CHAPTER X
FROM SCHOOLROOM TO PATENT OFFICE
Clara Barton’s work in Bordentown was a marked success. But it involved strenuous labor and not a little mental strain. When it was over, she found her reserve force exhausted. In the latter part of 1854 her voice gave out, and she gave up teaching, for a time as she supposed, and went to Washington.
She did not know it, but she was leaving the schoolroom forever. Yet she continued to think of herself as a teacher, and to consider her other work as of a more or less temporary character. Twenty years later, she still reminded herself and others that “fully one fifth of my life has been passed as a teacher of schools.” The schoolroom had become temporarily impracticable, and she wanted to see Washington and to spend time enough in the capital of the Nation to know something about it. Washington became her home and the center of her life plans for the next sixty years.
Clara Barton did not long remain idle in Washington. At the request of Colonel Alexander De Witt, the representative in Congress from her home district, she received an appointment as clerk in the Patent Office at a salary of $1400 a year. She was one of the first, and believed herself to have been the very first, of women appointed to a regular position in one of the departments, with work and wages equal to that of a man. Her appointment was made under President Pierce, in 1854. The records when searched in later years were found to be imperfect, but the following letter from the Honorable Alexander DeWitt to the Honorable Robert McClelland, Secretary of the Interior, shows clearly her status at the time of its date, September 22, 1855:
Having understood the Department had decided to remove the ladies in the Patent Office on the first of October, I have taken the liberty to address a line on behalf of Miss Clara Barton, a native of my town and district, who has been employed in the past year in the Patent Office, and I trust to the entire satisfaction of the Commissioner.
She had, indeed, performed her work to the entire satisfaction of the Commissioner. There had been serious leaks in the Patent Office, some dishonest clerks selling secrets to their own financial advantage and to the scandal of the department and injury of owners of patents. She became confidential clerk to the Honorable Charles Mason,—“Judge Mason” he was called,—the Superintendent of Patents. That official himself had a hard time under the Secretary of the Interior, Robert McClelland.
At different periods in her life, Clara Barton had several different styles of handwriting. There is a marked contrast between the clear, strong penmanship which she used when she left the schoolroom and the badly deteriorated form which she employed after her more serious nervous breakdowns. When she was lecturing, she wrote a very large hand, easy to read from manuscript, and that affected her correspondence. Some of her lectures are written in characters nearly a half-inch in height. Then she reverted to the “copper-plate” style of her young womanhood, and in that clear, fine, strong penmanship she wrote till the end of her life.
Handwriting such as hers was a joy to the head of the Patent Department. It was clear, regular, easily read, and accurate. The characters were well formed, and the page, when she had done with it, was clean and clear as that of an old missal.
She was not long in rousing the jealousy of men in the department who loafed and smoked and drew their pay. Some of them were anything but polite to her. They blew smoke in her face, and otherwise affronted her. But she attended strictly to her business. She was removed, but Judge Mason gave her a “temporary appointment,” and she worked, sometimes in the office, and sometimes, when political affairs were such that her presence there gave rise to criticism, at home. She waded through great volumes and filled other great volumes. A letter to her brother Stephen in the autumn of 1856 gives some idea of what was happening in Washington:
Monday Morning, Sept. 28, 1856
Dear Brother:
I don’t know why I have not written you before, only I suppose I thought you had enough to occupy your attention without my uninteresting scrawls. I have been hearing of late that you were better than when you first came home, but I have not heard a word when you expect to return.
We are having a remarkably fine fall, cool and clean, and I have not seen more than a dozen mosquitoes this summer.
