Washington, April 5th, 1864, Tuesday. Rained all day just as if it had not rained every other day for almost two weeks, and I read as steadily indoors as it rained out; am nearly through with “No Name.” Until 4 o’clock P.M. I had no disturbance, and then a most pleasant one. Mr. Brown came in to bring me letters from Mary Norton and Julia, and next to ask me to mend a little clothing, and next to present me a beautiful scrapbook designed for my own articles. It is a very beautiful article and I prize it much. Then my friend, Mr. Parker, called for a chat, and I read to him some two hours, in order to prepare his mind for George Thompson’s lecture which is to occur to-morrow night. Then a call from Senator W., and next Dr. Elliott which lasted till just now, and it is almost eleven o’clock, and I have set my fire out and apparently passed the day to little purpose; still, I think it has glided away very innocently, and with a few minutes’ preparation I shall retire with a grateful heart for the even, pleasant days which run so smoothly in my course.
Washington, April 6th, 1864, Wednesday. There are signs of clear weather, although it is by no means an established fact yet. I laid my reading aside, and took up my pen to address a letter to Mr. Wilson. I wrote at greater length than I had expected and occupied quite a portion of the day. The subject woke up the recollection of a train of ills and wrongs submitted to and borne so long that I suffered intensely in the reproduction of them, but I did reproduce, whether to any purpose or not time will reveal. It is not to be supposed that any decided revolution is to follow, as this is never to be looked for in my case. I have done expecting it, and done, I trust, with my efforts in behalf of others. I must take the little remnant of life that may remain to me as my own special property, and appropriate it accordingly. I had asked an appointment, as before referred to. I find I cannot make the use of it I had desired, and I have asked to recall the application. I have said I could not afford to make it. This was the day preceding the night of Mr. George Thompson’s lecture in the Hall of Representatives. I went early with Mr. Brown. We went into the gallery and took a front seat in a side gallery. The House commenced to fill very rapidly with one of the finest-looking audiences that could be gathered in Washington. Conspicuous among them were Mr. Chase, Governor Sprague, Senator Wilson, Governor Boutwell and lady, Speaker Colfax, Thad. Stevens, and, to cap all, the brother of “Old John Brown” came and sat with us. At eight the orator of the evening entered the Hall in the same group with President Lincoln, Vice-President Hamlin, Rev. Mr. Pierpont, and others whom I did not recognize. Preliminary remarks were made by Mr. Pierpont. Next followed Mr. Hamlin, who introduced Mr. Thompson, who arose under so severe emotions that he could scarce utter a word. It seemed for a time that he would fall before the audience he had come to address. The contrast was evidently too great to be contemplated with composure; his sensitive mind reverted doubtless to his previous visits to this country, when he had seen himself hung and burnt in effigy, been mobbed, stoned, and assailed with “filthy missiles,” and now he stood, almost deafened with applause, in the Hall of Representatives of America, America “free” from the shackles of slavery, and to address the President, and great political heads of the Nation. No wonder he was overcome, no wonder that the air felt thick, and his words came feebly, and his body bent beneath the weight of the contrast, the glorious consummation of all he had so earnestly labored and so devoutly prayed for. But by degrees his strength returned, and the rich melody of his voice filled every inch of the vast hall, and delighted every loyal, truth-loving ear. It would be useless for me to attempt a description of his address—it is so far immortal as to be always found, I trust, among the records of the glorious doings and sayings of our country’s supporters. His endorsement of the President was one of the most touching and sublime things I have ever heard uttered, and the messages from England to him breathed a spirit of friendship which I was not prepared to listen to. Surely we are not to growl at and complain of England as jealous and hostile when her working-people, deprived of their daily labor and the support of their families through our difficulties, bid us Godspeed, and never to yield till our purpose has been accomplished, and congratulate us upon having achieved our independence in the War of the Revolution, and ask us now to go on and achieve a still greater independence, which shall embrace the whole civilized world. Surely these words show a nobler spirit in England than we had any reason or real right to expect. His remarks touching John Brown were strong, and, sitting as I was, watching the immediate effect upon the brother at my side, and when in a few minutes the band struck up the familiar air dedicated to him the world over, I truly felt that John Brown’s Soul was marching on, and that the mouldering in the grave was of little account; the brother evidently felt the same. There was a glistening of the eye and a compression of the lip which spoke it all and more; he was evidently proud of the gallows rope that hung Old John Brown, “Old Hero Brown!”
