of his Country; Lincoln, the Father of a Race; Clara Barton, the
Mother of the Red Cross. THE AUTHOR.
The building which housed Clara Barton in her efforts for popular
education is still standing along with other historic landmarks.
Bordentown (N. J.) _Register_.
If you will let me try, I will teach the children free for six months.
CLARA BARTON.
I thank God that we have no free schools—in the colony—and I hope we
shall not have these hundred years.
GOVERNOR BERKELEY of Virginia in 1670.
The first incorporation to provide free schools, under the provisions
of the State, was passed in New York in 1805.
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM.
The basis of free government is in education; in a republic the hope
of the millions is the free public school.
THE TWO REPUBLICS.
The hope of all modern civilization is the public free school.
ANCIENT SCHOOL SYSTEMS.
I taught in an uninclosed shed at North Oxford, there being no house
for that purpose. CLARA BARTON.
The first meetings for the establishment of a kindergarten system at
Washington was held at the Clara Barton home, in Washington; among
others present Phoebe Hearst and Mrs. Grover Cleveland, wife of the
President, the chairman. THE AUTHOR.
Let us live in our children. FREDERICK FROEBEL.
PAUPER SCHOOLS; FROM SIX TO SIX HUNDRED
New Jersey had no public schools. The people said they were not paupers
and would not have their children taught at public expense—would not
send them to “pauper schools.” In New Jersey Clara Barton opened, for
the first time, what was called a “free school for paupers.” Since those
puritan days, what a change in public sentiment! Then it was “Pauper
school” education; now
Free education is the poor man’s marble staircase that leads upward,
and into, the palaces of wealth, health and happiness.
Clara Barton was told that a public school was impossible; every time it
had been tried, it had failed. At Bordentown she found herself with six
bright boys, and the public school[2] commenced. At the end of twelve
months her six pupils had grown to six hundred pupils—among whom no
corporal punishment had been administered.
Footnote 2:
The School Building, erected in 1837. School taught by Clara Barton,
in 1853. Building and site the property of New Jersey, purchased
through contributions by teachers and pupils. Building dedicated June
11, 1921, and now known as The Clara Barton Memorial School but used
as a Clara Barton Museum.
“Pauper schools” became thence in fact the free public school; now the
free public school is the one institution from whose flagstaff freedom’s
flag is never hauled down.
IX
Clara Barton taught the rich to be unselfish and the strong to be
gentle. CHARLES E. TOWNSEND, U. S. Senate.
Her voice was soft,
Gentle and low; an excellent thing in woman.
SHAKESPEARE.
Miss Barton was a soft-voiced, retiring little woman, yet she had a
way of approaching her work in a most telling manner.
Buffalo (N. Y.) _Express_.
Miss Barton followed her own light with steadfast steps.
Springfield (Mass.) _Republican_.
Clara Barton—a model of the beautiful simplicity of a life given to
others. Bridgeport (Conn.) _Standard_.
The severest test of discipline is its absence. CLARA BARTON.
Social, friendly and human, Clara Barton joined with the children in
the playgrounds;—instead of being locked out as the previous teachers
had been she “locked” herself “in” the hearts of every boy and girl.
_The Life of Clara Barton_, by Epler.
Show me a child well disciplined, perfectly governed at home, and I
will show you a child that never breaks a rule at school.
CLARA BARTON.
Whenever corporal punishment is inflicted on a pupil it is a sign of
negligence and indolence on the part of the teacher, says Seneca.
ANCIENT SCHOOL SYSTEMS.
In refinement of taste and beauty of action, or purity of thought and
delicacy of expression, nature’s own best teacher is woman.
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM.
CHILD LOVE—JOE AND CHARLIE—APPRECIATION
To the child nothing is small; nor does the child forget. Whatever
kindness comes to the child is stored in one of the cells of the brain
for future years. As an heirloom, the longer it is possessed the more it
is cherished.
Referring to her teacher of long ago, Dr. Eleanor Burnside recently
related this incident in her school life: “I recall when a little girl
in her school Clara Barton’s friendly interest in the progress of her
pupils; unvarying patience, no matter what the circumstances might be. I
do not think she knew how to scold, nor were scoldings and other
manifestations of ill temper necessary. Her quiet, firm word, pleasantly
expressed, seemed sufficient always.”
Speak gently; it is better far
To rule by love than fear—
Speak gently; ’tis a little thing
Dropped in the heart’s deep well;
The good, the joy, which it may bring,
Eternity shall tell.
