The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-04-06

! Since the wonderful Red Cross journey
| has been undertaken to Armenia loving
and old friends are filed with reminis-
cences and story of her early work in our
civil war. Such friends are many at the
capital.
In September 1862, Miss Barton left
Washington for the Blue Ridge with wa
gon-loads of supplies for the sick and
wounded. She had already miniStered to
the wowunded and dying from the battles
of Bull Run, Cedar Mountain and Chan
! tilly. When she reached Burnside's corps
after days of dusty travelling, sleeping IN
her wagon at night, she found the two
, armies lying face to face along the ridges
of hills that bounded the valley of An
tietam."
She ordered her mule teams to follow
! the lines of artillery, and through smoke
and fog of campfire and the dark air
of battle begun she turned into corn
! field and unloaded her supplies in an old
barn.
Confederate shot and shell few over her.
In the barnyard and field men were bleed
ing, torn and dying. The surgeons had
used their last bandages and were bind
ing up wounds with corn husks The
army supplies had not yet arrived. All
day long Miss Barton worked unceasing-
~ She fed the faint and dying all the
bread, dipped in wine. that she had;
moved them to the best possible places
found in the barn meal, flour and salt,
hidden there by the confederates.
Then began the cruel making in old
kettles, and before night Miss Barton
had twenty-five men at work with her
They carried buckets of hot cruel from
the barn and an old farmhouse near by
and across fields until the darkness fell
over the valley.
The porches of the house were used for
operating tables. All day long, under a
fierce battle, Clara Barton and the sur
geons worked over the dying men.
doctors al
the west, says: Never shall forget the
terror which seized me as 1 looked about
for candles. The supplies had not come.
The armies had stopped their firing Dark
ness crept over the hills and valley! A
surgeon near me said: This bit of candle
is all the light we have for tonight A
thousand suffering, dying, wounded menI
They viii perish before the day dawnsi'
Good Godp ! said, what a horror
Just then Clara Barton came back to
her post with a big bucket of Cruel and
said, cheerily: Doctor, we must light
up; we can't work or move about in the
DARK. poor boy almost at her feet
said: Shall L die alone-here-in-t the
dark?'
Miss Barton replied, joyously: WHY
Doctor, L brought thirty lanterns and
huhdreds OF candles" l learned a lesson
at Bull Run. We had a small supply 7
said after that light must be my first
thought" -'- 81
Both armies had laid down to rest
me uead were moved to one side that the
wounded might have care, and night
settled down on the dreadful scene.
The lanterns were quickly lighted and
hung in the bare old rooms, on the
porches, the fences and wagons. Can
dies were Pickering in all possible places
and the work of surgeons. doctors and
helpers went steadily on all through the
night.
The boy. who was so terrified by the
darkness said, as Miss Barton knelt be-
side him with the lantern on her arm:
"Oh, 1 sha'n't die alone now. I can see
your
An old friend of Clara Barton's wrote:
ut was well worth a journey to Antie-
tam to light the gloom of that night
Old soldiers love to tell the story, BED
Cross women have often heard it. and the
brave Christian woman of 96 is not
drawer, not more an angel of mercy, than
when she carried the light to the dark
valley of Antietam.-Margaret Spencer.