Evening star., 1952-04-20

Sprlngtlme washington 80
years ago. in 1862, was a city
of crisis more grave for it's in
habitants than any of the many
crises which harass her to-
day. The country was torn by
civil war, then a year old, and
the city was a vast hospital,
filling up with sick and shat
tered soldiers. Emergency hos
pitfalls were everywhere.
The mortality rate among
wounded soldiers from the time
they were hurt until they
reached Washington was fright
full. The task of relieving the
misery of these men, from the
time they were hit on the bat
tlefield until they reached a
hospital, was the challenge
taken up, unprompted, by a
timid, maiden woman called
Clarissa Harlowe Barton. The
world today knows her simply
as Clara. . 49,.
New En9Ionder
A former New England
schoolteacher. she had come to
Washington in 1855. The cry
ing need of wounded soldiers
became apparent to her in April
1861, soon after the war started,
when she rushed to the depot
in Washington to meet the
9Th Massachusetts, Regiment,
the first to reach here after
Lincoln's call for troops.
This regiment from her home
State had fought off a seces-
sionist mob at Baltimore and
reached Washington with a car
full of dead and wounded.
Waiting at the depot. with
lotions, salves and bandages,
were Clara Barton and other
devoted women. The wounded
were hurried to an infirmary.
The regiment encamped in the
Senate chamber. Here small,
prim Clara Barton brought bas-
kets of food for the homesick
boys. While they ate, she sat
at the Vice Presidents desk and
read to them news from the
Worcester (MassD Spy, a home
town paper for many of them.
Germ Of the Ideo
This was the turning point
in the life of Clara Barton.
After the first Bull Run battle
she went to the docks, the
hospitals. the crude receiv-
ing stations for the sick
and wounded. Here she saw the
pitiful neglect that cost so many
lives, the tragic lack of care be-
tween the bullet and the hos
pital."
At length she went to the War
Departments Medical Bureau
and scandalized its directors
with an insistent demand that
she be allowed to 60 to the bat
tlefieldS to minister to wounded
boys. The bureau replied that
no woman had ever gone to the
firing line. Soldiers would call
her a camp follower. Besides,
Army regulations said fatty, no.
Uphill Bottle
In the spring of 1862 she ap-
pealed to the newly appointed
Surgeon General at Washington,
DR.. William A. Hammond, for
permission to go to the Virginia
battlefields. She used every
avenue of influence, mostly her
own persuasive tongue. She
badgered the Surgeon Generals
Office from day to day. How she
finally and single-handedly tri-
umphed over inertia and preju-
dice is not known. But at last
she obtained from the new
Surgeon General an authorize
ton. 1t read: Miss C. H. Bar
ton has permission to 60 on the
sick transports in any direction
for the purpose of distribut-
ing comforts to the sick and
wounded--and nursing them
always subject to the direction
of the surgeon in charge"
Whatever else Hammond may
have done-he was later court
martialed and dismissed for ir-
regularitieS in the award o1
contracts-he at least launched
Clara Barton on the great mis-
sion Of her life. It might vel
be said that the American Rec
Cross dates from this day ir
1862 when Clara Barton set out
ito follow the cannon" as she
once put it.
Her first battle experience
came Quickly, at Cedar Noun
tain (also called appropriately