friend of America; now Spain is in trouble, America is her enemy.
GENERAL BLANCO (_In a Salon, Santiago de Cuba_, 1898.)
Miss Barton, you will need no directions from me, but if any one
troubles you let me know. ADMIRAL SAMPSON.
God will not call me home until my work is done.
CLARA BARTON.
There was an Overruling Providence when the “State of Texas” was
loaded for Cuba. CLARA BARTON.
I have with me a cargo of 1400 tons, under the flag of the Red Cross,
the one international emblem of humanity known to civilization. CLARA
BARTON.
A man said to me “The Red Cross has been a fairy godmother to us.”
CLARA BARTON.
Wherever men fight and tear each other to pieces, wherever the glare
and sound of war are heard, there the Red Cross aims to plant the
white banner that bears the blessed sign of relief.
CLARA BARTON.
The Red Cross has come to quicken into fresh new growth the best
things in life. CLARA BARTON.
Our Red Cross century tree blossomed in the smoke, and valor, and
wails of the Spanish-American War. CLARA BARTON.
The highest and best in the land stood under the cooling shade of the
Red Cross, and breathed its atmosphere of peace, love and help. CLARA
BARTON.
The Red Cross recognizes no features other than the relief of the
victims and the mitigation of the horrors of war. CLARA BARTON.
The Red Cross is founded in the soundest and noblest principles, in
the deep needs of human nature and in the enduring instincts of
mankind. CLARA BARTON.
Men do not go to war to save life; they might save life by keeping the
peace, and staying at home. CLARA BARTON.
Men go to war solely with the intent to inflict so much pain, loss and
disaster on the enemy that he will yield to their terms.
CLARA BARTON.
It is a wise statesmanship which suggests that in time of peace we
must prepare for war. It is no less a wise benevolence that makes
preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure
to accompany war. CLARA BARTON..
In no other country, as in ours, have the people so often risen from a
state of unreadiness and accomplished such wonderful results—at _such
a sacrifice_. CLARA BARTON.
As friends of humanity, while there is still a possibility of war or a
calamity, it behooves us to prepare. CLARA BARTON.
The memories of pitiful Cuba would not leave us.
CLARA BARTON.
To those who could not understand, Heaven came; to those who could,
“Cuba Libre.” CLARA BARTON.
Not with the booming of cannon; not with the shouts of victory, but
with the singing of Christian hymns and the outstretched hand of
help,—never before in the history of warfare was there triumphant
entry such as this. WM. E. BARTON, D.D.
Oh, the horrible, useless, tragic waste which no Peace Congress has
yet been able to avert! O treacherous fate! That made the great woman
of peace wait to see men of blood go before her to kill, to wound, to
devastate. ALICE HUBBARD.
Could it be possible that the commander would hold back his flagship
and himself, and send forward, and _first_, a cargo of food on a plain
ship, under direction of a woman? Did our commands, military or naval,
hold men great enough of soul for such action? It must be true, for
the spires of Santiago rise before us. How sadly the recollection of
that pleasant memorable day has since recurred to me! CLARA BARTON.
HORRIBLE DEED—LEADS AMERICAN NAVY—ANGEL OF MERCY
“Go to the starving Cubans!” She went. She had been entertained by
Captain Sigsbee and his officers on the Maine the evening before the
explosion. “Remember the Maine!” became the war cry.
War was declared. The Government wired: “Take no chances; get out of
Cuba.” She returned to Florida to await events. The blockade of Cuban
ports followed; the war was on. Let Clara Barton draw a picture of the
war scene:
“War has occurred four times in the United States in 120 years. Four
times men have armed and marched; and its women waited and wept. But we
cannot always hold our great Ship of State out of the storms and
breakers. She must meet and battle with them. Her timbers must creak in
the gale. The waves must dash over her decks; she must lie in the trough
of the sea. But the Stars and Stripes are above her. She is freighted
with the hopes of the world. God holds the helm; and she is coming into
port.”
[Illustration:
WILLIAM T. SAMPSON
Miss Barton, you need no advice, only the opportunity. If any trouble
happens you, let me know. REAR-ADMIRAL WILLIAM T. SAMPSON, of New
York. Commander-in-Chief, U. S. Atlantic Naval Forces,
Spanish-American War.
]
REPRESENTATIVES RESPECTIVELY OF THREE WARS
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
ISAAC B. SHERWOOD
Clara Barton is the greatest woman of either the nineteenth or
twentieth century.—ISAAC B. SHERWOOD, of Ohio, Brigadier-General,
Civil War; U. S. Congress, 1869–1875; 1907–1921.
