contributions at times when they were most wanted. She herself declares, with generous exaggeration, that if she has ever done any good, it has been due to the watchful care and kindness of General Rucker.

About the close of 1861, Miss Barton returned to Massachusetts to watch over the declining health of her father, now in his eighty-eighth year, and failing fast. In the following March she placed his remains in the little cemetery at Oxford, and then returned to Washington and to her former labors. But, as the spring and summer campaigns progressed, Washington ceased to be the best field for the philanthropist. In the hospitals of the Capitol the sick and wounded found shelter, food and attendance. Private generosity now centered there; and the United States Sanitary Commission had its office and officers there to minister to the thousand exceptional wants not provided for by the Army Regulations. There were other fields where the harvest was plenteous and the laborers few. Yet could she as a young and not unattractive lady, go with safety and propriety among a hundred thousand armed men, and tell them that no one had sent her? She would encounter rough soldiers, and camp-followers of every nation, and officers of all grades of character; and could she bear herself so wisely and loftily in all trials as to awe the impertinent, and command the respect of the supercilious, so that she might be free to come and go at her will, and do what should seem good to her? Or, if she failed to maintain a character proof against even inuendoes, would she not break the bridge over which any successor would have to pass? These questions she pondered, and prayed and wept over for months, and has spoken of the mental conflict as the most trying one of her life. She had foreseen and told all these fears to her father; and the old man, on his death-bed, advised her to go wherever she felt it a duty to go. He reminded her that he himself had been a soldier, and said that all true soldiers would respect her. He was naturally a man of great benevolence, a member of the

Masonic fraternity, of the Degree of Royal Arch Mason; and in his last days he spoke much of the purposes and noble charities of the Order. She had herself received the initiation accorded to daughters of Royal Arch Masons, and wore on her bosom a Masonic emblem, by which she was easily recognized by the brotherhood, and which subsequently proved a valuable talisman. At last she reached the conclusion that it was right for her to go amid the actual tumult of battle and shock of armies. And the fact that she has moved and labored with the principal armies in the North and in the South for two years and a half, and that now no one who knows her would speak of her without the most profound respect, proves two things—that there may be heroism of the highest order in American women--and that American armies are not to be judged of, by the recorded statements concerning European ones.

Her first tentative efforts at going to the field were cautious and beset with difficulties. Through the long Peninsula campaign as each transport brought its load of suffering men, with the mud of the Chickahominy and the gore of battle baked hard upon them like the shells of turtles, she went down each day to the wharves with an ambulance laden with dressings and restoratives, and there amid the turmoil and dirt, and under the torrid sun of Washington, toiled day by day, alleviating such suffering as she could. And when the steamers turned their prows down the river, she looked wistfully after them, longing to go to those dread shores whence all this misery came. But she was alone and unknown, and how could she get the means and the permission to go? The military authorities were overworked in those days and plagued with unreasonable applications, and as a class are not very indulgent to unusual requests. The first officer of rank who gave her a kind answer was a man who never gave an unkind reply without great provocation-Dr. R. H. Coolidge, Medical Inspector. Through him a pass was obtained from SurgeonGeneral Hammond, and she was referred to Major Rucker, Quar

termaster, for transportation. The Major listened to her story so patiently and kindly that she was overcome, and sat down and wept. It was then too late in the season to go to McClellan's army, so she loaded a railroad car with supplies and started for Culpepper Court-House, then crowded with the wounded from the battle of Cedar Mountain. With a similar car-load she was the first of the volunteer aid that reached Fairfax Station at the close of the disastrous days that culminated in the second Bull Run, and the battle of Chantilly. On these two expeditions, and one to Fredericksburg, Miss Barton was accompanied by friends, at least one gentleman and a lady in each case, but at last a time came, when through the absence or engagements of these, she must go alone or not at all.

