When Battlefields Have Angels

I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent.

-Clara Barton 

Law is a playbook of memory.  We make decisions in large part due to decisions others made in the past.  And, in many ways, this is logical: we must have notice for the consequences of our actions.   But, also in law, as in life, sudden changes occur.  All at once the new replaces the old.  Both catastrophic failures and auspicious successes can force us to view the world through a different lens, valuing and addressing the picture in an entirely novel manner, sometimes recognizing the tyranny of precedent. 

One hundred and fifty years ago, this great nation was at war with itself – and not the war of words we wage today - but one with bullets and wounds and ever present death.   One hundred and fifty years ago, a mind boggling 23,000 Americans were killed, wounded or went missing in one day at the edge of a creek called Antietam.  It is so difficult to imagine that one hundred and fifty years ago, General George McClellan had Lincoln’s ear as leader of the Army of the Potomac and an unknown Ulysses S. Grant was mired in Mississippi with the Army of the Tennessee. 

On September 17, 1862, General Lee brought the war North; his entire army had crossed the Potomac into Union territory to engage.  The cannons would blast and guns would fire for twelve full hours before it all ended.  Although the casualty count was almost even, by the next night, Lee headed back across the river and by the following day he was in retreat.  Despite losing 550 more soldiers than the Confederate Army, the Battle of Antietam was considered a Union victory because Lee and his men returned to Virginia.  It was enough to prompt the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862 which gave birth to the January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation changing the course of the war, of history and of the moral authority of a Union victory.  Brave men – on both sides – about to engage in the single bloodiest day of fighting ever known had no idea that their actions that day would alter the course of history for all mankind.

And, on that same battlefield was a truly courageous soul who brought her own medical supplies to the front in Maryland.  Clara Barton tended the wounded, assisted the surgeons, and literally lit the way for aid to continue into darkness with lanterns she had the foresight to pack.  Working tirelessly, she contracted typhoid and would be taken from Antietam in a stretcher.

The men who fought the battles and bore the wounds and suffered the ultimate sacrifice were unaware of the role they played in history.  They could not have known – any of them – that what happened on September 17, 1862 would not just change their lives, but life as they knew it.   Whether Clara Barton had any inkling of how the hiccup of Antietam would send history on a very different trajectory is utterly unknown.  It is doubtful that it would have changed anything for her.  Clara Barton was the kind of hero who did what she did because it was the right thing, not because she was looking to make a place in history or because she was a pioneer looking to open doors.  But, history she made and the doors she opened cannot be shut.

Clara Barton grew up in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts where public education has been paramount since its earliest days.  As she taught in a New Jersey school where fees paid her salary, she discovered that some children could not afford to attend.  So, she opened a free school where all of the children could learn, no matter how much money their families had.  She filled a gap in the system.  Today, with college costs soaring, others fill in educational gaps as well.  So, her example shines still.

Frustrated because the school she founded would be run by a less qualified man, she left teaching and moved to Washington, D.C. where she got hired as a clerk in the U.S Patent Office, taking a position that was once held by Thomas Jefferson and one day would be held by Albert Einstein.  While there, she earned the same pay as her male counterparts.  Alas, the Secretary of the Interior had other ideas; he reduced her role and pay so she quit.  The equal pay conversation should sound familiar; it is a work in progress.  But, her example shines still.

While tending the wounded on Civil War battlefields, Clara Barton became aware that some families would not know what became of their sons and husbands and fathers and friends so after the war ended, she sent out hundreds of letters, made connections, and discovered the fates of over 22,000 missing men.  She did not do this alone; she received help from countless strangers and unsung heroes who wrote back, provided information, and assisted in this noble pursuit to tend to grieving friends and families.  Today, as we are engaged in military struggles, we are fully aware that war continues for families and returning veterans.  So, her example shines still.

After the war ended, she became involved in the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements.  Then the Franco-Prussian War broke out and Clara Barton traveled to distant lands to help strangers in need.  She devoted her energies to the Red Cross, a humanitarian group dedicated to neutrality and relief services in times of war.  Experiences both in the American Civil War and in Europe prompted her to create such a relief organization in the United States.  War weary Americans believed their fighting days were over and that no such organization would be needed; so she changed course and lobbied for a natural disaster relief organization instead.  Today, when forces of nature upend lives, the tireless efforts of the American Red Cross help to right them.  So, her example shines still.

From her years of caregiving, Clara Barton felt that everyone had the ability to learn basic lifesaving skills.  She founded the American First Aid Society (now merged with the American Red Cross) whose legacy continues in the hundreds of Red Cross sponsored First Aid and CPR classes offered each year throughout the country.  Today, too many know first-hand of tragedies natural and unnatural and of the need for everyone who can to help. So, her example shines still.

On September 17, 1862, Clara Barton brought nursing and teaching skills and a heart full of compassion into battle.  She would go on to brave new waters, including unofficial diplomacy aiding those in need in Spain and Turkey and Cuba; indeed she would continue her healing ways until she took her last breath 90 years after she took her first.  Americans today, as official  and unofficial diplomats and aid providers - charitable, exemplary, truly righteous human beings take their determination to do good all over the world.  So, her example shines still.

On a battlefield near a creek in Maryland one hundred and fifty years ago, men fought and died, men fought and were wounded, men fought and lived to tell the tale; and one woman nursed them all.  Without knowing it, they changed history.  McClellan’s incomprehensible delays undoubtedly prolonged the battle of Antietam; the extraordinary number of casualties – more for the Union then the Confederacy – made this battle real and meaningful for thousands of people in towns across the nation, divided though it was;  Lee’s retreat back into Virginia to regroup, but not to quit established enough of a signal for Lincoln to announce to the world that this war, this bloody, devastating war, would have a moral afterall.  It would be to rejoin these United States with liberty and justice for all.

The end of the war brought hope and change; not the least of which were the three Amendments to the United States Constitution that finally made the promise of America a possibility for all Americans.  Passing the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments equals the grandeur of the ratification of the original Constitution and its Bill of Rights and (okay, with one more addition) finally allowed the document to make sense from preamble to post script.

We owe a collective debt of gratitude to every single person who not only witnessed but made history one hundred and fifty years ago on that blood-soaked battlefield.  Six weeks after Lincoln announced that every advancement of troops would advance freedom, that Union victory was a moral imperative, his party would hold the House and gain five Senate seats securing the opportunity for the president to make his grand gesture on  January 1, 1863.  For all its limitations, it would spark excitement, end fugitive slave bounties, and welcome African American soldiers and sailors to the cause.  Today's pundits tell us that candidates campaign in poetry but govern in prose.  We owe a collective debt of gratitude to Lincoln’s ability to govern in poetry.  

In our playbook of memory – in our laws, in our approach to law, in our aspiration for a better future tied to, but not mired in, history -  we must heed their example: to do what is right with everything we have no matter what anyone else has done before.  

Serve. Fight. Struggle. Die. Survive. Advance. Retreat. Heal. Nurture. Care. Create. Contribute. Make history.