"The faces of the rough men working at my side, which eight weeks before had flushed with indignation at the thought of being controlled by a woman, grew ashy white as they guessed the nature of the summons, ... and they begged me to send them, but save myself. I could only allow them to go with me if they chose, and in twenty minutes we were rocking across the swaying bridge, the water hissing with shot on either side. "Over into that city of death, its roofs riddled by shell, its every church a crowded hospital, every street a battle-line, every hill a rampart, every rock a fortress, and every stone wall a blazing line of forts. "Oh, what a day's work was that! How those long lines of blue, rank on rank, charged over the open acres, up to the very mouths of those blazing guns, and how like grain before the sickle they fell and melted away. "An officer stepped to my side to assist me over the debris at the end of the bridge. While our hands were raised in the act of stepping down, a piece of an exploding shell hissed through between us, just below our arms, carrying away a portion of both the skirts of his coat and my dress, rolling along the ground a few rods from us like a harmless pebble in the water. The next instant a solid shot thundered over our heads, a noble steed bounded in the air and with his gallant rider rolled in the dirt not thirty feet in the rear. Leaving the kind-hearted officer, I passed on alone to the hospital. In less than a half-hour he was brought to me--dead." She was passing along a street in the heart of the city when she had to step aside to let a regiment of infantry march by. At that moment General Patrick saw her, and, thinking she was a frightened resident of the city who had been left behind in the general exodus, leaned from his saddle and said, reassuringly: "You are alone and in great danger, madam. Do you want protection?" With a rare smile, Miss Barton said, as she looked at the ranks of soldiers, "Thank you, but I think I am the best-protected woman in the United States." The near-by soldiers caught her words and cried out: "That's so! That's so!" and the cheer they gave was echoed by line after line, until the sound of the shouting was like the cheers after a great victory. Bending low with a courtly smile, the general said: "I believe you are right, madam!" and galloped away. "At the battles of Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, during the eight months' siege of Charleston, in the hospital at Fort Wagner, with the army in front of Petersburg and in the Wilderness and the hospitals about Richmond, there was no limit to the work Clara Barton accomplished for the sick and dying, but among all her experiences during those years of the war, the Battle of Fredericksburg was most unspeakably awful to her. And yet afterward she saw clearly that it was this defeat that gave birth to the Emancipation Proclamation.