This was a most interesting gallivant for us since we lived in the Burke area for many years. In fact, the Church that we were to visit was the same Church which we got our Christmas trees every year and although we were somewhat familiar with it back then we would soon become much more so.
St. Mary’s Church was built in 1858 to serve the needs of the Irish immigrants recruited to work on construction of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad who then settled in this area. This same railroad was to play a major role in serving the needs of the wounded after the Second Battle of Bull Run, August 28-30, 1862.
The Orange and Alexandria Railroad line was one of the first lines from the coast to the inland of Virginia and a forerunner of the Northern Virginia railway system. One of its lines ran from Alexandria through Fairfax Court House and out to Bull Run. The Irish immigrants recruited to build this line formed the members of St. Mary’s parish.1
At the time the Second Battle of Bull Run was fought near Manassas on August 28–30, 1862, Manassas Junction was little more than a railroad crossing, but a strategic one, with rails leading to Alexandria and from the port of Alexandria to Washington, D.C. by ship.
What follows is a description of the situation that unfolded prior to the battle which made caring for the wounded more difficult, and which made the location of Fairfax Station and St. Mary’s Church critical in caring for the wounded after the battle. It was reported in the The Hampshire Advertiser, Southampton, Hampshire, England as telegraphed to them by a correspondent of “one of the New York journals” after the battle on Saturday the 30th of August.
“The commencement of the conflict now pending between the national and rebel forces may be said to date from Tuesday, the 26th inst., upon the night of which day Stonewall Jackson appeared with a large force at Bristoe where he destroyed about fifty cars and two locomotives. He also tore up the railroad track for some distance and burnt two bridges. The telegraph wire was cut in several places.
From Bristoe Station Jackson proceeded to Manassas Junction, two miles below, where he burned about 100 other cars which were standing upon a side track in readiness to be drawn to Warrenton Junction. The cars destroyed here were heavily laden with subsistence stores, ammunition and saddles and blacksmiths’ materials. All, or nearly all, the ammunition, consisting of three carloads, was secured and carried away. At the Junction the rebels burned another bridge and tore up more railroad track. The bridge is situated about five miles from the Junction.
From the Junction Jackson proceeded to the railway bridge over Bull Run and destroyed it. The reflection of the burning cars, bridge, and building could be seen at Warrenton Junction. The mass continued to burn throughout the night.”
What occurred prior to the battle was compounded since the Confederates controlled the battlefield after the battle. The below news article from The Alexandria Gazette dated September 1, 1862, clearly shows what Clara Barton was faced with while attending to the wounded at St. Mary’s Church at Farifax Station.
Monday Eve’g, September 1, 1862
SUNDAY. – Yesterday will be long remembered by the inhabitants of Alexandria for the exciting reports that prevailed and the interest felt to learn the War News. The day was dark and gloomy, and from the heavy clouds that overspread the Heavens, at intervals, the rain poured down. Notwithstanding the weather, the people were out on the streets, and at the corners, inquiring the latest news for the great battle. The sound of the “Church going bell” was but little heeded, and the places of worship were but thinly attended. All was restlessness and anxiety.
At the depot, there was congregated, all day, crowds of citizens and soldiers awaiting, impatiently, the arrival of trains from up the railroad, to gather whatever information those coming down might bring. At about half-past eleven o’clock, a train which had left Washington, the previous night, having on board clerks and employees in the government departments, for the battlefield, returning to the depot, having been able to proceed only as far as Fairfax Station, where they were ordered back. The passengers reported that Jackson held the field of battle, and that therefore they had returned. Soon after the arrival of this train, another from Baltimore, bringing over physicians and nurses for the wounded on the battlefield, arrived, but on reaching here, and ascertaining that there was no possibility of proceeding, the train returned. A train from Warrenton, which has been on the road four days, with sick and wounded, reached the depot about noon. Trains were going as far as Fairfax Station all the afternoon, and the shrill whistle of the locomotives, the moving of cars, and the arrival and departure of trains, made the depot a place of bustle and confusion.
