Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
In 1846 Arabella Wharton Griffith, a 22-year-old from rural New Jersey, moved to New York City to take a position as governess. Armed with a vibrant personality and keen intellect, she soon found herself in a circle of well-connected, literary-minded socialites, artists and prominent politicians, including the inveterate diarist George Templeton Strong. She was, he wrote, "certainly the most brilliant, cultivated, easy graceful, effective talker of womankind, and has read, thought, and observed much and well."
Shortly before the Civil War, Arabella met Francis Channing Barlow, who had been raised by his mother in the intellectual hothouses of Brook Farm and Concord, Mass. After graduating from Harvard, Barlow moved to New York where he commenced a legal career. Arabella was a decade older than Frank, as his friends called him, but the age difference didn't seem to matter: The couple married on April 20th, 1861, the same day that, following President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers, Barlow enlisted in the Union Army.
The next year Arabella followed him into service, volunteering as a nurse in the United States Sanitary Commission, the forerunner of the Red Cross. On Sept. 16, 1862, she arrived on the battlefield of Antietam, just in time to see her husband carried off the field with a piece of case shot in his groin.
Arabella took immediate control of her husband's care, first in a military hospital, and then in a private room she had arranged. Her friend Strong, who was a prominent official in the Sanitary Commission, encountered her one afternoon in a military camp – "unattended, but serene and self-possessed as if walking down Broadway."
Barlow, who had been promoted to brigadier general while in recovery, was back in action in time for the next year's campaigning season. On July 1, 1863, the first day of Gettysburg, his division held a rise on the federal right called Blocker's Knoll (now Barlow's Knoll). A massive Confederate attack smashed his lines, and Barlow suffered a grievous wound through his left side as his men retreated. As he was being carried off the field, a spent ball hit him in the back, and after he fell another rebel bullet grazed his thumb. He was captured and brought behind Confederate lines.
What happened next became one of the great legends of the war, and turned Arabella and Frank into one of the most celebrated couples of 1860s America. Responding to the entreaties of a seemingly dying foe, Confederates sent word to Arabella, who was on the battlefield with the Sanitary Commission. She immediately set out to cross into Confederate-occupied Gettysburg. Exactly how she managed to enter the village is unclear. One story has her running into rebel lines under fire from both armies without being hit; most likely, after a series of official exchanges, the Confederates granted her permission to attend her husband.
In any case, Gettysburg civilians saw her on horseback being escorted by Confederate soldiers on the night of July 2. Both Confederate and Union surgeons had declared Barlow's wound fatal. But under his wife's care, Frank defied the prognostications and began another slow but steady recovery.
As he slowly rebuilt his strength, Arabella moved him first to Baltimore, and then to her hometown, Somerville. She saw to it that he did not fall from the public eye, and organized as much social life as his condition would bear. In autumn, the couple visited Boston, where they stayed with Julia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; they later went to New York, where they caught up with their high-society friends from before the war.
Barlow returned to the Army of the Potomac in time for Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee. In command of the First Division, Second Corps, he was soon immersed in the bloodiest fighting of the war, while Arabella served in the Army field hospitals nearby.
While the federal forces dueled with Lee at Spotsylvania from May 8 to 20, Arabella was stationed at the Rappahannock town of Fredericksburg, which had been turned into a massive federal troop and supply depot. The small river town also acted as the receiving station for the wounded. Under Clara Barton's direction, Arabella augmented her usual nursing duties with the supervision of the "special diet kitchens" at her hospital.
Arabella's reputation for dedication and resourcefulness was forged during the Overland Campaign. Nicknamed "the Raider," she scoured villages and the countryside for supplies. Though Frank was seldom more than 10 miles away, the incessant fighting made visits impossible.
Repulsed by Lee at Cold Harbor, Grant sent the Army of the Potomac across the James River toward Petersburg, the railroad juncture that supplied Richmond. Despite achieving initial surprise, Grant failed to take the city, resulting in a nine-month semi-siege punctuated by vicious battles.
In early June, as the two armies dug in, Grant turned the small waterfront landing at City Point into an enormous manpower and material depot. It also became the new medical center for the Army of the Potomac, and Arabella was among the many nurses who journeyed from White House to City Point. Upon arrival, she made her way to Frank's First Division hospital, and was distributing food and drink to the wounded by June 18.
Though undoubtedly pleased by his wife's presence, Barlow grew apprehensive over her health. Disease killed more men than gunfire during the war, and nurses and doctors were not immune. By the time Barlow got to her, she was already exhibiting early signs of typhus, a common killer that she most likely caught while ministering to the sick and wounded in the military camps and hospitals in the Virginia low country.
Despite failing health, she had kept at her duties in the hot, humid Tidewater environment. Only when she collapsed at the hospital did the full extent of her affliction become clear. She was taken to Washington, where she could stay with friends.
Arabella did not remain in Washington for long. Perhaps feeling improved and eager to be near Frank, she returned to the front. But the disease had her in its grip. On July 2, Barlow wrote his family that Arabella was dangerously sick and "all run down with a fever." Four days later, Frank, unable to leave his command, walked her from his headquarters to the First Division field hospital, where one of the division surgeons escorted her to the transports at City Point. From there she took a steamer back to Washington.
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There she seemed to rally again, and on July 15, Barlow received word that her fever had broken, and he looked forward to her full recovery. But it was premature: On July 28, after leading an attack at Deep Bottom on the James, Barlow received word that Arabella had died the previous day.
Theodore Lyman, a friend and staff officer, described Barlow as "entirely incapacitated by this sudden grief," and stories spread among the troops that Arabella's death "had driven Barlow insane." Distraught but not insane, Frank received a 15-day leave to arrange his wife's funeral. She was buried in Somerville, N.J., where her white marble gravestone still stands.
Barlow returned to New York after the war, held a series of governmental offices, and commenced a successful legal practice. In 1867, he married Ellen Shaw, sister of Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the 54th Massachusetts at Ft. Wagner, S.C. They had three children.
But the memory of Arabella never left him. As he lay near death in December 1895, Barlow's mind kept returning to her and her devotion to him and the Union during the war. "The finest monument in this country" would be built to commemorate the "loyal women of the Civil War," he assured a visiting friend. There was no doubt whose life and character inspired the prediction.
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Richard F. Welch, who teaches history at Farmingdale State College, is the author of "The Boy General: The Life and Careers of Francis Channing Barlow."
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