As night fell, the gunfire ceased. Clara Barton had been nursing soldiers since the Battle of Antietam began, and now she ensured that the barn with wounded soldiers was well lit with the lanterns she brought.
Barton walked from the barn to the house, where she found a surgeon sitting in one of the small, dank rooms with only a small candle preventing the space from falling into complete darkness.
“You are tired, doctor,” Barton said.
“Yes, I am tired,” he said. “Five hundred [soldiers] will die before daybreak unless they have attention, and I with no light [but] that two inches of candle.”…