XV

XV

In the same year, and about the same time in the year, that Clara Barton first started for the battlefield her warm personal friend, Julia Ward Howe, wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

The Author.

The Author.

The Author.

The Author.

You remember the time was Sunday, September 14th, 1862.

Clara Barton.

Clara Barton.

Clara Barton.

Clara Barton.

Society forbade women at the front.Clara Barton.

Tradition absolutely forbade a good woman to go unprotected among rough soldiers.Clara Barton.

And what does woman know about war, and because she doesn’t know anything about it she mustn’t say, or do, anything about it.

Clara Barton.

Clara Barton.

Clara Barton.

Clara Barton.

It has long been said, as to amount to an adage, that women don’t know anything about war. I wish men didn’t either. They have always known a great deal too much about it for the good of their kind.Clara Barton.

I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety—with the appalling fact that “I was only a woman” whispering in one ear; and thundering in the other the groans of suffering men dying like dogs—unfed and unclothed, for the life of every institution which had protected and educated me.Clara Barton.

When war broke over us, with an empty treasury and its distressed Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, personally trying in New York to borrow money to pay our first seventy-five thousand soldiers, I offered to do the work of any two disloyal clerks whom the office would discharge and allow the double salary to fall back into the treasury. When no legal way could be found to have my salary revert to the national treasury, I resigned and went to the field.

Clara Barton.

I could not carry a musket nor lead the men to battle; I could only serve my country by caring for, comforting, and sustaining the soldiers.Clara Barton.

I broke the shackles and went to the field.Clara Barton.

Washington, D. C., June 20, 1864.

Washington, D. C., June 20, 1864.

Washington, D. C., June 20, 1864.

Washington, D. C., June 20, 1864.

Dr. J. M. Barnes,Acting Surgeon General, U. S. A.,

Dr. J. M. Barnes,Acting Surgeon General, U. S. A.,

Dr. J. M. Barnes,Acting Surgeon General, U. S. A.,

Dr. J. M. Barnes,

Acting Surgeon General, U. S. A.,

Sir: The undersigned, Senators and Representatives of Massachusetts, desire you to extend to Miss Clara Barton of Worcester, Massachusetts, everyfacilityin your power to visit the army at any time or place that she may desire, for the purpose of administering to the comfort of our sick and wounded soldiers. Also that such supplies and assistants, as she may require, may be furnished with transportation.

We are, very respectfully,

We are, very respectfully,

We are, very respectfully,

H. L. Dawes,Alex. H. Rice,D. W. Gooch,John D. Baldwin,Thos. D. Eliot,Geo. S. Boutwell,Charles Sumner,Henry Wilson,Jno. B. Allen,Oakes Ames,W. F. Washburne.

H. L. Dawes,Alex. H. Rice,D. W. Gooch,John D. Baldwin,Thos. D. Eliot,Geo. S. Boutwell,Charles Sumner,Henry Wilson,Jno. B. Allen,Oakes Ames,W. F. Washburne.

H. L. Dawes,Alex. H. Rice,D. W. Gooch,John D. Baldwin,Thos. D. Eliot,Geo. S. Boutwell,Charles Sumner,Henry Wilson,Jno. B. Allen,Oakes Ames,W. F. Washburne.

H. L. Dawes,

Alex. H. Rice,

D. W. Gooch,

John D. Baldwin,

Thos. D. Eliot,

Geo. S. Boutwell,

Charles Sumner,

Henry Wilson,

Jno. B. Allen,

Oakes Ames,

W. F. Washburne.

On September 14, 1862, Clara Barton started from the City of Washington to the firing line, then at Harper’s Ferry. She took with her no Saratoga, no grip, no “go-to-meeting clothes.” The articles in herwardrobe on that eventful trip will never be known but it is known to a “dead certainty” that whatever “worldly goods” she did take with her were all tied up in a pocket handkerchief.

Her only escort was a “mule skinner.” He, wearing the blue, held the onejerk lineto the team of six mules, animals known in the west as “Desert Canaries.” The vehicle in which Clara Barton took that eventful ride was an army freight wagon covered with canvas, such wagon sometimes called the “prairie schooner.” “In the Days of Old, the Days of Gold,” as “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” the “prairie schooner” was almost the exclusive vehicle of conveyance over the deserts for freight and passengers. It was in the “prairie schooner” that the Mormons went to Utah in 1848, and the Argonauts to California, in “’49 and ’50.” It was from a “prairie schooner” that, rising from a sick bunk and looking out over that beautiful valley of Salt Lake, Brigham Young exclaimed: “This is the Place!”

After an eighty-mile ride bumping over stones and dykes and ditches, up and down the hills of Maryland, Clara Barton arrived at the battlefield. There, side by side, cold in death with upturned faces, were the brave boys of the Northern blue and the Southern gray. In closing a description of this battle scene Clara Barton says: “There in the darkness God’s angel of Wrath and Death had swept and, foe facing foe, the souls of men went out. The giant rocks, hanging above our heads, seemed to frown upon the scene, and the sighing trees which hung lovingly upon their rugged edge dropped low and wept their pitying dews upon the livid brows and ghastly wounds beneath.”

Back to IndexNext