A Woman of Valor

world, to simulate what it was like to be there with her as the war unfolded. How I came to write A Woman of Valor is a story in itself. For the past several years, I have worked on a sweeping biographical history of the entire Civil War epic, one that attempts to capture it through the intersecting lives of a dozen central characters. One of them was Clara Barton. Always fiercely independent, a dedicated loner, she refused to remain in my lineup. Every time I wrote something about her in conjunction with my other figures, I had the sensation that she was trying hard to keep me from knowing and understanding her. She would float into my consciousness without a face, for example, or give me the strange feeling that she was hiding from me somewhere in my study or had just bolted out the door. At one point, my computer abruptly malfunctioned and started throwing out an entire body of information, several months' worth of work on Jefferson Davis. Nothing I punched on the keyboard could stop the machine from its insane mission to erase every trace of the Confederate president from its memory. All I could do was watch in despair. At first, I blamed this on Davis' own stubborn pride, as if he were saying, you're not putting me in a book with Lincoln or any other hated Yankee. Later, I decided it was Clara again, trying to sabotage my project in an effort to get out of it. Finally, submitting to her superior will, I put the biographical work aside and set out to write Clara's Civil War story by itself, and on a new computer, I might add. After that, she cooperated fully. I was helped to my decision by the remarkable details, so many of them never before published, that I kept discovering in the Clara Barton archives. Now I have told the story Clara wanted me to tell, speaking in an empathetic voice that attempts to understand and capture her in all her complexity, all her humanity. I hope she is not too disappointed with the result. Part 1. The Search. Clara would never forget the day the Civil War first touched her personally. She was in Washington City, working as a copyist in the U.S. Patent Office, when she heard that something terrible had happened to the 6th Massachusetts Regiment in Baltimore. A riot, someone said. The soldiers had been attacked while marching through the city en route to Washington, and the survivors were due in on the next southbound train. Clara was indignant, excited, alarmed. She was from Massachusetts, North Oxford to be precise, and many of her childhood friends were members of the old 6th Regiment. She hoped to God none of them had been killed or wounded. Anxious to help the soldiers somehow, Clara and her sister, Sally Vassell, joined a crowd of Washingtonians hurrying toward the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station. Clara walked with a resolute, flat-footed stride, her head erect, her eyes focused straight ahead. Her full name was Clarissa Harlow Barton, and she liked to point out she was the daughter of Captain Stephen Barton, a veteran of the Indian Wars in the old Michigan Territory. She was small, slender, and striking, only five feet tall, with silky brown hair parted in the middle and combed into a bun in the back of her head. She had a round face, a wide expressive mouth, and exquisite dark brown eyes. It was hard to tell her age. She looked to be in her late twenties, but was actually thirty-nine. She was unmarried by choice, and one of only a handful of women employed by the federal government in Washington. In the current crisis, she was an ardent Republican and patriot. From the bottom of my heart, she wrote a cousin, I pray that the thing may be tested, may the business be taken in hand and proved, not if we have a government, but that we have one. It was April 19, 1861, seven days after Confederate forces had fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and plunged the country into civil war. Since then, the pace of ominous events was almost too much to comprehend.