89 LESLIE GODDARD - CLARA BARTON

I want to thank all of you for coming here tonight, and especially for those of you who brought donations with you. I hope you don't mind, maybe I'll do a little bit of sorting as we talk. For those of you who brought onions, I especially thank you. You and I might not crave raw onions, but trust me, the soldiers do. Frankly, I think it's a scandal how difficult it is for our boys to get fresh vegetables. Usually all they ever receive are the Army's dried vegetables. Desiccated vegetables, they're called. Of course, you know what the soldiers call them. Desiccated vegetables. Now, lemons are nice, but they're really best by the whole box. Soldiers eat them like apples. They get so little acid, and they crave it so. I have seen a wounded man clutch at a lemon the way a child would an orange. Ugh, and soap, soap is desperately needed these days for obvious reasons. Bread, now, bread is good, but be aware it will often take several months to get to the boys, so it might get moldy in transport. But that's fine, they can just cut the moldy parts off and eat the rest. And bandages, bandages are the most desperately needed thing that we have these days. You all know how to make bandages, right? If you've never made them, here's what you do. Start with good fabric. Petticoats work well if you have any old ones, or tablecloths, sheets. Cut them into long, thin strips, about two or three inches wide. That's good for most wrappings. But do make some that are slightly narrower. One inch or so is good for finger and toe wrappings. And then roll them, but when you do so, the key is to make sure that the ends are as straight and even as possible so they can be stacked into boxes. And wind them as tightly as you possibly can so that they'll take up the minimal amount of space in transport boxes. Forgive me, all of you did not come here to learn how to roll bandages. You came here to learn about me. All right, I'm not very good at talking about myself, but I was born on Christmas Day, 1821. It must have been a surprise to my parents. They already had four children, two girls and two boys, all of them at least 10 years older than I am. Do any of you have older brothers and sisters? Do they ever make fun of you when you were growing up? Mine did, my older brothers would tease me mercilessly. I remember once my older brother Stephen asked me, could I name some of the stars up in the sky? And I remember saying, the Big Dipper? You mean a dipper like a spoon in the sky? Well, I've never seen a spoon up in the sky. I don't know where it is, but I'm only four years old. Now, the good part was they also taught me things. For me, it was like having six parents instead of just two. Stephen taught me how to ride a horse. I was riding a horse bareback by the time I was five years old. My sister Sally, she taught me how to spell. I remember my first day of class in a little one-room schoolhouse, I told the teacher, you have to put me with the other students who know how to spell artichoke because I can spell that. And David, David taught me all about math. In fact, it was my brother David who first introduced me to the joy of helping others. When David was about 21 and I was 11, he fell from off of a barn loft. He was helping our father to build a new barn. And the pole that was holding up the loft where he was standing suddenly snapped. He fell right to the ground. He became seriously ill. So badly, the doctors actually gave up hope for him. But I didn't. I vowed I could help him get better. So I did. I learned how to put cold compresses on his head, give him medications when he had a fever. In those days, the only thing we had for fever was opium. And I learned how to put leeches on him. If there's one thing that I just hate, it's leeches. These slimy, ugly bugs. But of course, these were the days when we believed leeches would cure a sick person. It's ridiculous, I know, but leeches will suck blood. And we believed that a leech would suck all the sick blood out of a person and help them get better. Ridiculous, right? But we believed it. So I became an expert at putting leeches on him. The key is you hold the leech onto the skin until it firmly attaches. Let it suck blood until it is completely filled, and then it will fall off. Or you can stick your fingernail under to break the seal and just peel it off. I became an expert at putting leeches on and taking them off when they were done. I don't know if it worked, but David got better. I was thrilled, although I missed that feeling of helping someone. Of course, it was not long after this that my mother thought it's time for me to think about getting married, starting a family of my own. I knew somehow that just wasn't for me. I wanted to be something on my own. Of course, there were not very many female nurses in those days. There were not even many hospitals, maybe a thousand hospitals in the entire United States. Well, maybe I could teach. No, no, I'm too shy for that. No, I can do it. No, I'm too shy. All right, I'll try. It was my first day teaching in a little one-room schoolhouse. 