CHAPTER XVIII
TO THE END OF THE WAR
At the end of May, 1864, Clara Barton was in Washington. She wrote to her brother David informing him of her return to the city on the night of May 24. There had been, she told him, a series of terrible battles; she doubted if history had ever known men to be mowed down in regiments as in these battles. Victory had been won, but it was incomplete, and the cost had been terrible. She had seen nine thousand Confederate prisoners.
As to her future plans, she thought she would not go out from Washington a great deal during the excessively hot weather. She remembered her sickness of the previous summer, and did not wish to repeat it. But as for keeping her away in case there should be a battle, she would not count a kindness on anybody’s part to attempt that. She said: “I suppose I should feel about as much benefited as my goldfish would if some kind-hearted person should take him out of his vase where he looked so wet and cold, and wrap him up in warm, dry flannel. We can’t live out of our natural element, can we? I’ll keep quiet when the war is over.”
She was not permitted to stay in Washington and guard her health. She was appointed Superintendent of the Department of Nurses for the Army of the James. She was under the authority of Surgeon McCormack, Chief Medical Director. The army was commanded by General B. F. Butler. She entered this new field of service June 18, 1864. We have a letter which she wrote concerning a celebration, such as it was, of the 4th of July.
Point of Rocks, Va., July 5, 1864
General Butler’s DepartmentMy Most Esteemed and Dear Friend:
Here in the sunshine and dust and toil and confusion of camp life, the mercury above a hundred, the atmosphere and everything about black with flies, the dust rolling away in clouds as far as the eye can penetrate, the ashy ground covered with scores of hospital tents shielding nearly all conceivable maladies that soldier “flesh” is heir to, and stretching on beyond the miles of bristling fortifications, entrenchments, and batteries encircling Petersburg,—all ready to blaze,—just here in the midst of all this your refreshing letter dropped in upon me.
New York! It seemed to me that in the very postmark I could see pictured nice Venetian blinds, darkened rooms where never a fly dared enter, shady yards with cool fountains throwing their spray almost in at the open windows, watered streets flecked with the changing shadows of waving trees, bubbling soda fountains and water ices and grottoes and pony gallops in Central Park and cool drives at evening, and much more I have not time to enumerate, and for an instant I fear human selfishness triumphed, and, before I was aware, the mind had instinctively drawn a contrast, and the sun’s rays glowed hotter and fiercer, and the dust rolled heavier, and my wayward heart complained to me that I was ever in the sun or dust or mud or frost, and impatiently asked if all the years of my life should pass and I never know again a season of quiet rest; and I confess it with shame. I trust that the suddenness with which it was rebuked may atone for its wickedness in some degree, and when I remembered the thousands who would so gladly come and share the toils with us, if only they could be free to do so, I gave thanks anew for my great privileges, and broke the seal of the welcome missive.
And you find hot weather even there, and have time among all the business of that driving city to remember the worn-out sufferers who are lying so helpless about us, many of whom have fought the last fight, kept the last watch, and, standing at the outer post, only wait to be relieved. The march has been toilsome, but the relief comes speedily at last—sometimes almost before we are aware. Yesterday in passing through a ward (if wards they might be termed) filled mostly from the U.S. Colored Regiments I stopped beside a sergeant who had appeared weak all day, but made no complaint, and asked how he was feeling then. Looking up in my face, he replied, “Thank you, Miss, a little better, I hope.” “Can I do anything for you?” I asked. “A little water, if you please.” I turned to get it, and that instant he gasped and was gone. Men frequently reach us at noon and have passed away before night. For such we can only grieve, for there is little opportunity to labor in their cases. I find a large number of colored people, mostly women and children, left in this vicinity, the stronger having been taken by their owners “up country.” In all cases they are destitute, having stood the sack of two opposing armies—what one army left them, the other has taken.
On the plantation which forms the site of this hospital is a colored woman, the house servant of the former owner, with thirteen children, eight with her and five of her oldest taken away. The rebel troops had taken her bedding and clothing and ours had taken her money, forty dollars in gold, which she had saved, she said, and I do not doubt her statement in the least. I gave her all the food I had that was suitable for her and her children and shall try to find employment for her.
For the last few days we have been constantly meeting and caring for the wounded and broken-down from Wilson’s cavalry raid; they have endured more than could be expected of men, and are still brave and cheerful under their sufferings.
