locally, but the monies would have to come from those already earmarked for the large public school. Another minor flurry arose over the dissatisfaction of those who had previously taught the private schools. As the free schools gained in reputation, the old subscription schools gradually closed. This was the only form of livelihood open to many of the teachers. Although the school board tried to help place the teachers, some accusations worried Barton and marred her pleasure.79
The gravest blow of all, however, was the discovery that the school was to be headed by an outsider named J. Kirby Burnham. It was Barton's sex, not her skills, to which the town objected. Having been raised in an atmosphere that encouraged her intellectual skills, having conquered rough winter schools that had shaken many a schoolmaster, and having demanded and received pay equal to a man's, she had not expected to meet such prejudice in Bordentown. It shocked her to be classed as a “female assistant” in this school, thereby ranking no higher than the other seven women who taught in the building. Not knowing what to do, she stayed on, helping with examination and classification of the six hundred pupils. But her heart was no longer in the work. She believed Burnham to be ungrateful and highhanded and resented deeply the necessity of taking orders from him. He created strict rules for governing the children, of which Barton did not approve. Burnham may indeed have possessed dictatorial qualities, or perhaps he was merely trying to establish himself in what must have been an extremely uncomfortable working relationship. In any case, Barton grew increasingly resentful of his presence, complaining vehemently that she needed “no one to give me directions and tell me what I shall and shall not do.”80 She may also have resented the lower salary she received, for Burnham was making $600 to her $250. Her brother tried to console her: “Those that do the hardest work generally get the least pay.”81
Barton was not the only teacher who was put off by Burnham. The teachers were split in their loyalties, and the resulting disunity hampered the school's progress during the first year. Fanny Childs followed Barton's lead in deploring the unfortunate Burnham, as did another teacher, Ellen Bartine. Together these three nicknamed him “the Critter” and spent much time poking fun at his mannerisms and occupations. But another teacher, a Miss Stinton, had formed a romantic attachment to Burnham, and she rallied the other teachers to his defense.82 Hostility among the staff rubbed off on the children. “I don’t see why Miss Barton could not have taught in our room,” one student complained when assigned to another teacher's class.83 A scathing editorial in the Bordentown Register condemned the teachers for their squabblings and unprofessional attitude. The school, it noted, had “stringent rules and regulations made to govern innocent and unoffending children, but none for those who needed them the most viz: the teachers.” The common knowledge of their quarrels was dividing the town, the paper continued, and had “completely disunited our school, destroyed its usefulness and intrinsic worth, bred war and contention in our midst, and instead of yielding the long sought blessing, is crushing us with the iron power of a despotism and covering us with the mantle of confusion and shame.”84
Under the pressure of rivalry, unhappiness, and the bitter collapse of her hopes, Clara's health broke down. She became weak and faint, and her spirited voice first hushed to a whisper, then gave out altogether. Although she blamed it on the damp new building, lime dust, and the strain of constant speaking during the five days of pupil examinations, she would experience these symptoms again and again during her lifetime in situations in which there was no lime dust or plaster, only tension, or disappointment and overwork. She tried to remain at her post, “but it was a vain effort.” Finally, seeing that there would be no change in her status in the new school and needing desperately to escape the stressful situation, she and Fanny Childs resigned. The town protested, hoping she would stay and appear occasionally at the school to lend it her prestige and a sense of continuity, but “the strain was too great.” In February 1854 she left Bordentown, her heart broken, her future again uncertain.85
The town, misunderstanding her motives and seeing no reason for self-blame, condemned the act. The Bordentown Register called it a “wrong” against the community and criticized Barton and Childs for “forsaking their posts without leave or warning.”86 But they could hardly blame Clara for the school's troubles, which remained acute after she left. In May 1854, the strife culminated with Burnham's dismissal and an entire revamping of the school's structure.
Barton's family had only an inkling of the trial through which she was passing. The clues in her letters were too scanty to give a full picture of the problem, but Stephen “thought there was something in the wind” and begged her to come home, to relax from business and spend time with their aging father.87 The family would be glad of her presence, he wrote, for they had troubles of their own. Otis Learned, the mischievous playmate of Clara's youth, was accused of robbing a safe in the company in which he worked. “I can hardly tell why,” complained Stephen, “only that his name is Larned [sic].”88 After she finally wrote “a long history” of her “trials and perplexities,” her brothers made a special effort to encourage her. “I suppose that you have done much to establish the system of free schools in the city and in so doing have done an infinite amount of good to the rising generations,” wrote Stephen.89 And later: “I am sorry that things have taken such a turn in the public schools, and think it must be unpleasant to you after you have done so much to help to establish them to feel that you cannot with propriety and respect to yourself continue to assist them.”90
Despite this show of support, Clara could scarcely imagine returning home. Whereas, less than a year earlier, her plans and prospects had been on the verge of fulfillment, they now lay wasted and scattered. Her own health was, to her, a sign of her failure to meet her ambitious goals and to accept with grace the blow to her pride. To return home again at thirty-two, with no future plans, was, in her mind, to cast herself once more into subservience. Moreover, there was, in the Learned robbery, yet another family scandal to be faced. After years of smalltown gossip centering on robberies, Dolly's tragic insanity, and the storms and rages of her mother, Barton felt she could not bear another such disgrace.
Clara left Bordentown in February, but it was not until mid-March that her brother received word from her. Picking up the envelope with the familiar copperplate handwriting, he was surprised to see that the postmark read “Washington, D.C.”
five
In her hasty departure from the rivalries in Bordentown, Clara Barton herself seems hardly to have known why she headed south. “I wanted the mild air for my throat,” she later claimed, stating that she believed Washington to be the furthest point south an unescorted woman could go with propriety. At other times she maintained that the decision was influenced by her interest in politics or the presence of the Library of Congress in the capital. Since the library offered her access to a greater variety of materials than she had ever before encountered, Barton hoped to spend her time in therapeutic study.1
Certainly her decision had little to do with any lure of city lights, for Washington in the early 1850s was hardly a stimulating metropolis. The capital had been plopped down into the wilderness a half century earlier, and unfinished public buildings still stood like splendidly incongruous islands in a sea of seedy and temporary structures. These lent an air of hesitancy to the city, as did the transient population that flocked to it, anxious to receive the favors of the men who governed there, and then, with unabashed fickleness, left town when better prospects were seen elsewhere. The existence of slavery in the capital, the sleepy tempo, and a lack of adequate public water or sewage facilities often startled those visiting from Europe or the northern United States. Social and political life ebbed and flowed with the sessions of Congress. Those seeking entertainment could look chiefly to the galleries of the Senate or House of Representatives, a stroll on the Capitol grounds, or to private levees, to which everyone, from lowly government clerks to foreign diplomats, was invited. Both the government and the social arena were dominated by those from below the Mason-Dixon line; the city spoke with a decidedly southern drawl.2
Barton
