Clara Barton and Her First Battlefield At Antietam

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
** Graphic photos of dead soldiers at Antietam in this thread, please be aware.

Clara is such a by-word it's terribly easy to by-pass much of what she did- with her hands and heart and determination. Dorothea Dix had similar compassion and endless drive but was much more intimidating as a person- less likely to charm the socks off a snake and may have eaten it whole instead, you know?

clara barton1.jpg

From NYPL

Bios on Clara are tough. There exists so much, or so many flatly astonishing feats on her part that to read them all end-to-end is to do justice to none. You're punch-drunk in her super-powers. Which one?

A lot of us are compassionate. How many could watch armies march to a battle and resolve to follow them in order to pick up the inevitable wounded and dying? You'd assume ' The Army ' had some vague plan. Clara had been meeting boats bringing wounded back from battles literally from Day 1. There was no real plan, surgeons being so, so overwhelmed most wounded died without having reached a surgeon. Or a nurse. or a hospital.
clara barton2.jpg

NYPL

It took an army of compassion to bring help to our wounded soldiers. From reading accounts it seems clear politicians held a war, everyone pretty much forgot to send bandaids. The Sanitary Commission, Christian Commission, states' Women's Aids Commissions in the North began organizing, Dorothea Dix wore down the Powers That Be inexorably applying bandaids administratively and physically. It took time. Clara Barton watched the Union Army march away to another great battle, knew wildly overwhelmed surgeons would have no hope of reaching more than a small a percentage of wounded and did something.

Up until this time Clara had not gone directly to battlefields, baffled by the problem of how to get official permission to do so. She never did. Clara stopped worrying about it. She just went.

clara barton brady.jpg

This Brady photograph of Clara Barton is from these years. It is this face which our men, North and South saw as their first in a hideous day of pain and anguish- sometimes their last image on the planet. She made no distinction, Union or Confederate either. Clara was there to alleviate suffering. This was a hugely unusual woman.


" On Sunday, the 14th of September, 1862, she loaded an army wagon with supplies and started to follow the march of General McClellan. Her only companions were Mr. Cornelius M. Welles, the teacher of the first contraband school in the District of Columbia—a young man of rare talent and devotion—and one teamster.

She travelled three days along the dusty roads of Maryland, buying bread as she went to the extent of her means of conveyance, and sleeping in the wagon by night. After dark, on the night of the sixteenth, she reached Burnside's Corps, and found the two armies lying face to face along the opposing ridges of hills that bound the valley of the Antietam.
antietam straw huts smiths fm.JPG

On Smith's Farm, straw huts erected to supplement the barn there used as the hospital

There had already been heavy skirmishing far away on the right where Hooker had forded the creek and taken position on the opposite hills; and the air was dark and thick with fog and exhalations, with the smoke of camp-fires and premonitory death. There was little sleep that night, and as the morning sun rose bright and beautiful over the Blue Ridge and dipped down into the Valley, the firing on the right was resumed. Reinforcements soon began to move along the rear to Hooker's support. Thinking the place of danger was the place of duty, Miss Barton ordered her mules to be harnessed and took her place in the swift train of artillery that was passing.

antietam dunker ch.JPG

She did not feel men killed to be ' casualties ', thought of them as lost soldiers to be mourned- these at Dunker Church

On reaching the scene of action, they turned into a field of tall corn, and drove through it to a large barn.

smiths barn.jpg

Smith's Barn, Antietam


They were close upon the line of battle; the rebel shot and shell flew thickly around and over them; and in the barn-yard and among the corn lay torn and bleeding men—the worst cases—just brought from the places where they had fallen. The army medical supplies had not yet arrived, the small stock of dressings was exhausted, and the surgeons were trying to make bandages of corn-husks. Miss Barton opened to them her stock of dressings, and proceeded with her companions to distribute bread steeped in wine to the wounded and fainting. In the course of the day she picked up twenty-five men who had come to the rear with the wounded, and set them to work administering restoratives, bringing and applying water, lifting men to easier positions, stopping hemorrhages, etc., etc. At length her bread was all spent; but luckily a part of the liquors she had brought were found to have been packed in meal, which suggested the idea of making gruel. A farm-house was found connected with the barn, and on searching the cellar, she discovered three barrels of flour, and a bag of salt, which the rebels had hidden the day before. Kettles were found about the house, and she prepared to make gruel on a large scale, which was carried in buckets and distributed along the line for miles.