I hope I shall not surprise you by the information that we celebrated the Fourth (yesterday) by giving an extra dinner. We invited in the lame, the halt, and the blind to the number of some two hundred or more to partake of roast beef, new potatoes, squash, blancmange, cake, etc., etc. We had music, not by the band, but from the vicinity of Petersburg, and, if not so sweet and perfectly timed as that discoursed by some of your excellent city bands, it must be acknowledged as both startling and thrilling, and was received with repeated “bursts.”
I thank you much for your kind solicitude for my health. I beg to assure you that I am perfectly well at present and, with the blessing of Heaven, I hope to remain so.
Of the length of the campaign I have no adequate idea, and can form none. I should be happy to write you pages of events as they transpire every day, but duty must not be neglected for mere gratification.
Thus far I have remained at the Corps (which is, in this instance, only an overburdened and well-conducted field) hospital. This point, from its peculiar location, is peculiarly adapted to this double duty service, situated as it is at one terminus of the line of entrenchments.
This part of Clara Barton’s war experience is least known of all that she performed. Her diaries were unkept and as her war lectures were mostly occupied with her earlier service in the field, they make almost no reference to this important part of her work. It is through her letters that we know something of what she experienced and accomplished in the closing months of 1864, and the early months of 1865. There is less material here of the kind that makes good newspaper copy or lecture material than was afforded by her earlier work in the open field, and it is probably on this account that this period has fallen so much into the shadow of forgetfulness that it has sometimes been said that Clara Barton retired from active service after the Wilderness campaign. Two letters, one to Frances Childs Vassall, and the other to Annie Childs, give somewhat intimate pictures of her life in this period, and may be selected out of her correspondence for that purpose.
Tenth Army Corps Hospital
September 3rd, 1864My darling Sis Fannie:
It is almost midnight, and I ought to go to bed this minute, and I want to speak to you first, and I am going to indulge my inclination just a little minute till this page is down, if no more; but it will be all egotism, so be prepared, and don’t blame me. I know you are doing well and living just as quietly and happily as you deserve to do. I hear from no one, and indeed I scarce write at all; and no one would wonder if they could look in upon my family and know besides that we had moved this week—yes, moved a family of fifteen hundred sick men, and had to keep our housekeeping up all the time; and no one to be ready at hand and ask us to take tea the first night either.
I have never told you how I returned—well, safely, and got off from City Point and my goods off its dock just in time to avoid that terrible catastrophe. I was not blown to atoms, but might have been and no one the wiser. I found my “sick family” somewhat magnified on my return, and soon the Corps (10th) was ordered to cross the James, and make a feint while the Weldon Railroad was captured, and this move threw all the sick in Regimental Hospital into our hospital, five hundred in one night. Only think of such an addition to a family between supper and breakfast and no preparation; and just that morning our old cook John and his assistant Peter both came down sick, one with inflammation of the lungs and the other with fever. It was all the surgeons, stewards, and clerks could do to keep the names straight and manage the official portion of the reception; and, would you believe it, I stepped into the gap and assumed the responsibility of the kitchen and feeding of our twelve hundred, and I held it and kept it straight till I selected a new boss cook and got him regularly installed and then helped him all the time up to the present day. I wish I had some of my bills of fare preserved as they read for the day. The variety is by no means so striking as the quantity. Say for breakfast seven hundred loaves of bread, one hundred and seventy gallons of hot coffee, two large wash-boilers full of tea, one barrel of apple sauce, one barrel of sliced boiled pork, or thirty hams, one half barrel of corn-starch blancmange, five hundred slices of butter toast, one hundred slices of broiled steak, and one hundred and fifty patients, to be served with chicken gruel, boiled eggs, etc. For dinner we have over two hundred gallons of soup, or boiled dinner of three barrels of potatoes, two barrels of turnips, two barrels of onions, two barrels of squash, one hundred gallons of minute pudding, one wash-boiler full of whiskey sauce for it, or a large washtub full of codfish nicely picked, and stirred in a batter to make one hundred and fifty gallons of nice home codfish, and the Yankee soldiers cry when they taste it (I prepared it just the old home way, and so I have everything cooked), and the same toasts and corn starch as for breakfast. And then for supper two hundred gallons of rice, and twenty gallons of sauce for it, two hundred gallons of tea, toast for a thousand, and some days I have made with my own hands ninety apple pies. This would make a pie for some six hundred poor fellows who had not tasted pie for months, it might be years, sick and could not eat much. I save all the broken loaves of bread from transportation and make bread puddings in large milk pans; about forty at once will do. The patients asked for gingerbread, and I got extra flour and molasses and make it by the score. I have all the grease preserved and clarified, and to-morrow, if our new milk comes, we are to commence to make doughnuts. I have a barrel of nice lard ready (they had always burned it before to get it out of the way).
