William E. Barton

“ The weather is bright and warm as May, for which blessing I feel hourly to thank the great Giver of all good gifts, that upon this vast army lying like so many thousand herds of cattle on every side of our bright, beleaguered city, with only the soil, for which they peril life, beneath, and the single threads of white canvas above, watching like so many faithful dogs, held by bonds stronger than death, yet patient and uncomplaining. ”

“ Walked to school. Dull day and unpleasant, cheerless indoors and out. Cannot see much in these days worth living for; cannot but think it will be a quiet resting-place when all these cares and vexations and anxieties are over, and I no longer give or take offense. I am badly organized to live in the world, or among society; I have participated in too many of its unpleasant scenes; have always looked on its most unhappy features and have grown weary of life at an age when other people are enjoying it most. ”

“ Passing from one to another during the tumult of Saturday, I waited for a regiment of infantry to sweep on its way to the heights. Being alone, and the only woman visible among that moving sea of men, I naturally attracted the attention of the old veteran, Provost Marshal General Patrick, who, mistaking me for a resident of the city who had remained in her home until the crashing shot had driven her into the street, dashed through the waiting ranks to my side, and, bending down from his saddle, said in his kindliest tones, “You are alone and in great danger, Madam. Do you want protection?” ”

“ But it was only when in the hush of the following day, as we glanced over that vast Aceldama, that we learned at what a fearful cost the gallant Union army had won the battle of Antietam.
Antietam! With its eight miles of camping armies, face to face; 160,000 men to spring up at dawn like the old Scot from the heather! Its miles of artillery shaking the earth like a chain of Ætnas! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Can we breathe yet? No! Still they struggle. Ah, yes, they break, they fly, up through the street and out of sight, pursuer and pursued.
It were long to tell of that night crossing and the next terrible day of fire and blood. And when the battle broke [Pg 216] o’er field and grove, like a resistless flood daylight exposed Fredericksburg with its fourth-day flag of truce, its dead, starving, and wounded, frozen to the ground. The wounded were brought to me, frozen, for days after, and our commissions and their supplies at Washington with no effective organization or power to go beyond! ”

“ The outbreak of the World War found America unprepared save only in her wealth of material resources, her high moral purpose, and her ability to adapt her forms of organized life to changed and unwelcome conditions. The rapidity with which she increased her army and her navy to a strength that made it possible for her to turn the scale, where the fate of the world hung trembling in the balance, was not more remarkable than her skill in adapting her institutions of peace to the exigencies of war. ”

“ Poor blind Government never feels inside his pockets, pouching with ill-gotten gain, heavy with sin. His whole department know it, but it might not be quite wise for them to speak—they will tell it freely enough, but will not, dare not affirm it—COWARDS! Congress knows it, but no one can see that it will make votes for him at home by meddling with it, so it is winked at. The Cabinet know it, but people that live in glass houses must not throw stones. So it rests, and the women live lighter and sink lower, God help them. ”

“ The soldier who has stood in the ranks of my country’s armies, and toiled and marched and fought, and fallen and struggled and risen, but to fall again more worn and exhausted than before, until my weak arm had greater strength than his, and could aid him, and yet made no complaint, and only left the ranks of death when he had no longer strength to stand up in them—is it for me to rise up in judgment and accuse this man of a want of patriotism? ”

“ On my return to Washington, three months later, a messenger came from Lincoln Hospital to say that the men of Ward 17 wanted to see me. I returned with him, and as I entered the ward seventy men saluted me, standing, such as could, others rising feebly in their beds, and falling back—exhausted with the effort.
Every man had left his blood in Fredericksburg—every one was from the Lacy house. My hand had dressed every wound—many of them in the first terrible moments of agony. I had prepared their food in the snow and winds of December and fed them like children. ”

