William E. Barton

“ Our relief rooms were instantly secured and our white banner, with its bright scarlet cross, which has never been furled since that hour, was thrown to the breeze, telling to every looker-on what we were there to do, and pointing to every generous heart an outlet for its sympathy. We had not mistaken the spirit of our people; our scarce-opened doorway was filled with men, women, and children bearing their gifts of pity and love. Tables and shelves were piled, our working committee of ladies took every article under inspection, their faithful hands made all garments whole and strong ”

“ Thus would I try to bring the early and organized efforts of America into direct communication with the activities of Europe, and try for once to make our charities of some timely and real benefit, which the great distance and want of proper organization has hitherto greatly hindered, or nearly prevented. Our people are generous, tender of heart, and quick in their sympathies, but they are busy and spread over a quarter of the globe. They do not become aware of the necessities for assistance in other lands till great suffering exists and the general Press brings it to their knowledge. ”

“ But beyond the eastern waves, in that dear old land that four years of life there taught me to love so well, I see again the flash of the bayonet, the march of armies trampling down the harvests; the terror-stricken fly for rescue, and the wounded cry for help. Again the Red Cross, like the bow of promise, rises over the scene, again the shout from its inspired origination rings out amid the din of arms, and its clear, brave tones reach me even here in my quiet chambers, and my heart, with all its old memories stirred to their depths, goes out in response ”

“ How shall we thank Miss Clara Barton and the Red Cross for the help they have given us? It cannot be done; and if it could, Miss Barton does not want our thanks. She has simply done her duty as she saw it and received her pay—the consciousness of a duty performed to the best of her ability. To see us upon our feet, struggling forward, helping ourselves, caring for the sick and infirm and impoverished—that is enough for Miss Barton. Her idea has been fully worked out, all her plans accomplished. What more could such a woman wish? ”

“ During the last week I have looked on as she has sat day by day in one of the greatest and grandest assemblies of men that could be gathered—men representing the highest rank among the civilized nations of the earth; men of thought, of wisdom, of power, called together from all over the world to deliberate on great questions, of nautical import, military power, the neutrality of nations, humanity in war, wisdom in peace. ”

“ With the pains your Comité have taken, the Red Cross should have been known and honored in every household in America to-day. It has not died here: it was still-born; it has never once gasped on our shores; the nurses to whom you delivered it have never even uncovered its face, and America does not know that this holy child was ever an applicant for her adoption. She would have received it with open arms at the close of our war, when her own wounds were unhealed, and her memories fresh and tender. She will be less enthusiastic now at the end of a ten years’ peace, and no prospect of war. ”

“ Geneva, March 24, 1882
Miss Clara Barton
President of the American Society of the Red Cross
Mademoiselle: At last, on the 17th instant, I received your glorious telegram. I delayed replying to it in order to communicate its contents to my colleagues of the International Committee, so as to be able to thank you in the name of all of us and to tell you of the joy it gives us. You must feel happy, too, and proud to have at last attained your object, thanks to a perseverance and a zeal which surmounted every obstacle. ”

“ When all was over, the graceful launch returned us safely to our ship, with grateful memories on the part of the younger members of our company, who had never chanced to form an intimate acquaintance with a piece of shipping at once so beautiful and so terrible as that death-dealing engine of destruction. I record this visit and courtesy on the part of Captain Harrington as the first of an unfailing series of kindnesses extended by the navy to the Red Cross from first to last. There was no favor too great, no courtesy too high to be cheerfully rendered on every occasion. ”

“ I am, of course, all too unpretending and simple in my life to have a gardener, so shall lack the beauties which such assistance would develop. I was once a very tolerable gardener myself among flowers, but I have no longer strength to spend on the strong lap of Mother Earth, much as I love her and her dear little nurslings of cowslip and violets, but good sturdy old dame, she does a great deal without help, and knows very well how to dress herself without the aid of a fille de chambre. ”

“ Clara Barton loved a home. Although she went forth from her father’s ample and generous house while still she was a young woman, and lived as school-teacher, department clerk, and humanitarian for many years, she never failed to make a home for herself if there was opportunity. Hotel life had no charms for her, and, while she enjoyed entertainment in the homes of her friends and was a gracious and appreciative guest, she always preferred a roof of her own above her head where she could be hostess rather than guest and could minister instead of being ministered unto. ”