On the ample piazza of the house were ranged the operating tables, where the surgeons performed their operations; and on that piazza she kept her place from the forenoon till nightfall, mixing gruel and directing her assistants, under the fire of one of the greatest and fiercest battles of modern times. Before night her face was as black as a negro's, and her lips and throat parched with the sulphurous smoke of battle. But night came at last, and the wearied armies lay down on the ground to rest; and the dead and wounded lay everywhere.
antietam sumner corps.JPG

Where Sumner's Corp fought

Darkness too had its terrors, and as the night closed in, the surgeon in charge at the old farm-house, looked despairingly at a bit of candle and said it was the only one on the place; and no one could stir till morning. A thousand men dangerously wounded and suffering terribly from thirst lay around, and many must die before the light of another day. It was a fearful thing to die alone and in the dark, and no one could move among the wounded, for fear of stumbling over them. Miss Barton replied, that, profiting by her experience at Chantilly, she had brought with her thirty lanterns, and an abundance of candles. It was worth a journey to Antietam, to light the gloom of that night. On the morrow, the fighting had ceased, but the work of caring for the wounded was resumed and continued all day.

On the third day the regular supplies arrived, and Miss Barton having exhausted her small stores, and finding that continued fatigue and watching were bringing on a fever, turned her course towards Washington. It was with difficulty that she was able to reach home, where she was confined to her bed for some time.

When she recovered sufficiently to call on Colonel Rucker, and told him that with five wagons she could have taken supplies sufficient for the immediate wants of all the wounded in the battle, that officer shed tears, and charged her to ask for enough next time."


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21853/21853-h/21853-h.htm#Page_111

antietam lone grave.JPG

Famous photo of the lone grave at Antietam

Thank you once again Project Gutenberg volunteers!
 

Attachments

  • antietam bridge.jpg
    antietam bridge.jpg
    82.9 KB · Views: 179
One of the aspects of Clara's story here is what would have happened to all these men, had she not arrived? With all the logistics taken care of so well- some supplies reaching armies, men and war equipment following in the wake of a general's orders like a small city bristling muskets, trailing death machines and even the means to bury warriors, well, the handful of over-worked, understaffed and equipped surgeons was appalling. These men worked around the clock after battles- frequently for days.

When Clara arrived at Antietam she discovered surgeons trying to create bandages from cornhusks.Somewhere existed such a great wall of ruthlessness that provisions had not been made ( despite the lessons of Bull Run ) for inevitable wounded in great amounts. Crazy!

The Sanitary and Christian Commissions, different women's groups from each state were responsible for much alleviation of later suffering- raising huge sums to purchase medical supplies, pay teachers and nurses and caring for our men. Again- just always seems so weird the armies had such little foresight. Dorothea could send nurses. They needed supplies.
 
The hospital Clara Barton mostly worked at was at the Samuel Poffenberger farm, though in her work she moved widely over the southern end of the battlefield, often under fire herelf. At one point, as she was tending a wounded soldier, a rebel bullet passed through the sleeve of her dress, killing the man. Clara never mended that bullet hole, keeping it as a reminder of the dangers the men faced every day.

The Samuel Poffenberger farmhouse as it appears today:
hospital6.jpg

[from: http://john-banks.blogspot.com/2012/08/photo-journal-antietam-hospital-site.html]

In his Personal Recollections of the Civil War, James Madison Stone, 21st Mass., recounts (pp.91-2) that at Antietam:
“During the evening an incident occurred, the effect of which was to last a long time. It was after we had drank our coffee and had received our ammunition late in the evening. An army nurse asked some of the boys to go with her and assist in getting some wounded men who were near some houses outside our picket line up along the Sharpsburg Road. The boys went, brought in the wounded men and took them to a hospital nearby, no one getting hit, although they did draw the Rebel fire. The work being finished and having been done in so fine a spirit, the nurse wished to know who the men were, and where they came from. Learning they were Massachusetts men and from her own Worcester County, she was quite affected and revealed her own identity — Clara Barton of Oxford. A few moments of friendly handshaking and this first meeting ended, only for a time, however, for later on she visited us at Pleasant Valley and vowed eternal friendship. After the war she became a member of the regimental association, was a regular attendant at the annual reunions and ever declared herself a comrade of the boys of the regiment.”

One never tires of singing the praises of Clara Barton, one of the Great Souls of our history. An eulogy given at Oxford during the 1922 centennial of her birth, concluded: “She was on the firing-line in the Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War, in the Spanish-American War; – she was on the 'firing-line' for half a century in the War of Human Woes.”

Of course, Clara was not alone in her heroic self sacrifice on the battlefield. The Hstorynet has an excellent outline of the work of Union Surgeons and Civilian Volunteers at Antietam.
 
Last edited:
I'm actually related to Clara Barton, according to my mom. Her great-grandmother was a Barton ("Granny Barton" is how she refers to her), but beyond that I'm not sure of the exact relationship. I don't think Clara Barton had any children, so it's possible that one of her siblings would be our ancestor on that branch of the family tree.
 
