Ten American Girls From History

K >> Kate Dickinson Sweetser >> Ten American Girls From History

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

"The sensitive nature will always remain," he said. "She will never
assert herself for herself; she will suffer wrong first. But for
others she will be perfectly fearless. Throw responsibility upon her.
Give her a school to teach."

The very words, "give her a school to teach," sent a shiver of fear
through Clara's frame, as she lay there listening, but at the same
time she felt a thrill of pleasure at the idea of doing something so
important as teaching. If her mother was so much troubled about her
peculiar traits as to be obliged to talk them over with a stranger,
they must be very hard to bear. She would set to work to be something
quite different, and she would begin at once!

And so it happened that when Clara Barton was fifteen years old she
followed in the footsteps of her brother and sisters and became a
teacher. As soon as she decided to take the step, she was given
District School No. 9, up in "Texas village," and in May, 1836, "after
passing the teachers' examination with a mark of 'excellent,' she put
down her skirts and put up her hair and walked to the little
schoolhouse, to face and address her forty scholars." That was one of
the most awful moments of her life. When the rows of pupils were
ranged before her, and she was supposed to open the exercises by
reading from the Bible, she could not find her voice, and her hand
trembled so visibly that she was afraid to turn the pages and so
disclose her panic. But no one knew. With perfect outward calmness,
she kept her eyes on the open book until her pulse beat less fast,
then she looked straight ahead and in a steady voice asked them to
each read a verse in turn. This was a new and delightful plan to her
pupils, who were still more pleased when the reading was over to have
the new teacher question them in a friendly way about the meaning of
the verses they had just read in the "Sermon on the Mount."

That first day proved her marked ability as a teacher, and so kindly
and intimate was she with her scholars that they became more her
comrades than her pupils. When the four rough boys of the school
"tried her out" to see how much she could endure, to their
astonishment, instead of being able to lock her out of the building as
they had done with the previous teacher, she showed such pluck and
physical strength that their respect was won and kept. After that,
almost daily, at recess time she would join them in games such as no
teacher had ever played with them before. And with her success Clara
gained a new assurance and a less shy manner, although she never
entirely lost her self-consciousness.

So successful was she with that first school that it was the preface
to sixteen years of continuous teaching, winter and summer. Her two
most interesting experiences as a teacher were in North Oxford and in
Bordentown, New Jersey. North Oxford was the mill village where her
brother's factories were, and where there were hundreds of children.
When her popularity as the teacher in No. 9, Texas village, spread to
North Oxford, she was asked to go there to start a school for
operatives. This was a piece of work to her liking, and for ten years
she says: "I stood with them in the crowded school-room summer and
winter, without change or relaxation. I saw my little lisping boys
become overseers, and my stalwart overseers become business men and
themselves owners of mills. My little girls grew to be teachers and
mothers of families." Here was satisfying work for the busy brain and
active body! But even that did not take up all of her time; she found
long hours in which to read and study, and also acted as Stephen's
bookkeeper in the mill, during those years in North Oxford.

At the end of the ten years she broke away from the routine of
teaching and became a pupil herself in Clinton Liberal Institute in
New York, as there were no colleges for women at that time. The year
of study refreshed her in mind and body, and, as her mother died
during the year and her father decided to live with his married
children, Clara was free to seek the work of the world wherever it
should claim her.

From the seminary she went to Hightstown to teach, and while there
rumors of her ability to cope with conditions and unruly scholars
reached the village of Bordentown, ten miles away from Hightstown.
Many attempts had been made to start a public school there, but
without success. As a result the children of the poor ran wild in the
streets, or when an attempt was made to open a school they broke up
the sessions by their lawless behavior. When she heard this, Clara
Barton was so greatly interested that she went to Bordentown to talk
it over with the town officials, who told her that it was useless to
think of making the experiment again.

Clara Barton's eyes flashed with determination. "Give me three months,
and I will teach free!" she said.

