The newspaper is the immediate recorder and interpreter of life.
HENRY IRVING.
Three Thousand newspapers voiced the public opinion of the nation;
thousands no doubt escaped us.
EDITOR—_Clara Barton In Memoriam_ (1912).
The press shapes the fortunes of the world and makes and unmakes with
a breath. CLARA BARTON.
The American press has been to me, to my assistants, and our work, a
band of faithful brotherhood. CLARA BARTON.
Human progress had evolved a “Press” whose lever moved the world.
CLARA BARTON.
Among the dark hours that came to us in the hopeless waste of work and
war on every side, the strong sustaining power has been the _Press_ of
the United States. CLARA BARTON.
I thank the press of my country for its unwavering and genuine
kindness for all the years it has dealt with my name.
CLARA BARTON.
Through all of good report or ill; contradictory, perplexing,
incomprehensible, the one thing that has not only sustained but
astonished me has been the loyalty of the American press.
CLARA BARTON.
THE PRESS AND THE INDIVIDUAL
THE PRESS
Clara Barton is to America what Florence Nightingale is to us. The
American Civil War created her, and determined the whole course of her
life. There is that which war, and nothing less, can do with a woman. It
can make her, right away, what we may without irreverence call
superwoman; and, having done that, it can set her to hard administrative
work, to reform and organize great matters of national welfare; and it
can keep her at that high level to the end of her days. Only, it must
have her all to itself; she must give up everything that she was doing.
It was a wonderful life. She was inspired to save lives. Providence,
very wisely, chose her for its purposes, not because she was an
intellectual woman but because she was a pure flame of sympathy. Not
peace, but war, made her what she was.
London (Eng.) Times,
January 27, 1916.
THE INDIVIDUAL
Among the countless thousands, in her lifetime, that Miss Barton
numbered as her friends, the following have been culled; and Miss Barton
had not only letters thanking her for her work from the following but
also enjoyed their personal friendship:
_Presidents of the United States_
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield
Chester A. Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
William McKinley
_Vice-Presidents of the United States_
John C. Breckinridge
Hannibal Hamlin
Schuyler Colfax
Henry Wilson
William A. Wheeler
Garret A. Hobart
_Secretaries of the Interior_
Zachariah Chandler
Henry M. Teller
John W. Noble
_Secretaries of the Navy_
Benjamin F. Tracey
Hillary A. Herbert
John D. Long
_Secretaries of the Treasury_
Salmon P. Chase
George B. Boutwell
William Windom
Charles J. Folger
_Secretaries of State_
William H. Seward
Elihu B. Washburn
Hamilton Fish
William M. Evarts
James G. Blaine
T. F. Frelinghuysen
Thomas F. Bayard
John W. Foster
Walter Q. Gresham
Richard Olney
John Sherman
William B. Day
John Hay
_Secretaries of War_
Edwin M. Stanton
John M. Schofield
William T. Sherman
Robert T. Lincoln
William C. Endicott
Redfield Proctor
Daniel S. Lamont
Russell A. Alger
_Secretaries of Agriculture_
Norman J. Coleman
Jeremiah M. Rusk
J. Sterling Morton
James Wilson
_Postmasters General_
James N. Tyner
John Wanamaker
Wilson S. Bissell
William L. Wilson
_Chief Justices U. S. Supreme Court_
Salmon P. Chase
Morrison R. Waite
Stanley Matthews
_The Army_
Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles
Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt
Maj. Gen. John R. Brooke
Gen. Daniel E. Sickels
Brig. Gen. James F. Wade
Brig. Gen. M. I. Luddington
Brig. Gen. Adolphus W. Greely
Brig. Gen. John M. Wilson
Brig. Gen. Jos. C. Breckinridge
Brig. Gen. W. A. Hammond
Brig. Gen. H. D. Rucker
Lieut. Gen. John M. Schofield
_General Officers U. S. Volunteers_
Maj. Gen. William R. Shafter
Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood
Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson
Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee
Brig. Gen. William Ludlow
Brig. Gen. Fred D. Grant
_The Navy_
Rear Admiral Winfield S. Schley
Rear Admiral William F. Sampson
_Sovereigns of Europe_
Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria
Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden
Abdul-Hamid, Sultan of Turkey
William I., Emperor of Germany
Empress of Germany
Nathalie, Queen of Servia
Czar of Russia
Grand Duchess of Baden
_Miscellaneous_
Surg. Gen. Joseph K. Barnes, U.S.A.
