While she was still under fire, but after the stress of the first assault, she found time to send a little note which enables us to identify with certainty her headquarters. Her work was not done in the shelter of any of the base hospitals in the general region of Charleston, it was with the advance hospital and under fire.
The midsummer campaign left Clara Barton desperately sick. She came very near to laying down her life with the brave men for whose sake she had freely risked it. What with her own sickness and the strenuous nature of her service, there is only a single line in her diary (on Thanksgiving Day) between July 23 and December 1. On July 22 she personally assisted at two terrible surgical operations as the men were brought directly in from the field. The soldiers were so badly wounded she wanted to see them die before the surgeon touched them. But the surgeons did their work well, and, though it was raining and cold, she covered them with rubber blankets and was astonished to find how comfortable they came to be. She returned to see them in the evening and they were both sleeping soundly. On the following day, the day of her last entry for the summer, she reported the wounded under her care as doing well; also, that she had now a man detailed to assume some of the responsibility for the food of the wounded. Fresh green corn was available, and she was having hominy cooked for men who had had quite too much of salt pork. She was arranging the meals, but had other people to serve them.
Then Clara Barton dropped; her strength gave out. Overcome with fatigue and sick with fever, she lay for several weeks and wrote neither letters nor in her journal.
By October she was ready to answer Annie Childs’s thoughtful inquiry about her wardrobe. There were two successive letters two weeks apart that consisted almost wholly of the answers she made to the question wherewithal she should be clothed. Lest we should suppose Clara Barton to be an institution and not a wholly feminine woman, it is interesting to notice her concern that these dresses be of proper material and suitably made.
The dresses arrived with rather surprising promptness, and they fitted with only minor alterations which she described in detail to Annie. Toward the end of October she had occasion to write again to Annie thanking the friends who had remembered her so kindly, and expressing in her letter the feeling, which she so often recorded in her diary, that she was not doing as much as she ought to merit the kindness of her friends. In another letter a few days later, she told of one use she was making of her riding-skirt; she was furnishing a hospital at Fort Mitchell, seven miles away, and her ride to that hospital combined both business and pleasure.
About this time she gathered some trophies and sent to Worcester for the fair. They were exhibited and sold to add to the resources of the good people who were providing in various ways for the comfort of the soldiers. At this time she wrote to other organizations who had sent her supplies, telling of the good they had done.
But again she fell upon a time of relative inactivity. There were no more battles to be fought immediately. She again wondered if she had any right to stay in a place where everything was so comfortable, especially as Annie Childs had written to her that the Worcester and Oxford women would not permit her to bear any part of the expense for the new clothes that had been made for her.
About this time her brother David received a letter from Stephen which showed that it was useless for her to stay where she was with any present expectation of securing his relief. He was still remaining with his property unmolested by both sides, and thought it better to continue there than run what seemed to him the larger risks of leaving.
One of the most interesting and in its way pathetic entries in her diary at this season, is a long one on December 5, 1863. Miss Barton had collided with official arrogance, and had unhappy memories of it. She probably would have said nothing about it had she not been appealed to by one of the women at the headquarters to do something to improve conditions at the regular hospital. And that was something which Clara Barton simply could not do. She knew better than almost any one else how much those hospitals lacked of perfection. She herself did not visit them, excepting as she went there to return official calls. She had made it plain to those in charge that she had not come to interfere with any form of established work, but to do a work of her own in complete sympathy and coöperation with theirs. She knew that Dorothea Dix had undertaken an impossible task. She saw some nurses near to where she was who were much more fond of spending pleasant evenings at headquarters than they were of doing the work for which they were supposed to have come down. But she also knew that even such work as she was doing was looked upon by some of them with feelings of jealousy, as work outside of the general organization, yet receiving from the public a confidence and recognition not always accorded their own. One night, after one of the officer’s wives had poured out her soul to Clara Barton, she poured out her soul to her diary. It is a very long entry, but it treats of some highly important subjects:
