Transcripts For CSPAN3 Clara Barton And The Missing Men Proj

Clara barton during the civil war. Miss stiehm argues that she played a major role in playing for caring for soldiers during and after the war. This talk was hosted by Georgetown Public Library and it is about an hour. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming out this rainy day. I am the librarian here at the peabody room. A special collection of georgetown neighborhood history and it is part of the District Of Columbia Public Library special collections which consists of the washingtonian and black studies. Both of those are located at the Martin Luther king jr. Library. I would like to welcome miss jamie stiehm back. She has become one of our regulars here talking about a disparate group from American History. She is a syndicate columnist and contributor to usnews. Com, today she will speak about clara barton remarkable civil war humanitarian work. [applause] ms. Stiehm this is the Perfect Place to be speaking about civil war washington. The room itself takes us there. I am happy to see all of you. I will speak for about 20 minutes and then open the floor to questions. You probably know that clara barton was a civil war nurse. There was much more to her than that. She was a humanitarian. If she were alive today she might have one the nobel peace prize. To pick up in 1861, clara barton was a 39 year old single woman with new england written all over her demeanor. She could not rest easy until she found a way to join the army. From the first day that the flood blood was spilled in civil war, in baltimore, four died in baltimore. She was an raged because several of her enraged because several of her School Friends were among the dead. She rushed to the regiments aid, and self defined herself as one of the on the people that was there just for the soldiers, outside the government to ease their pain and suffering. She left her job as a copyist. She was a single, selfsupporting woman who lived on 7th street here in washington. She left her good job to witness scenes of mass misery that broke all the record books. She did not sign up for the army nursing core organized by dorsey addicts dorsia dicks. She flew solo into the unknown. A rare civilian in the fog of war. She witnessed many of the most harrowing battles. For one day, that was the Bloodiest Day in Civil War History and military history. She got to the farmhouse on the firing lines and she went to work. She brought lots of supplies given to her by womens aid groups that wanted to help soldiers. They saw she had brought the latest thing, a lantern. To illuminate the house, the porch, the surgeries that could not wait until morning. Later, in a littleknown coda to her civil war career, she went on an army mission to andersonville. It was a nightmarish georgia prison, or war camp, where thousands of, seated corpses thousands of emaciated corpses lay in mass graves. She honored the dead with similar military burial. This is the thing that the president personally asked clara barton to undertake. Stanton was so tough that even president lincoln was afraid of him. It was a huge honor for her to go to andersonville. In 1861, the massachusetts sixth regiment after being stoned in the streets of baltimore, losing four of their ranks, they retired to the capital in the new Senate Chamber to recuperate. The building was eerily quiet because the southern senators had said their farewells like jefferson davis. Basically the capital was out of business. Although the chamber that we know well had just been built. The building was empty of lawmakers, and outside the capital had no crowning dome. It was still a work in progress. Barton arrived soon after with her spirits lifted in furious sympathy for her home state men and friends. She made herself quickly busy and indispensable in the chamber. She read the newspaper aloud from the senates president chair and she distributed which he had collected of her own volition. She gave encouragement and her clear, low voice. In itself a comfort. Later, soldiers start for a starved for a womans presence, fighting for their lives, said just listening to her comforted them. The episode in the capital served as a spark and a template for bartons resolved to go to the war front. Whether it was a bruising defeat at the second battle of bull run, or a dispiriting loss at fredericksburg, she came armed with relief supplies to treat the injured of the army of the potomac. Fredericksburg was especially bad because it was in the winter of 1862. The Confederate Army had set up a trap for the Union Soldiers. It was a losing battle with somebody injured that family so many injured that family members came to their site their side including walt whitman. Like clara barton, he was galvanized by the civil war. He was like a volunteer nurse to soldiers, whom he visited nearly everyday. Getting access to the camps was made easier for clara barton thanks to letters written by her ally, senator henry wilson. Even so, barton had to overcome cultural obstacles and bureaucratic resistance to requests to get passes to the front. She spent valuable time here on 7th street, anxious about delays go to the battlefield. Where the union and confederate armies crashed, she cooked gruel, soups and meals for hundreds. Her own apple pie made a good dessert. She changed bedsheets, even those covered with dysentery. She cleaned and tended to wounds. She walked along the ward and offered sips of water or whiskey. She listened to the lovesick stories of a soldier whose real name was mary. A teenage runaway who ran from wisconsin to find her sweetheart in a regiment. A soldier begged clara barton to cut out an unbearable bullet from his cheek. All she had was a penknife, but she did it, with another Soldier Holding his head. In other words, barton did a lot of everything that desperately needed to be done. Nursing did not exist as a profession before the war. It was urgently invented on the job. The civil war, just passed