On Sunday, the 14th of September, 1862, she loaded an army wagon with supplies and started to follow the march of General McClellan. Her only companions were Mr. Cornelius M. Welles, the teacher of the first contraband school in the District of Columbia—a young man of rare talent and devotion—and one teamster She travelled three days along the dusty roads of Maryland, buying bread as she went to the extent of her means of conveyance, and sleeping in the wagon by night. After dark, on the night of the sixteenth, she reached Burnside's Corps, and found the two armies lying face to face along the opposing ridges of hills that bound the valley of the Antietam. There had already been heavy skirmishing far away on the right where Hooker had forded the creek and taken position on the opposite hills; and the air was dark and thick with fog and exhalations, with the smoke of camp-fires and premonitory death. There was little sleep that night, and as the morning sun rose bright and beautiful over the Blue Ridge and dipped down into the Valley, the firing on the right was resumed. Reinforcements soon began to move along the rear to Hooker's support. Thinking the place of danger was the place of duty, Miss Barton ordered her mules to be harnessed and took her place in the swift train of artillery that

was passing. On reaching the scene of action, they turned into a field of tall corn, and drove through it to a large barn. They were close upon the line of battle; the rebel shot and shell flew thickly around and over them; and in the barn-yard and among the corn lay torn and bleeding men -the worst cases—just brought from the places where they had fallen. The army medical supplies had not yet arrived, the small stock of dressings was exhausted, and the surgeons were trying to make bandages of corn-husks. Miss Barton opened to them her stock of dressings, and proceeded with her companions to distribute bread steeped in wine to the wounded and fainting. In the course of the day she picked up twenty-five men who had come to the rear with the wounded, and set them to work administering restoratives, bringing and applying water, lifting men to easier positions, stopping hemorrhages, etc., etc. At length her bread was all spent; but luckily a part of the liquors she had brought were found to have been packed in meal, which suggested the idea of making gruel. A farm-house was found connected with the barn, and on searching the cellar, she discovered three barrels of flour, and a bag of salt, which the rebels had hidden the day before. Kettles were found about the house, and she prepared to make gruel on a large scale, which was carried in buckets and distributed along the line for miles. On the ample piazza of the house were ranged the operating tables, where the surgeons performed their operations; and on that piazza she kept her place from the forenoon till nightfall, mixing gruel and directing her assistants, under the fire of one of the greatest and fiercest battles of modern times. Before night her face was as black as a negro's, and her lips and throat parched with the sulphurous smoke of battle. But night came at last, and the wearied armies lay down on the ground to rest; and the dead and wounded lay everywhere. Darkness too had its terrors, and as the night closed in, the surgeon in charge at the old farm-house, looked despairingly at a bit of candle and said it was the only one on the place; and no one could stir till

morning. A thousand men dangerously wounded and suffering terribly from thirst lay around, and many must die before the light of another day. It was a fearful thing to die alone and in the dark, and no one could move among the wounded, for fear of stumbling over them. Miss Barton replied, that, profiting by her experience at Chantilly, she had brought with her thirty lanterns, and an abundance of candles. It was worth a journey to Antietam, to light the gloom of that night. On the morrow, the fighting had ceased, but the work of caring for the wounded was resumed and continued all day. On the third day the regular supplies arrived, and Miss Barton having exhausted her small stores, and finding that continued fatigue and watching were bringing on a fever, turned her course towards Washington. It was with difficulty that she was able to reach home, where she was confined to her bed for some time. When she recovered sufficiently to call on Colonel Rucker, and told him that with five wagons she could have taken supplies sufficient for the immediate wants of all the wounded in the battle, that officer shed tears, and charged her to ask for enough next time.

It was about the 23d of October, when another great battle was expected, that she next set out with a well appointed and heavily laden train of six wagons and an ambulance, with seven teamsters, and thirty-eight mules. The men were rough fellows, little used or disposed to be commanded by a woman; and they mutinied when they had gone but a few miles. A plain statement of the course she should pursue in case of insubordination, induced them to proceed and confine themselves, for the time being, to imprecations and grumbling. When she overtook the army, it was crossing the Potomac, below Harper's Ferry. Her men refused to cross. She offered them the alternative to go forward peaceably, or to be dismissed and replaced by soldiers. They chose the former, and from that day forward were all obedience, fidelity and usefulness. The expected battle was not fought, but gave place to a race for Richmond. The Army of the Poto