I moved along to the farther end of the piazza and found Mrs. D., who soon made known to me the subject of her desires. As I suspected, the matter was hospitals. She has been visiting the hospital at this place and has become not only interested, but excited upon the subject; the clothing department she finds satisfactory, but the storeroom appears empty and a sameness prevailing through food as provided which seems to her appalling for a diet for sick men. She states that they have no delicacies such as the country at the North are flooding hospitals with; that the food is all badly cooked, served cold, and always the same thing—dip toast, meat cooked dry, and tea without milk, perhaps once a week a potato for each man, or a baked apple. She proposed to establish a kitchen department for the serving of proper food to these men, irrespective of the pleasure of the “Powers that Be.” She expects opposition from the surgeons in charge and Mrs. Russell, the matron appointed and stationed by Miss Dix, but thinks to commence by littles and work herself in in spite of opposition, or make report direct to Washington through Judge Holt, and other influential friends and obtain a carte blanche from Secretary Stanton to act independently of all parties. She wished to know if I thought it would be possible to procure supplies sufficient to carry on such a plan, and people to cook and serve if it were once established and directed properly. She had just mailed a letter to Miss Dame calling upon her to stir people at the North and make a move if possible in the right direction. She said General Gillmore took tea with her the evening previous and inquired with much feeling, “How are my poor boys?” She desired me to attend church at the hospital to-morrow (Sunday) morning; not with her, but go, pass through, and judge for myself. In the meantime the Major came in and the subject was discussed generally. I listened attentively, gave it as my opinion that there would be no difficulty in obtaining supplies and means of paying for the preparation of them, but of the manner and feasibility of delivering and distributing them among the patients I said nothing. I had nothing to say. I partly promised to attend church the next morning, and retired having said very little. What I have thought is quite another thing. I have no doubt but the patients lack many luxuries which the country at large endeavors to supply them with, and supposes they have, no doubt; but men suffer and die for the lack of the nursing and provisions of the loved ones at home. No doubt but the stately, stupendous, and magnificent indolence of the “officers in charge” embitters the days of the poor sufferers who have become mere machines in the hands of the Government to be ruled and oppressed by puffed-up, conceited, and self-sufficient superiors in position. No doubt but a good, well-regulated kitchen, presided over with a little good common sense and womanly care, would change the whole aspect of things and lengthen the days of some, and brighten the last days of others of the poor sufferers within the thin walls of this hospital. I wish it might be, but what can I do? First it is not my province; I should be out of place there; next, Miss Dix is supreme, and her appointed nurse is matron; next, the surgeons will not brook any interference, and will, in my opinion, resent and resist the smallest effort to break over their own arrangements. What others may be able to do I am unable to conjecture, but I feel that my guns are effectually silenced. My sympathy is not destroyed, by any means, but my confidence in my ability to accomplish anything of an alleviating character in this department is completely annihilated. I went with all I had, to work where I thought I saw greatest need. A man can have no greater need than to be saved from death, and after six weeks of unremitting toil I was driven from my own tents by the selfish cupidity or stupidity of a pompous staff surgeon with a little accidental temporary authority, and I by the means thrown upon a couch of sickness, from which I barely escaped with my life. After four weeks of suffering most intense, I rose in my weakness and repaired again to my post, and scarcely were my labors recommenced when, through the same influence or no influence brought to bear upon the General Commanding, I was made the subject of a general order, and commanded to leave the island, giving me three hours in which to pack, remove, and ship four tons of supplies with no assistance that they knew of but one old female negro cook. I complied, but was remanded to Beaufort to labor in the hospitals there. With this portion of the “order” I failed to comply, and went home to Hilton Head and wrote the Commanding General a full explanation of my position, intention, proposed labors, etc., etc., which brought a rather sharp response, calling my humanity to account for not being willing to comply with his specified request, viz. to labor in Beaufort hospitals; insisting upon the plan as gravely as if it had been a possibility to be accomplished. But for the extreme ludicrousness of the thing I should have felt hurt at the bare thought of such a charge against me and from such a quarter. The hospitals were supplied by the Sanitary Commission, Miss Dix holding supremacy over all female attendants by authority from Washington, Mrs. Lander claiming, and endeavoring to enforce the same, and scandalizing through the Press—each hospital labeled, No Admittance, and its surgeons bristling like porcupines at the bare sight of a proposed visitor. How in reason’s name was I “to labor there”? Should I prepare my food and thrust it against the outer walls, in the hope it might strengthen the patients inside? Should I tie up my bundle of clothing and creep up and deposit it on the doorstep and slink away like a guilty mother, and watch afar off to see if the master of the mansion would accept or reject the “foundling”? If the Commanding General in his wisdom, when he assumed the direction of my affairs, and commanded me where to labor, had opened the doors for me to enter, the idea would have seemed more practical. It did not occur to me at the moment how I was to effect an entrance to these hospitals, but I have since thought that I might have been expected to watch my opportunity some dark night, and STORM them, although it must be confessed that the popularity of this mode of attack was rather on the decline in this department at that time, having reached its height very soon after the middle of July.