it second summer, had already caused more bloodshed than either side ever anticipated with no end in sight. As the historian has observed, the American People had nothing to prepare them for the profound scale of death that the civil war brought. It affected lives in every remote city, even the island of nantucket which had stayed neutral. Clara barton held up pretty well under challenging conditions to say the least. She slept in a tent, or in the barracks. At other times, if Union Army Soldiers decided to take a more spacious break, living was easier. Those times were a winter both sides took a winter this is about the time she began to fall in love with a union army officer. Thats something they dont tell you in second grade. [laughter] for a period, starting in spring of 1863, barton dwelled on the island of hilton head, south carolina. It was the heart of rebel country. South carolina was the most intransigent of all the states. As the summer wore on, with hostilities raging between the sea islands have you ever been there . She described it this way we are being scorched by the sun, chilled by the waves, rock chilled by the waves, rocked by the trenches tempest, toiling day after day in the trenches. She was there until a summer day when union chips shelled the confederate held wagner on a nearby island. Barton watched them apartment the bombardment from lookout hill. She was a beautiful writer. She cut the scene so vividly. It was grand the armed description, despite the battle turning out badly for the union. Once again, a massachusetts regiment was making history. The famous 54th. Composed of africanamerican soldiers, commanded by a white officer, shaw. Formed shortly after the emancipation proclamation, the 54th led the leading brigades against shaw and roughly 200 of 600 of his soldiers died in this fierce engagement. Full dress, crossed the units and all bayonets and all. It was a testament to the bravery and gallantry of the 54th, because they went where no one else dared to go. In the south, this stoked the fire of racist hatred leading to a policy on paper that all black soldiers captured would be brutally treated and hanged. Certain death with no exchanges. The civil war cut uglier and uglier and demeanor meaner. It was an absolute nightmare that people considered it as a sporting event in the beginning, but then it escalated far past anyones nightmares. Tending to the wounded and dying soldiers at the beach hospital on bloodstained sand, she had a set exchange with an africanamerican soldier returning. A former slave who had and listed enlisted in 1854. In the 54th. He said, he knew that he was dying, but he thanked god that his children would be free. For me, that is the saddest line i have ever read about the civil war, and she was there to witness. This is according to bartons biographer. Such a man, barton felt, was a soldier of freedom. At the scene she told the dying black soldiers that they were soldiers for freedom. She caught the meaning of the word so beautifully. She was on the same page as Abraham Lincoln. Most people originally thought of the civil war as a way to keep the sides together, to save the union. But later it had expanded to liberty, freedom and justice. It was more about that than real estate. Tending to the wounded and dying soldiers at the beach hospital, she comforted and put down many dying soldiers. These were indelible images for the rest of her life that she told the public about later. Barton is often considered the civil war nurse who later founded the red cross. She was more than that. She is better understood as a forceful humanitarian who acted on her own, original, unorthodoxed, ideas. She helped establish the principle that the nations must remember, record, and bury its stead. Its dead. That comes from drews book called this republic of suffering. She is now the president of harvard. In 1865, clara barton was not taking a vacation. She opened up a small Correspondence Office in the boarding house where she lived on 7th street. It was called the friends of the missing men of the United States army. There was a waiting office where she met with hundreds of people over the course of a year. Thousands of people over the course of 23 years. She found a way to locate and identify with detective work where were these missing men. What battle where they in as they fell . At this time, she lost her job as a copyist at the patent office. It was kind of insulting. Nobody thanked her for all the work she had done. But you must see how resilient she was. Whatever slights she suffered, she always kept her eye on the larger cause. Here, i might add, that she ran on manic energy at the battlefield. She also suffered deep depressions. In a way she was alone in the world, but really not. She made the world her own. During the missing soldiers period of her life, she met a young man who not only survived andersonville, but he had saved a secret desk register. He was the aide to the commandant who kept records and stole the records. He wanted the world to know what had happened here. It was obviously a fate worse than death to be a andersonville. There was terrible disease, polluted water. It was unspeakable. The commandant of andersonville was hanged for war crimes after the civil war. She made it her personal mission, her destiny, to identify the roughly 13,000 Union Soldiers who perished there. An Army Expedition was ordered by stanton. A gruesome errand in the summer of 1865. You can imagine how hot it was in georgia under the blazing sun. It was a rough ride, because they were not happy to have her. In part, thanks to her urging, a new National Cemetery was quickly underway. When it was finally settled, in the hot georgia son, nearly all the union dead were identified. Some with emaciated remains. Along with 450 unknown soldier headboards. On an august day in 1865, that was recorded by harpers weekly, the american Stars Stripes parades over andersonville to reclaim the ground, the land itself, from