smothered her in an embarrassment of popularity.
Barton was pleased, too, in these days, with the strength of her finances, which allowed her to buy presents for her father and Bernard, save extensively, and even purchase some valuable prairie land in Iowa, perhaps at the instigation of Charles Mason.43 “We are in fact in a state of prosperity,” she told a friend, obviously tickled.44 Free from monetary worries, she could enjoy the company of a fellow boarder, Mr. Harbour, a bricklayer from Iowa whose sense of humor matched her own: “We have laughed since he has been here until we are sore.”45 Even merrier was the first of a number of extended visits of sister Sally and her younger son Irving Vassall to Washington. Clara escorted them to the city's important sites, talking enthusiastically of the local politics and gossip. With the unjaded eye of a sixteen-year-old, Irving surveyed the self-conscious Washington scene and found it wanting. Far from adulating the heroic statesmen of the age, he found their peccadillos a source of amusement. James Buchanan, the newly elected president, had hair “combed so as to stick up exactly straight something in the fashion of an Indian. He tips his head to one side and squints with one eye horribly.” Old General Cass, long a respected member of the Senate, was ridiculed because he did little except frequently move for an adjournment. “He has a funny way of smacking his lips every few moments,” Irving told his grandfather, “so loud that it can be heard distinctly all over the Senate chamber.”46
Irving's Aunt Clara laughed at his irreverence but overall viewed the Washington circus a bit more seriously. She took advantage of every opportunity to watch the proceedings of the Senate and House, whose debates now centered upon the fiery question of slavery. One evening in 1856 she sat spellbound in the Senate gallery while Hubbell s senator Charles Sumner delivered an impassioned speech against expanding slavery into the territories. So vehement were his arguments in this speech, entitled “The Crimes Against Kansas,” that the next day he was struck down and beaten by Congressman Pierce Butler from South Carolina. Dour Charles Sumner with his staid speech and imperious ways was not a man to inspire adulation, but the assault on him caused a flurry of emotion both North and South. This scene, more than anything else she had witnessed in Washington, sobered Barton to the terrible divisions within the country. “I have often said that that night war began!” she told a friend years later. “It began not at Sumter, but at Sumner.”47
She was beginning to realize, too, that her own political star was descending. The men who had sponsored her were, one by one, leaving Washington. Much to her regret, Colonel Alexander DeWitt was not reelected in Clara's home district, and he returned to Hubbell s in March 1857. “I would attempt to tell you something of how sorry I am that the Colonel is going home to return to us no more,” Barton confided to Julia, “but if I wrote all night I should not have half expressed it.”48 Barton herself was out of step with the new Buchanan administration, which advocated unconditional political allegiance as a prerequisite to government jobs. Buchanan, like all presidents, sought to reward his own followers, but he also hoped to avoid the strife and delay caused by factions within the government. Though she could not vote, Barton's liberal views had made her sympathetic to the supporters of Buchanan's rival, the antislavery candidate John C. Fremont, and she realized her position was in jeopardy. When she joked about it at a political levee, a fellow office worker tried to smooth over the incident, saying that she was not responsible for anything she “might say on the present occasion, as the coffee was exceedingly strong.”49 Charles Mason was also worried. On June 27, 1857, he noted in his diary that the secretary of the interior had that day “asked me what I thought of the policy of removals in the patent office for political differences of opinion. Being thus asked I stated to him briefly my notions, that it would not be wise…to remove good officers…merely because they differed from us in political views.”50 Barton was agitated, yet she tried to make light of it to her family and friends: “there is great talk about cutting off official heads,” she told a nephew, “but no specimens of decapitation yet.”51
That summer the Patent Office was in a frenzy of activity. June 1857 was the busiest month in its history, and Barton put in long hours to keep up with the workload.52 In six days she did two weeks’ work, all in an oppressive heat wave that overwhelmed the city that month. As the summer wore on she tried to keep up with the work, though a severe case of malaria sapped her strength. She took “Bitter bitters” to rid herself of the disease, but her skin turned yellow and her spirits flagged.53, 54 Any hopes she had for keeping her job were finally dashed when Commissioner Mason resigned on August 4, 1857. Without DeWitt or Mason, her two staunch advocates, she had little chance of retaining her already controversial appointment.55 “I begin to feel that my Washington life is drawing to a close,” she wrote home early in September. She had prized the work and welcomed the experience, but her uncomfortable position vis-à-vis the other clerks and the infighting between the secretary and commissioner allowed her to leave in a state of mind more philosophic and relieved than regretful. It “had not been all sunshine,” she concluded, but “a steady battle, hard-fought, and I trust well won.”56 A month later, after being told that her place was wanted, she packed her bags and headed north.57
Barton was free and had a substantial savings account, but she had formulated few ideas about her future, immediate or otherwise. Washington seemed a less attractive place to remain, even temporarily, now that her friends were gone, and a hostile administration virtually foreclosed any possibility of employment. But, as always, she was loath to return home permanently. Giving herself time to think and a much needed rest, Barton boarded a train for Auburn, New York. There she visited the Bertram family, with whom she had stayed years before while a student at the Clinton Liberal Institute.58
Barton was a good house guest, cheerful, helpful, and unobtrusive, and the Bertrams pampered her and urged her to stay for an extended visit. They tried to interest her in settling in the area, possibly to start an academy for young ladies. Barton, however, was in no mood to set up a school or to overstay her welcome. Perhaps remembering her uncomfortable subservience at the Nortons’, she determined not to settle in New York. After a stay of nearly two months, she made a long-promised Christmas visit to her family.
She found that North Oxford was still little changed from her childhood and youth. The same families wielded the same influence. A few new mills had sprung up, but population, enterprise, and interest generally remained stagnant. Her father was growing deaf and saw with difficulty, but he still insisted on setting out his beloved garden and walking miles over the rocky hills to chat with his old comrades. Clara was living in the little house in which she was born, a guest of David and Julie, and that situation, too, was reminiscent of old times. The same climbing rose grew over the door, the same underlying tensions puzzled and disturbed her. Julie's acerbic tongue made her at once witty and disquieting to be around. David she found as charming and erratic as ever, personifying the family trait of overworking himself to the point of nervous exhaustion. Their active, bustling household reflected the varied life of an extended family, but to Clara it seemed to encompass everyone except her, and she felt again that she was the fifth wheel, the sore thumb, the one who did not quite fit.
Only Stephen was missing, his absence keenly felt by Clara. Early in 1856 he had moved to North Carolina to establish a new milling complex. His reputation had never completely recovered from the association with the Learned bank robbery in New York, and this, coupled with a conviction that labor and land were cheaper in the South, and chronic medical problems that made him uncomfortable during the cold New England winters, convinced him to make a move. He sold his share of the S & D Barton Mills to David, recruited twenty excellent workers, uprooted his wife, son Sam, and Bernard Vassall, and settled on the Chowan River in Hertford County. The first year was a lonely and anxious struggle to establish himself as a farmer and businessman. Still, he kept a tight cork on his liberal attitudes, availed himself of the local black labor supply, and determined to succeed. Two years later his business was thriving, but his wise counsel was sorely missed by his youngest sister.59
Clara's visit to North Oxford was meant to be only a short one, but it lengthened to a stay of over two years. During this time she was suspended in a semipermanent limbo. She refused all offers to teach that would commit her to staying in the vicinity. Yet she had