at she had no acknowledged position, rank, rights or duties,
was not employed, paid, or compensated in any way, had authority over no
one, and was subject to no one's orders. She was simply an American
lady, mistress of herself and of no one else; free to stay at home, if
she had a home, and equally free to go where she pleased, if she could
procure passports and transportation, which was not always an easy
matter. From many individual officers, she received most valuable
encouragement and assistance; from none more than from General Rucker,
the excellent Chief Quartermaster at Washington. He furnished her
storage for her supplies when necessary, transportation for herself and
them, and added to her stores valuable 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 conflic