Not easily disturbed, Miss Barton did not notice little misdemeanors by
the children at all. She seemed not to observe one day when some fun was
started by a boy sitting back of Joe Davis. The mischievous boy was
putting his finger in Joe’s red hair and pretending his finger was
burnt. Of course it amused the children, but only for a moment. To
govern too much is worse than to govern too little. This was an incident
merely of a child’s humor, requiring no reprimand. “But no matter what
happened, Clara Barton did not scold. Her pupils loved her and that made
what she did, and what she said too, right.”
The old desk used by Clara Barton recently has been found in possession
of one of the old families at Bordentown, New Jersey. By tracing back
the ownership it has been proved conclusively to be the original desk
used by Miss Barton. The desk refuted the libel that she was a
disciplinarian, and not a humanitarian. The libel referred to was that
she had a particularly unruly boy; that she seized him by the nape of
the neck, lifted the lid of the desk and dropped him inside. Now that
the desk has been discovered, her admirers point to the interesting fact
that it doesn’t have a top lid; it has a small drawer.
Childhood is ever of the living present. Up the stream of time the eye
keeps fixed on memory’s treasures of youth. In one of the battles of the
Civil War, Clara Barton stooped down to place the empty sleeve, then
useless to the bullet-shattered right arm, over the shoulder of a
soldier boy. Recognizing the face of his former teacher the fair-haired
lad dropped his face into the folds of her dress, then threw his left
arm around her neck, in deepest grief, crying: “Why, Miss Barton, don’t
you know me? I am Charlie Hamilton who used to carry your satchel to
school.”
X
Like a patriotic soldier Clara Barton responded in the youth of her
womanhood to the call of service to others.
York (Pa.) _Gazette_.
Clara Barton is one of the greatest heroic figures of her time.
_Buffalo Press._
Clara Barton—our greatest national heroine. _Literary Digest._
We reckon heroism today, not so much on account of the thing done as
the motive behind the act. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
Yes, it is over. The calls are answered, the marches have ended, the
nation saved. CLARA BARTON.
The best blood of America has flowed like water.
CLARA BARTON.
The soldier is lost in the citizen. CLARA BARTON.
The proudest of America’s sons have struggled for the honors of a
soldier’s name. CLARA BARTON.
Their glory, bright as it shone in war, is out-lustered by the
nobleness of their lives in peace. CLARA BARTON.
I shall never take to myself more honesty of purpose, faithfulness of
zeal, nor patriotism, than I award to another. CLARA BARTON.
What can be added to the glory of a nation whose citizens are its
soldiers? Whose warriors, armed and mighty,—spring from its bosom in
the hour of need, and peacefully retire when the need is over. CLARA
BARTON.
I have taught myself to look upon the government as the band which the
people bind around a bundle of sticks to hold it firm, where every
patriot must grapple the knot tighter.
CLARA BARTON.
If our government be too weak to act vigorously and energetically,
strengthen it till it can act; then comes the peace we all wait for,
as kings and prophets waited—and without which like them we seek and
never find. CLARA BARTON.
Henry Wilson worked on a farm at six dollars per month. Then he tied
up his scanty wardrobe in a pocket handkerchief, and walked to Natick,
Massachusetts, more than one hundred miles, to become a cobbler. The
trip cost him but $1.88.
HENRY MAKEPEACE THAYER.
I am the son of a hireling manual laborer who, with the frosts of
seventy winters on his head, lives by daily labor. I too lived by
daily labor. HENRY WILSON.
Henry Wilson, born in New Hampshire, February 16, 1812; elected to U.
S. Senate, 1855; elected Vice-President, 1872; died November 22, 1875.
THE AUTHOR.
We should yield nothing to our principles of right.
HENRY WILSON.
The sorrows of drunkenness glare on us from the cradle to the grave.
HENRY WILSON.
I would not have upon my soul the consciousness that I had by precept
or example lured any young man to drunkenness for all the honors of
the universe. HENRY WILSON.
Clara Barton’s never-failing friend, Senator Henry Wilson.
PERCY H. EPLER.
TEMPERANCE—CLARA BARTON AND THE HIRED MAN—STRANGER THAN FICTION
Way back in 1857 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clara Barton showed her
humanitarian spirit and organization ability. Under the Reverend Horace
James, she assisted in the organization of the Band of Hope,[3] a
society originating in Scotland whose object was: “To Promote the Cause
of Temperance and Good Morals of the Children and Youth.”
