Her reasons for this were partly military and partly personal. The military aspect of the situation was that she learned in Washington that the region about Charleston was likely to be the place of largest service during the year 1863. On the personal side was first her great desire to establish communication with her brother Stephen, who still was in North Carolina. When Charleston was captured, the army could move on into the interior. If she were somewhere near, she could have a part in the rescue of her brother, and she had reason to believe that he might have need of her service after his long residence within the bounds of the Confederacy. Her brother David received a commission in the Quartermaster’s Department, and he was sent to Hilton Head in the vicinity of Charleston. Her cousin, Corporal Leander T. Poor, in the Engineers’ Department, was assigned there, partly through her influence. It seemed as though that field promised to her every possible opportunity for public and private usefulness. There she could most largely serve her country; there she could have the companionship of her brother David and her cousin, Leander Poor; there she could most probably establish communications with Stephen, who might be in great need of her assistance. It is difficult to see how in the circumstances she could have planned with greater apparent wisdom. If in any respect the outcome failed to justify her expectations, it was because she was no wiser with respect to the military developments of the year 1863 than were the highest officials in Washington. Her request for permission to go to Port Royal was written early in 1863, and was addressed to the Assistant Secretary of War.
This request was promptly granted, and she was soon planning for a change of scene. The first three months of 1863, however, were spent in Washington, and we have few glimpses of her activities. In the middle of January she rejoined the army, acting on information which led her to believe that a battle was impending.
It should be stated that Clara Barton’s diaries are most fragmentary where there is most to record. She was much given to writing, and, when she had time, enjoyed recording in detail almost everything that happened. She was accustomed to record the names of her callers, and the persons from whom she received, and those to whom she sent, letters; her purchases with the cost of each; her receipts and expenditures; her repairs to her wardrobe, and innumerable other little items; but a large proportion of the most significant events in her public life are not recorded in her diaries, or, if recorded at all, are merely set down in catchwords, and the details are given, if at all, in her letters. Of this expedition in the winter of 1863 we have no word either in her diary, which she probably left in Washington, or in her letters which she may have been too busy to write, or which, if written, have not been preserved. Our knowledge of her departure upon this expedition is contained in a letter from her nephew Samuel Barton:
Surgeon-General’s Office
Washington City, D.C., January 18th, 1863My dear Cousin Mary:
Your very acceptable letter, with Ada’s and Ida’s, was received last Thursday evening. I could not answer sooner, for I have been quite busy evenings ever since it was received. Aunt Clara left the city this morning for the army. Her friend, Colonel Rucker, the Assistant Quartermaster-General, told her last Thursday that the army were about to move and they were expecting a fight and wanted her to go if she felt able, so this morning she, Mr. Welles, who always goes with her to the battles, and Mr. Doe, a Massachusetts man, took the steamboat for Acquia Creek, where they will take the cars for Falmouth and there join the army. Colonel Rucker gave her two new tents, and bread, flour, meal, and a new stove, and requested her to telegraph to him for anything she wanted and he would send it to her. Aunt Sally left for Massachusetts last Thursday evening....
Sam Barton
In the State House in Boston is the battle-flag of the 21st Massachusetts, stained with the blood of Sergeant Thomas Plunkett. Both his arms were shot away in the battle of Fredericksburg, but he planted the flagstaff between his feet and upheld the flag with his two shattered stumps of arms. Massachusetts has few relics so precious as this flag. Clara Barton was with him at Fredericksburg and ministered to him there, and remained his lifelong friend. In many ways she manifested her interest in him, rendering her aid in a popular movement which secured him a purse of $4000. Sergeant Plunkett was in need of a pension, and Clara Barton addressed to the Senate’s Committee on Military Affairs a memorial on his behalf. It was written on Washington’s Birthday, after her return from the field:
Washington, D.C., Feb. 22nd, ’63
To the Members of the
Military Committee, U.S. Senate.
Senators:Nothing less than a strong conviction of duty owed to one of the brave defenders of our Nation’s honor could induce me to intrude for a moment upon the already burdened, and limited term of action yet remaining to your honorable body.