As a result of her generous offer, she was allowed to rent a
tumble-down, unoccupied building, and opened her school with six
pupils! Every one of the six became so enthusiastic over a teacher who
was interested in each individual that their friends were eager to be
her pupils, too, and parents were anxious to see what the wonderful
little bright-eyed, friendly woman could do for their children. At the
end of five weeks the building was too small for her scholars, and the
roll-call had almost six hundred names on it. To a triumphant teacher
who had volunteered her services to try an experiment, a regular
salary was now offered and an assistant given her. And so Clara Barton
again proved her talent for teaching.

But Bordentown was her last school. When she had been there for two
years and perfected the public-school system, her voice gave out as a
result of constant use, and she went to Washington for a rest. But it
did not take her long to recuperate, and soon she was eagerly looking
out for some new avenue of opportunity to take the place of teaching.
Government work interested her, and she heard rumors of scandals in
the Patent Office, where some dishonest clerks had been copying and
selling the ideas of inventors who had filed patents. This roused her
anger, for she felt the inventors were defrauded and undefended
individuals who needed a protector. As her brother's bookkeeper, she
had developed a clear, copper-plate handwriting, which would aid her
in trying to get the position she determined to try for. Through a
relative in Congress she secured a position in the Patent Office, and
when it was proved that she was acceptable there, although she was the
first woman ever appointed independently to a clerkship in the
department, she was given charge of a confidential desk, where she had
the care of such papers as had not been carefully enough guarded
before. Her salary of $1,400 a year was as much as was received by the
men in the department, which created much jealousy, and she had many
sneers and snubs and much disagreeable treatment from the other
clerks; but she went serenely on her way, doing her duty and enjoying
the new line of work with its chances for observation of the
government and its working.

War clouds were now beginning to gather over both North and South, and
signs of an approaching conflict were ominously clear in Washington,
where slavery sentiments swayed all departments. Clara Barton saw with
keen mental vision all the signs of the times, and there was much to
worry her, for from the first she was clearly and uncompromisingly on
the unpopular side of the disturbing question, and believed with
Charles Sumner that "Freedom is national; slavery is sectional." She
believed in the Union and she believed in the freedom of the
individual. So eager was she to help the government in the coming
national crisis that she offered her services as a clerk, to do the
work of two dishonest men; for this work she was to receive the salary
of one clerk, and pay back into the Treasury that of the other, in
order to save all the money possible for an emergency. No deed gives a
clearer insight into the character of Clara Barton than that. As it
was in the case of the school in Bordentown, so was it now. If public
service was the question, she had no thought of self or of money--the
point was to achieve the desired end. And now she was nearer the goal
of her own personal service to the world than she dreamed.

Fort Sumter was fired on. President Lincoln called for seventy-five
thousand troops, and all those who were at the seat of government knew
that the hour for sacrifice of men and money had come. Massachusetts
responded to the call for troops with four regiments, one of which,
the Sixth, set out for Washington at once. As they marched through the
streets of Baltimore they were attacked by a furious mob who succeeded
in killing four soldiers and wounding many more, but the troopers
fought them off as bravely as possible and marched on to the station,
where they entrained for Washington, many of them arriving there in a
pitiable condition. When they detrained at the national capital they
were met by a large number of sympathetic women, among them Clara
Barton, who recognized some of her old friends and pupils among those
who were limping, or with injured arms, or carried on stretchers, and
her heart went out to them in loyalty and pride, for they were giving
their services to their country in an hour of need.

The men who had not been injured were temporarily quartered at the
Capitol, while the wounded were taken to the Infirmary, where their
wounds were dressed at once, any material on hand being used. When the
supply of handkerchiefs gave out, Clara Barton, as well as other
impromptu nurses, rushed to their homes and tore up sheets for
bandages, and Miss Barton also filled a large box full of needles,
pins, buttons, salves and other necessities, and carried it back to
the Infirmary, where she had her first experience in caring for
wounded soldiers. When she could leave the Infirmary, she went to the
Capitol and found the poor fellows there famished, for they had not
been expected and their commissary stores had not yet been unloaded.
Down to the market hurried the energetic volunteer nurse, and soon
came back carrying a big basketful of supplies, which made a feast for
the hungry men. Then, as she afterward wrote in a letter to a friend,
"the boys, who had just one copy of the _Worcester Spy_ of the 22nd,
were so anxious to know its contents that they begged me to read it to
them, which I did--mounting to the desk of the President of the
Senate, that they all might hear."