]
[Illustration:
JOSEPH TAGGART
Clara Barton gave expression to the sympathy and tenderness of all the
hearts of all the women in the world.—JOSEPH TAGGART, of Kansas. U.
S. Congress, 1912–1918; Captain, World War.
]
Bullets had done their ghastly work; disease had run riot amidst filth
and squalor. Starvation had stalked ruthlessly over the island. “May I
return to the starving,” asked Clara Barton, “with my relief ship of
supplies now in waiting?”
“Not so,” replied Admiral Sampson, “I go first; I am here to keep
supplies out of Cuba.”
“I know, Admiral, my place is not to precede you. When you make an
opening I will go in. You will go in to do the horrible deed. I will
follow you and, out of the human wreckage, restore what I can.”
Cervera’s fleet was at the bottom of the sea, or wrecked on the shores.
Spanish Cuba doomed, the enemy had raised the white flag, capitulated;
soldiers, sailors, civilians, women and children, the human wreckage.
Fateful days! Enough crime and misery rampant to satisfy the God of War
and the imps of regions infernal.
Fair land of Cuba! on thy shores are seen
Life’s far extremes of noble and of mean;
The world of sense and matchless beauty dressed,
And nameless horrors hid within thy breast.
Cuba! Thou still shalt rise, as pure, as bright
As thy free air—as full of living light;—
The American navy, with flags flying, in triumph was ready to enter the
Bay of Santiago. The Red Cross Flag floats from the flagstaff of the
State of Texas. The Admiral gives the order that the “Red Cross Ship” is
to lead; that now “flag-ship” moving majestically, is commanded by a
woman—that woman “The Angel of the Battlefield.” Moving over the smooth
waters of the Bay that Angel with her cospirits thrilled the ear with
the patriot’s song “My Country ’Tis of Thee;” and there too the little
band of crusaders, while nearing the holy wreckage they would rescue,
touched the human heart with the grandest of all hymns of gratitude,
“Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow.”
As on the Island of Corsica nearly three decades before, again there
goes in spirit to Heaven the prayer of Clara Barton: “And I pray, Oh!
how earnestly, once more to battle with error; to help sever the
shackles of the oppressed of every name and kind; to hold firm the right
and to set right the wrong; to raise up the weak against the power of
the mighty; to make our country what it should, and must, be—true and
just as well as great and strong. Once more to comfort the afflicted; to
give rest and shelter to the weary, water to the thirsty, bread to the
hungry; to stay the tide and bind the wounds that bleed, or to take the
farewell message and point the glazing eye to hope and heaven.”
There is a woman, it’s the Red Cross!
My God, boys, it’s Clara Barton! now we’ll
Get something to eat. (_Starving children._)
“Majestic in simplicity” and of more heraldic splendor than that of the
army and navy, with their thousands of heroes, stands the little woman
overlooking the scene of woe’s misery. There on the peaceful waters are
the destroyers that had done the “horrible deed;” there on the bridge of
the Peace-Ship, leading all others, stands the “Angel of Peace,” who
will restore what she can; and before the eyes of all lay the “Gem of
the Ocean,” strewn with life’s woes—a scene of pathetic grandeur
unequaled in the annals of history.
Miss Barton: Admiral Sampson, I wish to express to you my sincere
appreciation of your exceeding courtesy in permitting my ship to
precede the battleships into Santiago.
Admiral Schley (in a side remark): Don’t give the Admiral too much
credit, Miss Barton; he was not quite sure how clear of torpedoes the
channel might be. Remember that was a _trial trip_.
XXII
Clara Barton dressed the wounded of both armies indiscriminately—a
practice which first annoyed and sometimes angered the Union
officers—from whose headquarters she worked. IDA TARBELL.
Be generous and noble. CLARA BARTON.
War is in its very nature cruel—the very embodiment of cruelty in its
effects—not necessarily in the hearts of the combatants.
CLARA BARTON.
As the daughter of a Mason my Father bade me to seek and comfort the
afflicted everywhere, and as a Christian he charged me to honor God
and love mankind. CLARA BARTON.
Baron Thomas B. Macaulay thought it not a mitigation but an
aggravation of the evil that men of tender culture and humane
feelings, with no ill will, should stand up and kill each other.
CLARA BARTON.