“ If to enjoy the gratitude of a single heart be a pleasure, to enjoy the benediction of a grateful world must be sweet to one’s declining years. To have earned it makes it sublime.
I have also another tie which makes Oxford seem near to me. An old tent-mate, a member of our regimental quartette, a superb soldier and a very warm friend, lies mouldering there these many years. He survived, I think, more than thirty battles only to die of consumption in January, 1870. Whenever I can I run down from Worcester to lay a flower on George H. Amidon’s grave. ”

“ My arm is tired, and my poor thumb is all calloused holding my pen. I begin to feel that my Washington life is drawing to a close, and I think of it without regret, not that I have not prized it, not that it has not on the whole been a great blessing to me. ”

“ But in war—especially in a war precipitately entered into by a raw and inexperienced people—all such perfection of organization and discipline is out of the question. If a good field hospital is not to be had, the best must be made of a bad one. If a skillful surgeon is not at hand, then an incompetent one must hack away after his own butcher fashion. If selfish and greedy attendants eat up and drink up the supplies of delicacies and wines for the sick, then enough more must be supplied to give the sick the fag end of a chance. ”

“ You should be set down in the streets of Boston, Worcester, New York, or Philadelphia to-day, and only by a profusion of United States flags and occasionally a soldier home on a furlough would you ever mistrust that we were at war. Let the fire bells ring in any of those cities, and you will never miss a man from the crowds you have ordinarily seen gather on such occasions. We can raise another army like the one we have in the field (only better men as a mass) , arm and equip them for service, and still have men and means enough left at home for all practical purposes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the night before a “battle.” The enemy, Fredericksburg, and its mighty entrenchments lie before us—the river between. At to-morrow’s dawn our troops will essay to cross and the guns of the enemy will sweep their frail bridges at every breath. The moon is shining through the soft haze with a brightness almost prophetic ”

“ Finally, all traces of tears were washed away, the toilet made even to the apron and hat, the mother’s kiss given upon the cheek of her restless child with the gentle admonition “Be a good girl!” and, as I sprang from the doorstep striving hard to keep at least one foot on the ground, who shall say that the happiness and joy of that little bit of humanity was not as complete as ever falls to the lot of humanity to be? ”

“ I am poor mother’s only son, and when she consented that I go to the war, I promised her faithfully that if I were not killed outright, but wounded, I would try every means in my power to be taken home to her dead or alive. If I die on the train, they will not throw me off, and if I were buried in Washington, she can get me. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Clara Barton had many admirers, and they were all men whom she admired and some whom she almost loved. More men were interested in her than she was ever interested in; some of them certainly interested her, yet not profoundly. I do not think she ever had a love affair that stirred the depths of her being. The truth is, [Pg 84] Clara Barton was herself so much stronger a character than any of the men who made love to her that I do not think she was ever seriously tempted to marry any of them. ”

“ With all respect for the prejudices of the people, I should try not to increase them. My only desire was to open and teach a school in Bordentown, to which its outcast children could go and be taught; and I would emphasize that desire by adding that I wished no salary. I would open and teach such a school without remuneration, but my effort must have the majesty of the law, and the power vested in its offices behind it or it could not stand. If I secured a building and proceeded to open a school, it would be only one more private school like the score they already had ”

“ I stood at the Treasury, and with my eye glanced down the Avenue to the Capitol gate, and not one inch of earth or space could I see, only one dense living, swaying, moving mass of humanity. Surely it was great love and respect to be meted out to the memory of one so young and from the common ranks of life. ”

“ Its ten hours of uninterrupted battle! Its thunder and its fire! The sharp, unflinching order,—“Hold the Bridge, boys,—always the Bridge.” At length, the quiet! The pale moonlight on its cooling guns! The weary men, the dying and the dead! The flag of truce that buried our enemies slain, and Antietam was fought, and won, and the foe turned back!
Clara Barton remained on the battle-field of Antietam [Pg 206] until her supplies were exhausted and she was completely worn out. Not only fatigue but fever came upon her, and she was carried back to Washington apparently sick. ”