All day, ambulances and wagons, one, two and three at a time, were coming in with wounded soldiers, some severely, some slightly. These came principally by the Little River Turnpike, and the sight was a melancholy one. In one instance a soldier had his shoulder shot off, another had a hand off, many were wounded in the legs, some in the head, &c. The wounded were taken to the different hospitals here, or sent on to Washington.
A few stragglers, notwithstanding guards were placed at the various roads leading into the city, got in, and gave conflicting accounts of the battle, and of the situation of affairs.
At night, notwithstanding the excitement of the day, everything in the city was quiet and orderly.
TO-DAY. – There has been much excitement in the city to-day, and King street has been more than usually crowded. Rumors and reports are numerous, but the latest definite information comes through the morning papers. Wounded soldiers continue to arrive in ambulances and wagons, and are taken to the hospitals here, or sent on to Washington. Long trains of army wagons are passing and mounted and foot soldiers are everywhere to be seen.
Not long after the founding of St. Mary’s Church, the Civil War erupted and much of the activity of its first two years centered around Northern Virginia. By the end of August 1862, Saint Mary’s Church became the focal point for treatment of the wounded following the Second Battle of Bull Run. During the preceding spring, Clarissa Harlow Barton, a United States Patent Office clerk and former schoolteacher from Oxford, Massachusetts, had begun buying food and medicines for wounded soldiers bivouacked at the Capitol Building in Washington, in addition, her pleas for supplies through Massachusetts newspapers brought donations of medicines, bandages and food.
In March of 1862 Clara had visited the Governor of Massachusetts along with a former Congressman Colonel Alexander DeWitt. Her mission was to convince the Governor that a Massachusetts state agency needed to be established in Washington as a warehouse for the stores she and friends had been gathering for Massachusetts regiments. This was to be a distribution center similar to the Sanitary Commission or the commissary department which forwarded to the troops in the field. The Governor was convinced, and a distribution center was established in Washington. Further, Governor Andrew would write Clara a letter of recommendation “with my hearty approval of your visit and my testimony to the value of the service to our sick and wounded.”2
After staying in Massachusetts until June she returned to Washington and her job at the Patent Office. She was very pleased that the warehouse she had lobbied for was overflowing with boxes. In fact, it wasn’t long before she had to rent another warehouse.
The Peninsula campaign was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March to July 1862, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The operation, commanded by Major General George B. McClellan, was an amphibious turning movement against the Confederate States Army in Northern Virginia, intended to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. Clara had been paying attention to the reports from the front regarding the Peninsula Campaign and had a desire to serve the Potomac Army as an independent nurse. Back in Washington she would see the need to serve as casualties flowed into Washington. In total, through the final close of battle in July, total Northern casualties were estimated at 16,000 men which would include killed, wounded or captured. For the wounded an evacuation hospital had been established at White House Landing on the Pamunkey River, and the wounded were brought down from the battlefield in railroad freight cars and then on to hospital transports.
On the hospital ships teams of Sanitation Commission surgeons and nurses worked around the clock for three days, until the overcrowded ships, full of the many wounded headed North. One nurse who served as an agent with the United States Sanitary Commission and also as an Army nurse, Eliza Harris, would write of the wounded: ” There were eight hundred on board. Passage-ways, state-rooms, floors from the dark and foetid (smelling extremely unpleasant) hold to the hurricane deck, were all more than filled; some on mattresses, some on blankets, others on straw; some in the death-struggle, others nearing it, some already beyond human sympathy and help; some in their blood as they had been brought from the battle-field of the Sabbath previous, and all hungry and thirsty.”3
These wounded and suffering were already being transported into Washington hospitals when Clara returned to Washington in June. The hospitals in Washington were not only overflowing with the wounded but were also additionally crowded with thousands of cases of diarrhea and dysentery, malarial fevers, typhoid fever, and other disorders. On June 26 Clara wrote to her brother’s wife Julia, “I cannot make a pleasant letter of this, everything is sad, the very pain which is breathed out in the atmosphere of this city is enough to sadden any human heart. 5000 suffering men, and room preparing for 8,000 more, poor fevered, cut up wretches, it agonizes to think of it. I go (to the hospitals) when I can.”