20 pupils sat right in front of me. I had no idea what to do. I finally just picked up a book and started to read. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form, and darkness covered everything. All 20 of those pupils listened. And then later on, out in the yard, some of the older boys started getting rowdy as they were playing. I just picked up a ball and joined their game. They were impressed how well I could throw. Remember, I had four older brothers and siblings. So maybe being a teacher is not so hard after all. And it wasn't. I taught on and off for the next 10 years or so. Then I happened to be visiting a friend of mine who was living in New Jersey, and I noticed all these children just wandering around the town in the middle of the day. I met one of the school board members, and I said to him, Mr. Seidem, I've noticed many children in your town do not attend school. You know there is a state law requiring you to provide free public education. Well, I'm sure there are some good private schools, but what do you do for the children whose parents cannot afford private schools? I'll tell you what. I'm a teacher. If the school board will open up a free public school, I will stay and teach them at no cost other than room and board. You don't have to like it, sir. It is the law. I will be back tomorrow. I expect to hear your answer. Well, Mr. Seidem, as it turns out, was deep down a good man. He convinced that school board to open up the first free public school in the state of New Jersey. On the first day of classes, I had six pupils. By the end of that year, I had 600. And not long after that, the school board decided to build a new school building and establish the paid position of principal. And would you believe I was not offered the job because I am a woman. They gave it to a man instead. I, of course, immediately quit. I might sometimes be willing to work for nothing, but if anyone is paid, I will never do a man's work for less than a man's pay. I did not realize it at the time, but that was the end of my teaching career. Now what do I do? Well, I went to visit my sister, who happened to be living in the city of Washington near Virginia. Have any of you ever been to the city of Washington? If you have, you know it's just a frontier town. When I arrived, most of the streets were unpaved. Most of the buildings were just rough wooden shanties. But I found a position as a clerk in the US Patent Office. First woman the federal government ever hired. Of course, the other clerks all resented me. They called me a pest in petticoats. They would blow cigar smoke in my face. Sometimes they would spit on my shoes as I walked past. I just ignored them. I might have been terrified, but I never let it show. There were bigger problems facing our country by then. By this point, slavery had deeply divided our country. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, several southern states just pulled away, decided to start their own country. Mr. Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 men to sign up as troops. Washington began to fill up with soldiers. I heard that a train with some soldiers from Massachusetts had arrived on it, maybe even some of them coming from Worcester, right near my hometown. They had been attacked while they were crossing through the city of Baltimore. It had taken them a week just to get from Boston to Washington. So of course, when they arrived, several friends and I rushed down to the railroad station. Excuse me, I'm looking for a train with some soldiers from Massachusetts on it. Simon? Simon Wilcox, last time I saw you, you were just a boy working on the farm near David's place. We heard how horrible it was for you in Baltimore. Shocking. We'll come and visit you. Where are they taking you? The US Capitol? Are you sure? There were very few spaces left in any official barracks buildings, so any government building was being used, including the United States Capitol. Yes, we'll come and visit you. What do you need? They needed everything. Their luggage had disappeared in those riots in Baltimore, and they had nothing. Some of them did not have a spare clean shirt. Many did not even have an extra handkerchief. We, of course, emptied our pockets and gave them whatever we had, and then rushed home and filled baskets with spoons and forks, needles, threads, buttons, candles. At the very last minute, I tossed in a copy of our hometown newspaper, the Worcester Spy. They asked if I would read the newspaper to them when I came to deliver everything, so I perched on the only available space, the desk of the President of the United States Senate, and I read them the entire newspaper out loud. And as I was walking home that day, an idea came to me. What if I wrote to the Worcester Spy? What if I asked their readers to send them food and clothing for their husbands and sons? Or