Clara Barton held Dorothea Dix in the very highest regard. In all her diaries and letters and in her memoranda of conversations which her diaries sometimes contain, there is no word concerning Dorothea Dix that is not appreciative. In 1910 the New York “World” wired her a request that she telegraph to that newspaper, at its expense, a list of eight names of women whom she would nominate for a Woman’s Hall of Fame. The eight names which she sent in reply to this request were Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone Blackwell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Dana Gage, Maria Mitchell, Dorothea Dix, and Mary A. Bickerdyke. It was a fine indication of her broad-mindedness that she should have named two women, Dorothea Dix and Mother Bickerdyke, who should have won distinction in her own field and might have been deemed her rivals for popular affection. If Clara Barton was capable of any kind of jealousy, it was not a jealousy that would have thought ever to undermine or belittle a woman like Dorothea Dix. Few women understood so well as Clara Barton what Dorothea Dix had to contend with. Her contemporary references show how fully she honored this noble elder sister, and how loyally she supported her.

At the same time, Clara Barton kept herself well out from under the administration and control of Miss Dix. In some respects the two women were too much alike in their temperament for either one to have worked well under the other. For that matter, neither one of them greatly enjoyed working under anybody. It is at once to the credit of Clara Barton’s loyalty and good sense that she went as an independent worker.

But the hospitals in and about Washington were approaching more and more nearly something that might be called system, and that system was the system of Dorothea Dix. Clara Barton had all the room she wanted on the battle-field. There was no great crowd of women clamoring to go with her when under fire she crossed the bridge at Fredericksburg. But by the spring of 1863 it began to be less certain that there was going to be as much fighting as there had been in the immediate vicinity of Washington. There was a possibility that actual field service with the Army of the Potomac was going to be less, and that the base hospitals with their organized system would be able to care more adequately for the wounded than would the hospitals farther south where the next great crisis seemed to be impending.

These were among the considerations in the mind of Clara Barton when she left the Army of the Potomac—“my own army,” as she lovingly called it—and secured her transfer to Hilton Head, near Charleston.

[8] Tiffany, Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix, 336, 337.

[9] Tiffany, 338, 339.

CHAPTER XVI
THE ATTEMPT TO RECAPTURE FORT SUMTER

I am confounded! Literally speechless with amazement! When I left Washington every one said it boded no peace; it was a bad omen for me to start; I never missed finding the trouble I went to find, and was never late. I thought little of it. This P.M. we neared the dock at Hilton Head and the boat came alongside and boarded us instantly. The first word was, “The first gun is to be fired upon Charleston this P.M. at three o’clock.” We drew out watches, and the hands pointed three to the minute. I felt as if I should sink through the deck. I am no fatalist, but it is so singular.

Thus wrote Clara Barton in her journal on Tuesday night, April 7, 1863, the night of her arrival at Port Royal. She had become so expert in learning where there was to be a battle that her friends looked upon her as a kind of stormy petrel and expected trouble as soon as she arrived. She had come to Hilton Head in order to be on hand when the bombardment of Charleston should occur, and the opening guns of the bombardment were her salute as her boat, the Arogo, warped up to the dock. Everything seemed to indicate that she had come at the very moment when she was needed.

But the following Saturday the transports which had loaded recruits at Hilton Head, ready to land and capture Charleston as soon as the guns had done their work, returned to Hilton Head and brought the soldiers back. Her diary that morning recorded that the Arogo returning would stop off at Charleston for dispatches, but her entry that night said: