told them “war was hell!” Take it as you will, it is this;—whoever has
looked active war full in the face has caught some glimpse of regions
as infernal as he may ever fear to see.
CLARA BARTON.
Only time, prolonged effort, national economics, universal progress
and the pressure of public opinion could ever hope to grapple with the
existence of war, the monster evil of the ages.
CLARA BARTON.
I have studied the massing of forces and scanned from point to point
the old battle-grounds of Marengo and Jena and Waterloo and the
Magenta and Solferino and it has seemed to me that these armies had a
fairer field and a better chance than ours, in the Civil War. CLARA
BARTON.
War may be a _great harmonizer_, but it is not a _humanizer_.
CLARA BARTON.
That which is won by the sword must be held by the sword, whether it
is worth the cost or not. CLARA BARTON.
If there be any power on earth which can right the wrongs for which a
nation goes to war, I pray it may be made manifest.
CLARA BARTON.
If there be any good wars, I will attend them.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
That noble and numerous class of patriots who are brave with other
men’s lives and lavish of other men’s money. GLADSTONE.
There never was a good war, nor a bad peace.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
Don’t talk about war; we have done with war. The Peace of the world is
the question now. CLARA BARTON.
WICKEDNESS OF WAR—SETTLES NO DISPUTES
Clara Barton was a patriot, but “not a war woman.” She had no sympathy
with the religion such as was Odin’s, of the ninth century, which
religion assured for him who had killed in battle the greatest number
the highest seat reserved in the Paradise of the Valhalla; nor with the
sentiment of the King of Denmark of that day, “What is more beautiful
than to see the heroes pushing on through battle, though fainting with
their wounds;” nor with the sentiment of that same king’s boast, “War
was my delight from my youth, and from my childhood I was pleased with a
bloody spear.”
Princes were privileged to kill,
The numbers sanctified the crime.
Wolves in “packs” seek prey; so do men—in sheep’s clothing. Wolves
truthful, in howls, send forth their propaganda—hunger; men untruthful,
in words, send forth their propaganda—hate. If the “survival of the
fittest” be nature’s law only brutes conform to nature—by using no
weapons. Men kill their own “kith and kin”; brutes combine to protect
their own species. The more one sees of men on war’s slaughter-fields
killing their friends or strangers, for prospective profit, the more he
must admire the ethics of the brute. In brute history there have been no
wars. Facing human record, the record of 3,400 years, there have been
3,166 years of war, and only 234 years of peace; facing the picture of
which history makes no mention and which in the wake of armies she had
seen, Clara Barton says: “Faces bathed in tears and hands in blood, lees
in the wind and dregs in the cup of military glory, war has cost a
million times more than the world is worth, poured out the best blood
and crushed the fairest forms the good God has ever created.”
Through war and its consequences, one third of “civilized man” since the
world began has come to an untimely end, by violence, as did Abel at the
hands of Cain.
Earth’s remotest regions
Lie half unpeopled by the feuds of Rome.
“Mankind is the greatest mystery of all mysteries,” says Clara Barton,
and insists that she can never understand the history of human conduct
in this world, and wonders whether or not she will in the next. In the
light of war’s history and, trying to solve the “mystery of all
mysteries,” she asks: “Heavenly Father! what is the matter with this
beautiful earth that thou hast made? And what is man that thou art
mindful of him?”
Further philosophizing on the “Wickedness of War,” in a masterful public
address, she says: “There is not a geographical boundary line on the
face of the earth that was not put there by the sword, and is not
practically held there by this same dread power. War actually settles no
disputes, it brings no real peace; it but closes an open strife;—the
peace is simply buried embers. The war side of the war could never have
called me to the field—_through and through_, thought and act, body and
soul, _I hate it_. We can only wait and trust for the day to come when
the wickedness of war shall be a thing unknown in this beautiful world.”
Again philosophizing she says: “As I reflect upon the mighty and endless
changes which must grow out of war’s issues, the subject rises up before
me like some far-away mountain summit, towering peak upon peak, rock
upon rock, that human foot has not trod and enveloped in a hazy mist the
eye has never penetrated.”
XV
In the same year, and about the same time in the year, that Clara
Barton first started for the battlefield her warm personal friend,
Julia Ward Howe, wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
THE AUTHOR.
You remember the time was Sunday, September 14th, 1862.
CLARA BARTON.
Society forbade women at the front. CLARA BARTON.
Tradition absolutely forbade a good woman to go unprotected among
rough soldiers. CLARA BARTON.
And what does woman know about war, and because she doesn’t know
anything about it she mustn’t say, or do, anything about it.
CLARA BARTON.
It has long been said, as to amount to an adage, that women don’t know
anything about war. I wish men didn’t either. They have always known a
great deal too much about it for the good of their kind. CLARA BARTON.
I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety—with the
appalling fact that “I was only a woman” whispering in one ear; and
thundering in the other the groans of suffering men dying like
dogs—unfed and unclothed, for the life of every institution which had
protected and educated me. CLARA BARTON.
When war broke over us, with an empty treasury and its distressed
Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, personally trying in New York to borrow
money to pay our first seventy-five thousand soldiers, I offered to do
the work of any two disloyal clerks whom the office would discharge
and allow the double salary to fall back into the treasury. When no
legal way could be found to have my salary revert to the national
treasury, I resigned and went to the field.
CLARA BARTON.
I could not carry a musket nor lead the men to battle; I could only
serve my country by caring for, comforting, and sustaining the
soldiers. CLARA BARTON.
I broke the shackles and went to the field. CLARA BARTON.
Washington, D. C., June 20, 1864.
Dr. J. M. Barnes,
Acting Surgeon General, U. S. A.,
Sir: The undersigned, Senators and Representatives of Massachusetts,
desire you to extend to Miss Clara Barton of Worcester, Massachusetts,
every _facility_ in your power to visit the army at any time or place
that she may desire, for the purpose of administering to the comfort
of our sick and wounded soldiers. Also that such supplies and
assistants, as she may require, may be furnished with transportation.
We are, very respectfully,
H. L. DAWES,
ALEX. H. RICE,
D. W. GOOCH,
JOHN D. BALDWIN,
THOS. D. ELIOT,
GEO. S. BOUTWELL,
CHARLES SUMNER,
HENRY WILSON,
JNO. B. ALLEN,
OAKES AMES,
W. F. WASHBURNE.
HER WARDROBE IN A HANDKERCHIEF—THE BATTLE SCENE
On September 14, 1862, Clara Barton started from the City of Washington
to the firing line, then at Harper’s Ferry. She took with her no
Saratoga, no grip, no “go-to-meeting clothes.” The articles in her
wardrobe on that eventful trip will never be known but it is known to a
“dead certainty” that whatever “worldly goods” she did take with her
were all tied up in a pocket handkerchief.
Her only escort was a “mule skinner.” He, wearing the blue, held the one
_jerk line_ to the team of six mules, animals known in the west as
“Desert Canaries.” The vehicle in which Clara Barton took that eventful
ride was an army freight wagon covered with canvas, such wagon sometimes
called the “prairie schooner.” “In the Days of Old, the Days of Gold,”
as “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” the “prairie schooner”
was almost the exclusive vehicle of conveyance over the deserts for
freight and passengers. It was in the “prairie schooner” that the
Mormons went to Utah in 1848, and the Argonauts to California, in “’49
and ’50.” It was from a “prairie schooner” that, rising from a sick bunk
and looking out over that beautiful valley of Salt Lake, Brigham Young
exclaimed: “This is the Place!”
After an eighty-mile ride bumping over stones and dykes and ditches, up
and down the hills of Maryland, Clara Barton arrived at the battlefield.
There, side by side, cold in death with upturned faces, were the brave
boys of the Northern blue and the Southern gray. In closing a
description of this battle scene Clara Barton says: “There in the
darkness God’s angel of Wrath and Death had swept and, foe facing foe,
the souls of men went out. The giant rocks, hanging above our heads,
seemed to frown upon the scene, and the sighing trees which hung
lovingly upon their rugged edge dropped low and wept their pitying dews
upon the livid brows and ghastly wounds beneath.”
XVI
Clara Barton carried on her work in the face of the enemy, to the
sound of a cannon, and close to the firing line.
Boston (Mass.) _Transcript_.
So long as the Republic lives the name of Clara Barton will be
honored. _Roswell Record._
Clara Barton—Glorious Daughter of the Republic!
_The Buffalo News._
Clara Barton performed work for wounded soldiers often at the risk of
her life. PHEBE A. HANAFORD, AUTHOR.
Clara Barton—right into the jaws of death she went, ministering to the
wounded, soothing the dying.
CHAPLAIN COUDON (_of G. A. R._)
_National House of Representatives_.
Follow the cannon. CLARA BARTON.
The soldier has been supposed to die painlessly, gloriously, with an
immediate passport to realms of bliss eternal. CLARA BARTON.
The soldier who has fallen in battle “with his face to the foe” has
been regarded as a subject of envy, rather than pity.
CLARA BARTON.
If wounded and surviving, the honor of a soldier’s scars has been
cheaply purchased, it has been supposed, though he strolled a limping
beggar. CLARA BARTON.
Only a small portion of the thought of the generations of the past has
been devoted to the subject of devising, or affording, any means of
relief for the wretched condition resulting from the methods of
national and international strife. CLARA BARTON.
The pitiable neglect of men in war appears to have constituted one of
the large class of misfortunes for which no one is to blame, or even
accountable, assuming that wars must be. CLARA BARTON.
Go card and spin,
And leave the business of war to men. DRYDEN.
I am a U. S. soldier and therefore not supposed, you know, to be
susceptible to fear. CLARA BARTON.
THE BRAVERY OF WOMEN—CLARA BARTON’S BRAVEST ACT
When asked where occurred her bravest act, Clara Barton replied: “At
Fredericksburg.” She made headquarters at the Lacy House, just north of
the Rappahannock River. While there, the surgeon in charge of the
wounded on the south bank of the river sent a special messenger to Miss
Barton to come across with her assistants and supplies at once. As a
_soldier_ and as an American patriot, she obeyed orders and followed the
flag over the bridge and on to the battle field. In later years
describing the women who went to the war Clara Barton sings:
The women who went to the field, you say,
The women who went to the field;—what did they go for—?
Did these women quail at the sight of a gun?
Will some soldier tell us of one he saw run?
In referring to the _incident_, in her experience at Fredericksburg, she
said: “As I walked across this bridge with the marching troops, the
bullets and shells were hissing and exploding in the river on either
side of me, the long autumn march down the mountain passes—Falmouth and
old Fredericksburg with its pontoon bridge,—sharp-shooters—deserted
camps—its rocky brow of frowning forts—the one day bombardment, and the
charge!” There, unperturbed, among the men was Clara Barton, there in
the broad glacis, the one vast Aceldama, where—
In the lost battle,
Borne down by the flying,
Were mingled war’s rattle
With the groans of the dying.
[Illustration:
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
My dear Clara Barton, you have done some wonderful things in the
world.—SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Pioneer Suffrage Leader.
Susan B. Anthony was the first woman to lay her hand beside mine in
the promotion of the Red Cross Society.—CLARA BARTON.
]
REPRESENTATIVE SUFFRAGE LEADERS
[Illustration:
CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT
One of the great women of the world. Broad of vision, exalted of soul
and absolutely free from selfishness that binds, Miss Barton was a
rare human being.—CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President National American
Woman Suffrage Association, 1900–1904; 1913——; Ex-President
International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
]
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
DR. ANNA HOWARD SHAW
Every woman who loves her country will revere the name of Clara
Barton.—DR. ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President National American Woman
Suffrage Association, 1904–Dec., 1915.
]
XVII
Clara Barton—soldiers of every battlefield since the Civil War have
almost deified her. Mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts of the
conflict have ever since held her name in the highest reverence.
Hartford (Conn.) _Post_.
The ears of the sick are strangely acute. CLARA BARTON.
A light heart lives long. SHAKESPEARE.
The burden becomes light that is cheerfully made. OVID.
A cheerful spirit is one of the most valuable gifts ever bestowed upon
humanity by a kind Creator. AUGHEY.
Whatever comes, keep up cheerful and happy and hope for the best.
CLARA BARTON.
YES, AND GOT EUCHRED
During the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, while the
Federals lay again in Fredericksburg, Clara Barton one evening went to
the hotel which from ground to garret was filled with wounded men. Five
hundred of these were lying upon the bare floors. They had no food to
eat, nor was there any food to give them. Clara Barton was struck with
their fine soldierly figures and features, remarkable even in their
terrible extremity, and stopping near one she asked: “Where are you
from?” “Michigan,” he said. On to another—“Michigan,” and so on
“Michigan”—“Michigan”—“Michigan.” Up one flight of stairs, then another,
still “Michigan.” At length in her surprise, she said somewhat
humorously and without reflection, “Did Michigan take up this hand and
play it alone?” “Yes,” answered a poor fellow lying on the floor nearby,
seriously wounded but one who evidently understood the game better than
she did, “Yes, and got euchred.”
XVIII
With a strong, brilliant, cultivated mind was united a gentle, tender,
loving heart, and nothing was too great, nothing too small to enlist
Miss Barton’s earnest thought and tender sympathy.
HARRIETTE L. REED,
_Past National Secy. Woman’s Relief Corps_.
Men are what their mothers make them.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
All I have, and am, I owe to my mother. A. LINCOLN.
All that I am my mother made me. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Work and words are for the individual soldier—what he does, sees,
feels or thinks in the dread hours of leaden rain and iron hail.
CLARA BARTON.
I remember my mother’s prayers, and they have always followed me. They
have clung to me all my life. A. LINCOLN.
Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him. TENNYSON.
As the years sped on and the hands were stilled, there shone the gleam
of the far sighted mother’s watchfulness that neither toil could
obscure nor time relax. CLARA BARTON.
His sweetest dreams were still of that dear voice that soothed his
infancy. SOUTHEY.
TO DREAM OF HOME AND MOTHER
At Decatur, Alabama, in a well-remembered scene of the Civil War many
were the songs by southern chivalry started, but none finished. All
efforts to sing one evening having been boisterously tabooed, there
arose in the air a voice carrying the sentiment that thrills the camp,
the field, the hospital. In gloom for today with foreshadowing for
tomorrow, around a score of camp fires thousands of voices following the
leader there broke forth pathetic, in full chorus, “Who will care for
Mother now?”
While General Butler was digging Dutch Gap in 1863, a hospital boat was
plying daily between Fortress Monroe and Point of Rocks. In the Civil
War, among the wounded brought in from the battlefield to Point of Rocks
was a lad about sixteen or seventeen years of age. One of his arms, and
a leg, had been amputated.
Away from home! Crippled for life! Homesick, and no “tear for pity.”
Hope gone! No, not all hope. He still has his Mother—“She floats upon
the river of his thoughts.”
A Mother is a Mother still
The holiest thing alive.
“Mother, come to me—thine own son slowly dying far away.” “No, you
_can’t_ come. May I come to you, my dearest Mother?”
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O Mother, my heart calls for you!
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
WARREN G. HARDING
The President, also President American Red Cross Society, March 4,
1921–.
From a letter by the Secretary to President Harding: “The President
entertains the highest sentiment regarding the splendid service of
Miss Barton and her contribution to the development of practical
modern humanitarianism.”
]
His soldier chum heard his pleadings and interceded: “Miss Barton, can’t
we _possibly_ find room for this boy on the boat going down to Fortress
Monroe tonight? I think he has grit enough to live.” Miss Barton,
turning to the boy said: “My dear boy, you _shall_ go, though they have
sent word they can take no more.” The boy was taken down a long steep
hill on a stretcher, tenderly placed in a nice comfortable cot way up on
the hurricane deck, to dream of home and Mother.
XIX
The test of civilization is the estimate of woman.
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
A woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself so, even
amidst an army of soldiers. CERVANTES.
Clara: Go, if it is your duty to go. I know soldiers, and they will
respect you and your errand. STEPHEN BARTON (_Her Father, an old
soldier_).
To a gentleman every woman is a lady, in right of her sex.
GEORGE ELIOT.
Man pays deference to woman instinctively, involuntarily.
GAIL HAMILTON.
I gaze upon the men through blinding tears of admiration and respect,
and sing in my heart “It is well to be a soldier.”
CLARA BARTON.
TRIBUTE OF LOVE AND DEVOTION
“I was young and strong and loved to walk,” says Clara Barton. “I had
four great wagons loaded with supplies for sick and wounded soldiers
coming in the rear, so I decided I would not get my feet wet, but wait
for my wagons and cross in one of them. The soldiers splashed right
through in solid ranks, the water being only about a foot deep. Suddenly
the captain of a company in the middle of the stream called out to his
men ‘Company, Fours, Left, March! Halt! Right, Dress! Front! Now, Boys,
There stands Clara Barton. I want you to kneel down in the water on your
right knees, and let Miss Barton walk across on your left knees.’ This
order the soldiers instantly obeyed, and I stepped from knee to knee,
the soldiers reaching up and holding my hands, and passed dry shod to
the other shore.” As Miss Barton related this incident the tears
streamed down her cheeks, and she said, “This was the most beautiful
tribute of love and devotion ever offered me in my life.”
XX
All the elements of desolation have traced such lines upon that face
as no mortal artist ever drew, and filled it with emotions that no
music could incite. Oh, the power of the expression of the face of
Clara Barton! CONGRESSMAN PORTER H. DALE.
Welcome ever smiles
And farewell goes out sighing.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
Her smile which cheered—like the breaking day.
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
A smile is a thankful hymn. GERALD MASSEY.
A smile—the effusion of fine intellect, of true courage.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
A tender smile, our sorrow’s only balm. YOUNG.
Smile and the world smiles with you. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
A smile that turns the sunny side o’ the heart
On all the world. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
Duke of Marlborough—his fascinating smile and winning tongue, equally
with his word, swayed the destinies of Empires.
WILLIAM MATTHEWS.
Smiles are the language of love. HARE.
Smiles more sweet than flowers. SHAKESPEARE.
Smiles are better teachers than mightiest words.
GEORGE MCDONALD.
Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wire.
THEODORE WINTHROP.
Smiles, not allowed to beasts, from reason move. DRYDEN.
Sweet intercourse of looks and smiles, for smiles from reason flow.
MILTON.
There is no society where smiles are not welcomed.
WILLIAM MATTHEWS.
A beautiful smile is to the female countenance what the sunbeam is to
the landscape. LAVATER.
Her smiles were like the glowing sunshine. BULLARD.
If He has a place and work for me, and I think He has, I believe I am
ready. A. LINCOLN.
Clara Barton’s energy and humanity, with a “God bless you.”
Boston (Mass.) _Journal_.
A noble and attractive everyday bearing comes of goodness, of
sincerity, of refinement. WILLIAM MATTHEWS.
I have no higher ambition than to work obscurely, and singly, where I
can see the greatest necessity. CLARA BARTON.
CHEERING WORDS—ALWAYS READY—WEARS A SMILE
No being other than the human knows how to wear a smile. A smile is as
significant as are words—the smile oft proclaims the mind. Wearing
apparel is the gift of man; the smile, the gift of nature. Wearing
apparel wears out; the smile that is genuine never wears off. Of a woman
it is said her face is her fortune. It also may be said, to rob the
world of woman’s smile would leave the human race poor indeed. Of Clara
Barton an author has said, “her heart made music and her face radiated
sunshine.” Of Clara Barton a soldier said, “No discordant word ever
escaped her lips; in camp or on the field she always wore a smile.” Her
smile and her cheering words won the heart of the private soldier, the
heart of royalty—won the heart of the world.
A woman without effort may receive a “windfall,” in wealth; but success
is achieved through personal qualities, by effort. Said a writer: “The
life of Clara Barton should be familiarized to every child. Her history
and work should be as well known to the young of the nation as those of
the great Presidents. Her history should be taught in the public schools
for the enlightenment of all pupils, boys and girls, that they may
realize how great a task for humanity was undertaken and accomplished,
by a weak woman.”
It was at Fredericksburg. The rising sun was casting its rays aslant the
eastern sky. The boys had just come off picket-duty. Their fingers were
stiff with cold; their clothes, wet and frozen. Five or six of the
comrades went to the rear; there they discharged their rifles. Then they
went to a brick house one quarter mile distant—where they found Clara
Barton. In anticipation of their proposed call, Clara Barton was ready.
She had not forgotten, when a little girl, how she suffered from the
cold, fell unconscious in a pew at Church and was taken home with frozen
feet. She had for them a “blazing-hot” fire, and also had prepared for
them plenty of hot ginger tea. In the gloom of war’s woes all must wear
“sorrow’s crown of sorrows;” but, seeing them approaching the house, she
met them at the door with a smile—with greetings as kindly as if they
had been her long-ago friends, of happier days.
At a recent annual reunion of _her_ regiment Comrade Vincent, in tears
while relating the incident, said “THAT’S CLARA BARTON. I will never
forget that smile and that welcome.” In speeding her parting guests, at
the door she said: “God bless you, my boys! If I can do anything for you
at any time, call on me—it is never too late nor too early. I want you
to know you will always find me ready.”
XXI
From the days of earliest cravings for “fairy stories” there have been
recounted to young people the wonders wrought by that noble woman of
New England. Oakland (Cal.) _Tribune_.
Clara Barton’s work in Cuba, in 1898, added still greater luster to
her glory. Holyoke (Mass.) _Telegram_.
We have heard soldiers, who faced death green-eyed, tell with
quivering voice of Clara Barton’s services before the Battle of
Santiago when, perched on a gun-carriage, she gave directions to the
doctors and nurses. Lexington (Ky.) _Herald_.