Not content with accepting just what came to hand, Clara asked an officer what the troops needed most. To her surprise he answered “tobacco.” Far from flinching at this, she took the part of the men against the reproving frowns of her own sex. “It is needless to say that I trust soon to be a good judge of the product as it has become an article of commerce with me,” she told Vira Stone in some amusement.
You would smile at the sight of the half yard slabs of plug lying this moment on my table waiting for Dr. Sidney's Basket of Whiskey to arrive to accompany it to Kalorama. Dainty gifts, you will say, but all necessary my dear Coz—this I conceive to be no time to prate of moral influences. Our men's nerves require their accustomed narcotics and a glass of whiskey is a powerful friend in a sunstroke and these poor fellows fall senseless on their heavy drills.48
Barton's love for “her boys” and fierce patriotism were further stimulated and reinforced by her former landlady, the plain-spoken Almira Fales. Fales was surely the first woman to engage in army relief work. She had not waited for a declaration of war to begin her ministrations but had commenced garnering supplies the moment South Carolina seceded. Others might mistrust the outcome of this action, but Fales had had no doubt it would lead to fratricidal war, and she simply ignored the laughter of acquaintances who gazed at her work and “thought it was a ‘freak.’” She continued to hoard delicacies and distribute them at her pleasure after the firing on Fort Sumter. Her snappy blue eyes and brash way of telling stories from a memorable fund of anecdotes made her a favorite in the hospital. Although her patriotism did not lack zeal—she once erected a tent in her front yard to minister to any suffering soldier who might happen by—she was extremely modest about the contributions she made. Before, during, and after the war she declined to discuss them, simply forging ahead in her blundering way, without fanfare or praise.49
Fales was also one of the first to sense the terrors endured by the wounded on hospital transports and as they waited for help on the battlefield. The injured men needed a middleman between the bullet and the surgeon. As early as the battles of Corinth and Pittsburg Landing, she made her way directly to the line of battle, and she continued working in that capacity—tending wounds, encouraging, and nourishing—until the end of the war. She plied the Potomac River in hospital transports during the tedious Peninsular campaign and, when not actually with the army, met the wounded as they arrived at the wharves near Washington. After one of her own sons was killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg, she redoubled her efforts.50
Fales's activities further galvanized Barton, who was beginning to acknowledge that the Washington hospitals were becoming pretty well supplied with luxuries and willing ladies to hand them out.51 Soon after the battle at Manassas, therefore, she began to take her supplies to meet the ships and train loads of disabled and sick men and, like Fales, found the effort more rewarding than mere hospital service. It reinforced her belief that many men perished for lack of simple attention. She once told a reporter that she was, at this time, “deeply impressed with the importance of early attention to the wounded, and was made to see how much more efficient her service would be if it could be promptly rendered on the field of battle.”52 As she recognized the need, Barton felt a growing urgency and pursued her course with uncamouflaged intensity. Oblivious to the opinions of the more dignified townspeople, she transported her wares in any conveyance, and at any time, that seemed handy. More than one person could recall her small figure perched atop a ludicrously large wagonload of goods, clutching the seat and sides as best she could, while crowds of well-dressed people walked sedately to church.53
Throughout the fall of 1861 and the winter of 1862, Barton pursued this self-appointed task. It was above, and in addition to, her duties at the Patent Office, where she continued her chores on the “ladies side” at the same low salary. Clara later claimed that in her zeal for the Union she refused to accept any payment from the overtaxed United States Treasury, but government records show that she drew her salary throughout the war. She was, however, given additional responsibilities in December 1861. “I have been a great deal more than busy for the past three weeks,” she lamented to Fanny Childs, soon after the New Year, “owing to some new arrangements in the office, mostly, by which I lead the Record, and hurry up the others who lag.”54
The tenor of the Patent Office was notoriously pro-South, which aggravated Barton no end. There and elsewhere she began a new crusade—routing out those disloyal to the Union. In the office she offered to take over the work of two blatantly Confederate clerks, at no extra salary, if they were dismissed. The proposal was politely refused and served only to make her unpopular.55 Her familiarity with the parcel section of the post office caused her also to lead a campaign there, when she found that unclaimed parcels were being auctioned off to gentlemen who sent them on to the Confederate army. Barton had the pleasure of seeing that the rebels were arrested, though a hoped-for bonus in the form of an appointment to the army's sanitary committee never materialized. Still, she was content as long as her “precious freights” arrived directly.56
The vagaries of the Patent Office and the treacherous dealings of local Southern sympathizers seemed of slight significance compared to a personal blow that befell Barton in February 1862. For months, cousins, nephews, and neighbors had kept her informed about her father's health. He had lost his robustness years before, and there had been a serious alarm in December 1860, but the old man's “oak and iron constitution” had forestalled the family's worst fears.57 Clara had often thought of visiting her father, yet the image of North Oxford and the unhappiness she had felt there kept her from returning home, even when Sam, Stephen's boy, told her that the Captain “spoke in high terms of Julie and of the excellent care she had taken of him, but said after all there was no one like you.”58 Now the end was truly near. Barton turned over her work to another Patent Office clerk and went home to do her “last and highest” duties.59
Clara and her father talked much of the war in the last few weeks they had together. Captain Barton believed the Union would triumph but knew he would not live to see it; he therefore “committed himself and his country into the hands of a good and just God.”60 Clara sat patiently at his bedside, listening to the old soldier and telling him of her own war work. She worried aloud about the sick and wounded soldiers, soliciting her father's advice about how and where to give the most expedient aid. She had hoped to go to the battlefield, she told him, but was struggling with her sense of propriety, for women in the camps were often considered—and treated as—prostitutes. He brushed aside her fears, maintaining that a respectable woman would meet with respect from even the roughest soldiers. He then gave Clara a command that she would always recall: “As a patriot he bade me serve my country with all I had, even my life if need be; as the daughter of an accepted Mason, he bade me seek and comfort the afflicted everywhere, and as a Christian he charged me to honor God and love mankind.”61 As a symbol of his faith in her decision he handed her his gold Masonic badge to wear for luck and protection.
Near mid-March Stephen Barton's condition worsened, his imminent death evident in the wasting away of his desire to live. He wrote his will and put his other business affairs in order but took no food or water for some days. Late in the evening on March 21, in Clara's words he “straightened himself in bed, closed his mouth firmly, gave one hand to Julia and the other to me, and left us.”62 The local papers heralded Captain Barton as a “brave and true man,” and the house and grounds were crowded for the funeral, held in David's home.63 Clara watched as they lowered him into the grave, next to her mother—gone over a decade now—and recognized that she was alone in a way she had never been before. Her “last earthly guide” was gone, her mentor, the most inspired and inspiring of her kin.64
The long hours of vigil at her father's deathbed had given Clara an opportunity to mull over her urge to join the army in the field and to determine the best method of preparing to do so. She had Henry Wilson's backing, but she needed someone with direct influence in the army who would supply her with passes and protection if she moved toward the lines. Most officials were not anxious to see Barton, or any woman,
