ary stores had not yet been unloaded.
Down to the market hurried the energetic volunteer nurse, and soon
came back carrying a big basketful of supplies, which made a feast for
the hungry men. Then, as she afterward wrote in a letter to a friend,
"the boys, who had just one copy of the _Worcester Spy_ of the 22nd,
were so anxious to know its contents that they begged me to read it to
them, which I did--mounting to the desk of the President of the
Senate, that they all might hear."

In her letter she says, "You would have smiled to see _me_ and my
_audience_ in the Senate Chamber of the U. S. A." and adds: "God bless
the noble fellows who leave their quiet happy homes at the call of
their country. So far as our poor efforts can reach, they shall never
lack a kindly hand or a sister's sympathy if they come."

Eager to have the soldiers given all the comforts and necessities
which could be obtained, Miss Barton put an advertisement in the
_Worcester Spy_, asking for supplies and money for the wounded and
needy in the Sixth Regiment, and stating that she herself would
receive and give them out. The response was overwhelming. So much food
and clothing was sent to her that her small apartment overflowed with
supplies, and she was obliged to rent rooms in a warehouse to store
them.

And now Clara Barton was a new creature. She felt within herself the
ability to meet a great need, and the energy which for so long had
been pent up within her was poured out in a seemingly unending supply
of tenderness and of help for suffering humanity. There was no time
now for sensitiveness, or for shyness; there was work to do through
the all-too-short days and nights of this struggle for freedom and
unity of the nation. Gone was the teacher, gone the woman of normal
thought and action, and in her place we find the "Angel of the
Battlefields," who for the remainder of her life was to be one of the
world's foremost figures in ministrations to the suffering, where
suffering would otherwise have had no alleviation.

"On the 21st of July the Union forces were routed at Bull Run with
terrific loss of life and many wounded. Two months later the battle of
Ball's Bluff occurred, in which there were three Massachusetts
regiments engaged, with many of Clara Barton's lifelong friends among
them. By this time the hospitals and commissaries in Washington had
been well organized, and there was no desperate need for the supplies
which were still being sh