Clara Barton Nursed Ft Wagner Survivors, Smallpox Epidemic, She Was Immune: So. Carolina Civil War

[appalachiablue]

-'Angel of the Battlefield,' Clara Barton.


- Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Museum. - 'Smallpox in the Sea Islands: Clara Barton in South Carolina,' 2017.

At three o’clock one Tuesday afternoon, Clara Barton sailed into Hilton Head, South Carolina with a bang. She was going there to nurse Union Army soldiers and inspect hospital boats. Just as her ship pulled up to the dock on April 7, 1863, nine federal ironclads launched an attack on Forts Sumter and Moultrie as part of Union efforts to recapture Charleston. Confederates battered Union vessels with 2209 artillery shells, federal boats responded with 154 more of their own before limping back out to sea, and Barton feared she would “sink through the deck” from all the explosions. “I am no fatalist,” she confided in her diary that night, “but it is so singular.” Clara Barton’s “singular” arrival heralded the beginning of what would become her 9-month stay in the Sea Islands.

While she was there, African American soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Infantry would storm Battery Wagner as part of the same campaign that began at the moment of her arrival at the Hilton Head dock. She was still nursing survivors of that July attack when Wagner finally fell in September. Meanwhile, small pox devastated former slaves living under the protection of the Union Army throughout the Sea Islands, and the indomitable Miss Barton—used to marching in, assessing a problem, and solving it—could do nothing to alleviate that suffering. Or rather, she could do nothing by herself. 19th-century Americans were no strangers to smallpox. Clara herself had survived the disease in her youth, which made her immune for the rest of her life. Many more were not so lucky, especially under wartime’s crowded & unsanitary conditions, which facilitated the spread of the dreaded disease & weakened victims’ ability to fight it. The Union Army reported nearly 19,000 cases of smallpox in Union soldiers, with mortality rates at roughly 23% for white soldiers & 35% for African American soldiers. Former slaves were even more vulnerable.

Aware that their bondage rested at the heart of the war, enslaved men & women fled to the Union Army wherever it infiltrated the Confederacy & helped it to fight their former owners, sometimes by enlisting if they were men, but also by spying, nursing, growing crops, & performing every imaginable type of labor necessary to keep a large army battle-ready. Roughly 48,000 formerly enslaved men, women, & children took refuge with Union forces in the Dept. of the South, which ran through the coastal regions of South Carolina & Georgia into the very northern tip of Florida, & whose core consisted of the Sea Islands where Clara Barton arrived in April 1863. They, like refugees who encamped with the army throughout the occupied Confederacy, found a route out of slavery, but they also encountered a host of dangers. Crowded, located in perilous war zones, & perennially short of everything (including vaccine), camps created the perfect conditions for the spread of disease, including smallpox.

Smallpox cases appeared in Wash., DC in 1862, & spread throughout the theaters of war. Outbreaks sickened & killed thousands, & they worsened other problems like sanitation & even clothing shortages, because garments touched by the infected had to be burned to stem contagion. Smallpox beat Barton to the Sea Islands. By the spring of 1863, several cases had already broken out among Union troops, including the African American men of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. The disease quickly spread among the formerly enslaved. Living within the affected area was a man named Columbus Simonds. Born a slave, Simonds had somehow taught himself to read & write, & when the Union Army came he recognized a chance to carve a path out of slavery. He worked as a servant for Union General David Hunter & he cared for Union General Ormsby Mitchel when the latter contracted yellow fever in Beaufort, S.C. In 1863, Simonds met and impressed Clara Barton. In the face of the smallpox epidemic, Clara Barton realized that Columbus Simonds would know exactly what to do...

- Read More, https://www.clarabartonmuseum.org/smallpox/

- Also: Clara Barton Returned to So. Carolina Sea Islands in 1893 to Help After Hurricane Devastation
https://www.eatstayplaybeaufort.com/clara-barton-beaufort-visits/

[wryter2000]

1. Question

Was the 54th Massachusetts the group featured in the movie Glory?

[appalachiablue]

3. Yes indeed. Wonderful movie on a heroic regiment. It's a

passion, I curated an exhibit on the famous Mass. Civil War regiment right after the film came out.

More on the 54th,
https://democraticunderground.com/11632115

[Walleye]

4. One of the great Hollywood movies. And a great American story