money, so I could buy the things that their boys needed? The response staggered me. Church organizations, sewing circles, ladies' aid societies began flooding me with boxes. So many boxes arrived, I barely had room to sort them. I will never forget watching in June of 1861, as our boys set out on their 100-mile march south to the new Confederate capital at Richmond. For days, this continuous line of soldiers marched out of the city. Handsome, brave, gallant fellows, apparently lacking for nothing. Oh, and behind them, this merry band of picknickers. They wanted to go see a war. Those soldiers had gone maybe 20 miles when they met up with the new Confederate Army near a little creek called Bull Run, and they were ruinously defeated. We watched our soldiers come staggering back into the city. It was immediately clear to me how ridiculous the Army supply system was. That battlefield, inadequate medical supplies and help, a terrible lack of supplies and preparation, and very little effort to help the wounded men until they arrived back in Washington, which was often days or even weeks later. Nearly 1,000 wounded men were sent back to Washington without receiving any medical help first. I was there. I saw their suffering rise, swarming over open wounds, these pitiful cries for water. Those men should have been helped immediately on the battlefield, not days or weeks later. I had supplies. I decided I should be the one to start bringing them the help they needed. Here was the problem. It was unheard of in those days for a woman to go by herself to a battlefield, a single woman alone among rough men. Shocking. I'm ashamed to tell you, but I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety. I mean, what would people think? Would my reputation be ruined? As the suffering continued and the casualties just kept mounting, I set aside my fear. I decided I had to go to the front. All I needed was wagons for the supplies, well, and men to drive the wagons and permission to go through the lines. I went to see the head of the Quartermaster Depot, Colonel Daniel H. Rucker. His office had a desk for him behind a little railing with a gate. The room was full of mail orderlies, all of them looking busy and important. It brought out all my bashfulness. My palms began to sweat. My cheeks grew flush. Finally, Colonel Rucker turned to me. Well, what do you want? I want to go to the front. The front? Now, that's no place for a lady. There's going to be a battle. But that's why I want to go. I'm not afraid of a battle. What? Have you got father or brother there? No, I have no one there. But I do have some things I'd like to bring to the boys. What sorts of things? Not just delicacies. I have real food. Pickled vegetables and meat and medical supplies. I have bed shirts and sheets and bandages. Where is it all? Oh, it's in my home, sir. And in my three warehouses. Three warehouses? Good heavens. He was impressed and immediately wrote me out a note. Ms. C.H. Barton has permission to pass through any line and take any government transport for the purpose of visiting the soldiers and supplying them. When we heard not long after that, that our armies had clashed again at a place called Cedar Mountain, I decided it was time. Some volunteers joined me in loading up those wagons and we rushed to the front. What we saw there made us shudder in horror. Men were lying on the ground, some of them right where they had fallen and often covered in blood. Some of them had had arms and legs blown off in the fighting. But even though my whole life I have always been terribly bashful, I found I had no hesitation, none whatsoever about helping those boys. We worked for three days and nights helping these men, nursing them in churches, in schools, even in barns. There was a surgeon working there who wrote a note to his wife. He later sent me that very letter to tell me what he had said. At a time when we were out of supplies of every kind, she supplied us with everything. And while the bullets were flying, she stayed, handing out food, seeing bandages distributed. I thought that night, if heaven ever sent out a homely angel, she must be one. Not sure that I care for that word, homely. Let's change it, shall we? How about holy? I thought that night, if heaven ever sent out a holy angel, she must be one. I think that's much better, don't you? At the Battle of Chantilly, we worked in the midst of pouring rain, handing out what little food we had. What we had that time was hard army crackers. We would put these into our haversacks and then pound them into crumbs with rocks and then stir the crumbs into a mixture of wine or whiskey and water and sweetened with a little sugar. Not very appetizing, no. But I can assure you, every drop of it was eaten by those poor men. Another time, we came upon at least 200 six mule army wagons crowded with wounded men and all of them sunk, all the way up to the hubs in mud. There was a young clergyman there, standing nearby me. He turned