Amory Square Hospital
We took occasion on Saturday to make a visit to the buildings occupied by the hospital bearing the above name. These building are located on the Armory Square, near Seventh street, in the Seventh ward. There are twelve large buildings, besides several smaller ones devoted to the hospital. Ten of these are used for the ten different wards for the patients, each ward being a hospital by itself in its internal arrangements – there being a surgeon in charge, with ward masters, attendants, nurses, &c., to each, while all the buildings are under the supervision of one head surgeon. The centre large buildings are devoted to offices for the surgeons, chaplain, &c. A building in the rear is used as a kitchen, while at one end is a laundry, and at the other a commissary department. The kitchen is admirably fitted up with ranges for cookery, hot and cold water, and all the conveniences for the performance of the culinary duties with ease, neatness and dispatch. Back of this is a stable, knapsack room, guard house, &c. Each ward building is 183 feet long and 25 feed wide. They are placed 25 feet apart, and each will accommodate 50 patients, giving each patient eight or nine hundred cubic feet. An admirable system of ventilation is one of the special features of these buildings. Sliding doors about a foot square, under the head of each bed can be opened at any time for a draft of pure air, while in the apex of the roof throughout the entire length of the building is an opening, so arranged as to let out the air, and at the same time keep out the rain or snow. There are also plenty of windows to afford light at all times. A covered walk extends from one building to another through the centre, while another walk extends along the rear. Descending ditches extend around and lead away from all the buildings, carrying off all waste water, leaving no unhealthy dampness about the establishment.
On the whole, we do not believe that there is a better and more systematically arranged-hospital in the city. There are no dark nooks and corners throughout the establishment, but every patient has an equal and sufficient supply of sun and air.
Dr. D.W. Bliss, brigade surgeon, is in charge, and the soldiers who are here, as well as their friends at a distance, need no uneasiness on the score of faithful and skillful medical and surgical attention and care, if all we hear of Dr. Bliss and his faithful assistants is true. Of the former it need only be said that he has been highly popular wherever he has served his country, whether as surgeon of the Michigan regiment, (his own State,) as brigade surgeon in the field, medical director, or hospital surgeon. His assistants, each in charge of a ward, are Dr. B.B. Breed, late in charge of Circle Hospital, until it was abandoned as a hospital on account of unhealthy location; Dr. Thomain; and Drs. Robbins and Bowen, of this city, who rank as medical cadets.
Rev. E.W. Jackson, of Maine, is the chaplain in this hospital. About one hundred and fifty patients are now here.
At this time Clara also concluded that the hospitals in Washington were well supplied and that her warehouse stores were not desperately needed. In an article in the Boston Evening Transcript, entitled “THE RELIEF OF WOUNDED SOLDIERS IN WASHINGTON” and dated September 08, 1862, this was confirmed. “We learn from Lieut. Waldo Adams, – who accompanied the Boston contributions to the National Capital, and spent a week among the hospitals in the last-named city, – that the supply of hospital stores at Washington is sufficient for the relief of the sick and wounded for at least six months. The accumulations are so large that further additions only tend to waste valuable articles. The supply of lint, brandies, wines and other liquors, is beyond all demand for the present. Those wishing to make contributions where they will really alleviate the distress of soldiers, should send them to the New England rooms, New York, conducted by Col. Frank E. Howe. Frequently a thousand or two thousand returned disabled soldiers are received at the rooms, producing an immediate and pressing want of the very things, which, if sent to the National Capital would be unused.”
If on the one hand, Clara’s supplies were not needed, she on the other hand was also feeling not needed, therefore she felt a desperate need to serve in the field. Clara would confide to a friend, Mary Norton, of her unfulfilling hospital visits and her pent-up frustrations. She would write Mary: “I am sick at heart and yet not weak. I only wish I could work to some purpose. I have no right to these easy comfortable days and our poor men suffering and dying thirsting in this hot sun and I so quiet here in want of nothing, it is not rightly distributed, my lot is too easy, and I am sorry for it.”4
As new fighting broke out on the peninsula in late June and early July the Union formed the Army of Virginia on June 26, 1862. John Pope commanded the new organization, which was divided into three corps of over 50,000 men. Three corps of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac later were added for combat operations. The field of operation for the Army of Virginia, unlike the Potomac Army’s operations on the peninsula, made Clara realize that this new army was accessible to her. She had accumulated three warehouses full of supplies and had even had to store some in her apartment. What she now needed was a means to get them to the field.