Footnote 3:
First Temperance Society organized in America, in 1789; First National
Temperance Convention, in 1833; a “temperance revolution” urged, in
1842, by Abraham Lincoln; Women’s Christian Temperance Union organized
in 1874; National Prohibition went into effect January 16, 1920.
On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Reverend James became Chaplain
of the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, and two of the boys that
Clara Barton induced to join the society became officers of the
Fifty-seventh Massachusetts Regiment. One was Colonel J. Brainard Hall
and the other Captain George E. Barton. At the Battle of the Wilderness
the Colonel Hall referred to was seriously, then thought to be fatally,
wounded. Clara Barton was the first at his side to nurse, and to care
for, him. As soon as he was able to be moved, she sent him to Washington
to be cared for there by one whom she told him was her very dear friend.
Stranger than fiction, on reaching Washington, Colonel Hall discovered
this friend to be the “Hired Man,” previous to 1839, who worked in his
grandmother’s shoe-shop,—the late Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the
United States.
XI
Every woman who loves her country and who realizes what true
patriotism means will always revere the name of Clara Barton, and
connect it with the highest ideal of service to one’s country. DR.
ANNA H. SHAW _President American Woman Suffrage Association_.
Clara Barton has won the hearts of the women of the world. CARRIE
CHAPMAN CATT, _President American Woman Suffrage Association_.
John Marshall, for thirty-five years Chief Justice of the U. S.
Supreme Court, held the female sex the equals of men.
JUSTICE JOSEPH STORY.
I had not learned to equip myself—for I was no Pallas ready armed but
grew into my work by hard thinking and sad experience.
CLARA BARTON.
I am a woman and know what barriers oppose all womanly efforts.
HARRIET G. HOSMER.
Clara Barton is the best clerk, either man or woman, I ever had in my
office. MR. MASON, _Commissioner of Patents_.
It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius
than to be forgiven for it. BRISSOT.
Only the machinery and plans of Heaven move unerringly and we
short-sighted mortals are, half our time, fain to complain of these.
CLARA BARTON.
It is possible for the wisest even to build better than he knows.
CLARA BARTON.
Who furnished the Armies; who but the Mothers? Who reared the sons and
taught them that liberty and their country was worth their blood? Who
gave them up and wept their fall, nursed them in their suffering and
mourned them, _dead_? CLARA BARTON.
There is none to give woman the right to govern herself, as men govern
themselves by self-made and self-approved laws of the land.
CLARA BARTON.
Only the Great Jehovah can crown and anoint man for his work, and he
reaches out and takes the crown and places it upon his head with his
own hand. CLARA BARTON.
Whenever I have been urged as a petitioner to ask equal suffrage for
women a kind of dazed, bewildered feeling comes over me.
CLARA BARTON.
In making an appeal to her soldiers for “votes for women” Clara Barton
said: “When you were weak and I was strong, I toiled for you; now you
are strong, and I am weak. Because of my work for you, I ask your aid;
I ask the ballot for myself and my sex. As I stood by you, I pray you
stand by me and mine.” THE AUTHOR.
Clara Barton advocated “Votes for Women” on the platform of the First
National Suffrage Convention in this country.
Buffalo (New York) _Courier_.
LOOKING FOR A JOB—EQUAL SUFFRAGE
Among the ancients, controlling the certain affairs worthy of man, were
many goddesses; of these, Venus, Ceres, Juno, Diana, Pomona, Minerva.
Such man’s inherent respect for femininity that feminine names in
classic days were given to temples of worship; to the continents,
Europe, Asia, Africa, and later to America.[4] Feminine names with few
exceptions, also, have been given to all countries,—“she” and not “he,”
likewise the word used to identify great things mechanical and useful.
Long and hard has been the contest for woman to achieve in fact what in
spirit seemingly comports with womanhood. In this contest through the
last half of the nineteenth, and the first half of the twentieth,
century Clara Barton was conspicuous.
Footnote 4:
In 1507, by Martin Waldseemuller, the name of America was given to the
then newly discovered continent.
[Illustration:
THE SCHOOL HOUSE
Built of brick, in 1839, where Clara Barton taught school in 1853. See
page 47.
]
[Illustration:
THE DESK USED BY CLARA BARTON
See page 47.