I'm actually related to Clara Barton, according to my mom. Her great-grandmother was a Barton ("Granny Barton" is how she refers to her), but beyond that I'm not sure of the exact relationship. I don't think Clara Barton had any children, so it's possible that one of her siblings would be our ancestor on that branch of the family tree.


You know, we tend to hear a lot of nonsense on how our ancestors accomplishments are not ours and how it is somehow silly to be proud of them. How do you not be? Clara? Certainly, if one had a famous rogue in the tree no one should ride up to your farmhouse and throw a similar rope over the old oak. Still. An entire country is proud of Clara. To know your toes are warming in the same gene pool no matter how shallow the end would be hugely satisfying! I'd have to think about some kind of laminated card....... :angel:

" One never tires of singing the praises of Clara Barton, one of the Great Souls of our history ", from John Hartwell, and a bumper sticker if I ever saw one.

Yes, so many, many answered those men laying wounded at Antietam, thanks very much for the link- who knows in reply to what call. I've never been able to ascertain exactly why this war tugs so hard at one's head and heart. Genuinely think this is a good portion of it. Not only was it quite literally so much about people suffering that something massive just went POP it also consistently wrote stories for people perhaps they did not know were theirs. Faced with suffering on a scale no one had imagined- or conceived thousands just, plain went because not to was unthinkable. Nurses, doctors, teachers, housewives, students, shopgirls, North and South. It's where borders dissolved. What a very hopeful American story.
 
Just drove through a small village called ' Red Cross ' yesterday. It made me smile ( and resolve to try to discover who named it and why ), thinking of one woman. Clara is so famous, her name still such a household word it's easy to forget how she became that way.

She must have singular, especially for her era. Think about it. She'd been collecting supplies for relieving soldiers' suffering all by herself, in her lodgings in D.C. . Getting various permissions to go to battlefields was a sticky cobweb of red tape and went nowhere. So she didn't just bypass that mess, she ignored it. Packed what she could and just, plain went. We're awfully lucky she did.
 
After the Great Flood of 1889 in Johnstown, PA. Clara Barton came to town and set up office in a local home. From my reading I have learned that this disaster was the first real life test of her newly formed Red Cross. She had hospitals and dormitories built and was instrumental in saving many lives and helping our town start back to some semblance of normal. The bottom picture is of her office.

Clara Barton Red Cross Hotel.jpg


Clara Barton Headquarters 1889.jpg
 
Antietam was the first battlefield on which Clara Barton was seriously under fire, the battle raging all about her. But she had been close to the fighting a few times previously.

It was in the late summer of 1862 that Clara Barton’s program for bringing help and comfort for the sick and wounded at the front took its full shape. Also about this time, she began to receive an increasing amount of attention in the national press. Largely this came about in letters home from serving soldiers. One such was a letter Harper’s Ferry, from Surgeon James L. Dunn, of the 109th Pennsylvania. to the Conneauteville (Pa) Reporter of October 25, 1862.

“The Sanitary Commission, together with three or four noble, self-sacrificing women have furnished everything that could be required. I will tell you of one of these women, Miss Barton, daughter of Judge Barton of Boston, Mass. I first met her at the battle of Cedar Mountain, where she appeared in front of the hospital at 12 o’clock at night, with a four-mule team loaded with everything needed, and at a time when we were entirely out of dressings of every kind; she supplied us with everything, and while the shells were bursting in every direction, took her course to the hospital on our right, where she found everything wanting again. After doing everything she could she returned to Culpepper, where she stayed dealing out shirts to the invalid wounded, and preparing soup and seeing it prepared in all the hospitals. I thought that night that if Heaven ever sent out a homely angel, she must be one, her assistance was so timely.​
“Well, we began our retreat up the Rappahannock. I thought no more of our lady friend, only that she had gone back to Washington. We arrived on the disastrous field of Bull Run, and while the battle was aging the fiercest on Friday, who should drive up in front of our hospital but this same woman, her mules almost dead, having made forced marches from Washington to the army. She was again a welcome visitor to both the wounded and the surgeons.​
“The battle was over, our wounded removed on Sunday to Fairfax Station; we had hardly got there when the battle of Chantilly commenced, and soon the wounded began to come in. Here we had nothing but our instruments, not even a bottle of wine. When the cars whistled up to the station, the first person on the platform was Miss Barton, to again supply us with bandages, brandy, wine, prepared soup, jellies, meal, and every article that could be thought of. She stayed there until the last wounded soldier was placed on the cars, then bid us good-bye and left.​
“We got to Alexandria that night and next morning. Our soldiers had no time to rest after reaching Washington, but were ordered to Maryland by forced marches. Several days of hard marching brought us to Frederick, and the battle of South Mountain followed. The next day our army stood face to face with the whole rebel force. The rattle of 150,000 muskets, and the fearful thunder of over 200 cannon, told us that the great battle of Antietam had commenced. I was in the hospital in the afternoon, for it was then only that the wounded began to come in.​
“We had expended every bandage, torn up every sheet in the house, and everything we could find, when who should drive up but our old friend, Miss Barton, with a team loaded down with dressings of all kind, and everything we could ask for. She distributed her articles to the different hospitals, worked all night making soup, all the next day and night, when I left, four days after the battle, I left her there ministering to the wounded and dying. When I returned to the field hospital last week, she was still at work, supplying them with delicacies of every kind, and administering to their wants, all of which she does out of her own private fortune.​
“Now, what do you think of Miss Barton? In my feeble estimation, Gen. McClellan, with all his laurels, sinks into insignificance beside the true heroine of the age, the angel of the battle field.”​