Gen. Phil H. Sheridan
Gen. R. D. Mussey
Hon. George B. Loring
Hon. E. G. Lapham
Surg. Gen. George H. Crum, U.S.A.
Gen. Benjamin F. Butler
Sumner I. Kimball, General Superintendent U. S. Life Saving Corps
Walter Weymann, Surgeon General, Marine Hospital Service
CII
Time rolls rapidly—and the events we meet to revive are already
history. CLARA BARTON.
Clara Barton—before the growing strength and power of her sweet
spirit, the armies of the world shall some day halt and ground arms.
Madison (Wis.) _Journal_.
Worcester has even a tenderer affection than all humanity for Clara
Barton, the “Angel of the Battlefield.” She was in her Oxford birth a
Worcester County Contributor to the world’s upward move. Worcester
(Mass.) _Post_.
Her career as a nurse in the battlefields of the Civil War ranks high
among the achievements of women in human history. In the roll of the
centuries no other name will stand higher nor shine brighter than that
of the modest, the loving, the loyal, the world-wide patriot. Worcester
(Mass.) _Gazette_.
MILLIONS WILL REGARD THE SIMPLICITY OF THE END. Worcester (Mass.)
_Telegram_.
She lives whom we call dead. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
To die is to begin to live. RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Death borders on our birth and our cradle stands in the grave.
BISHOP HALL—_Epistles_.
Death but entombs the body; life, the soul;—death is the crown of
life. YOUNG’S _Night Thoughts_.
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their Country’s wishes blest!
WILLIAM COLLINS.
Nor shall your story be forgot,
While Fame her record keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
Where Valor proudly sleeps.
THEODORE O’HARA.
Resolutions have been adopted by the army nurses to provide for
perpetual decoration of Miss Barton’s resting place with the flag she
loved, and served under from 1861 to 1865, that its folds may wave,
summer and winter, in loving remembrance of the glorious work for
humanity accomplished during her long life. Boston (Mass.)
_Transcript_. April 17th, 1912.
THE CLARA BARTON CENTENARY
THE SIMPLICITY OF THE END
Memorial address delivered at the Annual Reunion of the Twenty-first
Massachusetts Regiment,—held at Worcester, Mass., August 23, 1921
By COMRADE CHARLES SUMNER YOUNG
(Honorary Member of the Regiment)
Comrades of the Twenty-first Massachusetts:
This year is the centenary of the birth of a Daughter of the Regiment.
Three score years today that regiment left Worcester for fields of
frightful carnage. Regiment and daughter shared in scenes tragic that
the Union might live.
At the close of the war the war-service of the regiment ended, but not
the public service of the daughter. Continuous thereafter she served the
human race. She served in disaster;—in fire and flood and famine and
[Illustration:
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
The President, March 4, 1909–March 4, 1913.
President American Red Cross Society, January 8, 1905–March 4, 1913
Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, 1921——.
]
cyclone and earthquake and yellow-fever and massacre. She served in two
succeeding wars. She served in the camp, in the hospital, and on the
firing-line. She was on the firing-line in the Civil War, in the
Franco-Prussian War, in the Spanish-American War;—she was on the
“firing-line” for half a century in the War of Human Woes.
It was fifty years after his passing that the American people fully
appreciated the heart and public services of Abraham Lincoln. Long
before half a century shall have lapsed into history world-recognized
will be the world-services of the Daughter of the Regiment. An oft
recital of her deeds is the best tribute that mortal man can pay to her.
But there are now of record tributes to her by powerful influences;
tributes by eleven American presidents, including ex-President Wilson
and President Harding; tributes to her by nine foreign rulers, by eleven
foreign nations, by several American States, and Cities, and by more
than fifteen hundred thousand American citizens. At the laying of the
corner stone of the Red Cross Building, in March, 1915, at Washington,
D. C., Acting Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge of her said: “Hers is
an immortal American destiny, the greatest an American woman has yet
produced.” General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American
Expeditionary Forces, in November, 1919, said, “The accomplishments of
the Red Cross during the past four years constitute an historical
monument to the memory of this noble woman.”