Last Saturday night we learned that we were to change with the Eighteenth Corps, and go up in front of Petersburg, and their first loads of sick came with the order. At dark I commenced to cook puddings and gingerbread, as I could carry them best. At two o’clock A.M. I had as many of these as I could carry in an ambulance, and packed my own things in an hour, and at three A.M. in the dark, started over the pontoon bridge across the Appomattox to our new base, about four miles. Got there a little before day, and got some breakfast ready about 8.30 for four hundred men that had crossed the night previous, nearly one hundred officers. The balance followed, and in eighteen hours from the receipt of the order we were all moved—but a poor change for us. Since dark forty wounded men have been brought in, many of which will prove mortal, one with the shoulder gone, a number of legs off, one with both arms gone, some blown up with shells and terribly burned, some in the breast. By request of the surgeons, I made a pail full of nice thick eggnog (eggs beaten separately and seasoned with brandy), and carried all among them, to sleep on, and chicken broth, and I have left them all falling asleep, and I have stolen away to my tent, which is as bare as a cuckoo’s nest—dirt floor, just like the street, a narrow bed of straw, and a three-legged stand made of old cracker boxes, and a wash dish. A hospital tent without any fly constitutes my apartment and furnishing. And here it is one o’clock, damp and cold, one little fellow from the 11th Maine dying, whose groans have echoed through the camp for hours. Another noble Swiss boy, I fear mortally wounded, who thinks he shall not live till morning, and has gained a promise from me that I will see him and be with him when he dies (I have still hopes of his recovery). Oh, what a volume it would make if I could only write you what I have seen, known, heard, and done since I first came to this department, June 18th. The most surprising of all of which is (tell Sally) that I should have turned cook. Who would have “thunk it”?
I am writing on bits of paper for want of whole sheets. I am entirely out. My dresses are equal to the occasion; the skirt is finished, but not worn yet. I am choice of it. The striped print gets soiled and washes nicely, all just right, and I have plenty, and I bless you every day for it. I want so to write Annie a good long letter, but how can I get time? Please give her from this, if you please, an idea of what I am doing, and she will not blame me so much.
Tell Sally that our purchases of tinware were just the thing, and but for them this hospital could not be kept comfortable a single day, not a meal. I wish I had as much more, and a nice stove of my own, with suitable stove furniture besides. And I think I could do as much good with it as some missionaries are supposed to do. Our spices and flavorings were Godsends when I got them here. I wish I had boxes of them. I need to use so much in my big cooking. There, I said it would be all egotism, but I am too stupid to think of anybody but myself, so forgive me. Give my love to all and write your loving Sis,
Clara
From letters such as this we are able to rescue from oblivion a full year of war service of Clara Barton. Contrary to all her previous intent, she was a head-nurse, in charge of the hospitals of an entire army corps. Not only so, but she was on occasion chief cook and purveyor of pie and gingerbread, and picked codfish and New England boiled dinners so like what the soldiers loved at home that they sometimes cried for joy. But she did not relinquish her purpose to be at the front. The front was very near to her. Another of her letters must be quoted:
Base Hospital, 10th Army Corps
Broadway Landing, Va.
Sept. 14th, 1864My dear Sis Annie:
Your excellent and comforting letter reached me some time ago, and, like its one or two abused predecessors, has vainly waited a reply. I cannot tell how badly I have wanted to write you, how impossible I found it to get the time. But often enough an attack of illness has brought me a leisure hour, and I am almost glad that I can make it seem right for me to sit down in daylight and pen a letter.
