just commenced.”
She “had just commenced”; that was characteristic of her. She had been ministering to the soldiers ever since the day when the first blood was shed on the 19th of April, 1861, and had been at it without rest or stint ever since. But she had just commenced; she had just learned how to do it in the way that was hereafter to characterize her methods.
The defeat at Harper’s Ferry threw Washington into a panic. But it moved McClellan to a long-deferred engagement with the Union forces in the offensive.
The long maneuvering and skirmishing [she wrote], had yielded no fruit. Pope had been sacrificed and all the blood shed from Yorktown to Malvern Hill seemed to have been utterly in vain. But the minor keys, upon which I played my infinitesimal note in the great anthem of war and victory which rang through the land when these two fearful forces met and closed, with gun-lock kissing gun-lock across the rocky bed of Antietam, are yet known only to a few. Washington was filled with dismay, and all the North was moved as a tempest stirs a forest.
Maryland lay temptingly in view, and Lee and Jackson with the flower of the rebel army marched for its ripening fields. Who it was that whispered hastily on Saturday night, September 13,—“Harper’s Ferry, not a moment to be lost”—I have never dared to name.
In thirty minutes I was waiting the always kindly spoken “Come in,” of my patron saint, Major, now Quartermaster-General, Rucker.
“Major,” I said—“I want to go to Harper’s Ferry; can I go?”
“Perhaps so,” he replied, with genial but doubtful expression. “Perhaps so; do you want a conveyance?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But an army wagon is the only vehicle that will reach there with any burden in safety. I can send you one of these to-morrow morning.”
I said, “I will be ready.”
But here was to begin a new experience for me. I was to ride eighty miles in an army wagon, and straight into battle and danger at that.
I could take no female companion, no friend, but the stout working-men I had use for.
You, who are accustomed to see a coach and a pair of fine horses with a well-dressed, gentlemanly driver draw up to your door, will scarcely appreciate the sensation with which I watched the approach of the long and high, white-covered, tortoise-motioned vehicle, with its string of little, frisky, long-eared animals, with the broad-shouldered driver astride, and the eternal jerk of the single rein by which he navigated his craft up to my door.
The time, you will remember, was Sunday; the place, 7th Street, just off Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington City.
Then and there, my vehicle was loaded, with boxes, bags, and parcels, and, last of all, I found a place for myself and the four men who were to go with me.
I took no Saratoga trunk, but remembered, at the last moment, to tie up a few articles in my handkerchief.
Thus equipped, and seated, my chain of little uneasy animals commenced to straighten itself, and soon brought us into the center of Pennsylvania Avenue, in full gaze of the whole city in its best attire, and on its way to church.
Thus all day we rattled on over the stones and dikes, and up and down the hills of Maryland.
At nightfall we turned into an open field, and, dismounting, built a camp-fire, prepared supper, and retired, I to my work in my wagon, the men wrapped in their blankets, camping about me.
All night an indistinct roar of artillery sounded upon our ears, and waking or sleeping, we were conscious of trouble ahead; but it was well for our rest that no messenger came to tell us how death reveled among our brave troops that night.
Before daybreak, we had breakfasted, and were on our way. You will not infer that, because by ourselves, we were alone upon the road. We were directly in the midst of a train of army wagons, at least ten miles in length, moving in solid column—the Government supplies and ammunition, food, and medicine for an army in battle.
Weary and sick from their late exposures and hardships, the men were falling by the wayside, faint, pale, and often dying.
I busied myself as I rode on hour by hour in cutting loaves of bread in slices and passing them to the pale, haggard wrecks as they sat by the roadside, or staggered on to avoid capture, and at each little village we entered, I purchased all the bread its inhabitants would sell.
Horses as well as men had suffered and their dead bodies strewed the wayside.
My poor words can never describe to you the consternation and horror with which we descended from our wagon, and trod, there in the mountain pass, that field of death.
There, where we now walked with peaceful feet, twelve hours before the ground had rocked with carnage. There in the darkness God’s angels of wrath and death had swept and, foe facing foe, the souls of men went out. And there, side by side, stark and cold in death mingled the Northern Blue and the Southern Gray.
To such of you as have stood in the midst or followed in the track of armies and witnessed the strange and dreadful confusion of recent battle-grounds, I need not describe this field. And to you who have not, no description would ever avail.
The giant rocks, hanging above our heads, seemed to frown upon the scene, and the sighing trees which hung lovingly upon their rugged edge drooped low and wept their pitying dews upon the livid brows and ghastly wounds beneath.
Climbing hills and clambering over ledges we sought in vain for some poor wretch in whom life had still left the power to suffer. Not one remained, and, grateful for this, but shocked and sick of heart, we returned to our waiting conveyance.