In her letter she says, "You would have smiled to see _me_ and my
_audience_ in the Senate Chamber of the U. S. A." and adds: "God bless
the noble fellows who leave their quiet happy homes at the call of
their country. So far as our poor efforts can reach, they shall never
lack a kindly hand or a sister's sympathy if they come."

Eager to have the soldiers given all the comforts and necessities
which could be obtained, Miss Barton put an advertisement in the
_Worcester Spy_, asking for supplies and money for the wounded and
needy in the Sixth Regiment, and stating that she herself would
receive and give them out. The response was overwhelming. So much food
and clothing was sent to her that her small apartment overflowed with
supplies, and she was obliged to rent rooms in a warehouse to store
them.

And now Clara Barton was a new creature. She felt within herself the
ability to meet a great need, and the energy which for so long had
been pent up within her was poured out in a seemingly unending supply
of tenderness and of help for suffering humanity. There was no time
now for sensitiveness, or for shyness; there was work to do through
the all-too-short days and nights of this struggle for freedom and
unity of the nation. Gone was the teacher, gone the woman of normal
thought and action, and in her place we find the "Angel of the
Battlefields," who for the remainder of her life was to be one of the
world's foremost figures in ministrations to the suffering, where
suffering would otherwise have had no alleviation.

"On the 21st of July the Union forces were routed at Bull Run with
terrific loss of life and many wounded. Two months later the battle of
Ball's Bluff occurred, in which there were three Massachusetts
regiments engaged, with many of Clara Barton's lifelong friends among
them. By this time the hospitals and commissaries in Washington had
been well organized, and there was no desperate need for the supplies
which were still being shipped to Miss Barton in great quantities, nor
was there need of her nursing. However, she went to the docks to meet
the wounded and dying soldiers, who were brought up the Potomac on
transports." Often they were in such a condition from neglect that
they were baked as hard as the backs of turtles with blood and clay,
and it took all a woman's swift and tender care, together with the use
of warm water, restoratives, dressings, and delicacies to make them at
all comfortable. Then their volunteer nurse would go with them to the
hospitals, and back again in the ambulance she would drive, to repeat
her works of mercy.

But she was not satisfied with this work. If wounds could be attended
to as soon as the men fell in battle, hundreds of deaths could be
prevented, and she made up her mind that in some way she was going to
override public sentiment, which in those early days of the war did
not allow women nurses to go to the front, for she was determined to
go to the very firing-line itself as a nurse. And, as she had got her
way at other times in her life, so now she achieved her end, but after
months of rebuffs and of tedious waiting, during which the bloody
battle of Fair Oaks had been fought with terrible losses on each side.
The seven days' retreat of the Union forces under McClellan followed,
with eight thousand wounded and over seventeen hundred killed. On top
of this came the battle of Cedar Mountain, with many Northerners
killed, wounded and missing.

One day, when Assistant Quartermaster-General Rucker, who was one of
the great-hearts of the army, was at his desk, he was confronted by a
bright-eyed little woman, to whose appeal he gave sympathetic
attention.

"I have no fear of the battle-field," she told him. "I have large
stores, but no way to reach the troops."

Then she described the condition of the soldiers when they reached
Washington, often too late for any care to save them or heal their
wounds. She _must_ go to the battle-front where she could care for
them quickly. So overjoyed was she to be given the needed passports as
well as kindly interest and good wishes that she burst into tears as
she gripped the old soldier's hand, then she hurried out to make
immediate plans for having her supplies loaded on a railroad car. As
she tersely put it, "When our armies fought on Cedar Mountain, I broke
the shackles and went to the field." When she began her work on the
day after the battle she found an immense amount of work to do. Later
she described her experience in this modest way:

"Five days and nights with three hours' sleep--a narrow escape from
capture--and some days of getting the wounded into hospitals at
Washington brought Saturday, August 30th. 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. But under
all, lay the life of a nation. I had inherited the rich blessing of
health and strength of constitution such as are seldom given to women,
and I felt that some return was due from me and that I ought to be
there."