Autocracy cannot take precedence over heart; wealth cannot compensate
the loss of the spirit of love; wrong cannot win permanent victory over
right; official mandate cannot dim the glory of record achievements. The
highest achievement is the highest ideal, realized. In a nation the
highest ideal, realized, is not wealth, not the palace of wealth; it is
the individual. Eliminate the individual and there would be no history.
The history of the individual is the history of a nation. In Greece the
highest realized ideal is Homer; in Italy, Dante; in England,
Shakespeare; in American philanthropy it is the Founder of the American
Red Cross, of the National First Aid, and author of the American
Amendment.
As in the early sixties the Daughter of the Regiment lit the fires of
hope on the field and in the hospital of the Southland, in later years
through her “American Amendment” her service-system in alleviating human
suffering has become the system of forty civilized nations, comprising
four-fifths of the human race. Certain of fulfillment the prophecy of
our illustrious statesman, the late George F. Hoar of this city, who
said that countless millions and uncounted generations will profit
through the Founder of our American systems of philanthropy.
The achievements of the Daughter of the Regiment are the heritage of the
nation. But the fame of the daughter is indissolubly linked with that of
the regiment; the fame of the regiment, with that of the daughter.
Regiment and daughter were comrades in adversity, comrades when bullets
whizzed and death stalked. That comradeship was the most beautiful of
the humanities in the Civil War. Said a gallant son of the Twenty-first
Massachusetts: “We dearly loved her, and I do not think there was a man
in the regiment who would not have been willing to die for her.” Said
the Daughter of the Regiment: “If my life could have purchased the lives
of the patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine, how
cheerfully and quickly would the exchange have been made.” That
sentiment reciprocal—willing to serve at the risk of life—is a sentiment
chivalric, unsurpassed by the belted and spurred knights of the sword in
Feudal Days.
The guns cease firing,—the battleground, a ghastly scene. Human ghouls
are lurking, preying upon the helpless. The “lone woman” is in their
midst, going in and coming out of houses where lay the dead and dying,
walking through the streets and alley ways, on her mission. A
knight-errant in his saddle, with hat in hand graciously bowing, gallops
up to her, admonishing that she is in great danger and offering her the
City’s protection. Pointing to the thousands of boys wearing the blue,
she answered: “No, Marshal, I think not; I am the best protected woman
in the United States.”
In the autumn of her life when war scenes were a misty memory, on a
public occasion, she again comments: “In all the world none is so dear
to me as the Old Guard who toiled by my side years ago.” As she is not
here to speak for herself, kindly permit me to echo her sentiments in
the very words the late daughter expressed to you at a former annual
reunion:
Ye have met to remember, may ye ever thus meet,
So long as two comrades can rise to their feet;
May their withered hands join, and clear to the last
May they live o’er again the great deeds of the past
Till summoned in victory, honor and love,
To stand in the ranks that are waiting above,
And on their cleared vision God’s glory shall burst,
Re-united in Heaven, the old Twenty-first.
The meek brown-eyed little maiden who, in 1836, left the scenes of her
childhood at the age of fifteen had returned crowned with laurel, in
1912, then seventy-six years a veteran in the service of humanity.
Impressive in its simplicity is that home coming which occurred at
Oxford. In Memorial Hall had assembled gray-haired men and women who had
known her from her youth. In that hall were the children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren of the playmates of her childhood. The hall had
been decorated by loving hands; flowers of rare beauty gently had been
placed near the temporary altar. By her request her beloved pastor was
there to invoke Him who was highest in service to humanity; to speak
words of cheer and to bespeak immortality. Songs were sung, prayers were
said, eulogies of her real character pronounced, and the long line of
personal friends accompanied her to the Silent Home of her ancestors.
Still clad as from youth in her fair robes of charity, there she lives
and sleeps and sleeps and lives.
The Cradle and the Tomb
Alas! so nigh.
