-- James Longstreet, at Gettysburg
Southern States Secede
Secession
fever hit the South after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The
South considered Lincoln's Republican party victory in the 1860
presidential election as a sign that the North was now going to end the
"peculiar institution" of slavery. For the South, the time of talk and
compromise had ended. In December, 1860 South Carolina became the first
state to secede from the Union. Secession of the rest of the states that
would make up the Confederate States of America occurred in two waves.
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Clara Barton
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The Angel of the Battlefield A young boy named David falls from the rafters of a barn at North Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1832. He is badly injured from the fall and becomes an invalid. David will spend the next two years recovering and during this time his eleven-year-old sister stays by his bedside helping, and nursing her brother back to health. |
Patients in Ward K of Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C.  |
The sister’s name was Clara, and this was the beginning of Clara Barton’s life of caring for, and helping others. Clara was born on Christmas day in 1821, and like her four older siblings Clara’s schooling was at home. At age fifteen she becomes a schoolteacher, later she starts a free public school in Bordentown, New Jersey. Clara Barton would spend her life aiding and serving. During the Civil War, Clara Barton becomes known as "The Angel of the Battlefield."
Barton was working for the United States Patent Office and living in Washington, D.C. when the Civil War began in 1861. The women who worked at the Patent Office before the Civil War were known as "government girls" as they were part of the growing Federal government. These women had jobs that were previously held only by men. When the Civil War began, these "government girls" lost their jobs.
The Baltimore Riot occurs on April 19, 1861 when militia from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are on their way to Washington and are attacked by secessionists in Baltimore. Four militiamen and twelve citizens are killed. Clara Barton starts a relief program for the 6th Massachusetts Regiment when it arrives at Washington.
Barnes&Noble: Clara Barton Professional Angel  |
Barton advertised in the Worcester, Massachusetts, Spy newspaper for donations when she learned that after First Bull Run (also known as First Manassas, fought July, 1861) the injured men did not have adequate medical supplies for their needs. She started an independent organization to distribute the collected supplies. Her efforts were successful and the next year Barton was granted a general pass by United States Surgeon General William A. Hammond to travel along with the army ambulances. William’s pass said Barton’s presence with the ambulances was; "for the purpose of distributing comforts for the sick and wounded, and nursing them." Clara accepted this pass, but she was somewhat reluctant to do so, Clara was afraid she might be confused as one of the women who made it a habit of following the army – but not for the good, and higher purposes like her’s. |
After Second Bull Run (also known as Second Manassas, fought August 28-30, 1862) Barton was part of the volunteer nurses United States Secretary Edwin M. Stanton called for to help the troops spread along the defeated Union line of retreat. She gathered and solicited wagonloads of food and needed medical supplies, taking them to the troops on the front lines. Barton would aid the injured and sick and make soup and coffee.
"The men were brought down from the field till they covered acres. By midnight there must have been three thousand helpless men lying in that hay…. All night we made compresses and slings – and bound up and wet wounds, when we could get water, fed what we could, traveled miles in that dark over to those poor helpless wretches, in terror lest some one’s candle fall into the hay and consume them all."
— Clara Barton writing of her experiences tending to the injured men after Second Bull Run. Barton had helped spread bales of hay onto the ground for the men to lay on.
It is during the Antietam Campaign (September, 1862, also known as Sharpsburg) when Clara Barton is almost killed. While attending to an injured soldier, a bullet passes through a sleeve of her dress. The bullet completely misses Clara, but strikes and kills the injured soldier. She also digs a bullet out the cheek of another soldier using only her pocketknife. A few days after Antietam, Barton has typhoid fever.
Clara Barton was working in field hospitals of General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James, in June, 1864. Also in 1864, Barton was part of a petition (along with notable others such as; Horace Greeley, P. T. Barnum, William Cullen Bryant, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) for the establishment of veteran’s homes. By 1933, fifteen such homes were built.
In February 1865, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Clara Barton to attend to correspondence to help reunite missing soldiers with their families. In July of the same year, she was at the infamous Andersonville prison in Georgia to manage the identification of unmarked graves. From hospital and burial records, Clara was able to create a list of missing prisoners.
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In 1877, Clara Barton organized the American National Committee, three years later it became the American Red Cross and she served as its first president. Barton published a book in 1882, History of the Red Cross. Barton retired from the Red Cross to her home at Glen Echo, outside of Washington, D.C. in 1904. She died on April 12, 1912. "If I were to speak of war, it would not be to show you the glories of conquering armies but the mischief and misery they strew in their tracks; and how, while they marched on with tread of iron and plumes proudly tossing in the breeze, some one must follow closely in their steps, crouching to the earth, toiling in the rain and darkness, shelterless themselves, with no thought of pride or glory, fame or praise, or reward; hearts breaking with pity, faces bathed in tears and hands in blood. This is the side which history never shows." |
Barnes&Noble: Clara Barton and the American Red Cross  |
Suggested Posts to Learn More...
- Civil War Veterans
- Civil War Casualties
- Seeing the Elephant
- The Sultana Disaster
- Andrew Johnson Drunk at Lincoln's Second Inaugural
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