The famous army nurse had served her novitiate now, and through the
weary years of the war which dragged on with alternate gains and
losses for the Union forces, Clara Barton's name began to be spoken
of with awe and deep affection wherever a wounded man had come under
her gentle care. Being under no society or leader, she was free to
come or go at will. But from the first day of her work at the front
she was encouraged in it by individual officers who saw the great
value of what she accomplished.

At Antietam, when the fighting began, her wagons were driven through a
field of tall corn to an old homestead, while the shot whizzed thick
around them. In the barnyard and among the corn lay torn and bleeding
men--the worst cases, just brought from the places where they had
fallen. All was in confusion, for the army medical supplies had not
yet arrived, and the surgeons were trying to make bandages of corn
husks. The new army nurse immediately had her supplies unloaded and
hurried out to revive the wounded with bread soaked in wine. When her
bread gave out there were still many to be fed. All the supplies she
had were three cases of unopened wine.

"Open the wine, and give that," she commanded, "and God help us."

Her order was obeyed, and as she watched the cases being unpacked her
eyes fell on the packing around the bottles of wine. It was nicely
sifted corn-meal. If it had been gold dust it could not have been more
valuable. The wine was unpacked as quickly as possible; kettles were
found in the farm-house, and in a twinkling that corn-meal was mixed
with water, and good gruel for the men was in the making. Then it
occurred to Miss Barton to see what was in the cellar of the old
house, and there three barrels of flour and a bag of salt were found,
stored by the rebels and left behind when they marched away. "What
wealth!" exclaimed the woman, who was frantically eager to feed her
flock. All that night Clara Barton and her workers carried buckets of
hot gruel up and down the long lines to the wounded and dying men.
Then up to the farm-house went the army nurse, where, in the dim light
of a lone flickering candle, she could dimly see the surgeon in
charge, sitting in apparent despair by the table, his head resting in
his hands. She tiptoed up to him and said, quietly, "You are tired,
doctor."

Looking up, he exclaimed: "Tired? Yes, I am tired! Tired of such
heartlessness and carelessness! And," he added, "think of the
condition of things. Here are at least one thousand wounded men;
terribly wounded, five hundred of whom cannot live till daylight
without attention. That two-inch of candle is all I have, or can get.
What can I do? How can I bear it?"

A smile played over Clara Barton's clear-cut face. Gently but firmly
she took him by the elbow and led him to the door, pointing toward the
barn, where dozens of lanterns gleamed like stars.

"What is it?" he exclaimed.

"The barn is lighted," she said, "and the house will be directly."

"Who did it?"

"I, doctor."

"Where did you get them?"

"Brought them with me."

"How many have you?"

"All you want, four boxes."

For a moment he stared at her as if to be sure he was not in a dream.
Then he turned away without a word, and never spoke of the matter
again, but his deference to Clara Barton from that time was the
greatest a man can pay a woman.

Not until all her stores were exhausted and she was sick with a fever
would Clara Barton leave the battle-field of Antietam; then, dragging
herself to the train, she went back to Washington to be taken care of
until she was better. When at last she was strong enough to work again
she went to see her friend Quartermaster-General Rucker, and told him
that if she had had five wagons she would have had enough supplies for
all the wounded at Antietam. With an expression of intense admiration
on his soldierly face as he watched the brave volunteer nurse, he
declared:

"You shall have enough next time!"

The promise was made good. Having recognized the value of her
efficient services, the Government assisted in every way, making it
possible for her to carry on her work on the battle-fields and in
military camps and hospitals in the best way.

Clara Barton!--Only the men who lay wounded or dying on the
battle-field knew the thrill and the comfort that the name carried.
Again and again her life was in danger--once at Antietam, when
stooping to give a drink of water to an injured boy, a bullet whizzed
between them. It ended the life of the poor lad, but only tore a hole
in Clara Barton's sleeve. And so, again and again, it seemed as if a
special Providence protected her from death or injury. At
Fredericksburg, when the dead, starving and wounded lay frozen on the
ground, and there was no effective organization for proper relief,
with swift, silent efficiency Clara Barton moved among them, having
the snow cleared away and under the banks finding famished, frozen
figures which were once men. She rushed to have an old chimney torn
down and built fire-blocks, over which she soon had kettles full of
coffee and gruel steaming.

