Clara Barton: Nursing Outside the Box
Clara Barton, ca. 1866
[WARNING: For the next few weeks, it's going to be all Civil War all the time here at the Margins as we lead up to February 16, when Little Brown releases Heroines of Mercy Street into the world. I'll try to keep the My Book! My Book! to a minimum and focus on the stories instead, but I may slip now and then because I'm excited. On the upside, there will be a couple of chances to win copies of the book and possibly other swag if I can get my act together.]
When I first began talking to Little Brown and PBS about writing Heroines of Mercy Street, most of what I knew about nurses in the American Civil War could be summed up in two words: Clara Barton.*
Barton first caught my imagination when I was seven or eight, thanks to a child's biography that belonged to my mother. ** Coming back to her as an adult, I found that her story was more complex, and more amazing that I had realized. Instead of being the archetypical Civil War nurse, Barton was an original who worked outside the system. She avoided any alliance with the official nurses, though she did not hesitate to alternately charm and kick men in high places to get the support and permission she needed in order to provide comfort and medical care to "her boys" on the battlefield.
When the Civil War began in April, 1861, Barton was working as a clerk at the United States Patent Office , one of only four women employed by the federal government before the war. (In short, she was already a shin-kicker.) After Bull Run, she visited the wounded in the improvised hospital on the top floor of the Patent Office every day, bringing them delicacies and helping where she could.
Barton soon became a one-woman relief agency. She developed a personal supply network of “dear sisters” who sent her packages of food, clothing, wine, and bandages to distribute to the troops. In fact, she received so many boxes that she had to rent warehouses to store them.
Over time she became convinced that she was needed on the battlefield, where she could help men as they fell. When the Army of the Potomac was mobilized in the summer of 1862, Barton convinced the head of the Quartermaster Corps depot in Washington to assign her a wagon and a driver.
Armed with a pass signed by Surgeon General Hammond that gave her “permission to go upon the sick transports in any direction for the purpose of distributing comforts to the sick and wounded, and nursing them, always subject to the direction of the Surgeon in charge,” Barton delivered her supplies to the field hospital at Falmouth Station, near Fredericksburg. But she still felt she was not doing enough. When she heard that fighting had broken out at Cedar Mountain, she headed for the battlefield. Thereafter, in battle after battle, Barton ran soup kitchens, provided supplies, nursed the wounded, and tried to keep track of the men who died so she could tell their families what had happened to them. In between battles, she returned to Washington, where she collected the latest batch of supplies, wrote impassioned letters thanking the women who provided them, and fought with bureaucrats to be allowed to continue her work.
She became a such a familiar figure of comfort to wounded men, that scores of the men she helped on the battlefields named their daughters “Clara Barton” in her honor. But that wasn't her only legacy after the war… [This is known in the trade as a cliffhanger. Don't touch that dial.]
*Okay, six words: Clara Barton and Louisa May Alcott.
** I know I've mentioned them before, but I owe a debt of gratitude to the authors who wrote biographies for young girls about smart and/or tough women who sidestepped (or kicked their way through) society's boundaries and accomplished stuff no one thought they could accomplish. (Now that I think of it, a lot of those biographies were set in and around the American Civil War--which like WWI and WWII opened doors to women that had previously been closed.) To any of you writing similar biographies today (and I know you're out there), you're making a difference. Thank you.
History on Display: The Atlanta History Center
My Own True Love and I spent the Christmas holiday in Atlanta. It was by no means a Road Trip Through History, but in between attending a Christmas pageant and a high school basketball game, ripping open packages, anxiously watching a roast that wouldn't roast, organizing (and failing to organize) various meet-ups, and navigating winding roads in the rain and dark(1), we managed to squeeze in a visit to the excellent Atlanta History Center
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The museum wasn't exactly what I expected. Instead of an overarching history of Atlanta, it offered several small focused exhibits that were developed around the private collections of enthusiasts.(2) In less skilled hands, it could have been just a bunch of "stuff". In this case, the museum used the collections to tell stories. Always a good approach in my opinion.
I skipped the exhibits on American golf legend Bobby Jones(3) and the 1996 Olympic Games in favor of a temporary exhibit on the history of the Creek and Cherokee in Georgia and permanent exhibits on folk arts and the American Civil War.(4) Here are some of my takeaways(5):
- A greater sense of the process of treachery, trickery, and legal sleight-of-hand that the United States government used to move Native American peoples off their land. Ruling bodies of both the Creek and Cherokee nations formally declared their refusal to sell the lands they held as a group. Federal agents got around that refusal by identifying individual members of those nations who were willing to sign removal treaties, which were then ratified by the Senate at a speed astonishing even at the time. (Without approving the results, I wish our current Congressional leadership could find a similar sense of focus, unity, and speed.) Not a pretty story, but well told. It left me wanting to know more. That shouldn't be a problem; the Indian Removal Act of 1830 has been tracking me down in the weeks since I saw the exhibit. Stay tuned.