the confederacy. Clara barton race the colors in the dedication ceremony, front with formal victory, but also with the hope of healing the torn human spirit. Thank you. [applause] i visited where clara barton lived on 7th street just yesterday. I can tell you, if youre curious about that. The rest of her life was very full as well because she went to switzerland where the red cross and the Geneva Convention were already in place. She came back to the United States with a determination to found the american chapter of the red cross. To persuade our leaders to be part of the Geneva Convention because she had personally witnessed some of horror and misery in wartime. She went through the crucible of the United States and lived to tell many stories about it. She lived on 7th street, near e, and in her later years in flynn echo. She really never stopped until she was in her 90s. She died at the age of 90. She retired about four years before her death. She was a very damn yankee, in my book. She was indefatigable. Want to know about her family or her education or what brought her to that moment where she was ready to take it on. Ms. Stiehm she was born and raised in north oxford, mississippi. Her family had a farm. In those days, there was no college for women, but she did go to a coed academy. Massachusetts girls were almost certainly the best educated in the whole United States, because it championed education for both. She was unusual to begin with coming to the south. This is the self. South in those days. She was close to her father and her brothers, she did not get along with her mother at all. She nursed one of her older brothers through a sickness for a year when she was young. This all came natural to her. She was a single woman. She never married. She was unusual in being a single, selfreliant woman here in washington. That gave her a seat at the spectacle of the civil war, and she was drawn into it. Does that answer your question . [indiscernible] could you talk more about how that became so they she got as well, and how common that was . Ms. Stiehm nursing was womens in work, or girls work. Growing up, a lot of girls knew how to nurse just the way that they knew how to milk a cow. It was something that was part of their skill set. During the crimean war, it was established as a profession for women, alongside teaching, being a governess, running a boarding house those were about the only avenues for advancement for women who were not married. The crimean war and the civil war were close in time and both established the need for more trained nurses, in emergencies, under pressure, in an organized hospital setting. My great aunt was a nurse and world war i. It was a female dominated profession for decades. It was an honorable one that women could undertake, if they could stand the sight of blood. Does that answer your question . There are a lot of Nursing Schools that universities that tried to elevate it to more than just bandaging wounds. When she went to geneva, did she meet the founder of the red cross . Ms. Stiehm im sure that she did. I know that she met with red cross officials. She was not that well aware of the red cross. When she got there, going to switzerland on a wellearned vacation, that she became acquainted facetoface with the red cross. That really became her most Lasting Legacy to this day. In her lifetime she was more famous than she is now as the civil war figure. Florence nightingale was the lady with the lamp, the angel of the battlefield. There was a period for a couple years where she was on the lecture circuit giving stories of her experiences in the civil war and she demanded the same lecture fee that Ralph Waldo Emerson received. She had a strong sense of her own dignity and duty. Did she helped establish the red cross in this country . Ms. Stiehm i dont know. You mean the same kind of resistance to the Geneva Convention . I dont think so. She was absolutely, completely determined and undaunted. It might take years to a compass what she set out to do. Have you seen pictures of her . She seems ageless and dignified. I saw a hand on this side of the room. No . You mentioned that she suffered from depression. Was there any indication of how she could get herself out of it . Ms. Stiehm there was the talk there was not the talk therapy and modern medicines that we have today and she has a few confidants and she wrote letters, detailed, deep, descriptive and flowing letters. I think that was just therapy. Day by day. Interestingly, Florence Nightingale and clara barton lived to be 90. They were very close in age. One was born in 1821 and the other in 1820. On christmas of 1861, she had her 40th birthday the civil war coincided with her age 40 to 44. She was well into adulthood. She had done some teaching as far as womens professions, they not run forld office said were not formally involved in politics. They do not have as much of a civic identity as a community or domestic role. Called thetually doctrine of separate spheres. Women had one and men had another and those should not intertwine that is neither here but if you are single that is neither here nor there. Yes. Could you say a little bit more about Florence Nightingale and the clara barton, their relationship or how they reviewed by society at the time . They were both very important, powerful people. Ms. Stiehm they carved out their own civic identity. They were not close, i wouldnt say they had a friendship, but obviously they knew of each other. The idea of the lady with the lamp happened in the 1850s with the crimean war. She came shortly after that so it was not completely a radical concept. They were both very headstrong and if they had been married, they might not have done what they did. You mentioned the author who is a great scholar of ethical medical advances. Are there biographies that you think are particularly good . This biography, which i have here, i found very valuable. There is an earlier one by elizabeth prior from the 80s and this one