]
HISTORIC IN EDUCATION
Bordentown, N. J.
[Illustration:
THE CLARA BARTON MUSEUM
The old school house reconstructed. See page 47.
]
Alone in the world, dependent upon her own efforts for a living and
looking for a “job,” the following is what in letters Miss Barton says
of herself in 1854 and 1860 respectively:
In a letter to her friend Miss Lydia F. Haskell, Washington, D. C.,
January 20, 1854, Clara Barton said:
“Well, I am a clerk in the United States Patent Office, writing my
fingers stiff every day of my life.... The truth is, I have written
nights until one or two o’clock for the last two weeks. I shall not be
so very busy long. I am just now fitting the mechanical report for the
press; that off my hands and I shall be quite at ease, I suppose.”
In a letter to Frank Clinton, Bordentown, New Jersey, dated January 2,
1860, Clara Barton said:
“I can teach English, French, drawing and painting.... I am a rapid
writer or copyist, and have the reputation of being a very good
accountant ... and if, in your travels through the South, you see an
opening for me, tell me.”
As the pioneer woman in Government service Clara Barton was the object
of commiseration. And only because she was a woman, she suffered through
jeers and hoots and cat-calls, and tobacco smoke in her face, and
slanderous whisperings in the hallways and boisterous talks about
“crinoline”—all sorts of offensiveness, on the part of Government
employees. Clara Barton in the public school, in the patent office, in
the Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War, in the Cuban War, in national
disasters, in the presidency of the Red Cross, now filled by the
President of the United States, is a series of object lessons of the
greatest significance in the progress of womankind in the public
service. Clara Barton the _intruder_ among men in the patent office in
1855, and Jeannette Rankin, the _honorable_ among men in Congress in
1918, are the exponents respectively of two conditions of American
sentiment as to the public function of women in the United States.
Possibly because of her sad experience as a woman in the public service,
she became one of those who, with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and other suffragettes, blazed the way to equal rights for
women—equal rights now approved by the President, the United States
Congress and the American people. At a meeting of the American Suffrage
Association held in Washington, D. C., in language most caustic and
argumentative, in part in a public address Clara Barton said:
A woman shan’t say there shall be no war—and she shan’t take any part
in it when there is one; and because she doesn’t take part in the war,
she must not vote; and because she can’t vote she has no voice in her
Government. And because she has no voice in her Government she is not
a citizen; and because she isn’t a citizen she has no rights, and
because she has no rights she must submit to wrong; and because she
submits to wrong she isn’t anybody. Becoming optimistic, she said, the
number of thoughtful and right minded men who will approve equal
suffrage are much smaller than we think and, when equal suffrage[5] is
an accomplished fact, all will wonder as I have done, what the
objection ever was.
Footnote 5:
The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution proclaimed August 26,
1920.
XII
Clara Barton’s simple life was long, and so full of stirring incidents
that all the books will not record the whole of it.
Worcester (Mass.) _Telegram_.
Be not like dumb-driven cattle.
LONGFELLOW—_The Psalm of Life_.
The Ox has therefore stretched his yoke in vain.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.
And the plain ox,
That harmless, honest guileless animal,
In what has he offended? he whose toil,
Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
With all the pomp of harvest.
THOMPSON—_The Seasons_.
A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.
BRILLAT SAVARIN.
The sign of true, not casual, progress, ... is the progress of
vegetarianism ... more and more people have given up animal food.
TOLSTOI.
I had not then learned the mystery of nerves. CLARA BARTON.
CREDULOUS OX—INNOCENT CHILD—CLARA BARTON, A VEGETARIAN
Among the Puritans the horse was a luxury; the beast of burden was the
ox. In the first half of the nineteenth century the ox made possible in
Massachusetts even the existence of man. In the snows of winter, at seed
time and at harvest, the toiling ox was loyal—faithful to the best
interests of the family. The ox himself was unsuspecting, and untutored
in the art of deceiving others. He couldn’t think his kindly attentive
Master, Man, unappreciative, disloyal—wholly obsessed with greed. He
didn’t know that money was above life,—he hadn’t read war-history. He
didn’t know that through the love of money, by man, come life’s woes.
The ox knew only that _he_ was the friend to man; and he thought man
must be _his_ friend. Poor credulous ox! And yet in the child the
friendship of the ox is not misplaced. Innocent child! to man and beast
Heaven’s best gift, a loyal friend.