It is comforting, in our reflections upon the past, to know that the
idea of humanity to an enemy in distress is not entirely modern; for
Xenophon in Cyropaedia, about 400 B.C. represents Cyrus the Great as
ordering his surgeons to attend the wounded prisoners.
CLARA BARTON.
A wounded Confederate that Clara Barton had been serving whispered to
her, “Lady, you have been kind to me—every street and lane in the city
is covered with cannon. When your entire army has reached the other
side of the Rappahannock, they’ll find Fredericksburg only a slaughter
pen. Not a regiment will escape. Do not go over or you will go to
certain death.”
PERCY H. EPLER.
AT GALVESTON FLOOD
Major McDowell, ex-Union soldier, wounded—assistant to Clara Barton:
Comrade, here is some clothing for you.
Ex-Confederate: But, Major (hesitating), I am an ex-Confederate
soldier....
Major McDowell: God bless you, poor suffering soul; what difference
does that make—here, will this fit you?
Love and tears for the Blue
Tears and love for the Gray.
FRANCES MILES FINCH.
CONFEDERATES AND FEDERALS ALIKE TREATED
Quite a number of wounded Confederate officers were brought to us. They
shared alike with our own men. They were amazed, said C. M. Welles, at
the kindness of northerners, particularly at a Massachusetts lady (Clara
Barton) devoting herself to them as freely as to her own neighbors. One
of them, a captain from Georgia, needed shirt, coat, stockings and
something to eat. After being supplied, he said to me, while tears were
streaming down his face, “Sir, I find that I have mistaken you; and, if
I live to return, I will never fight against such a people any more.”
An Angel of Mercy,—her touch they will miss,
That was felt by the Boys of the Blue and the Gray;
But her name is still fragrant with Service, and this
Will inspire their sons in the Cause of Today.
At Fredericksburg a shell shattered the door of the room in which Miss
Barton was attending to wounded men. True to her mission, she did not
flinch but continued her duties as usual. She found a group of
Confederates with their garments frozen fast in the mud. As the wounded
were helpless, Miss Barton got an axe and chopped them loose. She then
built a fire in a negro cabin and, while the wounded were warming
themselves she dressed their wounds, fed them gruel and otherwise cared
for them as if they were her “Brothers in Arms.”
A KNOT OF BLUE AND GRAY
Upon my bosom lies
A knot of blue and gray;
You ask me why; tears fill my eyes
As low to you I say:
I had two brothers once,
Warm hearted, bold and gay;
They left my side—one wore the blue
The other wore the gray.
One rode with Stonewall and his men,
And joined his fate with Lee;
The other followed Sherman’s march
Triumphant to the sea.
Both fought for what they deemed the right,
And died with his sword in hand;
One sleeps amid Virginia hills,
And one in Georgia’s sand.
The same sun shines upon their graves,
My love unchanged must stay;
And so upon my bosom lies,
The knot of blue and gray.
XXIII
Clara Barton deserves first place in the living memory of the world
today, and of generations to come.
Jacksonville (Florida) _Times-Union_.
She bore herself with a poise that lost for her no friends.
Utica (N. Y.) _Observer_.
She had a faculty for seeing what needed to be done, and how to do it.
_New York Examiner._
She accomplished what crowned heads failed in.
_Unity_, Chicago.
Things came to me as if ordered by a world-controlling power.
CLARA BARTON.
Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.
ATHENÆUS.
O God! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap.
HOOD.
The greatest attribute of Heaven is mercy;
And ’tis the crown of justice, and the glory,
Where it may kill with right and save with pity.
J. FLETCHER.
Tact is born with some people.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THAYER.
Tact is not a single faculty, but a combination of faculties.
W. M. THAYER.
What men call “shrewdness” and “Common Sense” usually signify no more
than tact. W. M. THAYER.
THE ENEMY, STARVING—TACT—THE WHITE OX
To know is power, but the power may be latent. Tact is skill, ever
alert. Tact knows what to do, when and how to do it. Queen Elizabeth had
tact, unerring. Her long reign was a series of tactful events. Tact was
the basis of the supremacy of the Elizabethan Age.
Clara Barton had tact, unerring. Tact gave her position among rulers of
nations, and likewise won for her the esteem of the lowly. Tact
attracted to her unpaid Red Cross assistants, who cheerfully shared her
privations. Through tact she retained her friends, made new friends, and
to an extent unprecedented.
Clara Barton was with the Army of the Blue, but nearby was a hospital in
which were the wounded Gray, starving. The surgeons from within were
begging for food. The Federal Quartermaster had refused supplies, giving
as a valid excuse that he was a bonded officer and responsible for the
property under his charge.
A “bunch” of cattle were seen passing. Clara Barton said to the officer:
“I know you are bonded, but I am neither bonded nor responsible.” The
officer taking the “cue” was soon out of sight. Clara Barton then gave
orders to her men, at the same time pointing to the large unsuspecting
white ox that had strayed from the “bunch.” The men appreciated the
_delicate situation_; the ox somehow _strayed_ over to the enemy, and
later received a hearty reception among the starving wounded inside the
hospital.
[Illustration:
MATHEW C. BUTLER
My dear Miss Barton:—
I do not see how those poor people in South Carolina will ever be able
to thank you enough for your noble work of relief. Certainly you
have been to them a “ministering angel.” I shall never cease to be
grateful for your self-sacrificing, heroic work.—MATHEW C. BUTLER,
of South Carolina, Major-General Civil War, Major-General
Spanish-American War, U. S. Senator 1877–1895.
General Butler, that busy, hard-worked Senator, prompt and kind. CLARA
BARTON.
]
REPRESENTATIVE OF TWO WARS
[Illustration:
JOSEPH WHEELER
I think it due Miss Barton that the government should give to her the
highest possible recognition, and thanks.—JOSEPH WHEELER, of
Alabama, Major-General Civil War; Major-General Spanish-American
War; U. S. Congress, 1881, 1882; 1885–1893; 1895–1900.
]
[Illustration:
HARRISON GRAY OTIS
Clara Barton is one of the blessed ones of the earth, and her name
will remain green in the heart of America.—HARRISON GRAY OTIS, of
California; Brigadier-General, Civil War; Major-General (Brevet),
Spanish-American War; America’s Great Journalist.
]
XXIV
One’s blood runs cold and then mounts high in reading of the amazing
feats of strength and courage of heart shown by this little lone
woman. _The Outlook._
Clara Barton—her personal service and self-sacrifice are beyond
praise. _Philadelphia Public Record._
The sum of all human agony finds its equivalent on the battlefield.
CLARA BARTON.
We cannot desert our poor charge of humanity, but must stay and suffer
with them if need be. CLARA BARTON.
And if you chance to feel that the positions I occupied were rough and
unseemly for a _woman_—I can only reply that they were rough and
unseemly for _men_. CLARA BARTON.
The sooner the world learns the better that the halo of glory which
surrounds a field of battle and its tortured, thirsting, starving,
pain-racked victims exists only in the imagination.
CLARA BARTON.
When dying President Garfield murmured: “The great heart of the nation
will not let a soldier die,” I prayed God to hasten the time when
every wounded soldier would be sustained by that sweet assurance.
CLARA BARTON.
My business is staunching blood, and feeding fainting men.
CLARA BARTON.
I am so sorry for the _necessity_, so glad for the _opportunity_, of
ministering with my own hand and strength to the dying wants of the
patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine.
CLARA BARTON.
I sometimes discuss the application of a compress, or a wisp of hay
under a broken limb, but not the bearing of a political movement.
CLARA BARTON.
I make gruel, not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers,
not political addresses. CLARA BARTON.
You must never so much as think whether you like it or not, whether it
is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need,
and how to meet it. CLARA BARTON.
If it has been granted to me to be ever so little service to those
about me, in need of my help, He alone who granted me the privilege
knows how grateful I am for it. CLARA BARTON.
BULLETHOLE—AMPUTATED LIMBS LIKE CORDWOOD—GOD GIVES STRENGTH
The valley of Antietam lies in Maryland. In September, 1862, on the
night of the 16th, the Federals were on one ridge of the valley; the
Confederates, on the opposite ridge. Somber night was hushed to
stillness. Within the fog that arose from the valley and the smoke of
the campfires there gleamed the stacked bayonets and the properly placed
cannon which portend the fateful tomorrow. On the tomorrow Antietam was
to be the harvest field, death and suffering the harvest.
In the early morning were heard the bugle notes which call to battle.
The fight to death was on—possibly the fight that would unmake a nation,
or make a new nation. A little lone woman had flanked the cannon at
midnight and, in the early sunlight, stood beside the artillery.
Terrifying the sharp crack of the musketry, deafening the boom of the
cannon. The earth quaked; the sun, obscured. Over her head were shells
bursting or, passing, buried themselves in the hills beyond. Her tongue
was dried by the sulphurous powder smoke; her lips parched to bleeding.
Such the scene of the conflict in which Clara Barton said she had the
most terrible experiences of her life.
The men were falling, bleeding to death. Within that organized system
for death there was no system to save life,—no surgical instrument, no
bandage, no lint, no rag, no string. Clara Barton hastens to her supply
wagon, and with all things needful rushes into the line of fire. There
on the battlefield, with a pocket knife, she extracted a ball from the
face of a wounded soldier. There, while lifting a canteen of water to
quench the thirst of a soldier-lad, a minnie ball from the gun of the
enemy passed harmlessly through her clothing and fatally into the body
of the soldier she was trying to save.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lance, bleeding slow his life away!
With a stifled cry of horror, straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked upon her dead.
But she heard the youth’s low moaning, and his struggling breath of
pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled;
Was that pitying face his mother’s? Did she watch beside her child?
All his broken words with meaning her woman’s heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother!” murmured he and died.
There through the day, in that awful carnage of blood, fearless Clara
Barton worked to save human lives. Did she shrink from danger? She said
“_I am an American Soldier_ and am not supposed to be susceptible to
fear.”
But the most gruesome of her experiences was after nightfall. Through
the night in a barn near by, she assisted the surgeons. The surgeons had
no bandages, she supplied them; they had no light, she supplied the
lanterns and candles until the operating tables were in a blaze of
light. They had no food; she supplied the gruel made from Indian corn
meal, cooked in great brass kettles. The surgeons were without adequate
assistance; she assisted at the amputating tables. “Through the long
starlit night,” she said, “we wrought and hoped and prayed.” When the
morning came the amputated limbs made a pile so high that you had to
look up to see the top, a pile of human limbs like a cord of wood.
Not only gruesome was that “cord of wood” but pathetic. In that pile the
limbs were from mere boys,—innocent victims of the greed of men;—not a
leg, not an arm in that pile was from “War’s Profiteers.” And with the
morning came complete exhaustion. When she returned from her uncanny
labors her arms were crimson with blood; her skirts, blood-soaked; her
shoes, blood-sopping. In all human history did woman have such
experience as had Clara Barton through that two days of human
carnage—carnage on one of America’s most famous battlefields in the most
infamous fratricidal war in history? Frail Clara Barton! “The most timid
person on earth!” The same Clara Barton who fainted at the killing of an
ox? Can it be? Let hers be the explanation: “I was always afraid of
everything except when someone was to be rescued from danger or pain.
Human endurance has its limits;—God gives strength and the thing that
seems impossible is done.”
XXV
An Overruling Providence seemed to interpose its hand between Clara
Barton and the perils of war and epidemic alike, for a high and
splendid purpose. Pawtucket (R. I.) _Times_.
If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can help
their running away with him? A. LINCOLN.
Cowards die many times before their deaths
The valiant never taste of death but once.
SHAKESPEARE.
For others Clara Barton will be perfectly fearless.
DR. L. N. FOWLER (Phrenologist.)
I have no fear of the battlefield; I have large stores but no way to
reach the troops. CLARA BARTON.
FEARLESS OF BULLETS AND KICKING MULES
General Shafter used to say that he did not think Clara Barton knew the
meaning of the word fear. Sharp words passed between the General and
Miss Barton because she would not obey his orders to keep away from the
“firing line,” out of the way of the fighting men and of the bullets. On
one occasion he even threatened to order her out of Cuba, if she
continually disobeyed his orders in this respect.
Sergeant Henry White, of the 21st Massachusetts Regiment, said that he
had seen Clara Barton in positions of danger where an old veteran would
hardly dare venture. He had seen her passing among the wounded lying
around on the ground, the battle raging in front of them. As she did so,
she supplied the boys in turn with coffee, milk, and other food. Just to
please the “boys” she accepted the Sergeant’s pistol which she carried
several weeks.
Not only was she oblivious to the danger of the bullets on the
battlefield but even more reckless as to her personal safety in the
camp. She would go around among the army wagons, close to the heels of
kicking mules, where any moment there might be a “stampede,” endangering
her life. In a “stampede” of mules, she would be as helpless as in a
shower of grape and cannister from the guns of the enemy.
XXVI
And when at morning and evening repast, with folded hands and grateful
heart, you bless God for the bounties He has placed before you, let
your thoughts wander a little to find if there is not another than
yourself. CLARA BARTON.
Paradise is open to all kind hearts. BERANGER.
Kind words are the music of the world. F. W. FABER.