Part 6
At Fredericksburg a shell shattered the door of the room in which Miss Barton was attending to wounded men. True to her mission, she did not flinch but continued her duties as usual. She found a group of Confederates with their garments frozen fast in the mud. As the wounded were helpless, Miss Barton got an axe and chopped them loose. She then built a fire in a negro cabin and, while the wounded were warming themselves she dressed their wounds, fed them gruel and otherwise cared for them as if they were her “Brothers in Arms.”
A KNOT OF BLUE AND GRAY
Upon my bosom lies A knot of blue and gray; You ask me why; tears fill my eyes As low to you I say:
I had two brothers once, Warm hearted, bold and gay; They left my side—one wore the blue The other wore the gray.
One rode with Stonewall and his men, And joined his fate with Lee; The other followed Sherman’s march Triumphant to the sea.
Both fought for what they deemed the right, And died with his sword in hand; One sleeps amid Virginia hills, And one in Georgia’s sand.
The same sun shines upon their graves, My love unchanged must stay; And so upon my bosom lies, The knot of blue and gray.
XXIII
Clara Barton deserves first place in the living memory of the world today, and of generations to come.
Jacksonville (Florida) _Times-Union_.
She bore herself with a poise that lost for her no friends.
Utica (N. Y.) _Observer_.
She had a faculty for seeing what needed to be done, and how to do it. _New York Examiner._
She accomplished what crowned heads failed in.
_Unity_, Chicago.
Things came to me as if ordered by a world-controlling power.
CLARA BARTON.
Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.
ATHENÆUS.
O God! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap.
HOOD.
The greatest attribute of Heaven is mercy; And ’tis the crown of justice, and the glory, Where it may kill with right and save with pity. J. FLETCHER.
Tact is born with some people.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THAYER.
Tact is not a single faculty, but a combination of faculties.
W. M. THAYER.
What men call “shrewdness” and “Common Sense” usually signify no more than tact. W. M. THAYER.
THE ENEMY, STARVING—TACT—THE WHITE OX
To know is power, but the power may be latent. Tact is skill, ever alert. Tact knows what to do, when and how to do it. Queen Elizabeth had tact, unerring. Her long reign was a series of tactful events. Tact was the basis of the supremacy of the Elizabethan Age.
Clara Barton had tact, unerring. Tact gave her position among rulers of nations, and likewise won for her the esteem of the lowly. Tact attracted to her unpaid Red Cross assistants, who cheerfully shared her privations. Through tact she retained her friends, made new friends, and to an extent unprecedented.
Clara Barton was with the Army of the Blue, but nearby was a hospital in which were the wounded Gray, starving. The surgeons from within were begging for food. The Federal Quartermaster had refused supplies, giving as a valid excuse that he was a bonded officer and responsible for the property under his charge.
A “bunch” of cattle were seen passing. Clara Barton said to the officer: “I know you are bonded, but I am neither bonded nor responsible.” The officer taking the “cue” was soon out of sight. Clara Barton then gave orders to her men, at the same time pointing to the large unsuspecting white ox that had strayed from the “bunch.” The men appreciated the _delicate situation_; the ox somehow _strayed_ over to the enemy, and later received a hearty reception among the starving wounded inside the hospital.
REPRESENTATIVE OF TWO WARS
XXIV
One’s blood runs cold and then mounts high in reading of the amazing feats of strength and courage of heart shown by this little lone woman. _The Outlook._
Clara Barton—her personal service and self-sacrifice are beyond praise. _Philadelphia Public Record._
The sum of all human agony finds its equivalent on the battlefield. CLARA BARTON.
We cannot desert our poor charge of humanity, but must stay and suffer with them if need be. CLARA BARTON.
And if you chance to feel that the positions I occupied were rough and unseemly for a _woman_—I can only reply that they were rough and unseemly for _men_. CLARA BARTON.