Before Clara could take her supplies to the field she needed to get approval from the U.S. Sanitary Commission. To secure this approval she called on the Commission’s headquarters in Washington to persuade the assistant secretary there that her work was meant to complement the Commission’s, and received from them a letter of introduction which she could hand to Sanitary agents in the field: “Miss Barton proposes to devote herself, as an individual, to the same objects as those which engage the Commission in its collective capacity, so far as administering to the comforts of the sick and wounded soldier are concerned.”5
As the Army of Virginia took the field against Confederate infantry southwest of Manassas Junction, along the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, Clara wrote her cousin Leander, on August 2, that no one knew the condition of these soldiers and that she assumed “they must be dying from want of care, and I am promised to go to them moment access can be had.”
Shortly after she wrote this, Clara now took to the field with an immediate opportunity open to her. She would use the permits she had received from Colonel Rucker, who commanded the Washington Supply Depots and General Wadsworth, Commander of the Military District of Washington. She, along with her two assistants, Cornelius Welles and Anna Carver, after her stores were loaded upon a tugboat, would sail from Washington toward Fredericksburg. On their journey they passed by Alexandria and finally landed in Aquia Landing, an army supply transit base. Aquia was both connected to Washington via steam ships and was also a stop on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad. They would then spend the evening at Aquia and then take the rail to Falmouth Station the next day.
Fredericksburg, just across the river from Falmouth, was then occupied by General Rufus B. King’s division. She then called on his quartermaster at King’s headquarters at the Chatham House in Falmouth. From there she, on the next day, crossed over the bridge to Fredericksburg and visited a hospital which had been set up in a woolen factory. It was here she witnessed her first amputation.
On August 4, Clara and her assistants were at Falmouth Station when General Burnsides Ninth Corps arrived on flatcars from Aquia Creek. They then searched out the Twenty-first Massachusetts regiment and distributed her supplies. Clara then hastened back to Washington to be followed a few days later by Cornelius Welles and Anna Carver.
On August 9 Union forces under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks attacked Confederate forces under Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson near Cedar Mountain, Culpeper County, as the Confederates marched on Culpeper Court House to forestall a Union advance into central Virginia. Losses were high in the battle: Union casualties of 2,353 (314 killed, 1,445 wounded, 594 missing). The Medical Director of the Army of Virginia, Surgeon Thomas McParlin, had set-up dressing stations near the battlefield and a main evacuation hospital at Culpeper which was on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. From here military trains would transport the wounded back to Alexandria. Clara resolved to go Culpeper.
If casualties at Cedar Mountain were anything like Bull Run had been, then Union medical teams were undoubtably short of supplies such as stimulants, bandages and salves. Even after two officers warned her that she risked being captured she replied, ” I fail to see any more danger to me than for our disabled men.”
On August 12, with Colonel Rucker’s help, she secured an army pass authorizing her to take stores to Culpeper by military railroad. Cornelius Welles and Anna Carver would be at her side. From Washington she sent Welles to Fredericksburg with one load of supplies and Carver took another load downriver to Alexandria which was General Pope’s supply base on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. Along with Welles and Carver was Gardner Tufts of the Massachusetts state agency. At the Alexandria depot they found a train had just arrived from Culpeper with 480 wounded just in from the battlefield. Clara would soon arrive from Washington and she and her assistants would unload their supplies, stimulants, bandages, salves, and hospital clothing, into a boxcar. The next morning, they were on their way to the battlefield by railroad.
