friendly courtesy, but _so long_ my dark thoughts have turned to you
that I cannot find myself with the privilege of communicating with you
without expressing them. I cannot think where I have found the courage
to do it, but I _have_.
I know how unwise a thing it seems but if the pressure is too great
the bands may break, that may be my case, and fearing that my better
judgment might bid me put these sheets in the fire—I send them without
once glancing over. You will glance them over and put them in the
fire. Forgive me. You need not forget, but kindly _remember_, rather,
that they are the wail of an aching heart and that is all. Nature has
provided a sure and final rest for all the heart aches that mortals
are called to endure.
If you are in the East again, and I am here, I pray you come to me.
Receive again my thanks and permit me to remain,
Your friend,
(Signed) CLARA BARTON.
Earth naught nobler knows
Than is the victim brave beneath his cross.
’Tis in the shadow that the dawn-light grows.
ARCHAG TCHOBANIAN.
SCHEMERS—DEFAMERS—PIRATES
Bakersfield Club,
Bakersfield, Cal., February 2, 1904.
My Dear Miss Barton:
Your favor of January 13 received, and read with exceeding interest.
Mr. and Mrs. Canfield appreciate your letter to them personally, as
well as your kind words sent through me, in recognition of their
slight token of high regard for you. While here a day or two ago, Mrs.
Canfield requested me to convey these sentiments to you.
Now, Miss Barton, why you have confided in obscure me is a mystery I
cannot solve; such a compliment is more than I can hope to deserve.
(Having written the above General W. R. Shafter came into the Library
and sat beside me at the table. I stopped writing and we entered into
a discussion of you and your affairs. He is exceedingly complimentary
to you and of your work. He especially requested me to extend to you
his greetings and sincerest good wishes.)
I have known for several years more of the secret plottings than you
think. From our mutual friends I have known also of your heart aches
and the causes, and a thousand times have wished that I might say
something, or do something, so that you might know that in my inmost
heart I was in sympathy with you and your struggle against the coterie
of schemers. I have also wished that I might have power long enough to
show you in what esteem you are held by the households in America;
what a charm attaches to your name wherever spoken,—such as neither
royalty possesses nor money buys.
Your defamers no more represent the American people than pirates upon
the high seas the country from which they spring.
The unanimous vote of confidence, last week by the Woman’s Club of
Bakersfield enthusiastically expressed by all present rising to their
feet, was but one manifestation among tens of thousands of similar
ones which would occur if the facts were known. I hope you will soon
hear of similar evidence of love for you and fidelity of your friends
from organizations elsewhere in California, including the State
Federation of Women soon to convene in Sacramento.
My Uncle, General Ross, never told me of any event in his military
career with so much pride as that of offering you his services, and
acting as your lieutenant in the ware-house of the Red Cross at
Havana. Likewise would I be proud of the distinction to serve you in
the most humble capacity, either for the cause you represent or for
yourself personally.
While I do not, and can not, take seriously even the remotest
suggestion that you might seek retirement and seclusion, I would
gladly volunteer to be your Kit Carson over any mountain trail leading
to happiness. I don’t think the American people will ever permit your
forced retirement, but in the event you should voluntarily withdraw
from public service, I would indeed be glad to suggest to some of my
friends, who I am sure would esteem it an honor and privilege, to
offer you a home in Los Angeles and a competence the rest of your
life.
I expect to be in the East again soon and hope to have the honor of
seeing you. I have in mind several things I would like to talk over
with you, and thank you kindly for the invitation to call at your home
in Glen Echo.
If in my humble way I can be of any service to you, you will please
remember that you have but to command me.
Believe me,
Sincerely your friend,
(Signed) C. S. YOUNG.
To
Miss Clara Barton,
Glen Echo, Maryland.
Whispering tongues can poison truth.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
The paths of charity are over roadways of ashes; and he who would
travel them must be prepared to meet opposition, misconstruction,
jealousy, and calumny. CLARA BARTON.
And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting
lots upon them what every man should take. ST. MARK.
SHE READ THE ACTORS LIKE A BOOK
EXECUTIVE OFFICE
6 Beacon Street,
Boston, Mass.
July 11th, 1907.
Mr. C. S. Young,
Los Angeles, California.