On leaving the Hall, Mr. Parker joined us, and we all took a cream at Simmod’s and returned, and I made good my escape to my room.
Since her return from Hilton Head, she had been furnished no passes. Official Washington had forgotten her in her year of absence. But there came a day when Clara Barton had no difficulty in obtaining passes, and when all Washington was willing enough to have her go to the front. That was when the battle of Spotsylvania occurred, May 8, 1864. It took Washington a day or two to realize the gravity of the situation; and Clara Barton was begging and imploring the opportunity to hasten at the sound of the first gun. There was refusal and delay; then, when it was realized that more than 2700 men had been killed and more than 13,000 wounded, her passes came. General Rucker, who had been endeavoring to secure them for her, obtained them, and sent them in haste by special messenger; and Clara Barton was back on the boat, landing, as so often before, at Acquia Creek, and wading through the red mud to where the wounded were.
They were everywhere; and most of all they were in wagons sunk to the hub in mud, and stalled where they could not get out, while men groaned and died and maggots crawled in their wounds. Bitterly she lamented the lost hours while she had been clamoring for passes; but now she set herself to work with such facilities as she could command, first for the relief of the wounded men in wagons:
The terrible slaughter of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania turned all pitying hearts and helping hands once more to Fredericksburg [she wrote afterward]. And no one who reached it by way of Belle Plain, while this latter constituted the base of supplies for General Grant’s army, can have forgotten the peculiar geographical location, and the consequent fearful condition of the country immediately about the landing, which consisted of a narrow ridge of high land on the left bank of the river. Along the right extended the river itself. On the left, the hills towered up almost to a mountain height. The same ridge of high land was in front at a quarter of a mile distant, through which a narrow defile formed the road leading out, and on to Fredericksburg, ten miles away, thus leaving a level space or basin of an area of a fourth of a mile, directly in front of the landing.
Across this small plain all transportation to and from the army must necessarily pass. The soil was red clay. The ten thousand wheels and hoofs had ground it to a powder, and a sudden rain upon the surrounding hills had converted the entire basin into one vast mortar-bed, smooth and glassy as a lake, and much the color of light brick dust.
The poor, mutilated, starving sufferers of the Wilderness were pouring into Fredericksburg by thousands—all to be taken away in army wagons across ten miles of alternate hills, and hollows, stumps, roots, and mud!
The boats from Washington to Belle Plain were loaded down with fresh troops, while the wagons from Fredericksburg to Belle Plain were loaded with wounded men and went back with supplies. The exchange was transacted on this narrow ridge, called the landing.
I arrived from Washington with such supplies as I could take. It was still raining. Some members of the Christian Commission had reached an earlier boat, and, being unable to obtain transportation to Fredericksburg, had erected a tent or two on the ridge and were evidently considering what to do next.
To nearly or quite all of them the experience and scene were entirely new. Most of them were clergymen, who had left at a day’s notice, by request of the distracted fathers and mothers who could not go to the relief of the dear ones stricken down by thousands, and thus begged those in whom they had the most confidence to go for them. They went willingly, but it was no easy task they had undertaken. It was hard enough for old workers who commenced early and were inured to the life and its work.
I shall never forget the scene which met my eye as I stepped from the boat to the top of the ridge. Standing in this plain of mortar-mud were at least two hundred six-mule army wagons, crowded full of wounded men waiting to be taken upon the boats for Washington. They had driven from Fredericksburg that morning. Each driver had gotten his wagon as far as he could, for those in front of and about him had stopped.
Of the depth of the mud, the best judgment was formed from the fact that no entire hub of a wheel was in sight, and you saw nothing of any animal below its knees and the mass of mud all settled into place perfectly smooth and glassy.
As I contemplated the scene, a young, intelligent, delicate gentleman, evidently a clergyman, approached me, and said anxiously, but almost timidly: “Madam, do you think those wagons are filled with wounded men?”
I replied that they undoubtedly were, and waiting to be placed on the boats then unloading.
“How long must they wait?” he asked.
I said that, judging from the capacity of the boats, I thought they could not be ready to leave much before night.
“What can we do for them?” he asked, still more anxiously.
“They are hungry and must be fed,” I replied.