Captain Stephen Barton kept a dairy. When a small girl Clara used to
drive the cows and oxen to, and from, the pasture. Clara also assisted
morning and evening in milking the cows. One evening she observed three
men, one holding in his hand an axe, driving a big, red, fat ox into the
barn. She saw the man with the axe strike the ox in the head, then saw
the ox drop to the floor. At the same moment she fell unconscious to the
ground. She was carried to the house, placed on a bed, and a camphor
bottle freely used. When she regained consciousness, in reply as to why
she fell, she said: “Someone struck me.” “Oh, no, no one struck you,”
they said. “Then what makes my head sore,” she asked. At that time her
desire for meat left her; and in later years she used to say, “all
through life to the present, I have eaten meat only when I must for the
sake of appearances. The bountiful ground always yields enough for all
of my needs and wants.”
[Illustration:
ANNIE WITTENMEYER
Clara Barton is second to none of womankind.—MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER,
First President W. C. T. U.
]
[Illustration:
JOHN B. GOUGH
Clara Barton’s lecture—I never heard anything more thrilling in my
life.—JOHN B. GOUGH, America’s Greatest Temperance Lecturer.
]
REPRESENTATIVE TEMPERANCE ADVOCATES
[Illustration:
MARY STEWART POWERS
Clara Barton was prominent among women as an advocate of the cause of
temperance. Through her leadership in practical humanitarianism she
endeared herself to the whole world. Her good name will live
forever.—MRS. MARY STEWART POWERS, Public Lecturer and State
Superintendent of Scientific Temperance of Ohio.
]
[Illustration:
FRANCES WILLARD
President W. C. T. U.
In the name of your God and my God, ask your people and my people not
to be discouraged in the good work (Red Cross) they have
undertaken.—CLARA BARTON. From Armenia, in 1896, to Miss Willard.
See page 347.
]
XIII
The Mother, patriot though she were, uttered her sentiments through
choking voice and tender trembling words, and the young man caring
nothing, fearing nothing, rushed gallantly on to doom and to death.
CLARA BARTON.
The soldier’s fear is the fear of being thought to fear. BOVEE.
Self trust is the essence of heroism. EMERSON.
I have no fear of the battle field; I want to go to the suffering men.
CLARA BARTON.
I was always afraid of everything except when someone was to be
rescued from danger or pain. CLARA BARTON.
Like the true Anglo-Saxon, loyal and loving, tender and true, the
Mother held back her tears with one hand while with the other she
wrung her fond farewell and passed her son on to the State.
CLARA BARTON.
FELL DEAD ON THE GROUND BESIDE HER
The first time Clara Barton visited in New Haven, she wore a gray dress
that had bullet holes in it—received in caring for the wounded at
Fredericksburg. In describing the battle scene Clara Barton said: “Over
into that City of Death; its roofs riddled by shells, its very 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!”
At Fredericksburg
They rated blood as water,
And all the slope shone red,
Past Valor’s call
By bristling wall;
Defeat linked arms with slaughter
Astride the blue-robed dead.
As Miss Barton was being assisted off the bridge by an officer, an
exploding shell hissed between them, passing below their arms as they
were upraised, carrying away both the skirts of his coat and her dress.
A moment later, on his horse, the gallant officer was struck by a solid
shot from the enemy; the horse bounded in the air and the officer fell
to the ground dead, not thirty feet in the rear.
In her usual modest manner, in relating _war incidents_, she described
the experience to a lady friend and said: “I never mended that dress. I
wonder whether or not a soldier ever mends a bullet hole in his
clothes.”
XIV
Military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood,
that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The friends of humanity will deprecate war, whenever it may appear.
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
There is no need of bloodshed and war. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
* * * * *
Wars are largely the result of unbridled passions.
CLARA BARTON.
War is only splendid murder. JAMES THOMSON.
War is the mad game that the world so loves to play. SWIFT.
* * * * *
Every battleship is a menace to the peace of the world. With each new
battleship every nation carries a chip on its shoulder.
CLARA BARTON.
The Red Cross took its rise in, and derived its existence from, war.
Without war it had no existence. CLARA BARTON.
Deplore it as we may, war is the _great act_ of all history.
CLARA BARTON.
War has been the rule, if not largely the occupation, of the peoples
of the earth from their earliest history. CLARA BARTON.
Scarcely a quarter of the earth is yet civilized, and that quarter not
beyond the probabilities of war. CLARA BARTON.