My dear Mr. Young:
I wonder if I have ever said a word in reply to your comforting letter
of May. If I have or have not said anything on paper I have in my
heart answered it many times and bless both you and Mrs. Logan for
your kindliness and trust. I have never in my life had a moment’s
doubt of the loyalty of Mrs. Logan. She stood the brunt of the battle
while she could, and longer than I wished her to. She foresaw what was
coming with her keen knowledge of human nature and thorough political
training. She read the actors like a book. I well remember one night
when she made this remark, and it was comparatively early in the game.
Looking earnestly at me she said, calling me by name, “At first I
called this prosecution, then I called it persecution, but now I name
it crucifixion, and that is what they mean.” I knew it too but there
was no redress, no course but to wait the resurrection if it came.
The trust even of one’s best friends, under the circumstances, and
knowing nothing of the facts could not be expected to withstand it.
That it was physically withstood was beyond either the expectation or
the intention. But, my good friend, that is all passed. The press no
longer turns its arrows upon me. The harvest was not what the reapers
expected, and I suspect if it were all to be done over again in the
light of their newly gained experience it would not be done.
I would like to tell you some day of the newer work that occupies, and
will take pleasure in sending you a report issued at our second annual
meeting when it leaves the press. I am writing from Boston, where I am
spending a few days at our headquarters, but return soon to Glen Echo,
where I hope to see you whenever circumstances call you to the East.
Again thanking you most warmly for your letter, which brought me much
satisfaction, and wishing the best of all good things for you I am,
dear Mr. Young,
Most cordially yours,
(Signed) CLARA BARTON.
A TRIBUTE
And Marie of Logan; she went with them too,
A bride, scarcely more than a sweetheart, ’tis true,
Her young cheek grows pale when bold troopers ride
Where the “Black Eagle” soars she is close at his side.
CLARA BARTON.
The name of Clara Barton will forever shine among women who won
deathless fame in the days of war that called for loyal effort.
PHEBE A. HANAFORD, Author.
For patriotism, for national honor, I would stand by that at all cost.
CLARA BARTON.
If my life could have purchased the life of the patriot martyrs who
fell for their country and mine, how cheerfully and quickly would the
exchange have been made. CLARA BARTON.
What king so strong,
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
SHAKESPEARE.
The following are excerpts from letters written to the author:
LOVED AND LOYALLY TRIED TO SERVE
In April, 1909, she writes as follows:
“Does ‘Mexico’ recall to your mind a request I once made of you that you
should see me across the border line of that strange country? However
much I needed it and whether well or ill I never knew. I only know I did
not go. But my own country seemed to me so hard that I thought I could
not live it through.
“The Government which I thought I loved and loyally tried to serve has
shut every door in my face and stared at me insultingly through its
windows. What wonder I want to leave?
“The locks have never turned, the doors are rusted in their hinges. The
old warders go out and the new ones come in, sworn faithfully to their
charge, with no knowledge of why they are charged to do it; ignorant of
every fact, simply enemies by transmission; and yet I stay represented
as of ‘doubtful integrity,’ ‘weak,’ ‘decrepit,’ ‘imbecile,’ but yet,
very ‘dangerous.’”
She then draws a picture of a Sultan of Turkey who was made a prisoner.
“He was locked in and I locked out, but my whole country seemed my
prison and I struggled to free myself of it. Pardon me, I never thought
to recall the disagreeable subject again, but like the boy’s whistle it
‘blew itself.’”
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. ECCLESIASTES.
I am reminded of what Theodore Parker used to say so piteously of
himself—‘I can never talk but I talk too much.’
CLARA BARTON.
The following is an excerpt from a letter under date of Nov. 9, 1909:
THE STRICTEST SILENCE
“There has never been an occasion, nor a time, when I have so missed
my old time privilege of speaking in behalf of a friend. I never
before have so fully realized what a pleasure that privilege had been
to me through half a century. It is a change to me, to come to feel
that my only help must lie in the _strictest_ silence; an expressed
wish for any one would be fatal; not perhaps with President Taft
_personally_, for I am of small importance to him, if he even knows
me, but from the advice he would be sure to receive from those he does
know. So I wait and hope....”