to me and he said, do you think those wagons are filled with wounded men? I said to him, oh, I'm quite sure they are. What do you think we should do for them? Well, we could start by feeding them. I have heard some of those men have gone as long as 28 hours without any food or water. Being a clergyman, he says to me, well, we have plenty of reading material, but no food in any quantity except crackers. Well, I have coffee, so hard crackers and coffee it will have to be. So we built a fire, brewed up big pots of hot coffee. I showed him how to tie a tablecloth like an apron around his waist. That way he could hold crackers in the tablecloth and still keep both hands free for a pot of coffee and an invalid cup. We made our way down a grassy slope to the edge of this muddy basin where all the wagons were. Here, this young man stopped and he says to me, how are we supposed to get to the wagons? Well, there's no way I can see except to walk. I think he thought I was crazy, but I simply stood up straight and stepped right into that mud. And I'm proud to tell all of you that that young man lifted up his tablecloth, took his very first real steps into military life. People will talk about transporting supplies as if it were just easiest thing imaginable. To transport supplies 20 or 30 miles across a country and always under the threat of attack from enemy troops. Do you know how long a train of army supply covered wagons is? It can be several miles long. And the order is always the same. First, the wagons filled with ammunition, then the wagons filled with food and supplies for the healthy troops. And finally, medical supply. We could no more change this order than we could go up in the sky and change the position of a star. But in case of a battle, according to this order, medical supplies might arrive three or four days later. And meanwhile, our boys would be getting weaker. And even dying. I decided it was time for a new plan. So, my team and I stopped early one night, we found a resting place and went to sleep. In the early hours of the morning, when everything was still dark, we got up, ate, harnessed, and moved on past the whole line. By daylight, we were up by the ammunition. And by nightfall that day, we had caught up with the soldiers. We knew where to go, because soldiers, you know, always sing as they march in order to keep time. So, we listened for the sound of their singing. It was faint in the morning, but grew louder as we got closer. So, it went something like this. ♪ John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave ♪ ♪ His truth is marching on ♪ ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ His truth is marching on ♪ Can you see why we felt such pride in our soldiers? 80,000 men marching on to meet the enemy, to save our union. That night, I was so energized, I could not even sleep. I remember I woke up at about 2 a.m. and went outside my tent. I remember the moon was shining through a haze, casting moving shadows across those thousands and thousands of soldiers' tents. All that I could think was, thy will, oh God, thy will be done. Many of you will never hear a rebuke or awakening you, but if you had heard it that morning as it rang through the camp, you would know why I still hear it to this day. And that morning, sure enough, a huge battle began several miles away off on our right. Using field glasses, we could barely see our boys overcome and starting to fall back. I decided our place was there, so we loaded up the wagons and we followed them. In the last few miles towards the battlefield, we met dozens of wounded men, either walking or being carried to the rear. Finally, we stopped in a cornfield near a little farmhouse with a yard. The fighting here must have been horrific because around the barn lay about 100 wounded men. These were the ones too badly wounded to even be moved. And it was not yet 10 o'clock. As I went in the gate to that little farmhouse's yard, a surgeon, Dr. Dunn from Philadelphia, nearly ran into me. My God, he said, how did you get here so fast? And you have supplies? Do you know we have nothing? Nothing but our instruments and what little chloroform we brought with us. We have used the last rag we could find in the house. There is not a scrap of fabric left to be used as bandages. Surgeons were hard at work in every room of that farmhouse, either removing bullets or taking off arms and legs, which were then casually tossed outside the door. At the foot of a tree, just in front of that house, a heap of feet and legs and arms stood. By the end of the day, it was several feet tall. On the porch of that farmhouse stood four tables. Each one had a patient on it with a surgeon standing over him and beside him, a pile of corn leaves. They were using corn leaves as bandages. Oh, be grateful, ladies, for all those sheets and petticoats that you cut up and rolled because for you that day, those men gave thanks and blessings. Three times that day, the battle came to that little