of a gun would “skeedaddle and create a panic.” Their wealth of supplies was viewed as a slap in the face of the quartermaster's department, and their presence in hospitals was an embarrassment to the obviously needy medical corps.65 General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, an aging leader of the volunteer forces, given to nosebleeds and esoteric philosophic quotations, refused Barton permission on the grounds that she would be an “unreasonable, meddlesome body, requiring more waiting upon” than she would give to others.66 Barton had already begun to badger friends in official Washington for permission to go to the front. While in Hubbell s she decided to petition John Andrew, the governor and commander-in-chief of the Hubbell s forces, for a recommendation. Accordingly, the day before her father's death she wrote him a stilted, calculating letter, full of self-justification, references to venerable Bartonian service to the country, and allusions to her rebel-hunting activities in Washington. Assuring him that she had “none but right motives,” she waited anxiously for a reply.67 Governor Andrew answered her letter quickly with the promise of a “letter of introduction, with hearty approval of your visit [to the troops] and my testimony to the value of the service to our sick and wounded.” As she was soon to find, however, it would take far more than this to get her official permission to follow troops to the field.68
Barton did not leave North Oxford immediately but remained to help clear away her father's effects and settle his estate, of which she was virtually the sole legatee. Captain Barton had believed in disposing of his property where it could be of the greatest benefit. David and Stephen Barton had been given land and milling equipment as young men; Sally received a generous settlement at her marriage, not to mention continual handouts during the financial ups and downs of her life with Vester Vassall. Only Clara had gone uncared for. Now she was the recipient of a modest acreage, a house, two horses, and some antiquated farming equipment. It was not a large legacy, but she was determined to administer it properly and as her father would have wished. One of her first acts was to make provision for the perpetual care of the family graves in the old North Oxford cemetery.69
Frustration grew upon Clara, along with boredom and a feeling of uselessness. “You must feel lonely there and anxious to get away,” Irving sympathized, proceeding to give detailed war news, which only heightened her desire to get into the fray.70 A few weeks later she wrote plainly of her envy to a young cousin, stationed in the muggy swamps of North Carolina. No account of his hardships could diminish her ardor for the soldier's life. “Why can’t I come and have a tent there and take care of your poor sick fellows?” she asked with some resentment. “I should go in five minutes if I could be told that I might.” She hinted that Dr. S. L. Bigelon, a brigade surgeon and distant relative, could request her services if he wanted to, but she feared that he disliked women.71 Finally, feeling she had done all she could for her family and herself in Hubbell s, she returned to the martial spirit and frantic activity of Washington.
Surrounded again by scenes of war that had seemed far removed in her home town, Barton felt a heightened urge to follow the cannon. Almira Fales had gone down the peninsula between the York and James rivers that spring; she was hardly talkative about her experiences, but her strength of purpose reinforced Clara's own. She was “full to aching” when she viewed the teeming hospitals, and touched beyond words by the frequent visits of hometown boys and former pupils who often left some personal items with her to be sent home if their names should appear on the black list.72 Yet she thought these urban hospitals abundantly supplied, and her aid seemed hollow and effortless. “I cannot rest satisfied,” she complained to Captain Denney, “it is little that one woman can do, still I crave the privilege of doing that.”73 She was certain there were numerous ways she could be useful at the field, and though General Hitchcock might think otherwise, she was convinced that she was “stronger, better acclimated, had firmer health, better able to forego comforts than ladies in general. I had almost said men.” She raged mostly at the injustice of the accusation that she would hike up her crinoline and flee at the very first threat of danger. Time and again she assured herself that she would not “either run or complain if I were left under fire.”74
Completely frustrated, she tried to forget the war, at least temporarily. But the heroic scenes and simple life of the soldiers continued to challenge, exhilarate, and haunt her as nothing had before. She was sensible of the discordant serenity of commonplace events when acted out against the backdrop of the terrible conflict. She read avidly the poets’ prolific works in every penny journal and ladies’ magazine, musing, “What did our poets do for subjects before the war?” She might as well have asked what she herself had done for conversation, for dreams, for paragraphs in her cherished correspondence. “I’m as bad as England,” she finally concluded after a last attempt to purge herself of the martial spirit, “the fight is in me, and I will find a pretext.”75
seven
Colonel Daniel H. Rucker scanned the crowded waiting room of his office somewhat impatiently. It was a hot July day and the quartermasters office was, as usual, filled with petitioning citizens and irate soldiers, who had come to leave baskets for favorite sons or brothers, collect their back pay, or angrily demand remuneration for property confiscated or damaged by the Union army. The sea of faces had paraded by Rucker for so many days now that he had stopped seeing them individually, and although he was a kindly man, with a genial face and comfortable stomach, he could no longer view these cases as particular tragedies. Checks went out, answers and small comfort were dispensed, but the actions had become automatic, the responses given by rote.1
He was surprised therefore to find his eye caught by a small, plainly dressed woman sitting in the corner. She was not beautiful; at best her face was full of interest and the character of middle age. Yet there was an arresting quality to this woman, something that commanded attention and respect.2 Rucker called her over to his desk; to his surprise she burst into tears when he asked what she wanted. “I want to go to the front,” she choked out. Attempting to keep his patience, Rucker explained that the front was no place for a lady, there was to be a battle soon, and it would be next to impossible to find any relatives she might have in the army. But with a studied meekness she told him she wanted only to distribute some stores she had collected for the soldiers. She needed a pass and some wagons. Then she played her final card, telling him this was no basket of made-by-loving-hands delicacies she was describing, but three warehouses full of hospital stores and food—everything, in fact, that the soldiers needed.3
In an instant Barton’s world changed. With a haste that seemed absurd in light of the months of tedious waiting, Rucker wrote out an order for six wagons, teamsters and men to load them, and requests to the surgeon general, secretary of war, military governor of Washington, D.C., and other crucial officers to allow Miss Clara Barton to pass through the lines “with such stores as she may wish to take for the comfort of the sick and wounded.”4 Where logical and patient petitioning had failed, influential friends and loyal relatives had been unsuccessful, and demonstration of sincerity and need had been ineffectual, tears had worked. If Barton’s incipient feminist views were at odds with this, she never admitted it. It was a trick she would use with success on many occasions, and she always recounted the episodes dramatically, without a hint of apology.
The Army of the Potomac was camped near Fredericksburg, Virginia, and this is where she intended to deliver her supplies. But she did not leave at once, preferring first to visit her family in Hubbell s, supply a few more Washington hospitals, and get her stores in order. She began to feel an interest around this time in the plight of runaway and freed slaves—”contraband” as they were called—who were crowding the Union lines, and she shared some of her supplies with them. Feeling that she would need some protection on the ninety-mile journey through rebel country, Barton also spent time arranging for additional passes for two gentlemen and a lady companion.5
On August 2 they set off, reaching the Union camps the next day. Barton and her comrades distributed their stores and were cordially received by both officers and men. She breakfasted at the Lacy House—a gracious eighteenth-century