“ I will direct that monuments be erected defining the boundaries of this domain, dedicated to eternal peace and humanity, upon which shall be inscribed the insignia of the Treaty of Geneva, which insignia all the nations of the earth are bound by solemn covenant to respect.
Not only our own people, but the peoples of all civilized nations will have published to their knowledge that the American National Red Cross has a home and a recognized abiding-place through all generations. ”

“ If we did not hear the crackling of the flames, our skies grew murky and dark and our atmosphere bitter with the drifting smoke that rolled over from the blazing fields of our neighbors of Michigan, whose living thousands fled in terror, whose dying hundreds writhed in the embers, and whose dead blackened in the ashes of their hard-earned homes. Instantly we felt the help and strength of our organization, young and untried as it was. We were grateful that in this first ordeal your sympathetic president was with us. ”

“ It has been simply that, ill, weak, worn, and suffering, I have been lost to the work of the world, and to the friends I honored and loved. Four long years have found and held me powerless to strike a blow on the great anvil of humanity, or labor one day in its vineyards, and for the most part too weak even to hear of those who did. ”

“ Most of us have forgotten whether there is a National Board of Health, but “the words Red Cross, and the emblem for which they stand,” have become as familiar as the Stars and Stripes.
Yet there was a time when all other countries knew of it, but in the United States we knew of Internal Revenue and of the National Board of Health, but not of the Red Cross! ”

“ The appearance of our men on their arrival at Constantinople confirmed the impression that they had not been recalled too soon. They had gone out through the snows and ice of winter and without change or rest had come back through the scorching suns of midsummer—five months of rough, uncivilized life, faring and sharing with their beasts of burden, well-nigh out of communication with the civilized world, but never out of danger, it seemed but just to themselves and to others who might yet need them that change and rest be given them. ”

“ Every effort I have ever made on behalf of the people of the United States, during the long years of my work, has been met with friendly approval or thoughtful response. These efforts have always been made on behalf of suffering humanity, in times of dire distress and peril, and I have administered with a free but careful hand the benefactions of whatever nature that have been entrusted to me ”

“ If, in all the weary months when she was fighting her lonely battles for the Red Cross, it ever occurred to her that this organization would give to her a life position, or bring to her either money or other emoluments, there is no hint of it in her diaries. So far as one may judge from these intimate self-revelations, her purpose was as genuinely altruistic as human nature is capable of becoming. ”

“ Not a man could lie uncared for nor unfed. I thought of the Peninsula in McClellan’s campaign, of Pittsburg Landing, Cedar Mountain, and second Bull Run, Antietam, Old Fredericksburg, with its acres of snow-covered and gun-covered glacée, and its fourth-day flag of truce; of its dead, and starving wounded, frozen to the ground, and our commission and their supplies in Washington, with no effective organization to get beyond; of the Petersburg mine, with its four thousand dead and wounded and no flag of truce, the wounded broiling in a July sun, dying and rotting where they fell. ”

“ I am very grateful to you for the kindly interest you take in the subject of my health. My sleep, which I know to be the great want, is always gaining, and digestion improving, and these without the slightest artificial aid. I never took a grain of morphia in my life, and probably never in all combined a tablespoonful of medicine to produce sleep, and now I take nothing; for the last three years not one particle of medicine, relying entirely upon my food, rest, and open air for my restoration. All I have gained has been by the aid of nature alone ”

“ She had no love for the mannish woman. She was much in the society of men. In many respects she preferred the society of men to that of women. She entered into their joys and experiences appreciatively. But in it all she was distinctly feminine. She was a woman always, a lady always. People who expected to meet in her a big, aggressive female, with a long stride and a heavy voice and a domineering attitude, were amazed. She was a little, undemonstrative gentlewoman of the old school.
One of Clara Barton’s most outstanding qualities was her almost complete disregard of precedent. ”

