Although she lost her job at the Patent Office under the Buchanan administration in 1856, Barton was reappointed late in 1860. She enjoyed living in Washington, for she was fascinated by politics and liked knowing such prominent figures as Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson. She often sat in the Senate gallery to watch the proceedings and became astute and well-informed on political matters.
Clara Barton was still a clerk at the Patent Office when the Civil War began. Like many other intelligent and independent women of her day, she was often filled with restless discontent, probably stemming from having more to give than life demanded. Her job as Patent Office clerk demanded little but self-effacement and neat penmanship. The conflict that arose in 1861 provided her with an outlet for her energy and satisfied her longing to lose herself in her work and to be needed.
[Illustration: _When President Lincoln issued his call for volunteers to maintain the Union, the response was immediate and troops began heading for Washington. Some Massachusetts volunteers passing through Baltimore, which was decidedly Southern in sentiment, were attacked by local citizens._]
In late April 1861, less than two weeks after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the Massachusetts Sixth Regiment arrived in Washington, D.C., from Massachusetts. This regiment hailed from the Worcester area and many of the men were friends or former pupils of Clara Barton. Their train was mobbed while passing through Baltimore, and Barton, concerned that one of her “boys” might have been injured, rushed to their temporary quarters in the Senate Chamber. She found the Regiment unharmed, but sadly lacking in basic necessities—“towels and handkerchiefs ... serving utensils, thread, needles ... etc.” She bought and distributed as many of these items as she could, then wrote to the anxious families in Massachusetts to send preserved fruits, blankets, candles, and other supplies to supplement the unreliable army issues. “It is _said_ upon proper authority, that ‘our army is supplied,’” she wrote to a group of ladies in Worcester, “how this can be so I fail to see.” When the generous New Englanders inundated her with useful articles and stores, Barton’s home became a virtual warehouse. “It may be in these days of quiet idleness they have really no pressing wants,” she observed, “but in the event of a battle who can tell what their needs might grow to in a single day?” Such garnering of supplies against unforeseen disaster eventually became a central characteristic of her relief work in the years to come.