I have my friend Clara’s permission to show any portion of her “poor scrawls” that I think would interest the excellent ladies who are laboring so faithfully for the good and comfort of the soldiers, and trust to their charity to overlook imperfections. Many portions of the above are copied for the benefit of persons in Worcester and other places, as I could not get time to write many copies like this, which is three fourths of my letter from her.
Annie E. Childs
It must have been something of a relief to Clara Barton to be working in a definite sphere under military authority, and not as a volunteer worker. Not that she regretted for a moment the method of her previous activity. She would never have worked cheerfully as a part of the organization commanded by Miss Dix. She had too clear ideas of her own, and saw the possibilities of too large a work for her to be content with any sort of long-range supervision. All the women who really achieved large success at the front were individualists. “Mother” Bickerdyke, for instance, took no orders from any one. General Sherman was accustomed to say of her that she ranked him. But Miss Barton’s field for volunteer service was now limited. The war was closing in, and nearing its end. Clara Barton wisely accepted a definite appointment and took up her work with the army of General Butler. How highly he esteemed her service is shown by his lifelong friendship for her, and his appointment of her to be matron of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women.
Clara Barton knew, before she went to the Army of the James, how impossible it was to obtain ideal conditions in a military hospital. She must have been very glad that she had refused to criticize the hospitals at Hilton Head, even when she knew that things were going wrong. She had her own experience with headstrong surgeons and incompetent nurses. But on the whole her experience in the closing days of the war was satisfactory.
One incident which she had looked forward to with eager longing, and had almost given up, occurred while she was with the Army of the James. Her brother Stephen was rescued.
It was a pathetic rescue. He was captured by the Union army, and robbed of a considerable sum of money which had been in his possession. When he was brought within the Union lines, he was sick, and he suffered ill treatment after his capture. The date of his capture was September 25, 1864. It was some days before Miss Barton learned about it. She then reported the matter to General Butler, and it was at once ordered that Stephen be brought to his headquarters with all papers and other property in his possession at the time of his capture. The prisoner was sent and such papers as had been preserved, but the money was not recovered. Two long letters, written by Stephen Barton from the hospital, tell the story of his life within the Confederate lines, and it is a pathetic story.
Stephen Barton was treated with great kindness while he remained in the hospital at Point of Rock. He was there during the assault on Petersburg, and well toward the end of the campaign against Richmond. Then he was removed to Washington, where, on March 10, 1865, he died. Miss Barton had the satisfaction of ministering to him during those painful days, and she afterward wrote down her recollection of a prayer he offered one night after a battle in front of Richmond:
An hour with my dear noble brother Stephen, during a night after a battle in front of Richmond.
Clara Barton
My brother Stephen, when with me in front of Richmond
Hearing a voice I crept softly down my little confiscated stairway and waited in the shadows near his bedside. He had turned his face partly into his pillow and, resting it upon his hands, was at prayer. The first words which my ear caught distinctly were, “O God, whose children we all are, look down with thine eye of justice and mercy upon this terrible conflict, and weaken the wrong and strengthen the right till this unequal contest close. O God, save my Country. Bless Abraham Lincoln and his armies.” A sob from me revealed my presence. He started, and, raising his giant skeleton form until he rested upon his elbow, he said, “I thought I was alone.” Then, turning upon me a look of mingled anxiety, pity, and horror, which I can never describe, he asked hastily, “Sister, what are those incessant sounds I hear? The whole atmosphere is filled with them; they seem like the mingled groans of human agony. I have not heard them before. Tell me what it is.” I could not speak the words that would so shock his sensitive nature, but could only stand before him humbled and penitent as if I had something to do with it all, and feel the tears roll over my face. My silence confirmed his secret suspicions, and raising himself still higher, and every previous expression of his face intensifying tenfold, he exclaimed, “Are these the groans of wounded men? Are they so many that my senses cannot take them in?—that my ear cannot distinguish them?” And raising himself fully upright and clasping his bony hands, he broke forth in tones that will never leave me. “O our God, in mercy to the poor creatures thou hast called into existence, send down thine angels either in love or wrath to stay this strife and bid it cease. Count the least of these cries as priceless jewels, each drop of blood as ruby gems, and let them buy the Freedom of the world. Clothe the feet of thy messengers with the speed of the lightning and bid them proclaim, through the sacrifices of a people, a people’s freedom, and, through the sufferings of a nation, a nation’s peace.” And there, under the guns of Richmond, amid the groans of the dying, in the darkling shadows of the smoky rafters of an old negro hut by the rude chimney where the dusky form of the bondman had crouched for years, on the ground trodden hard by the foot of the slave, I knelt beside that rough couch of boards and sobbed “Amen” to the patriot prayer that rose above me.
The stolen money was never restored. Stephen struggled on a few weeks longer, alternating, hoping, and despairing, suffering from the physical abuse he had received, crushed in spirit, battling with disease and weakness as only a brave man can, worrying over his unprotected property and his debts in the old home he never reached, watching the war, and praying for the success of the Union armies, and died without knowing—and God be praised for this—that the reckless torches of that same Union army would lay in ashes and ruins the result of the hard labor of his own worn-out life and wreck the fortunes of his only child.
Although doubting and fearing, we had never despaired of his recovery, until the morning when he commenced to sink and we saw him rapidly passing away. He was at once aware of his condition and spoke of his business, desiring that, first of all, when his property could be reached, his debts should be faithfully paid. A few little minutes more and there lay before us, still and pitiful, all that remained to tell of that hard life’s struggle and battle, which had failed most of all through a great-hearted love for humanity, his faithfulness to what he conceived to be his duty, and his readiness to do more for mankind than it was willing to do for itself.
Clara Barton did not long continue in hospital service after the immediate need was passed. With the firing of the last gun she returned to Washington. One chapter in her career was closed. Another and important work was about to open, and she already had it in mind. But the work she had done was memorable, and its essential character must not be forgotten.
Clara Barton was more and other than a hospital nurse. She was not simply one of a large number of women who nursed sick soldiers. She did that, hastening to assist them at the news of the very first bloodshed, and continuing until Richmond had fallen. Hers was the distinction of doing her work upon the actual field of battle; of following the cannon so as to be on the ground when the need began; of not waiting for the wounded soldier to be brought to the hospital, but of conveying the hospital to the wounded soldier. Others followed her in this good work; others accompanied her and were her faithful associates, but she was, in a very real sense, the soul and inspiration of the movement which carried comfort to wounded men while the battle was still in progress. She was not, in any narrow sense, a hospital nurse; she was, as she has justly been called, “the angel of the battle-field.”
One characteristic of Clara Barton during these four years deserves mention and emphasis because her independent position might have made it easy for her to assume a critical attitude toward those who worked under the regular organization or through different channels. In all her letters, in all the entries in her diaries, there is found no hint of jealousy toward any of the women who worked as nurses in the hospitals, or under the Sanitary or Christian Commission.