As she was bending over a wounded rebel, he whispered to her: "Lady,
you have been kind to me ... every street of the city is covered by
our cannon. When your entire army has reached the other side of the
Rappahannock, they will find Fredericksburg only a slaughter-pen. Not
a regiment will escape. Do not go over, for you will go to certain
death."

She thanked him for the kindly warning and later told of the call that
came to her to go across the river, and what happened. She says:

"At ten o'clock of the battle day when the rebel fire was hottest, the
shells rolling down every street, and the bridge under the heavy
cannonade, a courier dashed over, and, rushing up the steps of the
house where I was, placed in my hand a crumpled, bloody piece of
paper, a request from the lion-hearted old surgeon on the opposite
shore, establishing his hospitals in the very jaws of death:

"'Come to me,' he wrote. 'Your place is here.'

"The faces of the rough men working at my side, which eight weeks before
had flushed with indignation at the thought of being controlled by a
woman, grew ashy white as they guessed the nature of the summons, ...
and they begged me to send them, but save myself. I could only allow
them to go with me if they chose, and in twenty minutes we were rocking
across the swaying bridge, the water hissing with shot on either side.

"Over into that city of death, its roofs riddled by shell, its every
church a crowded hospital, every street a battle-line, every hill a
rampart, every rock a fortress, and every stone wall a blazing line of
forts.

"Oh, what a day's work was that! How those long lines of blue, rank on
rank, charged over the open acres, up to the very mouths of those
blazing guns, and how like grain before the sickle they fell and
melted away.

"An officer stepped to my side to assist me over the debris at the end
of the bridge. While our hands were raised in the act of stepping
down, a piece of an exploding shell hissed through between us, just
below our arms, carrying away a portion of both the skirts of his coat
and my dress, rolling along the ground a few rods from us like a
harmless pebble in the water. The next instant a solid shot thundered
over our heads, a noble steed bounded in the air and with his gallant
rider rolled in the dirt not thirty feet in the rear. Leaving the
kind-hearted officer, I passed on alone to the hospital. In less than
a half-hour he was brought to me--dead."

She was passing along a street in the heart of the city when she had
to step aside to let a regiment of infantry march by. At that moment
General Patrick saw her, and, thinking she was a frightened resident
of the city who had been left behind in the general exodus, leaned
from his saddle and said, reassuringly:

"You are alone and in great danger, madam. Do you want protection?"

With a rare smile, Miss Barton said, as she looked at the ranks of
soldiers, "Thank you, but I think I am the best-protected woman in the
United States."

The near-by soldiers caught her words and cried out:

"That's so! That's so!" and the cheer they gave was echoed by line
after line, until the sound of the shouting was like the cheers after
a great victory. Bending low with a courtly smile, the general said:

"I believe you are right, madam!" and galloped away.

"At the battles of Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, during
the eight months' siege of Charleston, in the hospital at Fort Wagner,
with the army in front of Petersburg and in the Wilderness and the
hospitals about Richmond, there was no limit to the work Clara Barton
accomplished for the sick and dying, but among all her experiences
during those years of the war, the Battle of Fredericksburg was most
unspeakably awful to her. And yet afterward she saw clearly that it
was this defeat that gave birth to the Emancipation Proclamation.

"And the white May blossoms of '63 fell over the glad faces--the
swarthy brows, the toil-worn hands of four million liberated slaves.
'America,' writes Miss Barton, 'had freed a race.'"

As the war drew to an end, President Lincoln received hundreds of
letters from anxious parents asking for news of their boys. There were
eighty thousand missing men whose families had no knowledge whether
they were alive or dead. In despair, and believing that Clara Barton
had more information of the soldiers than any one else to whom he
could turn, the President requested her to take up the task, and the
army nurse's tender heart was touched by the thought of helping so
many mothers who had no news of their boys, and she went to work,
aided by the hospital and burial lists she had compiled when on the
field of action.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22