The city has just been somewhat disturbed, i.e., the official portions of it (and this is the greater portion at this particular time), in consequence of the resignation of Judge Mason, which was tendered to the President some eight days ago, and no notice whatever taken of it until day before yesterday morning, the Judge in the meantime drawing his business to a close, packing his library, and Mrs. Mason packing their wardrobes, and on Friday evening, when I called on them, they were all ready to leave for Iowa next Tuesday at three o’clock. They both explained particularly the nature of the circumstances which induced them to leave. You have known before that Congress guaranteed to the Commissioner of Patents the exclusive right of making all temporary appointments in his department, and that Secretary McClelland had previously interfered in and claimed the same. He commenced upon the most vulnerable points, something like a year ago, when he removed us ladies, and, partially succeeding in his attempts, has been enlarging his grasp ever since, and a few weeks ago sent a note to Judge Mason forbidding him to appoint any temporary clerk unless subject to his decision and concurrence, giving to the Judge the right to nominate, reserving to himself the privilege of appointing. Then Congress having voted some $70,000 to be used by the Commissioner of Patents in procuring sugar-cane slips (if so they might be termed) from South America for the purpose of restoring the tone of the sugar growth in the South, which is becoming exhausted, and the Commissioner having procured his agent to go for them, the Secretary interfered, said it was all useless to send an agent, the military could attend to it; he had the agent discharged, and delayed the matter until it was too late to obtain the cuttings this year, and the Commissioner, being thus deprived of the privilege of complying with the directions received from Congress, and thereby unable to acquit himself creditably, resigned, but at the last moment the President came to his room, and invested him with power to act as he pleased in all matters over which the law gave him jurisdiction, and he promised to remain until the Secretary should return from Michigan, and see how he behaved then. The Secretary is making himself extremely odious; he may have, and doubtless has, friends and admirers, but I never met with one of them.
Fannie writes me that little Mary has burned her arm; is it badly burned? Does father still think of coming South this winter? Hobart was a slippery stick, wasn’t he, and what did he mean? How do you arrange with Fisher? Some way I hope that will last so that he can’t slip his halter and leave poor Dave to chase after him, with a measure of oats in one hand and a cudgel in the other, as he has all summer. You will come to Washington, I am sure, on your way to Carolina; it is best that you should—I want so much to see you. I want to talk a good long talk with you that I cannot write. I have so many things to say, all very important, of course. But write me soon and tell me when you will return. I must go over to the city and look what I can do to make ready for the comers.
Please give my love to all inquiring friends; write and come and see us.
Your affectionate sister
Clara
How stand politics, and who is going to be President? The Democrats are looking pale in this quarter.
Buchanan was elected, and Clara Barton continued in the Patent Office for a time unmolested. But the election lost her one of her best friends in Washington, Colonel De Witt, a resident of Oxford, and representative from her home district, through whom her first appointment had come, and who had been her constant friend. Just before the inauguration of President Buchanan, she wrote her home letter to Julia, and sent it by the hand of the retiring representative, who volunteered to take her letter to her home:
Washington, D.C., Mar. 3rd, 1857
Dear Sister Julia:
Our good friend Colonel De Witt has kindly offered to become the bearer and deliverer of any despatches which I may wish to send to Yankee Land, and knowing from good authority that a call upon you might not be a hard medicine for him to take, I avail myself of the opportunity to tell you that we are all engaged in making a president; intend, if no bad luck follow, to finish him off and send him home to-morrow. I hope he may finally give satisfaction, for there has been a great deal of pains taken in fitting and making him up, but there are so many in the family to wear him that it is scarcely possible that he should be an exact fit for them all....
We are at our same old tricks yet here in the capitol, i.e., killing off everybody who doesn’t just happen to suit us or our peculiar humor at the moment; we have indeed some shocking occurrences at times. You have probably seen some account of the homicide which took place in the Pension Office the other day; if not I think the Colonel will be so kind as to give you some of the first points and relieve me from the disagreeable task of reciting so abrupt and melancholy a matter. My opinion of the matter is that the man who gave the offense, and from whom the apology was due, remained doggedly at his office, armed, and shot down his adversary who came to make the very explanation which the offender should have sought. Colonel Lee (I think), instead of sitting there at his desk hugging a concealed pistol to his unchristian and unmanly breast, should at that very moment have been on his way to Alexandria to apologize to Mr. House for the previous night’s offense. The man may perhaps meet the sympathy of the world at large, but at present he has not mine.
And last night a terrible thing occurred within the district. It appears that the almshouse and workhouse are, or rather were, both the same building, very large, new and fine. Last night, curiosity or something else equally powerful caused the keepers of the establishment all to leave the premises and come up to the city, a distance of three miles, I suppose, locking the building very securely, fastening in all the inmates, I have no idea how many, but the house took fire, and burned down, consuming a great portion of its inhabitants, old, lame, and sick men and women and helpless infants. Only such were saved as could force an escape through the barred windows—was not that horrible? Now it would seem to me that in both these cases there was room left for reflection on the part of some one. I think there would be for me if I were in either of their places.