During the late Battle of Fredericksburg, the 21st Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers were ordered to charge upon a battery across an open field; in the terrible fire which assailed them, the colors were three times in quick succession bereft of their support; the third time they were seized by Sergeant Thomas Plunkett, of Company E, and borne over some three hundred yards of open space, when a shell from the enemy’s battery in its murderous course killed three men of the regiment and shattered both arms of the Sergeant. He could no longer support the colors upright, but, planting his foot against the staff, he endeavored to hold them up, while he strove by his shouts amid the confusion to attract attention to their condition; for some minutes he sustained them against his right arm torn and shattered just below the shoulder, while the blood poured over and among the sacred folds, literally obliterating the stripes, leaving as fit emblem of such heroic sacrifice only the crimson and the stars. Thus drenched in blood, and rent by the fury of eight battles, the noble standard could be no longer borne, and, while its gallant defender lay suffering in field hospital from amputation of both arms, it was reverently wrapped by Colonel Clark and returned to the State House in Boston, with the request that others might be sent them; the 21st had never lost their colors, but they had worn them out.
The old flag and its brave bearer are alike past their usefulness save as examples for emulation and titles of glory for some bright page of our Nation’s history, and, while the one is carefully treasured in the sacred archives of the State, need I more than ask of this noble body to put forth its protecting arm to shelter, cherish, and sustain the other? If guaranty were needful for the private character of so true a soldier, it would have been found in the touching address of his eloquent Colonel (Clark) delivered on Christmas beside the stretcher waiting at the train at Falmouth to convey its helpless burden to the car, whither he had been escorted not only by his regiment, but his General. The tears which rolled over the veteran cheeks around him were ample testimony of the love and respect he had won from them, and to-day his heart’s deepest affections twine round his gallant regiment as the defenders of their country.
A moment’s reflection will obviate the necessity of any suggestions in reference to the provisions needful for his future support; it is only to be remembered that he can nevermore be unattended, a common doorknob is henceforth as formidable to him as a prison bolt. His little pension as a Sergeant would not remunerate an attendant for placing his food in his mouth, to say nothing of how it shall be obtained for both of them.
For the sake of formality merely, for to you gentlemen I know the appeal is needless, I will close by praying your honorable body to grant to Sergeant Plunkett such pension as shall in your noble wisdom be ample for his future necessities and a fitting tribute to his patriotic sacrifice.
C. B.
The assignment of her brother David to duty in the vicinity of Charleston was the event which decided her to ask for a transfer to that field, or rather for permission to go there with supplies.
It must be remembered that Miss Barton’s service was a voluntary service. She was not an army nurse, and had no intention of becoming one. The system of army nurses was under the direct supervision of Dorothea Lynde Dix, a woman from her own county, and one for whom she cherished feelings of the highest regard, but under whom she had no intention of working. Indeed, it is one of the fine manifestations of good sense on the part of Clara Barton that she never at any time attempted what might have seemed an interference with Miss Dix, but found for herself a field of service, and developed it according to a method of her own. It will be well at this time to give some account of Miss Dix, and a little outline of her great work in its relation to that of Clara Barton.
Dorothea Lynde Dix was born April 4, 1802, and died July 17, 1887. She was twenty-nine years older than Clara Barton, and their lives had many interesting parallels. Until the publication of her biography by Francis Tiffany in 1890, it was commonly supposed that she was born in Worcester County, Massachusetts, where she spent her childhood. But her birth occurred in Maine. Unlike Clara Barton she had no happy home memories. Her father was an unstable, visionary man, and it was on one of his frequent and futile migrations that she was born. Her biographer states that her childhood memories were so painful that “in no hour of the most confidential intimacy could she be induced to unlock the silence which, to the very end of life, she maintained as to all the incidents of her early days.” She had no happy memories of association with school or church, or sympathetic friends. The background of her childhood memory was of poverty with a lack of public respect for a father who, though of good family, led an aimless, shiftless, wandering life. Unhappily, he was a religious fanatic, associated with no church, but issuing tracts which he paid for with money that should have been used for his children, and, to save expense, required her to paste or stitch. She hated the employment and the type of religion which it represented. She broke away from it almost violently and went to live with her grandmother in Boston.
There she fell under the influence of William Ellery Channing, and was born again. To her through his ministry came the spirit that quickened and gave life to her dawning hope and aspiration.