The writer was wrong about one thing. Clara Barton’s bounty did not come “out of her own private fortune” (which was quite small). Nor was she supplied by any government agency or commission. She had organized her own supply network, centered mostly in her native Massachusetts and also in New Jersey, where she had made her home. Volunteers in cities and towns collected donations of clothing, bedding, food, medicines, anything possibly of use, and shipped them to her warehouse in Washington. And she would personally distribute it from there. That organization made her entirely independent, and free to go anywhere she felt her services were most needed.

Clara did her best work when she was completely in charge.

Gardner Tufts of the U.S. Sanitary Commission was with Clara in Culpepper shortly after the battle of Cedar Mountain. He wrote:

"Before coming away they visited a place or hospital where most of the confederate wounded prisoners were. They found them very much in need of clothing and care.​
"Miss Barton -- taken to be one of the ladies of Culpepper -- was appealed to for sheets, clothing, and other articles. She told them she was from Massachusetts, and they instantly wore an air as if they didn't expect anything from her; but tears came in some of their eyes as she brought in the articles they wished, and showed them the kind attention of a noble woman."​
 
Last edited:
Clara did her best work when she was completely in charge.


Yes, she did. REALLY learned a ton more about Clara and how singular she was since the original post. Hadn't known for instance her post war Missing Soldier's office was the same place she'd lived while working in the Patent Office and must have been the place she first began collecting supplies. Well and also that she just, plain packed a wagon one day and showed up everywhere herself.

Thank you Dr. Dunn for leaving us your eye witness accounts.
 
Great series of posts. I wonder if she and Florence Nightingale ever corresponded? They were only about a year apart in age.
 
@John Hartwell has spent a lot of time in Clara's papers. Did you find anything between the two women, please?
To the end of her life, Clara Barton regretted that she had never met Florence Nightingale.

The best opportunity had been in 1872-3, when Clara was in London, recuperating from her most serious bout of illness, brought on by a decade of hard work and self-deprivation. Her fevers, and throat and chest troubles brought on by nervous exhaustion had her bed-ridden for long periods, and she temporarily lost her eyesight; she did not fully recover until long after her return to America in the fall of 1873. During that same period, Florence Nightingale, always physically less robust, was also a shut-in, much of the time in a private hospital. So the two were never able to meet.

I don't recall any mention of their corresponding, which seems strange. Clara, at least, was a prolific letter-writer.
 
Last edited:
To the end of her life, Clara Barton regretted that she had never met Florence Nightingale.

The best opportunity had been in 1872-3, when Clara was in London, recuperating from her most serious bout of illness, brought on by a decade of hard work and self-deprivation. Her fevers, and throat and chest troubles brought on by nervous exhaustion had her bed-ridden for long periods, and she temporarily lost her eyesight; she did not fully recover until long after her return to America in the fall of 1873. During that same period, Florence Nightingale, always physically less robust, was also a shut-in, much of the time in a private hospital. So the two were never able to meet.
What a shame...two great women...no, two great humans..man or woman.
 
171.JPG

I'd forgotten Clara was at Antietam's hospitals- Smith's barn has some of the most striking images we have of what can only be called primitive conditions. This is what Clara arrived to, docs doing their best in straw huts.
Monument to Clara at Poffenberger Farm.
170.JPG

172.JPG
 
Thanks very much, James! No idea why, maybe because it draws civilians into the conversation, that made me think of this Waud image- " Citizens aiding with wounded ", at Antietam. What they saw. Pretty sure Waud is depicting an amputation, left.

waud civilian wounded.JPG


Question please/ We have Miller's house, Sherrick's, Smith's, the church ( which is terribly iconic to me, Dunkers were anti-violence )- never discovered an era image of Poffenbergers- is there one or at least an era image where the house is included from a distance?
 
Back
Top