I would attempt to tell you something how sorry I am that the Colonel is going home to return to us no more, but if I wrote all night I should not have half expressed it. I am sorry for myself, that I shall have no good friend left to whom I can run with all my annoyances, and find always a sympathizer and benefactor, and especially am I sorry for our (generally) old State. I pity their folly; they have cut off their own hands after having blocked all their wheels; they cannot stir a peg after the Colonel leaves; they have not a man on the board they can move; and who is to blame but their own poor foolish selves? Well, I am sorry, and if crying would do any good I would cry a week, steadily. I don’t know but I shall as it is....
Remember me especially to “Grandpa,” and tell Dave I like him a leetle particularly since he didn’t sign that petition.
From your affectionate sister
Clara
For a time after the election, political matters settled down, and Clara continued her work unmolested. She was home for a time in the spring of 1857, but back in Washington through the summer, and in that time went through huge volumes of technical description and copied the essential parts into record books for the purpose of reference and preservation.
It would make this volume more consecutive in its connections if out of her letters were culled only such items as related to particular topics; but her letters must be read as she wrote them, with news, gossip, inquiry about home matters, answers to questions, and all just as she thought of them and wrote about them. In the early autumn of 1857 she wrote to Julia:
Washington, D.C., Sept. 6th, 1857
Dear Sister Julia:
I dare not ask you to excuse me for neglecting you so badly, but still I have a kind of indefinable hope that you will do so, when you remember how busy I am and that this is summer with its long weary days and short sleepy nights; and then the “skeeters!” Just as soon as you try to write a letter in the evening to anybody, they must come in flocks to “stick their bills.” In vain have I placarded myself all over on every side of me, “Stick no bills here”—it doesn’t do a bit of good, and but for the gallant defense of a couple of well-fitted nets at my windows, I should long ere this have been pasted, scarred, and battered as the wooden gateway to an old theater, or the brick wall adjacent to an eleven-penny-bit lecture-room. I should, however, have written out of selfishness just to hear from you, only that by some means intelligence gets to us that father is better, and the rest of you well. My health is much better than when I was at home. I have been gaining ever since Miss Haskell came. She relieves me many ways. The yellow has almost gone off of my forehead, else it has grown yellow all alike; but it looks better, let it be which way it may; it isn’t so spotted. Bernard has been home and got cured of the chills and fever, and gone back again; expect Vest. home soon. I am not much better settled than ever; liable to pick up my traps and start any day. I am glad you found my mits, for I began to think I must have had a crazy fit and destroyed my things while I was at home. To pay for losing my parasol, I made myself carry one that cost fifty-six cents! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Well, it is the best I have had all summer, and I walked to church under it to-day; so much to pay for carelessness. I also left a large bottle of some kind of drugs, I guess in your parlor cupboard. Please give it closet room awhile, and I will come sometime between this and the middle of January at farthest and relieve you of it. I may spend Christmas with you, cannot tell yet, but I shall be home while the snow is on the ground if I live, and maybe before it comes, but if I do I shall stay until it is there, for I am determined to have a sleigh-ride with old Dick. Oh, I am so glad every time I think of it, that he beat Dr. Newton, blast his saucy picture! Will try it again when the snow comes.
I have written “a heap” since my return; let me see, seven large volumes, the size of ledgers, I have read all through and collected and transferred something off of every page—3500 pages of dry lawyer writing is something to wade through in three months; and out of them I have filled a great volume almost as heavy as I can lift. My arm is tired, and my poor thumb is all calloused holding my pen. I begin to feel that my Washington life is drawing to a close, and I think of it without regret, not that I have not prized it, not that it has not on the whole been a great blessing to me. I realize all this, but if I could tell you in detail all I have gone through along with it, you would agree with me that it had not been all sunshine. I look back upon it as a weary pilgrimage which it was necessary for me to accomplish. I have nearly done, so it has been a sturdy battle, hard-fought, and I trust well won.