- Southern pottery was the heart of the folk arts exhibit: a truly impressive array of works by nineteenth century "clay clans" throughout the south and modern potters using traditional methods to create works of beauty. I was particularly fascinated by the story of David Drake, the best known enslaved African American potter, who was not only allowed to sign his pottery (a rarity among nineteenth century potters, slave and free alike) but to inscribe them with his own poetry.
- The scale on which pottery was needed prior to the American Civil War came as a surprise. In the days before the mason jar(6), people used clay jars to store just about everything. A family could need as many as 50 jars to hold a year's supply of sorghum. Not to mention pickled vegetables and other staples. (I'm not sure why this came as such a surprise. It was certainly true in the ancient world. Think of the hundreds of amphora discovered in wrecked ships.)
- The Civil War exhibit, titled Turning Point, was one of the best general exhibitions I've seen about the war. The museum did not try to trace the ebb and flow of battles, though it did compare and contrast Union and Confederate goals and actual outcomes for each year of the war. Instead it focused on the social and economic history of the war, beginning with one of the best demographic comparisons of the North and South in 1860 that I have seen. This was the first exhibit I have seen to deal with the South's need to create a munitions industry from scratch, the Civil War counterparts of Rosie the Riveter, the role of the international cotton trade in the war, the long-term consequences of the war for the Southern economy, and the mythic reach of the war well into the twentieth century. Well done, Atlanta!
Due to rain and time constraints, we only managed to see a portion of the center, which includes two historic houses with living history docents exhibiting life in the 1860s and 1930s(7) and 33 acres of gardens that show the horticultural history of the region as well as the museum proper. There are also new exhibits and the restoration of a nineteenth century cyclorama of the Battle of Atlanta in the offing. We'll be back. (That's a promise, Stacy Allen.)
(1) An experience which led us to bless the unknown inventor(s) of the grid system, who installed order on urban settings in the Indus Valley civilization, ancient Rome, and the Aztec Empire.
(2)AKA the lunatic fringe, which includes some of my favorite people
(3)Though perhaps I should have chosen that exhibit. I know little about golf and nothing about golf history. I might have learned something wonderful that I couldn't even imagine. An opportunity missed.
(4)Because that's where my head is right now, thanks to My Book, My Book!
(5)In checking whether or not to hyphenate, I discover that takeaway is an alternative term for a backswing in golf. Dang! I knew I should have gone through the Bobby Jones exhibit.
(6)The self-closing glass jar canning system was patented by Mason in 1858. He trademarked the name in 1871. Obviously it did him no good. Like aspirin, xerox and dumpster, the brand name has entered American English as a common noun, testament to the importance of the technology.
(7) I was sorry to miss that one. I've seen lots of historic homes from the nineteenth century, but not from the first half of the twentieth century. Time passes.
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Traveler's tip: Take a long-sleeved sweater. The museum is seriously air conditioned. I had a fleece vest and a light scarf and I froze. Even My Own True Love, who is happiest when the temperature drops, thought it was chilly in there.
Photo of the Atlanta History Center's Swan House courtesy of Evilarry - Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Violent and Often Ugly Story of How Portugal Won A Global Empire
In works such as City of Fortune, Empires of the Sea and 1453, historian Roger Crowley focused on the struggles between the Renaissance powers--Christian and Muslim alike--over who would control the Mediterranean and the lucrative trade between East and West. In Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, Crowley moves his account outside the Mediterranean to follow Portugal's maritime explorations down the coast of Africa and its gunpowder-fueled entrance into the Indian Ocean.
I have no doubt that you're familiar with bits of the story: Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Golden Goa, the Treaty of Tordesillas*. In Conquerors, Crowley expands the familiar stories of the Age of Exploration into an account that is darker and more complicated than the version presented in world history texts. He does not downplay Portugal's expansion of nautical technology and geographic knowledge or the heroic feats of courage, endurance and seamanship involved in its global expansion. Instead he places that knowledge and heroism within a historical context that explains them both. Poised between the era of the Crusades and the Renaissance, the Portuguese explorations were driven as much by the desire to make league with the mythical Christian king Prester John against the Muslims as by the desire for gold and spices. That crusading instinct and a fundamental lack of knowledge about Asia and the Middle East meant that the Portuguese entered the trading world of the Indian Ocean literally with all guns blazing. The result was a series of misunderstandings and violent encounters that resulted in Portuguese control of the maritime East-West trade--laid out by Crowley in gruesome and fascinating detail.
What can I say? Europe's expansion into the non-Western world was ugly.
*In which Spain and Portugal divided the earth like an orange without saving a slice for the other kids.
Most of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.