On August 27th news reached Washington, D.C. that Rebel forces had destroyed Pope’s main supply depot at Manassas Junction including a large amount of medical supplies. On the 30th Clara heard that a battle was being fought on the old Bull Run battlefield and that over 8,000 men had been killed and many more wounded. Requests from Medical Director McParlin appeared in the newspapers for doctors, nurses and supplies. Clara and two female friends (Mrs. Murrell and Almirante Fales) spent all night packing boxes and barrels on August 31st. By now news had filtered back to the capitol that Pope had been defeated and thousands of wounded soldiers remained on the battlefield, while many others were in homes and churches in Centreville. By the next day, Sunday September 1st, the medical service was short of surgeons, supplies and provisions. A civilian led ambulance train got lost in the dark and had to return to Alexandria. That morning Medical Director Richard Coolidge began evacuating the wounded by any means possible to Fairfax Station (shown below) on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad where the they could be moved to Alexandria.
On the morning of September 1st Clara Barton, Cornelius Welles, Mrs. Murrell and Almirante Fales arrived by train at Fairfax Station. She described her group as “a little band of almost empty handed workers, literally by ourselves in the wild woods of Virginia with 3000 suffering men crowded upon the few acres within our reach.” Soon after getting off the train Clara met Dr. Dunn who she had worked with at Culpeper. Clara and her group were the only volunteers at the station. Here for the first time out of necessity Clara functioned as a battlefield nurse. She learned how to make compresses and slings, apply tourniquets and change bandages. Clara and her workers cooked, distributed food and water, and nursed the wounded. They helped load patients on trains all day Monday September 2nd as evacuations continued. The following day rebel snipers opened fire on them and cavalry closed in as they continued loading the wounded on trains. Finally, they boarded a train with the last of the injured men. As it pulled away she saw Confederate cavalrymen galloping into the station. They reached Alexandria at 10:00 PM. She made her way back to her apartment in Washington, D.C. and slept for 24 hours. A couple of weeks later on September 17, 1862, Clara would be on to her third battlefield to aid the sick and wounded at the Battle of Antietam. She would aid many more wounded during the war and later found the American Red Cross.
While at Fairfax Station Clara also worked at the Church of St. Mary’s, shown below, which is very close to Fairfax Station.
Next- John Pope- in General a Failure in Virginia
Source
A Woman of Valor Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oates.