But how do you all do? How are Grandfather and Dave, and the little ones? How I do want to see you all! Has father’s leg got so he can use it well again? Does it pain him? Do the children go to school? How are Mary’s[4] congress gaiters?—a perfect fit, I hope. Tell her to be a good girl and learn to read, for I shall want to hear her when I come home. Wash Bubby’s[5] eyes in bluing water; it may improve the color. Please give my love to Cousin Vira, Mrs. Aborn, and after this according to discretion. Is Martha in New Worcester? I should like to see her. We have had a fine summer thus far—very few hot days.
Please tell father that I was not silent so long because I had forgotten him, but I had scarce time to write, and I get so tired of writing. Please write me soon and tell me all the news. I will bring your jewelry when I come. I feel guilty to have taken it away.
Your sister, most affectionately &c &c &c
Clara
The Democrats had some reason to look pale, for no one could predict just how well John C. Fremont would run. But he was not elected. The Democrats returned to power, with James Buchanan as their successful candidate. As the election approached, it became evident that this was to be the result, and the Democratic chief clerk of the Pension Office, certain that he was to succeed Judge Mason, desired Clara Barton to be as good a Democrat as possible that she might not fail to be his confidential clerk: but she was already a “Black Republican.” Her father had been an old-time Jackson Democrat, and the administration under which she was appointed was Democratic; but she heard Charles Sumner’s great speech on the “Crime Against Kansas” and she was convinced. “Freedom is national; slavery is sectional,” he said, and she believed him.
She was not yet sure that slavery ought to be interfered with where it was, but she was with the party that opposed its further extension, and this imperiled her future as a clerk if James Buchanan was elected. Just before the November election, she wrote to Julia, David’s wife:
Washington, D.C., Nov. 2nd, 1856
Sunday EveningDear Sister Julia:
Your looked-for letter came safe to hand; you may well suppose we were anxious to hear from you considering the alarming nature of the one which had preceded it. Stephen must have had a very distressing time, but I am so glad to know that he is relieved and has decided to let some one else be his judge in reference to getting out. I hope he will continue firm in the faith and venture nothing; it is of no use to strive against nature; he must have time to recruit and he has no idea of the time and care it will require to rid his system of the troublesome disease which has fastened upon him. I am glad you have found a physician there who knew how to name his disease. I have known all the time, since the first time he wrote me of his illness in Carolina, what the trouble was, and said when I was at home that he had the dumb chills, but no one would believe an ignoramus like me. I have no doubt but he had had his ague fits regularly since his first attack without ever once mistrusting the real cause of his bad feelings. People say there are two classes of community that the shaking ague never attacks, viz., those who are too lazy to shake and those who will not stop. Stephen belongs to the latter and I to the former, so we must have dumb ague if any. I am glad that father is better, and hope I shall not hear of David’s getting down again this winter; he must keep well enough to come out and see us. We are all very well, only that I have a slight cold, which will wear off, I guess. The weather is delightful, but getting quite cool. We saw a few flakes of snow last Friday, but one would never mistrust it by the Indian summer haze which is spread over the city this evening.
We are all dreading the confusion of day after to-morrow night, when the election returns are made. There will be such an excitement, but the Democrats are the most certain set of men that I ever saw; their confidence of success in the approaching contest is unbounded. Judge Mason has gone to Iowa to vote, and Mr. Stugert (our chief clerk) will leave the city to-morrow night in order to reach Pennsylvania in time the next day. He is one of Mr. Buchanan’s most intimate friends. He called to take me to Georgetown one evening last week, and during the evening he conversed respecting the approaching election. His spirits were unbounded, and his confidence in the right results of the election as unbounded. He wished me to say I would be commissioner and chief clerk for him until his return, but I declined the honor, declaring myself a Freemonter. This he would not hear a word of and walked all around the parlors in company with the Reverend Mr. Halmead assuring all the company that I was an “old school Loco,” “dyed in the wool,” and my father before me was the same, and requested them to place no confidence in anything I might say on the present occasion, as the coffee was exceedingly strong and he passed my cup up five times. I thought this latter three fifths of a mistake, but could not quite tell.