Excerpts from letter written under date of Dec. 14, 1909:
OVER THE MEXICAN LINE
May 31st, the date runs, and I know I never answered that letter, for
I never in my life could have answered a letter like that, but still
more, I never even tried to. Discouraged at the onset and gave up the
encounter. A glimpse at the topics it handled were so far beyond any
reply from the “likes o’ me.” “Great services unnoticed”—“Future
remembrances when others are forgotten”—“To be told in story and sung
in other lands”—poor little me who has never seen the present Ruler of
her own country!
“Then let us hope, and although you may never escort me over the
Mexican line, I have never lost sight of the darkness of the day when
I proposed that you should.”
If it were not my firm belief in an overruling Providence.
A. LINCOLN.
Excerpts from a letter under date of November 21, 1910:
A GREATER POWER AND A WISER MIND
“How well I remember when I once asked you to escort me over! and I
never can understand _why_ I failed to go; a Greater Power and a Wiser
Mind were guiding me, no doubt——”
To God my life was an open page,
He knew what I would be;
He knew how the tyrant passions rage,
How wind swept was all my anchorage,
And why I would drift to sea.
He who hath a thousand friends hath none to spare.
ALI BEN ABOU TALEB.
I am never weary when meeting my friends. CLARA BARTON.
Clara Barton’s intellect was never keener, clearer nor more alert than
it is now (1911). STEPHEN E. BARTON.
The report which went out that I was ill set the country, nay the
world, by the ears and the letters came pouring in by the score, yes,
and more. CLARA BARTON.
Such beautiful letters! I have read them through tears.
CLARA BARTON.
WRITE NONE—SEE ONLY THOSE I MUST[12]
Oxford, Sept. 21, 1911.
Prof. Young,
My Dear friend:
I am trying to speak to your letter of yesterday, myself, but it is
from a very sick bed.
I write none—see only those I must.
I _must see you_. Come and see me though only a week. I had hoped to
see you under better conditions.
I replied to your dispatch. Come when you will; all times are alike to
me.
Yours sincerely and always,
(Signed) CLARA BARTON.
Footnote 12:
Her friends who were with her through her last illness say the letter
of which the above is a copy is the last letter written by Clara
Barton.
I did not err: there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night.
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled;
Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory
DATA AS TO THE TWENTY-FIRST MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT
Number
Enlisted men leaving Worcester, August 23, 1861 1,001
Total enlisted men throughout the war 1,277
Number Ages
1 Emery G. Wilson, Co. K. 15 years
5 17 years
101 18 years
111 19 years
140 20 years
———
358 Total number under 21 years
170 at the age of 21 years
574 between 22 years and 30 years
120 between 30 years and 40 years
50 between 40 years and 48 years
2 at the age of 46 years
1 at the age of 47 years
2 at the age of 53 years
————
1277
Of this number 560 were killed or wounded in battle. The regiment was a
member of the ninth-army Corps under General Burnside, a corps that did
not lose a color nor a gun.
Membership of the Twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment Association August
23, 1921–61.
Carrie E. Cutter, Daughter, 1861–1862.
Clara Barton, Daughter, 1862–1912.
Flora S. Chapin, Secretary and Daughter, 1912——.
Miss Carrie E. Cutter, delicate and accomplished, was known as the
Florence Nightingale of the Twenty-first. She was the daughter of Calvin
E. Cutter, surgeon of the regiment; died in the service as nurse, March
24, 1862. Aged, nineteen years and eight months. Mrs. Flora S. Chapin is
the daughter of Reverend Charles E. Simmons Hospital Steward in the
Civil War, under Surgeons Calvin E. Cutter and James Oliver, of the
Twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment. Clara Barton was the daughter of
non-commissioned officer Stephen Barton. He enlisted in 1793, serving
three years in the Indian wars (1793–97), and later was known by his
friends as “Captain Barton.”
Clara Barton, then a war nurse and nearly forty-one years of age, was
made Daughter of the Regiment on the battlefield of Antietam, in
October, 1862. This was a few days after President Lincoln had reviewed
the Army of the Potomac, the review occurring October third. The army at
that time numbered about 145,000 men. It was towards nightfall, and the
regiment was on dress parade. “She made a little speech,” says Comrade
James Madison Stone, “and there was cemented a friendship begun under
fire which was destined to last to the end of the lives of all the
participants.”