As Clara and her team pulled into the Culpeper Court House depot, they came upon a makeshift relief station with several hundred wounded men awaiting evacuation. There were no medical attendants in sight. Their suffering from their wounds was compounded by the heat, their lack of water, and the lack of attention which was obvious by their filthy bandages. This evacuation site was just the beginning as the wounded all over Culpeper Court House. They were in churches, private homes, the Masonic Hall, a tobacco factory and in tents. The surgical teams on site, as Clara had anticipated had run short of everything. These shortages were exactly what Clara had brought to the field,
This was Clara’s first experience with field hospitals directly after a battle. She witnessed the devastation of battle. Men with arms and legs torn off, faces mangled, stomachs torn open, and intestines hanging out. All around her were soldiers covered in their own filth and blood, crying out for water or assistance. Clara had witnessed an amputation in Fredericksburg, however that did not prepare her for what she was now witnessing. The Culpeper hospitals were filthy, their floors covered with blood. The medical staff too occupied with caring for the wounded and suffering, so Clara stepped up to help up cleaning up the fifth and blood. She and her assistants would fill the void scrubbing the floors. It was here that she developed a take charge attitude.
Clara and her team toiled in Culpeper hospitals for two days and two nights, going without sleep, scrubbing floors and handing out her bandages, salves, stimulants, and articles of clothing until not a single item was left. On August 15 she and Anna Carver boarded a train for Washington. On August 18 the last trainload of wounded arrived from Culpeper. On August 27 the news arrived the Confederate cavalry and infantry had captured Union General Pope’s main supply depot at Manassas Junction and by August 30 the Second Battle of Bull Run had ended with Stonewall Jackson holding the battlefield after having destroyed the bridge connecting Manassas Junction with the Orange & Alexandria stations east of there to Alexandria.
When reports came of steadily mounting casualties during the Second Battle of Bull Run, Clara Barton responded. Recruiting three other women volunteers and collecting more donated supplies. Miss Barton cut across regulations and social conventions, obtaining permission to have supplies sent to the front by train, and enabling her and her team to work close to the battle lines. As the Union Army withdrew before General Lee’s advancing troops, the federal field hospital was removed to Saint Mary’s, Fairfax Station. A train of 88 cars arrived there on Sunday, August 31, carrying food and ammunition for General Pope’s troops. When emptied, it would carry the wounded back to Washington. In the meantime, the men would have to be laid out on the hill stretching away from the church.6
By August 30 the Medical Director of Transportation had designated Alexandria a receiving and distribution center for the wounded. Operations involved 450 wagons and ambulances, 2,000 horses and mules, and over 1,000 drivers and medical attendants. A train carrying 800 nurse volunteers and medical assistants arrived in Alexandria from Washington. Ambulance trains and wagons were bringing thousands of wounded soldiers from Centreville to Fairfax Station for transport to Alexandria and Washington. The trains also carried medical personnel, volunteers and provisions. The trains would then be loaded with wounded to be sent to Alexandria. By noon on August 31 the subsistence department would designate Fairfax Station the principal depot, and troops were ordered to secure the depot by abatis against Confederate cavalry.
The War Department pressed into service private hacks, buckboard wagons, omnibuses, hay wagons, dog carts, sulkies, and private carriages and sent them forward toward the battlefield with civilian manning them. The Medical Director of the Army of Virginia, Thomas A. McParlin appealed to the public on Saturday August 30; “There is pressing need for the services of surgeons and nurses (male) to attend the wounded of the great battles that have taken place recently. We are requested by the War Department to call for such Volunteers from this point to repair at once to Alexandria, prepared to stay near the scene of action for some days at least.”7
Clara prepared to answer the call. She and two friends spent that Saturday packing her stores and supplies into boxes and barrels. Early Sunday morning, August 31, it was apparent to all that Pope and the Army of Virginia had suffered a major defeat. By 7:30 Sunday morning she had her boxes and barrels at Washington depot bound for Fairfax Station. Even though the call for volunteers specified male only, Clara had her pass from Pope’s inspector general. She was accompanied by Cornelius Welles, and two new assistants, both female: Mrs. Morrell and Almira Fales.