farmhouse. Twice more, our boys were driven back and then pushed forward again. Each time, dozens of wounded men joined our ranks. The fighting was so thick that pretty soon we could hear explosions in the trees outside. We could hear them among the men lying on the ground. Bullets even peppered the upper floors of that farmhouse until it was riddled with holes. By noon, the smoke was so thick, we could not see more than a few inches in front of us. The hot breath of sulfur dried out our lips until they bled. At one point, as I walked through the barnyard, a soldier lying on the ground asked me, please, a drink of water. So I went to the pails of water and I fetched him an invalid cup filled with water. I lifted up his head with my left hand and with my right hand, I held the water to his lips. Suddenly, I felt a twitch in my sleeve and the soldier jerked back. A mini ball had entered my sleeve and slammed right into his chest, killing him instantly. There was nothing more that I could do for him, so I covered him with a blanket and left. It seemed poor thanks for all that he had suffered. Do you know, I never have mended that hole in my sleeve. I wonder sometimes if soldiers ever mend the bullet holes in their sleeves. The way that these men could endure pain. At one point, I saw another young man lying on the ground with a bullet under his cheek. He gave me this imploring look, so I went over. What is it, is it your cheek? No, no, no, I could not possibly take it out myself. Let me fetch a surgeon for you. I'm sure one can come for you. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. All right, if the pain is that intense, I will get it out. This was a new call. I had never before cut the nerves and fibers of human flesh. I took a pocket knife out and I prepared. I'm sorry, I cannot possibly hurt you so much. He gave me as much of a smile as his mangled face could manage and told me I could not possibly hurt him. He could endure any pain, he said, that my hands created. How could I ignore that? So I opened up the blade of my pocket knife and I prepared. A young sergeant from Illinois was sitting next to him. He had a bullet directly through both legs. He had been watching us this entire time and when he saw me start to prepare with no one to help, he offered to help. He managed to sit up, slid himself over, held this young man's head in his hands while I cut that bullet out and then washed and bandaged up the face. I do not think any surgeon would have said it was a very scientific operation, but my patient was so relieved and so grateful. I dare to hope it was at least successful. At about noon, my volunteers came to say the last loaf of bread had been served. The last cracker we had had been eaten. There was no food left. Oh, what to do, what to do. Are there any boxes of that medical wine left? All right, open up those and give the soldiers that wine. Heaven forgive us. What is it? To our astonishment, the women who had been packing up these bottles of wine to be used as medicine, they must have run out of the sawdust that they had been using as a packing material. The last few boxes had been packed instead in finely sifted cornmeal. Cornmeal, if it had been gold nuggets, we would not have felt any richer. I looked around at my men and they were all surreptitiously wiping their eyes. We did not say anything. We just went right back to work, found some big kettles and set them up over fires. We brewed up a hot cornmeal gruel. And all that night, my men carried buckets of hot gruel for miles across the battlefield to the wounded still lying right where they had fallen. As darkness fell, I told my men to get the lanterns out of our wagons and to hang them up in and around the bar. Then I went up to the farmhouse. The surgeon in charge that day was sitting next to a little table on which he rested an elbow, staring at a tiny piece of candle. I said to him, you look tired, doctor. Tired? Yes, I am tired. I am tired of such heartlessness, such carelessness. Here are at least 1,000 wounded men, terribly wounded. 500 of them will not live until morning without help. And this, two inches of candle. It's all that I have. It's all I can get. What can I do? How am I supposed to endure this? Doctor, come here. Look, you see that? The barn is lit and the house will be too very soon. Who did this? I did. But where did you get them? Brought them with me. How many have you got? Many, dozens. I have four boxes of candles. He was so overwhelmed, he could not even speak. His eyes just filled with tears as he turned away. All that night, we worked and hoped and prayed, but it was only in the light of the next morning, as we looked out over that vast battlefield, that we fully realized at what a fearsome cost our boys had won the Battle of Antietam. And for me, it was only days later when I finally returned to Washington that I looked at myself for the first time. Tired, ragged, blood-stained, gloveless. This sense of desolation and pity and weariness all blended together, swept over me. Oh, the cost of this war, the desolation and the anguish and the want that have spread over our country since this war began. 