Lo, Bubby [Stephen, her nephew] says he will come to Washington. Well, he must go and ask Colonel De Witt to make him a page, and if the Colonel can do it, Bub can come and stay; he is large enough to carry letters and papers about the House, and do little errands for the Members. I guess he had best ask the Colonel and see what he says about it. Irving is getting ready to take our mail to the office and I must hasten to close my scrawl for the present. I had intended to write to Stephen to-day, but it is rather late; I may get time the first of the week, although I have a heavy week’s business in contemplation. How I wish I could drop in and see you all to-night, but that cannot be just yet. Please give my love to “Grandpa” [her father] and then all the others in succession as they come along, down to Dick [the horse]; is he as nice as ever? I want to see him too. Please remember me to Elvira and Mrs. Aborn, and write me soon again.
Tell Stephen he is a nice fellow to mind so well, and he must keep doing so. Irving is ready.
So good-bye.
Your affectionate sister
Clara
The country was steadily drifting toward war, and Clara Barton felt the danger of it. Although she was convinced that slavery ought not to be extended further, she was not yet an abolitionist, and she felt that violent agitators were taking upon themselves a serious risk in bringing the Nation to the very brink of bloodshed. She did not approve of the John Brown raid, and she was greatly concerned about the meetings that were held that seemed to her calculated to induce riot. She had her convictions, and was never afraid to speak them boldly, but she said, “It will be a strange pass when the Bartons get fanatical, and cannot abide by and support the laws they live under.” A neighbor who had been with Stephen in Carolina was driven away on account of utterances that followed the John Brown raid. She wrote to her brother Stephen at this time—the letter is not dated—and gave the fullest account of her own feelings and convictions concerning the issues then before the country, having in special mind the duty of Northern people resident in the South to be considerate of the conditions under which Southern people had to live. It is a very interesting letter, and the author of this volume could wish that it had been in his possession while Clara Barton was living, that he might have asked her to what extent her views changed in the years that followed:
I have not seen Mr. Seaver since his return, and regret exceedingly that there should have been any necessity for such a termination to his residence in the South. I should not have supposed that he would have felt it his duty to uphold such a cause as “Harper’s Ferry,” and if he did not, it is a pity he had the misfortune to make it appear so. Of course I could not for a moment believe him a dangerous man, hostile to either human life, rights, or interests, or antagonistic to the community among whom he resided, but if they felt him to be so, I do not by any means blame them for the course they took. Situated as they are, they have a right to be cautious, and adopt any measures for safety and quiet which their own judgment may suggest. They have a right even to be afraid, and it is not for the North, who in no way share in the danger, to brand them as cowards; they are the same that people the world over are and would be under the circumstances. Unorganized men everywhere are timid, easy and quick to take alarm. It is only when bodies of men are organized and disciplined, and prepared to defend themselves against expected dangers, that they stand firm and unshrinking, and face death unmoved. Occasionally we hear that you have been or will be requested to leave—this amuses me. It would be singular, indeed, if in all this time your Southern friends had not learned you well enough to tolerate you. It will be a strange pass when the Bartons get fanatical, and cannot abide by and support the laws they live under, and mind their own business closely enough to remain anywhere they may chance to be. I am grieved and ashamed of the course which our Northern people have taken relative to the John Brown affair. Of their relief societies, and mass meetings and sympathetic gatherings, I can say nothing, for I have never witnessed one, and never shall. From the first they seemed to me to be wrong and ill-advised, and had a strained and forced appearance; and the longer they are persisted in, and the greater extent to which they are carried, the more ridiculous they become in my sight. If they represented the true sentiments and feeling of the majority of candid thinking men at the North, it would savor more of justice, but this I believe to be very far from the facts. Their gatherings and speechifyings serve the purpose of a few loud-mouthed, foaming, eloquent fanatics, who would be just as ready in any other cause as this. They preach for notoriety and oratorical praise, fearlessly and injudiciously, with characters long stamped and nothing to lose. It matters little to them that every rounded sentence which falls from their chiseled lips, every burst of eloquence which “brings down the house,” drives home one more rivet in slavery’s chain; if slavery be an evil, they are but helping it on; it is only human nature that it should be so, and so plain a fact “that the wayfaring man cannot err therein.” Nature, and cause and effect, are, I suppose, much the same the world over, and if our Southern neighbors clasp their rights all the firmer, when assailed, and plant the foot of resistance toe to toe with the foot of aggression, it is not for us to complain of it; what differently should we ourselves do? That slavery be an evil I am neither going to affirm nor deny; let those pass judgment whom greater experience and observation have made capable of judging; but allowing the affirmative in its most exaggerated form, could it possibly be equal to the pitiful scene of confusion, distrust, and national paralysis before and around us at the present hour, with the prospect of all the impending danger threatening our vast Republic? Men talk flippantly of dissolving the Union. This may happen, but in my humble opinion never till our very horses gallop in human blood.