It was in a torrential rain that Clara and her assistants arrived at Fairfax Station at 10:00am that Sunday. On arrival at Fairfax Station, they found acres of hillside around the depot and St, Mary’s Church covered with wounded soldiers. A field hospital was in the Church itself and the wounded are pouring in by the wagon load, picked up on field by volunteers under a flag of truce. All day they come and are laid on beds of straw scattered over the ground and under trees. Clara and her helpers, assisted by male nurses already there, gathered up all the utensils they could find, and with crates of provisions stacked by the tracks, they built cooking fires and began preparing food and dressing wounds. Bread, soup, coffee, and preserves in cans and jars are brought, little by little, to 3,000 starving wounded.
Night for them is a fearful scene. Piteous cries and moans are heard throughout. The ground is littered with dry straw and the wounded are laid so close that it is impossible to move around in the dark. Clara has two lanterns, but there are many candles with open flames being carried about by the surgeons and volunteers, each one capable of igniting a huge fire among the wounded. Socks, slippers, and blankets are distributed and wrapped around the men, and when these ran out, they covered them with hay. The trains ran back and forth to Alexandria, leaving with cars full of wounded and returning empty for another load, but still the ambulances arrived with their shattered cargo.8
All day Monday, September 1, trains continued to carry off the wounded even as more arrived from Bull Run. Many of the new arrivals were transferred directly to the freight cars. Clara continued to strive to provide nourishment to the wounded as they were moved onto the trains. By the afternoon, however, Confederate cavalry appeared in the wooded areas just beyond the station. This created fear among those attending to the needs of the wounded that they might be taken prisoner. As all the wounded then in from the field were loaded onto a waiting train many volunteers left with them. Clara would later write; “as the ambulances were up to the field for more and I knew I would never leave a wounded man there if I knew it, though I was taken prisoner 40 times.”
As night came upon Fairfax Station a heavy thunderstorm blew up. There was lightening, however there was also the sound of artillery coming from the direction of Chantilly. The fear that Confederate cavalry would appear was real. Through all of this ambulances appeared and another train stood by on the tracks to receive this latest batch of wounded. As this train departed is cleared off all of the wounded that were there. Yet it was not over yet. A little over an hour later there appeared and ambulance train once again. She later wrote of the “ceaseless rumbling of the never-ending train of army wagons, which brought alike the wounded, dying and the dead.”
On Tuesday, September 2, soldiers from the Army of the Potomac as they were falling back through the hospital camp on their way to Alexandria brought those left at Fairfax the news that Pope had abandoned Centreville and was in full retreat back to Alexandria and Washington. Through the confusion this caused the roads were clogged in the direction of Alexandria. Confederate cavalry were once again spotted near Fairfax Station. “We knew this was the last,” Clara said of the thousand wounded then at the station. They were to be loaded on the train as soon as possible so they could get out while they still could.
Everyone pitched in lifting the thousand or so wounded soldiers into box cars. Time was clearly running out for the workers at Fairfax Station. A rebel sniper would quicken the process as he opened fire on them. At last, with such a great effort, the last train was ready to move. Clara and Cornelius Welles put the last wounded soldier on the last freight car. The train reached Alexandria at 10 o’clock Tuesday evening September 2. Clara would write; “I stood in my car and fed the men till they could eat no more – then the people would take us home and feed us.” Clara made her way home to her apartment in Washington, sank into her bed and slept for twenty-four hours. Except for a short nap she had gone without sleep from Saturday morning until late Tuesday night.9
- NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES INVENTORY — NOMINATION FORM for St. Mary’s Church, Fairfax Station ↩︎
- A Woman of Valor – Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oats, Page 39 ↩︎
- A Woman of Valor – Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oats, Page 47 ↩︎
- A Woman of Valor – Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oats, Page 50 ↩︎
- A Woman of Valor – Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oats, Page 52 ↩︎
- NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES INVENTORY — NOMINATION FORM for St. Mary’s Church, Fairfax Station ↩︎
- A Woman of Valor – Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oats, Page 66 ↩︎
- Chronology of the Civil War in Fairfax County Volume 1 by Edward T. Wenzel, pages 318-320 ↩︎
- A Woman of Valor – Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oats, Page75 ↩︎