Says Captain Charles F. Walcott of the Twenty-first Regiment (afterward
Brigadier-General), and the author of the history of the regiment: “Our
true friend, Miss Barton, a Twenty-first woman to the backbone, was now
permanently associated with the regiment and, with two four-mule covered
wagons which by her untiring efforts she kept well supplied with
delicacies in the way of food and articles of clothing, was a
ministering angel to our sick. General Sturgis kindly ordered a detail
from the regiment of drivers and assistants about her wagon. And this
true, noble woman, never sparing herself nor failing in her devotion to
our suffering men, always maintained her womanly dignity, and won the
lasting respect and love of our officers and men.”
Clara Barton’s last message to the regiment was delivered forty-five
years after the Civil War, through an address and original poem, she
then being eighty-nine years of age. The occasion was the annual reunion
of the regiment, the date August 23, 1910; the reunion held at
Worcester, Massachusetts.
[Illustration:
REUNION OF 21ST MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT
]
Picture taken on the occasion of the annual reunion of the
Twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment Association—on August 23,
1921—Sixtieth anniversary of the day the Regiment left Worcester for
the field.
On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread;
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.
THEODORE O’HARA.
I hear the loved survivors tell
How naught from death could save,
’Til every sound appears a knell
And every spot a grave.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
“I never made a secret of the fact that of all the glorious regiments
that marched to the music of the Union and cooled their heated brows
in the shadows of the Stars and Stripes, the Twenty-first
Massachusetts was peculiarly my own—nearest in my thoughts, and
deepest in my love, and there are many who know that more than once my
heart went down in agony under the blood-stained soil with the
lifeless forms of its bravest and its best. I would divide the last
half of the last loaf with any soldier in that regiment, though I had
never met him.”—CLARA BARTON.
Top, left hand corner—Clara Barton.
Top, right hand corner—Carrie E. Cutter.
Lower row, center—Flora S. Chapin.
But evil on itself shall back recoil,
And mix no more with goodness when, at last,
Gathered like scum, and settled to itself,
It shall be an eternal restless change,
Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth’s base built on stubble.
XCVII
CLOSING INCIDENTS—THE BIOGRAPHY—OTHER CORRESPONDENCE
I am so glad to see you; I was afraid you wouldn’t get here in _time_.
CLARA BARTON. From “Notes” at Oxford, Massachusetts, Oct. 2, 1911.
AUTHORIZED TO SPEAK FOR CLARA BARTON
Accompanying the letter under date of December 14, 1909, came data from
Clara Barton to be used in her proposed biography, and which data the
author had previously promised to make use of as soon as his private
business would permit him to give the time necessary to do this literary
work. Commenting on the author’s final acceptance of her commission, in
her letter she said: “Your talent to writing a biography of me—of me!
Your talent and time for such as this! ‘Why was this waste made’?” The
object hoped for in her letter of September 21, 1911, wherein Clara
Barton says “_I must see you_” and therein the “dispatch” referred to,
was that she might consult the author on her biography and to make a
final request that after her passing he would protect her good name
which, continuously being assailed, she then thought to be in jeopardy.
Arriving at Oxford, Massachusetts, at the end of a special trip from
California for the final consultation as to the facts and motives
involved in her persecution, on October 3, 1911, in the sick room and at
the time when she thought that she had but a few hours to live, the
author made the promise. The further object of the visit at Oxford, on
the part of the author, was to try to stimulate her health, through a
possible sea voyage. That there had been in anticipation for several
months previous such sea voyage was well known in her household, and is
personally indicated by her in her Easter Greetings for 1911. In this
letter she writes: “And we may expect you in the East!! That is more
than I _dared_ hope. It would surely be a luxury to visit the old _old_
countries of the world. I should indeed be glad to see them with you.”
I may come to California this winter; will do so, if I am able.
CLARA BARTON.
From “Notes” of a visit in the sick room at
Glen Echo, Maryland, Oct. 20, 1911.