No bugle sound reached the ear, no crack of the soldier’s rifle rent the
air, no war hero’s honors were hers; hers were the honors of a gentle
maiden that came to save life, not to destroy it. Into the open earth
that received her, and on the grassy slope of the hill, lovingly were
dropped flowers of sentiment; among these the red rose, the flower she
loved best; the lily, symbol of immortality. There Valor proudly
sleeps,—there almost in sight of the birthplace; where her eyes greeted,
first, the Christmas Morn; where she was rocked in her rude wooden
cradle; where her baby fingers had pressed against the window pane and
her eyes looked out upon innocent nature; where she had romped with
other children in the wildwood, gathered wild flowers in the field,
ridden untamed horses, skated upon the smooth surface of frozen waters,
learned life’s early lessons at home and in the school-room; where she
had said “goodbye” to childhood, to enter public service. There, after
more than four score years and ten, death was still almost amidst her
baby playthings. Only a few steps from her cradle to the grave and yet,
on that short journey, she had taken millions of steps for humanity. At
the end of her journey is her memorial tribute to those she loved;
waving appreciative is the flag she served; looming significant is the
Memorial Red Cross, a memorial that gives expression to “a world of
memories, a world of deeds, a world of tears and a world of glories;”
and, as was said of another great American at his passing, Clara Barton
now belongs to the ages.
THE FINALE
After the ceremonies at the cemetery, concluding with the hymn
“Nearer, My God, to Thee,” the following conversation took place, at a
christening:
The Mother: My little girl was born in Clara Barton’s birthplace; in
the very room.
Reverend Barton: Bring her to me and I will christen her at once,
“Clara Barton.”
CIII
Honorable Charles Sumner Young’s address was an eulogy surpassing
anything ever heard in Oxford on the woman whom the town delights to
honor—Clara Barton. Worcester (Mass.) _Telegram_, May 31, 1917.
There is properly no history—only biography.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
CLARA BARTON
(Delivered by Charles Sumner Young, at Oxford, Massachusetts, Memorial
Day, 1917)
The inspiration of this historic day originated in the mind of woman. To
the credit of womanhood there is a woman at the beginning of every great
undertaking, sentimental and humanitarian. Today we pay the floral
tribute to the late soldier-patriot. Equally befitting is it, amidst
flowers of memory and at her birthplace, to pay tribute to the soldier’s
comrade, the greatest woman-patriot of the Civil War.
In ancient days woman was the cultivator of the soil, the guardian of
the fire, the creator of the home, the oracle of the Temple, and not
infrequently the leader of men. Countless women in closing their career
could similarly say as, according to Greek legend, said Semiramis:
“Nature gave me the form of a woman, my actions have raised me to the
level of the most valiant of men.” Artemisia was a heroine, wise in the
councils of war, and had Xerxes not scoffed her advice he would not have
gone down to eternal disgrace at Salamis. Cornelia, the mother of the
Gracchi, who of her two sons said “These are my jewels,” lives honored
as the highest type of Roman motherhood.
[Illustration:
THE OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS, MEMORIAL BUILDING
“A memorial to the defenders of the Union from Oxford, Mass.”
The building in which were held the funeral ceremonies for Clara
Barton April 15, 1912, and the Clara Barton Memorial Exercises,
Memorial Day, 1917.
]
[Illustration:
THE INSIDE OF MEMORIAL BUILDING, OXFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Scene on the stage, on the occasion of the Clara Barton Memorial
Exercises, Memorial Day, 1917; also where were held the funeral
exercises for Clara Barton, April 15, 1912.
]
To a woman Rome was indebted for her republic; to a woman, the legal
right of plebeians to become office-holders in the Roman Commonwealth;
to a woman, the inspiration of Dante in transmitting to the world the
Divine Comedy; to a woman, who pawned her jewels that she might finance
Columbus, must be accorded the discovery of America; to a woman, the
saving of the colonists of Jamestown and the colony’s future existence;
to a woman America owes the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo; to a woman,
the Sisters of Charity in the United States with its thousands of angels
of mercy; to a woman, the foundation of Christian Science to which is
anchored the hope of millions; to a woman, known as the “Grandmother of
the Revolution,” the revolt against tyranny by autocracy in Russia; to a
woman, the American Red Cross with its millions of humanists.
So vital to the human race is labor that in the centuries of the classic
past gods and goddesses supervised the various fields of human effort.
Such was the dignity of labor that even a toiling ox was regarded
sacred, and whoever killed this companion of toiling man was punishable
with death.
There is dignity in labor
Truer than e’er pomp arrayed.