For a moment his countenance brightened, then fell again as he exclaimed: “What a pity; we have a great deal of clothing and reading matter, but no food in any quantity, excepting crackers.”
I told him that I had coffee and that between us I thought we could arrange to give them all hot coffee and crackers.
“But where shall we make our coffee?” he inquired, gazing wistfully about the bare wet hillside.
I pointed to a little hollow beside a stump. “There is a good place for a fire,” I explained, “and any of this loose brush will do.”
“Just here?” he asked.
“Just here, sir.”
He gathered the brush manfully and very soon we had some fire and a great deal of smoke, two crotched sticks and a crane, if you please, and presently a dozen camp-kettles of steaming hot coffee. My helper’s pale face grew almost as bright as the flames and the smutty brands looked blacker than ever in his slim white fingers.
Suddenly a new difficulty met him. “Our crackers are in barrels, and we have neither basket nor box. How can we carry them?”
I suggested that aprons would be better than either, and, getting something as near the size and shape of a common tablecloth as I could find, tied one about him and one about me, fastened all four of the corners to the waist, and pinned the sides, thus leaving one hand for a kettle of coffee and one free, to administer it.
Thus equipped we moved down the slope. Twenty steps brought us to the abrupt edge which joined the mud, much as the bank of a canal does the black line of water beside it.
But here came the crowning obstacle of all. So completely had the man been engrossed in his work, so delighted as one difficulty after another vanished and success became more and more apparent, that he entirely lost sight of the distance and difficulties between himself and the objects to be served.
If you could have seen the expression of consternation and dismay depicted in every feature of his fine face, as he imploringly exclaimed, “How are we to get to them?”
“There is no way but to walk,” I answered.
He gave me one more look as much as to say, “Are you going to step in there?” I allowed no time for the question, but, in spite of all the solemnity of the occasion, and the terribleness of the scene before me, I found myself striving hard to keep the muscles of my face all straight. As it was, the corners of my mouth would draw into wickedness, as with a backward glance I saw the good man tighten his grasp upon his apron and take his first step into military life.
But thank God, it was not his last.
I believe it is recorded in heaven—the faithful work performed by that Christian Commission minister through long weary months of rain and dust and summer suns and winter snows. The sick soldier blessed and the dying prayed for him, as through many a dreadful day he stood fearless and firm among fire and smoke (not made of brush), and walked calmly and unquestioningly through something redder and thicker than the mud of Belle Plain.
No one has forgotten the heart-sickness which spread over the entire country as the busy wires flashed the dire tidings of the terrible destitution and suffering of the wounded of the Wilderness whom I attended as they lay in Fredericksburg. But you may never have known how many hundredfold of these ills were augmented by the conduct of improper, heartless, unfaithful officers in the immediate command of the city and upon whose actions and indecisions depended entirely the care, food, shelter, comfort, and lives of that whole city of wounded men. One of the highest officers there has since been convicted a traitor. And another, a little dapper captain quartered with the owners of one of the finest mansions in the town, boasted that he had changed his opinion since entering the city the day before; that it was in fact a pretty hard thing for refined people like the people of Fredericksburg to be compelled to open their homes and admit “these dirty, lousy, common soldiers,” and that he was not going to compel it.
This I heard him say, and waited until I saw him make his words good, till I saw, crowded into one old sunken hotel, lying helpless upon its bare, wet, bloody floors, five hundred fainting men hold up their cold, bloodless, dingy hands, as I passed, and beg me in Heaven’s name for a cracker to keep them from starving (and I had none); or to give them a cup that they might have something to drink water from, if they could get it (and I had no cup and could get none); till I saw two hundred six-mule army wagons in a line, ranged down the street to headquarters, and reaching so far out on the Wilderness road that I never found the end of it; every wagon crowded with wounded men, stopped, standing in the rain and mud, wrenched back and forth by the restless, hungry animals all night from four o’clock in the afternoon till eight next morning and how much longer I know not. The dark spot in the mud under many a wagon, told only too plainly where some poor fellow’s life had dripped out in those dreadful hours.
I remembered one man who would set it right, if he knew it, who possessed the power and who would believe me if I told him [says Miss Barton in describing this experience]. I commanded immediate conveyance back to Belle Plain. With difficulty I obtained it, and four stout horses with a light army wagon took me ten miles at an unbroken gallop, through field and swamp and stumps and mud to Belle Plain and a steam tug at once to Washington. Landing at dusk I sent for Henry Wilson, chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate. A messenger brought him at eight, saddened and appalled like every other patriot in that fearful hour, at the weight of woe under which the Nation staggered, groaned, and wept.