The sooner the world learns the better that the halo of glory which surrounds a field of battle and its tortured, thirsting, starving, pain-racked victims exists only in the imagination.
CLARA BARTON.
When dying President Garfield murmured: “The great heart of the nation will not let a soldier die,” I prayed God to hasten the time when every wounded soldier would be sustained by that sweet assurance. CLARA BARTON.
My business is staunching blood, and feeding fainting men.
CLARA BARTON.
I am so sorry for the _necessity_, so glad for the _opportunity_, of ministering with my own hand and strength to the dying wants of the patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine.
CLARA BARTON.
I sometimes discuss the application of a compress, or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing of a political movement. CLARA BARTON.
I make gruel, not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses. CLARA BARTON.
You must never so much as think whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it. CLARA BARTON.
If it has been granted to me to be ever so little service to those about me, in need of my help, He alone who granted me the privilege knows how grateful I am for it. CLARA BARTON.
BULLETHOLE—AMPUTATED LIMBS LIKE CORDWOOD—GOD GIVES STRENGTH
The valley of Antietam lies in Maryland. In September, 1862, on the night of the 16th, the Federals were on one ridge of the valley; the Confederates, on the opposite ridge. Somber night was hushed to stillness. Within the fog that arose from the valley and the smoke of the campfires there gleamed the stacked bayonets and the properly placed cannon which portend the fateful tomorrow. On the tomorrow Antietam was to be the harvest field, death and suffering the harvest.
In the early morning were heard the bugle notes which call to battle. The fight to death was on—possibly the fight that would unmake a nation, or make a new nation. A little lone woman had flanked the cannon at midnight and, in the early sunlight, stood beside the artillery. Terrifying the sharp crack of the musketry, deafening the boom of the cannon. The earth quaked; the sun, obscured. Over her head were shells bursting or, passing, buried themselves in the hills beyond. Her tongue was dried by the sulphurous powder smoke; her lips parched to bleeding. Such the scene of the conflict in which Clara Barton said she had the most terrible experiences of her life.
The men were falling, bleeding to death. Within that organized system for death there was no system to save life,—no surgical instrument, no bandage, no lint, no rag, no string. Clara Barton hastens to her supply wagon, and with all things needful rushes into the line of fire. There on the battlefield, with a pocket knife, she extracted a ball from the face of a wounded soldier. There, while lifting a canteen of water to quench the thirst of a soldier-lad, a minnie ball from the gun of the enemy passed harmlessly through her clothing and fatally into the body of the soldier she was trying to save.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young a soldier lay, Torn with shot and pierced with lance, bleeding slow his life away! With a stifled cry of horror, straight she turned away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked upon her dead. But she heard the youth’s low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again. Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother’s? Did she watch beside her child? All his broken words with meaning her woman’s heart supplied: With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother!” murmured he and died.
There through the day, in that awful carnage of blood, fearless Clara Barton worked to save human lives. Did she shrink from danger? She said “_I am an American Soldier_ and am not supposed to be susceptible to fear.”
But the most gruesome of her experiences was after nightfall. Through the night in a barn near by, she assisted the surgeons. The surgeons had no bandages, she supplied them; they had no light, she supplied the lanterns and candles until the operating tables were in a blaze of light. They had no food; she supplied the gruel made from Indian corn meal, cooked in great brass kettles. The surgeons were without adequate assistance; she assisted at the amputating tables. “Through the long starlit night,” she said, “we wrought and hoped and prayed.” When the morning came the amputated limbs made a pile so high that you had to look up to see the top, a pile of human limbs like a cord of wood.
Not only gruesome was that “cord of wood” but pathetic. In that pile the limbs were from mere boys,—innocent victims of the greed of men;—not a leg, not an arm in that pile was from “War’s Profiteers.” And with the morning came complete exhaustion. When she returned from her uncanny labors her arms were crimson with blood; her skirts, blood-soaked; her shoes, blood-sopping. In all human history did woman have such experience as had Clara Barton through that two days of human carnage—carnage on one of America’s most famous battlefields in the most infamous fratricidal war in history? Frail Clara Barton! “The most timid person on earth!” The same Clara Barton who fainted at the killing of an ox? Can it be? Let hers be the explanation: “I was always afraid of everything except when someone was to be rescued from danger or pain. Human endurance has its limits;—God gives strength and the thing that seems impossible is done.”
XXV
An Overruling Providence seemed to interpose its hand between Clara Barton and the perils of war and epidemic alike, for a high and splendid purpose. Pawtucket (R. I.) _Times_.
If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can help their running away with him? A. LINCOLN.
Cowards die many times before their deaths The valiant never taste of death but once. SHAKESPEARE.
For others Clara Barton will be perfectly fearless.
DR. L. N. FOWLER (Phrenologist.)
I have no fear of the battlefield; I have large stores but no way to reach the troops. CLARA BARTON.
FEARLESS OF BULLETS AND KICKING MULES
General Shafter used to say that he did not think Clara Barton knew the meaning of the word fear. Sharp words passed between the General and Miss Barton because she would not obey his orders to keep away from the “firing line,” out of the way of the fighting men and of the bullets. On one occasion he even threatened to order her out of Cuba, if she continually disobeyed his orders in this respect.
Sergeant Henry White, of the 21st Massachusetts Regiment, said that he had seen Clara Barton in positions of danger where an old veteran would hardly dare venture. He had seen her passing among the wounded lying around on the ground, the battle raging in front of them. As she did so, she supplied the boys in turn with coffee, milk, and other food. Just to please the “boys” she accepted the Sergeant’s pistol which she carried several weeks.
Not only was she oblivious to the danger of the bullets on the battlefield but even more reckless as to her personal safety in the camp. She would go around among the army wagons, close to the heels of kicking mules, where any moment there might be a “stampede,” endangering her life. In a “stampede” of mules, she would be as helpless as in a shower of grape and cannister from the guns of the enemy.
XXVI
And when at morning and evening repast, with folded hands and grateful heart, you bless God for the bounties He has placed before you, let your thoughts wander a little to find if there is not another than yourself. CLARA BARTON.
Paradise is open to all kind hearts. BERANGER.
Kind words are the music of the world. F. W. FABER.
Happiness must be unselfish; only in the happiness of all can one find happiness. TOLSTOI.
Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks Shall win my love. SHAKESPEARE.
I have always refused a tent unless the army had tents also, and I have never eaten a mouthful of my own soft bread or fresh meat, until the sick of the army were abundantly supplied with both.
CLARA BARTON.
Clara Barton is the noblest, bravest, and most unselfish woman God Almighty ever made. JUDGE JOSEPH SHELDON.
HIS COMFORT, NOT HERS; HIS LIFE, NOT HERS
In the winter of 1863–64 Clara Barton lived for a time in an old plantation house on Chapin’s farm, in Virginia. Chapin’s farm was not far from the field hospital. In the hospital were the sick and wounded; her services there were greatly needed. An ambulance was sent as a detail to bring her to the hospital. The soldier-messenger arrived at the house, and called for her. It was in the midst of a snow storm, the thermometer indicator hovering around zero. “Wait a minute,” she said; “tie your horses and come in. Have you had any dinner?” “No marm,” he replied. The soldier sat down to a dinner of cold meat, hot biscuit, cake and cocoa,—a refreshing change from “hardtack” and “salt hash,” the daily rations of the soldier.
While the soldier-messenger was eating his meal she had been thinking. “The soldier has generally no part nor voice in creating the war in which he fights. He simply obeys, as he must, his superiors and the laws of his country.” The soldier is under orders, but he is under _my_ orders now. It’s bitter cold and, while I can ride comfortably on the inside of the ambulance, he must ride outside on the seat in the snow. She considered his comfort, not her own; his life, not hers. She _ordered_ him to put his horses in the barn and care for them. She made him her guest, standing sponsor for him at military headquarters—awaiting a pleasant day for the trip. In soliloquizing on her conduct she said: “God forbid that I should ask the useless exposure of _one_ man, the desolation of _one_ home.”
XXVII
Advice is seldom welcome. LORD CHESTERFIELD.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
ROCHEFOUCAULD.
I do not like giving advice; it is incurring an unnecessary responsibility. BEACONSFIELD.
Those who give bad advice to the prudent both lose their pains and are laughed to scorn. PHAEDRUS.
I pray thee cease thy counsel, which falls into my ears as profitless as water in a sieve. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Clara Barton—in her 77th year—followed to the fever ridden tropics, to lead in the relief work on Spanish battle grounds.
Grand Rapids (Mich.) _Herald_.
In Cuba one saw only Nodding plumes over their bier to wave, And God’s own hand in that lonely land To lay them in their grave. CLARA BARTON.
Mr. Cottrell, private secretary of Clara Barton, says: “Miss Barton was the means of saving thousands of lives in Cuba. She was a small, unostentatious woman, very quiet in her demeanor and spoke in a soft, sweet tone. Her habits were simple, but she had a great capacity for organization work.”
New Orleans (La.) _Times-Democrat_.
My post is the open field between the bullet and the hospital.
CLARA BARTON.
DOES NOT NEED ANY ADVICE
At Santiago Miss Barton approached Admiral Sampson and said, “There is some doubt about our being able to unload.”
“Miss Barton,” replied Sampson, “Tell the world that the Red Cross Society does not need any advice. We only need an opportunity. If any trouble happens you, let me know.”
On one of the boats in the harbor of Santiago, the following conversation took place between a Major-Surgeon and Clara Barton:
Major: “You have been at the front?”
Clara Barton: “Yes, Major.”
Major: “I should think you would find it very unpleasant there.”
Clara Barton: “Such things are not supposed to be pleasant.”
Major: “What do you go for? There is no need of your going there; it is no place for women. I consider women very much out of place in a field hospital.”
Clara Barton: “Then I must have been out of place a good deal in my lifetime, Major, for I have been there a great deal.”
Major: “That does not change my opinion; if I had my way I would send you home.”
Miss Barton: “Fortunately for me, if for no one else, Major, you have not your way.” Major: “I know it, but again that does not change my opinion. I would send you home....”
Miss Barton: “Good morning, Major.”
“I am with the wounded,” flashed along the wire From the Isle of Cuba swept with sword and fire. Angel sweet of mercy, may your Cross of Red Cheer the wounded living; bless the wounded dead.
XXVIII
Clara Barton—humanity is richer for her having lived.
Grand Rapids (Mich.) _Press_.
Life is a shuttle. MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
Life is a bubble. WM. BROWNE.
Life is a miracle. KING LEAR.
Life is a walking shadow. MEREDITH.
Life is like a stroll on the beach. THOREAU.
Life is scarcely the twinkle of a star. BAYARD TAYLOR.
Life lives only in success. SWIFT.
That life is long that answers life’s great end.
YOUNG’S NIGHT THOUGHTS.
For the multitude of failures I have encountered I am sorry.
CLARA BARTON.
Life is so short at best. CLARA BARTON.
It’s now three minutes past twelve and I am thirty-three. Alas, my friend, the years pass swiftly by, but I do not regret them so much for what I have done, as what I _might_ have done. BYRON.
HAD BUT A FEW MOMENTS TO LIVE
Clara Barton supplied the place of mother and sister to the sick soldiers, and this she did for many months, while in the deadly miasma of the South Carolina marshes. Much of this time she was with the soldiers and facing the guns of Fort Wagner. There with the shot and shell whistling about her, the heroic woman could be seen at all hours of the day and night stooping over the wounded soldiers, and tenderly administering to their wants. An officer who had been with the Army of the Potomac said that he had seen this woman upon the field of battle, sitting with the head of a dying soldier in her lap, apparently unconcerned and then only for the comfort of the poor fellow who had but a few moments to live.
XXIX
Clara Barton—representing the mercy and magnanimity of the nation. Columbus (Ohio) _Despatch_.
Clara Barton—her works of mercy in war and peace made her an international figure. _New York Tribune._
Everybody’s business was nobody’s business, and the stricken victims perished. CLARA BARTON.
The door that never creaked a hinge for the feeble child of want may swing wide open at the thundering knock of the Marshal’s Staff. CLARA BARTON.
The incentive to help and heal another in distress is spontaneous, generally the result of sympathetic impulse and kindness—a thing of the feelings and consequently of sudden growth.
CLARA BARTON.
“The other ladies could not endure the climate at Morris Island,” and, as I knew somebody must take care of the soldiers, I went.
CLARA BARTON.
The idea of humanity in distress is not entirely modern; Alexander was accompanied in his march by the most famous physicians of the age. CLARA BARTON.
Homer and Plato were so struck with Egyptian Science and skill that they declared the Egyptians were all doctors.
CLARA BARTON.
It is probable that the first practitioners in common life were women. CLARA BARTON.
A wise physician, skilled, our wounds to heal Is more than armies to the public weal.
A sister and family followed me to Washington that I should not be quite alone in that slave city, for up to 1860 they bought and sold slaves at the Capital. CLARA BARTON.
When I think, I fear how supreme an International Court must have been to be able to induce the Southerners to liberate the slaves, or to convince them that “mudsills” and “greasy mechanics” and “horned yankees” are a people entitled to sufficient respect to be treated on fair international grounds. CLARA BARTON.
ENLISTED MEN FIRST—THE COLONEL’S LIFE SAVED
In ancient Greece, in the Roman Empire, in Europe through the middle ages, in the more modern chivalry of “Dixie,” among soldiers no slave, no servant—none but a _gentleman_ carried a gun to kill. Killing in war time was the occupation of “gentlemen” only. For the first time in the history of the Centuries—in 1863—the ex-slave alongside the “gentlemen” on the battlefield, fought for human rights. It was at the battle of Fort Wagner on Morris Island; Colonel Shaw had led his “colored regiment” to that field of slaughter.
The first woman nurse on any battlefield, a veteran nurse at the front, was there,—the only woman present among the thousands of boys in blue. The chivalric southern soldiers hated the “mudsills,” the “greasy mechanics” and the “horned yankees,” but with a still more deadly hatred the “nigger in blue”—the ex-slave now marshalled in battle array against his former master. The onslaught there amidst the whizzing of bullets and bursting of shells is pictured as the “orgy of hell.”
The Colonel while leading that colored regiment was among the wounded. “Miss Barton, Colonel Shaw is lying on a dissecting table. His leg has been taken off. His life is ebbing away; won’t you go to him?”
Bearing the bandage, water and sponge, Straight and swift to the wounded I go—
Miss Barton replied: “Officers generally have friends enough to see that their wants are attended to, while the poor enlisted men are neglected. I will go to see the Colonel as soon as I have attended to my charges here.” When she was through with the wounded enlisted men, Clara Barton gave her attention to the Colonel, and through her services his life was saved.
XXX
If any number of Americans were asked off-hand to name the woman who stands highest in the esteem of the American people, the reply would be unanimously, “Clara Barton.”
_Republic Magazine._
The patience, the nobility of soul, the resignation and bravery of our gallant troops! CLARA BARTON.
Love chivalry. ARMAND.
Chivalry is the essence of virtue. LORD JOHN RUSSELL.
Chivalry was the parent of honor. A. DELEVAN.
The true spirit of chivalry is a generous impatience of wrong.
CHATFIELD.