In the presence of more than a hundred suitors, Penelope was daily
engaged in weaving while waiting the return of her Ulysses. The
celebrated Lucretia was not too proud to spin in the presence of her
attendants. In the days of Homer princesses did themselves the honor to
dip the water from the springs, and with their own hands to wash the
linen of the household. Augustus, the world sovereign, wore with pride
the clothes made by his wife and sister. The sisters of Alexander the
Great made the clothes worn by their distinguished brother. To the
request of her son to make Mt. Vernon her home during her declining
years Mary, the mother of Washington, replied: “My wants are few in this
world, and I feel perfectly competent to take care of myself.” Queen
Victoria became world-beloved because she rendered personal service to
her children, and to the children in families less fortunate than her
own.
Hypatia, the philosopher and teacher at Alexandria, refused the advances
of all would-be lovers that she might give instruction to her pupils.
Elizabeth accepted maidenhood rather than motherhood that she might
exclusively serve her subjects; Maria Theresa reproached herself for the
time she spent in sleep, as so much robbed of her people; Clara Barton,
with but a few hours of sleep daily, served not her people but
strangers. Wherever locating, Clara Barton was the directing spirit of a
swarm of workers where were permitted no drones, and among whom she was
the queen. She adopted as her rule of conduct, “hard work and low fare,”
sacrificed health without complaint, risked life without hope of reward.
Nations are the rising and falling tides of humanity; women, the fixed
beacon lights along the wave-borne highway of human progress. Fabiola,
the Roman Matron of the fourth century, who established the first
hospital and herself cared for human wrecks, set a precedent existent
through all succeeding centuries. All honor to Queen Isabella, the first
to appoint military surgeons and to originate what was known as the
“Queen’s Hospital” for the sick and wounded. As a nurse in her home, in
the plagues of her country and the wars of the fourteenth century,
Catherine Benincasa rose to the exalted position of Saint Catherine,
patron saint of Italy. As a nurse among the poor, sewing, cooking,
keeping the house clean indoors, and working with her brothers in the
harvest field—before she saw the vision of St. Michael—prepared Joan of
Arc to become the deliverer of France from Britain in the fifteenth
century, and in consequence the Maid of Orleans became a patron saint of
that period.
Maria Theresa provided hospitals for the wounded soldiery in the country
over which she ruled, until then a soldiery wholly neglected in their
sufferings on the battlefield. Ever green in memory should be kept the
name of Grace Darling, and that graphic picture of her as she hastens
down from the lighthouse on Farne Island, and through the mists of that
terrible night in 1838 goes to the rescue of the shipwrecked sailors.
Born in Florence, Italy, reared in England, a little girl caring for the
injured birds and animals in her improvised hospital at Lea Hurst, the
student nurse in Germany, the superintendent of nurses in the Crimean
War, Florence Nightingale became adored throughout Christendom,
diffusing rays of glory on the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Of England’s heroine, Longfellow sings:
A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land;
A noble type of good,
Heroic Womanhood.
CLARA BARTON! The Babe of Oxford, a Christmas gift to humanity. In a
little corner room of a little farmhouse, her tiny eyes greeted, first,
the eyes of highly esteemed but not far-famed parents. From this
Huguenot Colony, with no prestige of birth and no power of wealth, the
meek, brown-eyed maiden went forth unheralded to carry her message of
love and service. No Star of Destiny had cast its rays aslant the
cradle, and no omen betokened her future as
Out of the quiet ways
Into the world’s broad track
she ventured.
Timid as a fawn, “the sweet voiced retiring little woman” emerged from
Youth’s environs. She had dreams romantic, but her romance was wrecked.
She had visions of a mission, but for her no mission materialized.
Things came to her “as if by a world controlling power.” In whatever her
field of service, she stumbled over opportunities to be brave and
good;—there seems to have been for her a decree of the Fates against
“how circumscribed is woman’s destiny.”
Having a wide vision, she laid the foundation for the superstructure.
She was a student of the best English writers; of the classics that gave
prestige to Aspasia, the mentor of Socrates and Pericles. She studied
sanitary methods at Jackson Sanitorium, and treatment of diseases with
Doctor Carpenter at London and with her co-worker, Doctor Hubbell. In
statesmanship she learned at the feet of Webster, Calhoun, Sumner and
Lincoln. In military tactics and military strategy, she studied Napoleon
at Ajaccio, his birth-place, and at Paris made by him “Paris Beautiful,”
whence the leader of men promulgated the Napoleon Code of Laws;—“Paris
Beautiful” and the Code, two services which of themselves entitle
Napoleon to lasting fame.