He listened to the story of suffering and faithlessness, and hurried from my presence, with lips compressed and face like ashes. At ten he stood in the War Department. They could not credit his report. He must have been deceived by some frightened villain. No official report of unusual suffering had reached them. Nothing had been called for by the military authorities commanding Fredericksburg.
Mr. Wilson assured them that the officers in trust there were not to be relied upon. They were faithless, overcome by the blandishments of the wily inhabitants. Still the Department doubted. It was then that he proved that my confidence in his firmness was not misplaced, as, facing his doubters he replies: “One of two things will have to be done—either you will send some one to-night with the power to investigate and correct the abuses of our wounded men at Fredericksburg, or the Senate will send some one to-morrow.”
This threat recalled their scattered senses.
At two o’clock in the morning the Quartermaster-General and staff galloped to the 6th Street wharf under orders; at ten they were in Fredericksburg. At noon the wounded men were fed from the food of the city and the houses were opened to the “dirty, lousy soldiers” of the Union Army.
Both railroad and canal were opened. In three days I returned with carloads of supplies.
No more jolting in army wagons! And every man who left Fredericksburg by boat or by car owes it to the firm decision of one man that his grating bones were not dragged ten miles across the country or left to bleach in the sands of that city.
Yes, they owed it all to Senator Wilson. And he owed it to Clara Barton.
Why was there such neglect, and why did no one else report it?
The surgeons on the front were busy, and they did not see it. The surgeons and nurses in the base hospitals were busy, and they knew nothing of it. Military commanders only knew that the roads were bad, and that it was difficult to move troops to the front or wounded men back to the rear, but supposed that the best was being made of a bad matter. But Clara Barton knew that, if some one in authority could realize that thousands of men were suffering needless agony and hundreds were dying who might be saved, something would be done.
Something was done; and many a soldier who lived and regained his health had reason, without knowing it, to bless the name of Clara Barton.
At the close of the Wilderness campaign, Clara Barton found time to answer some letters and acknowledge some remittances. In one of these letters she answered the question why, being as she was in close touch and entire sympathy with the work of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, she still continued to do her work independently. It is a thoroughly characteristic letter:
May 30, 1864
... The question would naturally arise with strangers, why I, feeling so in unison with the Commission and among whose members I number my best friends, should maintain a separated organization. To those who know me it is obvious. Long before either commission was in the field, or had even an existence, I was laboring by myself for the little I might be able to accomplish and, gathering such helpers about me as I was best able to do, toiled in the front of our armies wherever I could reach, and thus I have labored on up to the present time. Death has sometimes laid his hand upon the active forces of my co-workers and stilled the steps most useful to me, but others have risen up to supply the place, and now it does not seem wise or desirable, after all this time, to change my course. If I have by practice acquired any skill, it belongs to me to use untrammeled, and I might not work as efficiently, or labor as happily, under the direction of those of less experience than myself. It is simply just to all parties that I retain my present position, and through all up to the present time I have been always able to meet my own demands with such little supplies as came voluntarily from my circle of personal friends, which fortunately was not small. But the necessities of the present campaign were well-nigh overwhelming, and my duty required that I gather all I could, even if I shouted aloud to strangers for those who lay fainting and speechless by the wayside or moaning in this wilderness. I did so and such responses as yours have been the reply. Dearly do I think God poured his blessing on my little work, for the friends He has raised up to aid me, for the uninterrupted health and unfailing strength He has given me, and more and more with each day’s observation do I stand overawed by the great lessons He is teaching us His children, grand and stern as the earthquake’s shock, judgments soft and terrible as the lightning stroke. He is leading us back to a sense of justice and duty and humanity, while our thousand guns flash freedom and our martyrs die. It is a terrible sacrifice which He requires at our hands and in obedience the Nation has builded its altar and uplifted its arm of faith and the knife gleams above the child. He who commands it alone knows when His angel shall call from heaven to stay our hands and bid us no longer slay our own. Then may we find hidden in the peaceful thicket the appropriate sacrifice that in blessing He may bless us, that our young men return together, that our seed shall possess the gates of our enemies, and that all the nations of the earth be blessed.