For once in my life I am at a loss where to commence. I have been your debtor so long, and am so full of unsaid things, that I don’t know which idea to let loose first. Perhaps I might as well speak of the weather. Well, it rains, and that is good for my conscience again, for I couldn’t get out in that if I were well enough. Rain here means mud, you must understand, but I am sheltered. Why, I have a whole house of my own, first and second floors, two rooms and a flight of stairs, and a great big fireplace, a bright fire burning, a west window below, a south one above, an east door, with a soldier-built frame arbor of cedar, twelve feet in front of it and all around it, so close and green that a cat couldn’t look in, unless at my side opening. It was the negro house for the plantation, and was dirty, of course, but ten men with brooms and fifty barrels of water made it all right, and they moved me into it one night when I was sick, and here I have lain and the winds have blown and the rains descended and beat upon my house, and it fell not, and for hours in the dark night I have listened to the guy ropes snapping and the tent flies flapping in the wind and rain, and thunder and lightning. All about me are the frail habitations of my less fortunate neighbors. One night I remembered a darling little Massachusetts boy, sick of fever and chronic diarrhœa, a mere skeleton, and I knew he was lying at the very edge of his ward, tents, of course,—delicate little fellow, about fifteen,—and I couldn’t withstand the desire to shield him, and sent through the storm and had him brought, bed and all, and stored in my lower room, and there he lay like a little kitten, so happy, till about noon the next day, when his father, one of the wealthy merchants of Suffolk, came for him. He had just heard of his illness, had searched through the damp tents for him and finally traced him to me. The unexpected sight of his little boy, sheltered, warm, and fed, nearly deprived him of speech, but when those pale lips said, “Auntie—father—this is my Auntie; doesn’t she look like mother?” It was too much. Women’s and children’s tears amount to little, but the convulsive sobs of a strong man are not forgotten in an hour.
Well, I have made a queer beginning of this letter. One would have supposed I should have made it my first duty to speak of the nice box that came to me, from you, by Mrs. Rich, and how choice I was of it, and did not take it with me the first time I went for fear I might not find the most profitable spot to use it in just then till I had found my field. As good luck would have it, it did not take long to find my field of operations; and nothing but want of time to write has prevented me from acknowledging the box many times, and expressing the desire that others might follow it. I can form no estimate of what I would and should have made use of during the campaign thus far, if I had had it to use. I doubt if you at home could realize the necessities if I could describe every one accurately, and now the cold weather approaches, they will increase in some respects. The army is filling up with new troops to a great degree and the nights are getting cold....
I was rejoiced to hear from Lieutenant Hitchcock and that he is doing well. You are favored in so pleasant a correspondent as I know he must be, and what a comfort to his wife to have him home so soon. I hope his wound will not disable him very much. Please give my love and congratulations to them when you write. Poor fellows! how sorry I was to see them lying there under the trees, so cut and mangled. Poor Captain Clark! Do you know if he is alive? the surgeons told me he couldn’t survive. I went up again to see them, a day or two after they all left. Colonel Gould had gone the day before. Yes! I lost one friend. Poor Gardner! He fought bravely and died well, they said, and laid his mangled body at the feet of his foe. I feel sad when I think of it all. “Tired a little”—not tired of the war, but tired of our sacrifices.
I passed a most pleasant hour with Lieutenant Hitchcock. It seemed so comfortable and withal so quaint and strange to sit down under the sighing pines of Virginia away out in the woods in the war of the guns and talk of you. I have asked a great many times for Mr. Chamberlain and only heard twice—he was well each time, but this was not lately. I shall surely go to him if I get near the dear old regiment (21st regiment)—that is more than I ever said of any other regiment in the service. I am a stranger to them now, I know, after all their changes; few of them ever heard of me, and yet the very mention of the number calls up all the old-time love and pride I ever had. I would divide the last half of my last loaf with any soldier in that regiment, though I had never seen him. I honor him for joining it, be he who he may; for he knew well if he marched and fought with that regiment he had undertaken no child’s play, and those who measured steel with them knew it as well.
The Oxford ladies at work for me again!! I am very glad if they have the confidence to do so. I had thought, perhaps, my style of labor was not approved by them; but I could not help it. I knew it was rough, but I thought it none the less necessary. If they do so far approve as to send me the proceeds of some of their valuable labors, it will be an additional stimulant to me to persevere.
Do you know I am thinking seriously of remaining “out” the winter unless the campaign should come to a sudden and decisive stand, and nothing be done and no one exposed.
You know that my range here is very extended; this department is large, and I am invited by General Butler to visit every part of it, and all medical and other officers within the department are directed to afford me every facility in their power. But so little inclination do they display to thwart me that I have never shown my “pass and order” to an officer since I have been in the department. I have had but one trouble since I came, and that has been to extend my labor without having the point that I leave miss me.