“ When I left Washington every one said it boded no peace; it was a bad omen for me to start; I never missed finding the trouble I went to find, and was never late. I thought little of it. This P.M. we neared the dock at Hilton Head and the boat came alongside and boarded us instantly. The first word was, “The first gun is to be fired upon Charleston this P.M. at three o’clock.” We drew out watches, and the hands pointed three to the minute. I felt as if I should sink through the deck. I am no fatalist, but it is so singular. ”

“ God forbid that I should ask the useless exposure of the life of one man, the desolation of one more home; I never for a moment lose sight of the mothers and sisters, and white-haired fathers, and children moving quietly about, and dropping the unseen, silent tear in those far-away saddened homes, and I have too often wiped the gathering damp from pale, anxious brows, and caught from ashy, quivering lips the last faint whispers of home, not to realize the terrible cost of these separations ”

“ Maddened by the fate of their comrades, others seize the work and march onward to their doom. For now, the balls are hurling thick and fast, not only at the bridge, but over and beyond to the limit of their range—crashing through the trees, the windows and doors of the Lacy house. And ever here and there a man drops in the waiting ranks, silently as a snowflake. ”

“ Eight months and two days ago we landed at the dock in this harbor. When nations move as rapidly as ours moves at present, that is a long time, and in it as a nation we have done much, gained much, and suffered much. Still much more remains to be done, much more acquired, and I fear much more suffered. Our brave and noble old Army of Virginia still marches and fights and the glorious armies of the West still fight and conquer; our soldiers still die upon the battle-field, pine in hospitals, and languish in prison ”

“ Miss Dix managed her work in her own line, insisting that nurses whom she appointed should be neither young nor good-looking, and fighting her valiant battles with quite as much success as in general could have been expected. But Dorothea Dix had no desire for publicity. She shrank from giving to the world any details of her own life, partly because of her unhappy childhood memories, and partly because she did not believe in upholding in the mind of young women the successful career of an unmarried woman. ”

“ She was so pronounced in her opinions that a man who wanted a submissive wife would have stood somewhat in awe of her. However good a wife she might have made to a man whom she knew to be her equal, and for whom she felt real admiration, she would not have been an ideal wife for a man to whom she could not look up, not only in regard to moral character, which in every case was above reproach, but also as to intellect, education, and ambition.
Clara Barton’s diaries did not ordinarily indulge in self-analysis. ”

“ Is General Seymour to be sacrificed when so many hundred people and the men know it to be all based on falsehood and wrong? Is there no manly justice in the world? Is there not one among them all that dares risk the little of military station he may possess to come out and speak the truth, and do the right? ”

“ 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. ”

“ We were directly in the midst of a train of army wagons, at least ten miles in length, moving in solid column—the Government supplies and ammunition, food, and medicine for an army in battle.
Weary and sick from their late exposures and hardships, the men were falling by the wayside, faint, pale, and often dying. ”

“ Our fifty prisoners dug graves and gathered and buried the dead, bore mangled men over the rough ground in their arms, loaded cars, built fires, made soup, and administered it. And I failed to discern that their services were less valuable than those of the other men. I had long suspected, and have been since convinced, that a private soldier may be [Pg 185] placed under guard, court-martialed, and even be imprisoned without forfeiting his honor or manliness; that the real dishonor is often upon the gold lace rather than the army blue.
At three o’clock the last train of wounded left. ”

“ The mother of Clara Barton was greatly troubled by the abnormal sensitiveness of this little child. She asked L. W. Fowler, who was then staying at the Barton home, what this little girl ought to do in life. Mr. Fowler answered: “The sensitive nature will always remain. She will never assert herself for herself; she will suffer wrong first. But for others she will be perfectly fearless. Throw responsibility upon her.”
He advised that she should become a school-teacher. School-teaching scarcely seemed a suitable vocation for a child of so shrinking a nature. ”

“ Are there no consequences attending wrong? How shall the world move on in all this weight of dead, morbid meanness? Shall lies prevail forevermore? Look at the state of things, both civil and military, that curse our Government. ”