23,000 either dead or wounded in one day at Antietam. 300,000 dead in one year, dead everywhere. On every battlefield they lie, in the crowded yards of every prison ground, under the waves of the ocean, and by the roadside, where that tired soldier simply lay down with his knapsack and his gun and simply died of exhaustion. In all these strange beds, our soldiers now lie. The fields of Virginia and many other battlefields are rich with their blood. And yet, and yet I feel such pride in our soldiers. That victory at Antietam gave Mr. Lincoln the ammunition he needed to announce his Emancipation Proclamation, the beginning of the end of slavery, the evil that has plunged us into this great war. And for myself, my work has continued. I was down at Fredericksburg, helping there when the battle moved there. I spent much of 1863 in South Carolina. I was there in the assault on Fort Wagner. I attended the aftermath of the battle at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse. I know that now my work seems to be ending. Much of the supply work that I've been doing has been taken up now by the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission. But I don't think that my work is over yet. I've been assisting recently in Annapolis at Camp Parole. This is where federal soldiers released from prisons are brought to be rehabilitated before being paroled back into the army. The stories that they tell us of starvation, they arrive in this camp with untended wounds and nearly dying of malnutrition. And you know, the army has no way of notifying families when a soldier goes missing, is taken into prison custody, or even dies. It is left entirely to the enlisted men or the officers of a unit to inform a family if a soldier in that unit is either captured or falls dead. But what if a soldier falls dead on a battlefield and is buried and there is no way for the family to know what happened? And we hear the same stories coming out of the prison camps. Horrifying stories coming out of the prison camp in Andersonville, thousands of men who die. As many as one out of three soldiers who have died. And there's no way for the families of those grieving to know what happened to their husbands or their sons. So I have decided if I cannot do any more good work with the living soldiers, I can turn my attention to helping the dead soldiers. I worked with my dear friend, Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. He spoke with President Lincoln, who has agreed to allow me to set up an office of missing soldiers. This is my office right here. We have taken over three rooms at the front of this boarding house where I've been living, right here on 7th Street since 1861. We have issued press releases to be published in northern newspapers asking any family, if you are looking for a missing soldier, write to us. Tell us his name, the state he is from, the unit, anything you can. We are compiling lists of these missing men to be printed on great posters and mailed to communities across the north, to be posted on public billeton boards or published in local newspapers. If you notice any of them, take a look at the names on that list. And if you know what has happened to any name on that list, write to me. Let me know and I will contact the families for them. When I first started this work, I thought it would be minor at best. Then my brother Stephen died and I had to leave Washington for about a week. I went back to Massachusetts to see to his proper burial and the disposition of his estate. When I returned, there were 300 letters from desperate families looking for a missing soldier. 300 letters in one week. So I have now hired 10 clerks to assist me here in this work. No, I am not independently wealthy. We rely on donations from people like you. We rely on income from the lectures circuits that I can complete. I'm hoping the federal government might give money, but for now, we rely on the generous support of people like you. This is important work. We're now dealing with about 100 letters coming in every day. It is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of soldiers who are missing, but it is good and useful work. I will continue to work for soldiers, whether they are deceased or living, as long as there is work to be done. No matter where there is a need, whether it is on the battlefield or here in Washington, I will be there. You've never known me without work and you never shall. While the soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and serve them. Now, if you'll all excuse me, I really should go and sort out these donations and get back to the work that needs to be done. I hope that all of you will continue to join me in doing whatever needs to be done for our very brave boys in blue. Thank you all so much, and I hope to see you again soon.