“ Why should I let my life be spoiled by those who are now opposing me, and who take the joy out of my sunshine?
Why, indeed? She had money enough to live upon, in Dansville, or in Oxford, or for that matter in Washington; and she owned homes in each of those three places, and had income enough to live upon in any one of them or in Europe. Why should she expose herself longer to weariness, misrepresentation, and cruel disappointment?
It will be seen that Clara Barton had some reason to apprehend trouble growing out of the visit of the wife of the Senator. ”

“ The great wheels have slowly turned, until they have ceased to crush me so low, and grind me so small, and once more I begin, under God’s Providence, to reach out my hands into the passing atmosphere of life and feel the breezes blow over the seared and fevered palms. Once more I dare turn my eyes toward the labor-fields and their faithful workers; in my land, bright with its western sunbeams, aglow with beauty and abounding in plenty, they sew and glean in peaceful valleys. ”

“ She lived in Washington, amid a wide circle of friends, among them men of every station in life. No longer was she possessed of ambition beyond that of any man of her age and acquaintance. There were men whom she knew and men whom she liked, who had ambitions equal to her own and ideals with which her own had much in common. During the Civil War she might have chosen any one of scores of grateful men, as her husband. ”

“ Largely ignorant, knowing nothing of the world, with no real dependencies upon any section of its people, they could only wait its charity, its pity, its rescue, and its care—wait and pray—does any one who knows the negro characteristics and attributes doubt this latter? Surely, if angels do listen, they heard pleading enough in those hours of agony to save even the last man and woman and the helpless babe. Something saved them, for there is no record of one who died of starvation or perished through lack of care. ”

“ The first vessel to enter the harbor was not the flagship of either of the Admirals Sampson or Schley, but the State of Texas under command of Clara Barton.
Perhaps that may be called the crowning moment of her life. Clara Barton was more than seventy-eight years old, but she stood erect on the deck of her vessel, modestly appreciative and quietly thankful, not so much for the honor that had come to her as for the opportunity of serving. ”

“ If one would look for peers of this accomplished Christian body of our countrymen, they would only be found in the noble band of women, who, as wives, mothers, and teachers, aid their labors and share their hardships, privations, and dangers. I shall always feel it a privilege and an honor to have been called, even in a small way, to assist the efforts of this chosen body of our countrymen and women, whose faithful and devoted lives are made sacred to the service of God and their fellow men. ”

“ We come, then, to lay our honors at your feet as a citizen of the world, as a friend to humanity, as a lover of your race; recognizing the work which you have done as a foreshadowing of that time when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, when nations shall not lift up sword against nations, neither shall they learn war any more. ”

“ As we look into the grave and bid farewell to the mortal remains of Clara Barton, we instinctively are led to ask ourselves, “Where is Clara Barton who for more than ninety years made them the agencies of her great work in the world?” The life, the spirit, the soul—has that been destroyed by [Pg 378] death? Does utter annihilation follow the development and growth of such a life? ”

“ Clara Barton was a woman to her finger-tips. Nothing that she saw or suffered ever coarsened her or made her oblivious to the finer things of life. Nothing that came of her association with men—and rough men at that—made her anything less than a woman and a lady. ”

“ So certain have I been of this, and so confident in the firm loyalty, safe counsel, and moral support of the eminent help surrounding me, that I have felt free to devote my energies during the past months to perfecting a plan for so broadening and strengthening the organization of the Red Cross that it may enter on a new field of useful activity—on a work that will appeal directly to the people everywhere, and prepare them, in these times of peaceful well-being, to meet intelligently and successfully any emergency or disaster that may occur, either nationally or individually. ”

“ The first step, it seems to me, is to find and appoint to the head of the work some person in America who will have the spirit, the interest, the enterprise, the determination to push the work, and bring it before the country and the people, or the honest conscience to resign the position in favor of some one who will, and not hold it for years, as an empty honor, smothering out its life, and leaving the country in ignorance of its existence. ”

“ The express office and freight depots began filling up until within two weeks we were compelled to open large supply rooms, which were generously tendered to the use of the Red Cross. A description could no more do justice to our flood of supplies than to the flood of waters which had made them necessary—cases, barrels and bales of clothing, food, household supplies, new and old; all that intelligent awakened sympathy could suggest was there in such profusion that, so far from thinking of leaving it, one must call all available help for its care and distribution. ”