But I must hold or I shall get to writing politics to you, and you might tell me, as old Mr. Perry of New Jersey did Elder Lampson when he advised him to leave off drinking whiskey and join the Temperance Society. After listening long and patiently until the Elder had finished his remarks, he looked up very, very benignly with, “Well, Elder, your opinions are very good, and probably worth as much to yourself as anybody.”
Lincoln was elected and duly inaugurated. Clara heard the inauguration address and liked it. She witnessed nothing in the ceremony of inauguration which seemed immediately threatening. So far as she could discover, no one present had any objection to permitting the new President to live. There were rumors that Eli Thayer, of Worcester, who had done more than any other man to make Kansas a free State, was to be Commissioner of Patents. That was delightful news for her. It meant not only an assured position, but an opportunity of service undisturbed by needless annoyances. She had an invitation to the inauguration ball, but had to decline that dreary function on account of a cold. On the day following the inauguration, she wrote to Annie Childs, sister of Frances, her account of the day’s events:
Washington City, March 5th, 1861
My Dear Annie:
I have just a few minutes before dinner for which I have no positive call, and I am going to inflict them on you. Of course you will not expect an elaborate letter, for I by no means feel competent to the task to-day if I had the time.
The 4th of March has come and gone, and we have a live Republican President, and, what is perhaps singular, during the whole day we saw no one who appeared to manifest the least dislike to his living. We had a crowd, of course, but not so utterly overwhelming as had been anticipated; everywhere seemed to be just full, and no more, which was a very pleasant state of affairs. The ceremony was performed upon the East Capitol steps facing Capitol Hill, you remember. The inaugural address was first delivered in a loud, fine voice, which was audible to many, or a majority of the assemblage. Only a very few of the United States troops were brought to the Capitol at all, but were in readiness at their quarters and other parts of the city; they were probably not brought out, lest it look like menace. Great pains appeared to be taken to avoid all such appearances, and indeed a more orderly crowd I think I never saw and general satisfaction expressed at the trend and spirit of the Address. Of course, it will not suit your latitude quite as well, but I hope they may find it endurable.
It is said that the Cabinet is formed and has been or will be officially announced to-day. And there is some prospect of the Honorable Eli Thayer being appointed Commissioner of Patents. Only think of it! Isn’t it nice if it is true? Mr. Suydam has been spending the week with us; left this morning. Mrs. Suydam is better, he says. Mr. Starr is here.
We have had the most splendid spring weather you ever saw for two weeks past, no rain, but bright sunshine; it has been frightfully dusty some of the time and this day is one apparently borrowed from Arabia, by the clouds of sand.
I hear from you sister sometimes, but not until I have almost lost trace of her each time, but I am, of course, most to blame. I hope your business has revived with the approach of spring, as it doubtless has. You will not be surprised if I tell you that I am in a hopeless state of semi-nudity, just clear the law and nothing more. Sally told me on her return that you would have come out and stayed with us some this winter if you had thought it could have been made to pay, but as usual I knew nothing of this until it was too near spring to think of your leaving your business. How glad I should have been to have had you here a month or two, and I think I could have relieved you of the most of expense to say the least of it, if you were not doing much at home, and what a comfort it would have been to me to get right in the clothing line. Will there ever be another time that you would think you could leave, and come to Washington if I should remain?
Where is Fannie? Is she having a vacation now? Please give my love to her, and all inquiring friends, reserving a large share for yourself, and believe me,
As ever, your loving friend
Clara
Everybody would send love if they knew I were writing. I cannot report the Inauguration Ball personally, as I was not present; after a delightful invitation could not go. I have been having a very bad cold for a few days and a worse cough than I ever had, but I hope to get over it soon. I did not attend the last Levee.
[4] Mary—Mrs. Mamie Barton Stafford, daughter of David.
[5] Bubby—Stephen E. Barton, son of David, Miss Barton’s brother.