Angel of the Battlefield, part two

Clara Barton’s throat was raw and her nose dripping as winter air bit into her.  She was determined to hear Abraham Lincoln give his first presidential inaugural speech.  People were predicting that he would be assassinated before he became president.   Many Southerners believed that he represented the enemy, The North.  Now he stood, a very tall and thin man, at an outdoor podium by the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  Thousands of people stood in the cold watching him.

Clara listened intently to him. She thought, “He’s not avoiding tough subjects.  The people’s anger and arguments about slavery are understood by him.  He knows that we, the people of the United States, are close to dividing into two nations and fighting each other.  Saving the Union is his passion.”

Lincoln’s speech was given February 22, 1861; and within two months the Civil War began.  Since she was a child Clara had shown amazing commitment, as a nurse and a teacher, to helping people near her, but not on a national level.  Now her vision changed.

As soldiers arrived and camped outside the capitol, she got involved.  Her concerns for “her boys,” as she called them pushed her into action.  She wrote to schools, churches, civic clubs, and individuals requesting supplies for the soldiers.  Hundreds of boxes came.  She rented space for them and boarded off a corner for her living quarters.

After the first battle of Bull Run, wounded men poured into Washington, D.C.  Sixty-five thousand Americans, inexperienced in warfare, had fought against each other using new muskets and old tactics.  Men were cut to pieces in close range shooting.   Five days after the battle, men were still being brought into the city to hospitals. Many had received no medical attention on the battlefield, when they needed it. One experience etched the need for immediate help into Clara’s mind.  She moved a soldier, who had been lying on the field for five days, his toes were so infected that they dropped off.  She bathed his toeless feet.