PROPOSED HOME IN CALIFORNIA
A few days after the consultation at Oxford she rallied, and on a
Pullman was taken to her Glen Echo home. Seriously ill and thinking this
would be her last ride, she expressed the wish to have for the party of
three, consisting of her physician, her nephew and herself, the Pullman
exclusively. The cost for the use of the car would be three hundred
dollars. This having been made known to her she protested the seeming
extravagance whereupon a friend, after having been refused such tender
by the Pullman office in New York, himself made the tender of the car,
without cost to her. Characteristic of her, she declined to accept the
courtesy, but said she would have accepted such courtesy from the
Pullman Company. She accepted, instead, a drawing room—to save the
proposed expense, even by another. Early on the way to Glen Echo, she is
reported to have said to those accompanying her: If he were here now I
would not leave the car until I shall have reached California, where I
would make my home with my friend as long as I live, thereby accepting
his invitation to become his guest permanently—in his home nearby and
overlooking the Pacific ocean.
She stood the journey so well, says her physician, that again she said
to us just before reaching Washington that she would be glad to remain
on the train and continue on to California, emphasizing “That’s what I’d
like to do.” The physician further comments: “Her faith in her friend’s
loyalty would have been sufficient tonic to make the journey easy and a
delight, and I feel sure now that had she taken the journey then, as she
expressed the wish, the end of the journey would have found her in an
_improved condition_, with constant-increasing physical strength.”
In the author’s diary for October 20, 1911, is found the following:
At ten A.M. visited Calumet Place. Mrs. John A. Logan and I then went
to Glen Echo on the street car. Visited Miss Clara Barton, who was in
a chair awaiting our presence. Spent an hour or so with her. She was
in good spirits, happy and much improved in health. Mrs. Logan and she
talked over personal matters. She received me most cordially, and said
she was most happy to see me; also said she would like to go to
California with me. Mrs. Logan, Dr. Hubbell, Stephen E. Barton and I
had a talk in the room downstairs on matters of personal interest to
Miss Barton, formulating a plan for her vindication.
FORECASTING THE BIOGRAPHY
In April, 1912, her physician, Dr. Julian B. Hubbell, wrote from Glen
Echo that a few hours before her passing Clara Barton expressed the wish
that, if not exclusively so, in any event the author _must be_
associated with her biographer. The protection of her “good name” by her
biographer was more to her than a recital of her deeds of valor. She had
in mind in selecting her biographer not what fame thereby might come to
him, not kinship nor the family name, not what profit there might be in
her biography. She had in mind her own “good name,” and the cause such
“good name” represents. These were to her vital; these to her were
dearer than life itself. Respect for the wish of the dying, and the
dead, is regarded sacred; such wish has been regarded sacred, and
binding, throughout the centuries, alike by Christian and Pagan. To do
violence to the sentiment and well known wish of Clara Barton, on the
part of the author, similarly would do violence to the sentiment of the
country which would protect her “good name,” a name historic and beloved
by the people—violence to the sentiment pervading all humanity.
As the financial executor had possession of, and control of, the
historic data prerequisite, for all practical purposes he could name the
biographer of the nation’s heroine;—could dictate what data and
sentiment must be, and must not be, included in the biography of his
Aunt. As soon after her passing as it could be written and reach
California there came from her nephew, Mr. Stephen E. Barton, of her
nearest of kin and by her made the Executor of her Estate, the following
letter:
ONE OF MY AUNT’S LAST REQUESTS
Boston, Mass.,
April 20, 1912.
Col. Charles Sumner Young,
Los Angeles, Cal.
My dear Col. Young:—
When the death of our beloved occurred at Glen Echo on the morning of
the 12th inst. Doctor Hubbell thought you were at the Palace Hotel in
San Francisco and I immediately wired you there, but I was notified
that you had left the city. I was exceedingly glad to receive your
beautiful message of the 13th from Los Angeles.
I followed your wishes by placing some beautiful flowers in your name
upon her bier at Oxford and I knew that the sympathy and tenderness of
your great heart were with us that day. I am sending you Worcester
newspapers, which will give an account of the last ceremonies, all of
which were carried out just as she desired them, both at Glen Echo and
Oxford....
I am sending you enclosed a copy of the tribute written by Mrs. Logan
and read at the Glen Echo services by her daughter.
Has it not the ring of eloquence, of justice and of fearless
friendship? I gave it to the Associated Press, but I believe it was
used only in a garbled form. You are at liberty to use it in any form
which you choose.