from a
treasury already overtaxed, resigned her clerkship and devoted herself
to the assistance of suffering soldiers. Her work commencing before
the organization of Commissions, was continued outside and altogether
independent of them, but always with most cordial sympathy. Miss
Barton never engaged in hospital service. Her chosen labors were on
the battle-field from the beginning, until the wounded and dead were
attended to. Her supplies were her own, and were carried by Government
transportation. Nearly four years she endured the exposures and rigors
of soldier life, in action, always side by side with the field
surgeons, and this on the hardest fought fields; such battles as Cedar
Mountain, second Bull Run, Chantilly, Antietam, Falmouth, and old
Fredericksburg, siege of Charleston, on Morris Island, at Wagner,
Wilderness and Spotsylvania, The Mine, Deep Bottom, through sieges of
Petersburg and Richmond, with Butler and Grant; through summer without
shade, and winter without shelter, often weak, but never so far
disabled as to retire from the field; always under fire in severe
battles; her clothing pierced with bullets and torn by shot, exposed
at all times, but never wounded.

Firm in her integrity to the Union, never swerving from her belief in
the justice of the cause for which the North was fighting, on the
battle-field she knew no North, no South; she made her work one of
humanity alone, bestowing her charities and her care indiscriminately
upon the Blue and the Gray, with an impartiality and Spartan firmness
that astonished the foe and perplexed the friend, often falling under
suspicion, or censure of Union officers unacquainted with her motives
and character for her tender care and firm protection of the wounded
captured in battle. Their home-thrusts were met with the same calm
courage as were the bullets of the enemy, and many a Confederate
soldier lives to bless her for care and life, while no Union man will
ever again doubt her loyalty. All unconsciously to herself she was
carrying out to the letter in practice the grand and beautiful
principles of the Red Cross of Geneva (of which she had never heard),
for the entire _neutrality_ of war relief among the nations of the
earth, that great international step toward a world-wide recognized
humanity, of which she has since become the national advocate and
leader in this country.

[Illustration: Clara Barton. "Very Sincerely Yours Clara Barton."]

At the clo