We have now in the 10th Corps two main hospitals and no regimental hospital; the “base,” where I am at present, about four miles from the extreme front, and the “Flying” Hospital three miles farther up—in the rear of the front line of works. The most skillful operators are always here, and all the surgeons at that post are my old-time personal friends. Dr. Barlow I worked with at Cedar Mountain and through Pope’s retreat, and again on Morris Island; and he says, if I am going to desert my old friends now, just say so, that’s all. And I have stood by Dr. Porter all summer, and Porter says he will share me some with the upper hospital, but I must not leave the Corps on any condition whatever. And yet the surgeon in charge of one of the largest corps in General Grant’s army at City Point came for me one day last week and would hardly be denied; wanted me to help him “run” his hospital—“not to touch a bit of the work.” I begin to think I can “keep a hotel,” but I didn’t think so a year ago. Well, I have told you all this to show you how probable it is that I shall find it difficult to get off the field this fall or even winter.
And thank you many times for your sisterly invitation to spend some portion of the winter with you. I should be most happy to do so, but it is a little doubtful if I get north of Washington this winter, unless the war ends suddenly, and I am beginning to study my duty closely. I can go to the Flying Hospital, and be just along with the active army; and then, if I had a sufficient quantity of good suitable supplies, I could keep the needy portion of a whole corps comfortably supplied; and being connected with the hospital and convalescent camp, conversant with the men, surgeons, and nurses, I could meet their wants more timely and surely than any stranger or outside organization of men could do. And ladies, most of the summer workers, will draw off, with the cool nights; men who have been accustomed to feather beds, will seek them if they can when the frost comes. Nevertheless the troops will need the same care—good warm shirts, socks, drawers, and mittens, and the sick will need the same good, well-cooked diet that they did in summer; and yet it would try me dreadfully to be among them in the cold and nothing comfortable to give them. And this corps especially never passed a winter north of South Carolina and they will nearly freeze, I fear. I have scraped together and given already the last warm article I have just for the few frosty nights we have had. I haven’t a pair of socks or shirts or drawers for a soldier in my possession. I shall look with great anxiety now for anything to reach me, for I shall require it both on account of the increased severity of the weather and my proposed extended field of labor. I have the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry on hand, and they have a hospital of their own and a good many sick. I gave them, one day last week, the last delicacy I possessed; it was but little—some New York and New Jersey fruits; nothing from Massachusetts for them. I was sorry; I wish I had. If I go to the Flying Hospital it will be entirely destitute of all but soldier’s blankets and rations, not a bedsack or pillow, sheet or pillowcase, or stove or tin dishes, except cups and plates. Now, I should want some of all these things, and if I go I must write to some of the friends of the soldiers the wants I see, and if they are disposed they can place it in my power to make them comfortable, independent of army regulations. You know this front hospital is for operations in time of battle, and subject to move at an hour’s notice, or when the shot might reach it, or the enemy press too near, and must not be encumbered with baggage. Ask Lieutenant Hitchcock to explain it to you, and he will also tell you how useful a private supply connected with it might be, what comfort there would be in it, and how I could distribute from such a point to the troops along the front. Now, with my best regards to the good ladies of Oxford, I am done about soldiers and hospitals.
Oh, if I had time to write! I have material enough, “dear knows,” but I cannot get time to half acknowledge favors received. If some one would come and act as scribe for me, I might be the means of relating some interesting incidents; but I have not even a cook or orderly, not to say a clerk. I do not mean that I cannot have the two former, but I do not use them myself at all when I hold them in detail. I immediately get them at work for some one who I think needs them more. I am glad you see my Worcester friends. You visited at Mr. Newton’s, I suppose. I hope they are well. Please give my love to them....
We are firing a salute for something at this minute, don’t yet know what. We fired one over the fall of Atlanta; solid shot and shell with the guns pointed toward Petersburg. Funny salutes we get up here. Yesterday morn we had terrible firing along the whole line, but it amounted to only an artillery duel. Yet it brought us fourteen wounded, three or four mortally. What a long letter I have written you and I am not going to apologize and I know you are not tired even if it is long, you are glad of it, and so am I, although it is not very interesting.
Please give my kindly and high regards to Miss Sanford and Mrs. Burleigh, Colonel De Witt, also, and all inquiring friends and write soon to your affectionate
Sis
Clara
This letter was copied by Annie Childs, and bears this note in the handwriting of Annie Childs: