Clara Barton, Professional Angel. Elizabeth Brown Pryor
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in spirit. It was they who had threatened the safety of the president-elect, and they saw both insult and opportunity in the parade of Union soldiers about to pass through their city. The trains from the North would not merely stop at the station or chug slowly by the brick row houses with distinctive marble stoops. The configuration of railroad tracks and stations was such that passengers were forced to alight, find transportation to another platform some half mile distant, and wait for the arrival of the cars, which were being drawn by mules along a precarious piece of track. The soldiers would have to leave the protection of the cars and march through the streets of the city in full view of the hostile Baltimoreans.25
On April 19 exaggerated gossip proved true and worst fears were realized. The officers in charge of the Hubbell s men had ordered them to endure whatever the Baltimore mobs hurled at them—insults, profanities, or bricks—unless they were actually fired on. With raw troops and an angry crowd, however, there was little hope for restraint. Three men were killed and thirty wounded from the regiment that day—the war's first casualties. In Baltimore the rebellious mood was heightened, as defiance or determination grew stronger in every breast.26
In Washington, news of the attack flashed across the telegraph wires, and crowds began to form in the street. Barton, hearing the noise, joined the throng and was “thrilled and bewildered” to hear of the atrocities in Baltimore.27 Her sister (who had returned to Washington with Irving) was with her; together they were swept up in the current that flowed toward the depot of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Southern partisans predominated in the tumultuous crowd, jeering and shouting congratulatory slogans. By the time she and Sally reached the station, Clara was so “indignant, excited, alarmed” that she determined to render any aid possible to the weary and wounded men.28
The city was unprepared for the arrival of so many soldiers, let alone wounded and frightened raw recruits. Hasty quarters had been arranged in, among other inappropriate places, the Senate chamber, There were no hospitals or even barracks, and Barton filled this immediate need by bringing the most severely wounded to Sally Vassall's house. From the patients there she learned that the men's luggage had been seized in Baltimore and that many had “nothing but their heavy woolen clothes—not a cotton shirt and many of them not even a pocket handkerchief.”29 Hearing also that no rations had been issued them, Barton hastily set to work to alleviate the problems as best she could. The next morning, ignoring the fact that it was Sunday, she rose early to persuade neighboring grocers to sell her as many provisions as they would, hired a train of Negro servants, and proceeded to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, laden with parcels in wicker baskets. Besides food Barton packed every useful article she could dream of; she had emptied her pockets and drawers of combs, “sewing utensils, thread, needles, thimbles, scissors, pens, buttons, strings, salves, tallow, etc.” Old sheets were torn up for towels and handkerchiefs. With such a cargo she had no trouble passing the guards at the Capitol. Once inside, her former pupils crowded around her, anxious for news. She had only one copy of the Worcester Spy, so she sat in the chair reserved for the president of the Senate and read aloud to the men, joking later that it was “better attention than I have been accustomed to see there in the old time.” The troops were homesick and misunderstood the country's expectations, she noted, and pledged: “So far as our poor efforts can reach, they shall never lack a kindly hand or a sister's sympathy if they come.”30
It was a crucial moment for Barton: this place and time united her selfconfidence and strength of purpose with a glaring need. She had once told a friend that it would be a “strange pass when the Barton's get fanatical,”31 but she became so, both in her devotion to the Union and her attachment to “her boys.” Inside the woman remained the little girl who shunned Mother Goose's melodies, asking instead for “more stories about the war” as she sat on her soldierfather's knee. She had always looked first to her father for pride and inspiration, and she saw now a chance to emulate his philanthropic nature, to fulfill his teaching that “next to Heaven our highest duty was to…serve our country and…support its laws.”32 Remembering the spirit of mission that she felt in these early weeks of the war, Barton would later acknowledge: “The patriot blood of my father's was warm in my veins.”33
The troops from Hubbell s were soon followed by trains from New Jersey and Herkimer County, New York, all bearing old friends and former pupils. With the arrival of each new company, Barton's exhilaration rose, as did her determination to be a part of this great drama. She was amazed at the change in sleepy, rustic Washington, now a bustling place “grown up so strangely like a gourd all in a night.”34 Over seventy-five thousand troops were camped in and around the city. Their white tents were everywhere, they marched and drilled and loafed in the streets, and at night the stars were blotted out by the haze and glare from their campfires. Many Washington women feared the strange men; one acquaintance of Barton's recalled that although she had had no unpleasant experiences, she spent the war years avoiding the throngs of soldiers. Clara felt no such intimidation. The presence of the troops brought a feeling of intimacy to her that had been missing in the city, and their numbers thrilled and cheered her. In an early war letter she informed her father, “I don’t know how long it has been since my ear has been free from the roll of a drum, it is the music I sleep by, and I love it.”35
Clara and Sally visited the troops often. The DeWitt Guards, in which Bernard was now a fourth lieutenant, was a favorite company, as were the Fourth and Eighth New Jersey regiments, home for the familiar faces from Bordentown and Hightstown. The two women played whist with the officers in their tents, joked with correspondents from eastern newspapers, and shook hands all around. They also discovered the small miseries to which the soldiers were exposed. Disease and vermin were prevalent in the unsanitary camps. Clothing was shabby, meals inadequate, shelter sometimes completely lacking. Clara felt some envy but no sympathy for the “few privileged, elegantly dressed ladies who ride over and sit in their carriages to witness ‘splendid services’ and ‘inspect the Army of the Potomac’ and come away ‘delighted’.”36 Increasingly, she brought delicacies from home for the men: homemade jellies, cloth-lined sewing kits called “housewives,” even whole pies and cakes. The soldiers wrote to their families with a myriad gripes in the early months of the war; at the top of the list were complaints over the inadequate food and the poor preparations the army had made for them. Energetic mothers and wives baked, preserved, and mended in answer to these grumblings, then sought a way to ensure delivery of their precious wares. Through a chance mention of Clara in a soldier's letter, someone's remembrance that she lived and worked in the Union's capital, or through Elvira Stone, who tirelessly began to solicit goods, individual women and relief societies started to connect Barton with philanthropic work with the troops. They began to send their boxes to Barton, certain that they could not go astray in her care.37
By early June she was so inundated with supplies that she moved her quarters to a larger room in a business block. Though less homelike, it had enough space for both Barton and her stores. Behind a wooden partition she kept the boxes and barrels; her own belongings were crowded into the remaining space. “It was a kind of tent life,” noted Fanny Childs, “but she was happy in it.”38 The importance she had assigned her work in the Patent Office now seemed misplaced. She had not meant to start the rush of boxes from Hubbell s, but when she realized the distribution of the provisions would serve a significant need, she committed herself to the work totally. She determined also to remain in the capital, despite the fact that, like most other citizens, she thought it would come under attack shortly. “I will remain here while anyone remains and do whatever comes to my hand,” she declared stoutly. “I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.”39
Barton was proud of the army in that late spring and summer of 1861, and as she sat calmly on the Treasury building steps watching campfires and Roman candles on Independence Day, she longed for their gleaming sabers to be called into service.40 Even so she was unprepared for the outbreak of fighting only two weeks later. After Confederate troops, massed near Manassas, Virginia, held back the Union army's first advance with a decided rout on July 21, she watched the “sad, painful, and mortifying” scene of their return.41 Hundreds of wounded began to pour into