The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1896-04-30
Clara BartOn's Light.

Clara BartOn's Light.
Since the wonderful Red Cross jour.
ney has been undertaken to Armenia,
loving and old friends are filled with
"reminiscences and story of Clara Bar.
tons early work in the civil war. Such
friends are may at the capital.
In September, 1852, Miss Barton left
Washington for the Blue Ridge with
wagon loads of supplies for the sick and
wounded. She had already ministered
to the wounded and dying from the bat.
ties of Bull Run, Cedar Mountain and
Chantilly. When she reached Burn.
sides 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 val.
ley of Antietam"
She ordered her mule teams to follow
the lines of artillery, and through smoke
and fog of camp fire and the dark air
OF battle began, she turned into tall
cornfield and unloaded her supplies in
an old barn.
Confederate shot and shell fell over
her. In the barnyard and field men
were bleeding, torn and dying. The
surgeons had used their bandages and
were binding up wounds with corn
husks. The army supplies had not yet
arrived. All day long Miss Barton
worked increasingly. She fed the faint.
ing and dying, AL 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 gruel-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 field until darkness fell over
the valley.
The porches of the house were used
for operating tables All day long, un.
der fierce battle, Clara Barton and the
surgeons worked over the dying men.
One of the doctors, now an old man in
the west, says: "Never shall forget
the terror which seized me as 1 looked
about for candels. The supplies had
not come. The armies had stopped
their firing. Darkness crept over the
hill and the valley A surgeon near
me said hurriedly: "This bit of candle
all the light we have for to night!
A thousand suffering, dying, wounded
men They Will perish before the day
dawps"
"Good God !" said; "what horror!"
"Just then Clara Barton came back to
her post with big bucket of Cruel and
said, cherfully; Doctor, we must light
up; we can't work nor move about in
the dark A poor boy almost at her
feet said: Shall die alone-here-in
-the-dark ?"
"Why, doctor, l brought thirty lam
terms and hundreds of candles learn.
ed lesson at Bull Run. We had a
small supply. said after that light
must be my first thought"
Both armies had lain down to rest.
The dead were moved to one side, that
the wounded might have care, and night
settled down on the dreadful scene.
The lanterns we're quickly lighted
and hung in the bare old rooms, on the
porches, the fences and wagons. Candles
were fickering 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 ~
side him with the lantern on her arm
"Oh, shan't die alone now! can see
you !"
Old soldiers love to tell the story,
Red Cross women have often heard it,
aud the brave christian woman of 1896
is not brsver not more an angel of
mercy than when she carried the light
to the dark valley OF Antietam