French, and was a close student of Holy Writ. In crayon and painting,
she produced work highly commended by artists. In letter writing, as
evinced by letters which “excelled all others in literary merit that
come to the White House,” and by tens of thousands of other letters, she
must ever rank in a class with Cornelia, the Roman matron; and Abigail
Adams, the illustrious American. In poetry, as tokened in “Marmora,” “A
Christmas Carol,” “The Women Who Went to the Field,” and in many other
published and unpublished poems, she at times received real inspiration
from some gentle muse. In pedagogy, as through Pestalozzi in Switzerland
so through Clara Barton in New Jersey, “pauper schools” were transmuted
into public schools.
In oratory, through her six war lectures and many other public
addresses, she established her reputation as a public speaker. Speaking
from the same platform, receiving a like fee and being as great a
“drawing card” as John B. Gough, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and
Henry Ward Beecher, she must rank for all time as one of the greatest
orators of a half century ago. Mr. W. J. Kehoe, having reported
thousands of speeches and for twenty-five years official reporter of
Congress, says: “Clara Barton evinced qualities of diction and oratory
hardly excelled by any other American.”
Separate and distinct from that of man is the inner machinery of woman’s
mind; distinctive also are the outward manifestations. Whether as the
ruler of a nation or the ruler of a cottage, a woman’s mind rules in its
own inimitable way. In the realm of heart, woman is the queen and in
that realm there can rule no king. Of our many great American heroes and
statesmen, only one has been honored in having had accorded to him the
heart of woman—all Americans worship at his shrine. Of a woman’s mind,
the inner workings and outward manifestations, no man has made
portrayal, none save perchance the Bard of Avon through his fifty
heroines. Having “the brain of a statesman, the command of a general and
the heart and hand of a woman” no man, as indicated by Lincoln, could
have become world-adored through services such as were rendered by Clara
Barton.
Equipped a leader among women, she became no Zenobia with thirst for
fame; no Cleopatra, with Cæsars and Anthonys at her beck and call; no
Catherine the Great, with political and military support; no Joan of
Arc, with a frenzied and despairing soldiery at her heels; no Elizabeth
nor Victoria, with an Empire to acclaim her reign; Clara Barton became
the self-termed “lonesomest-lone-woman-in-the-world”;—a woman “majestic
in simplicity,” who went about merely doing good and, in enduring
influence for good, surpassed them all.
She came not from a line of ancestors reliant mainly on social prestige.
Her inheritance from environments was a spirit intensely practical—the
puritan spirit.
[Illustration:
HENRY WILSON
To President Lincoln: Clara Barton is worthy of entire
confidence.—HENRY WILSON. U. S. Senate, 1855–1873; Chairman
Committee on Military Affairs, Civil War; Vice-President, 1873–1875.
Senator Henry Wilson was my always good friend.—CLARA BARTON.
See page 48.
]
REPRESENTATIVE MASSACHUSETTS STATESMEN
[Illustration:
CHARLES SUMNER
Clara Barton has the brain of a statesman, the command of a general,
and the heart and hand of a woman.—CHARLES SUMNER, U. S. Senate,
1851–1857; 1863–1869.
]
[Illustration:
GEORGE F. HOAR
Clara Barton is the greatest “man” in America. Where will you find a
man to equal her?—GEORGE F. HOAR, U. S. Senate, 1877–1901.
]
She achieved through nature’s endowments—a head to think, a heart to
feel and hands to work. From her hard-working Barton forbears she
inherited the sentiment in the Roman adage—“There is no easy way to the
stars from the earth”;—all things are conquered by labor. For her to
labor was to worship; to her the dignity of labor was greater than
queenly dignity; labor, “wide as earth,” became her passport from the
farm, the field of war, fire, flood, drouth, famine and pestilence, into
every country of earth; her “labor of love,”—the open sesame to the
White House, to the palaces of kings and emperors.
The illustrious author of “The True Grandeur of Nations,” a personal
friend of Clara Barton, says: “No true and permanent fame can be
founded, except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind.” Clara
Barton learned lessons in manual training before manual training became
a science; she learned to use her hands in the kitchen, in the garden,
in the factory, in the sick room. She not only knew how to sew and spin
and weave and cook and care for the sick, but she organized women for
such work throughout two continents. Labor organized by her among the
poor, the sick and wounded in Germany, France, Russia, Sea Islands,
Turkey, Armenia, Cuba and other countries, attesting her appreciation
Luise, the Grand Duchess of Baden, writes: “Clara Barton possesses the
ever powerful mind and ready love for suffering mankind;—faithful
gratitude follows her for ever.”
In person she was not a Queen of Sheba arrayed for kings to admire; not
a Cleopatra bejeweled in richest splendour to beguile military heroes;
not an Elizabeth with a new dress for every day in the year to impress
millions of subjects—she was a “working-woman.” Her raiment was homespun
or commonplace, by her ‘made over,’ raiment which would put to shame for
economy the average rural housewife, and yet she could but be envied for
her artistic taste by the heiress to millions. Simple in dress she lived
close to Nature, a Nature-child of perennial growth;—“a passion for
service,” she developed through the years an identity all her own. Her
identity thus developed, she became a landmark in her own country for
humanity, as in Switzerland became Dunant who first caught the spirit of
the Red Cross work on the bloody fields of Solferino.
Most unusual were Clara Barton’s physical and mental powers. If her
powers were portrayed by the imaginative mind of a Homer, Clara Barton
would be a composite being possessed of attributes as to the head, of a
Jupiter; as to the heart, of a Venus; as to the shoulders, of an Atlas;
as to the hands, of a Vulcan. But she was human, intensely human, a
“frail woman,”—in her own words, a “Poor little me.” Her weakness was
her strength; her courage, a woman’s heart.
She dwelt not on a Mount Olympus, not in a palace;—when on the
“firing-line,” “rolled in her blankets” she camped under the wagon, or
on the ground within a canvas tent. In the days of _rest_ through her
closing years, she “camped” in a warehouse of thirty-eight rooms, with
seventy-six closets; in her “house of rough hemlock boards,” a house
stored with food and clothing and she ready “to set in motion the wheels
of relief at a moment’s warning over the whole land.” She lived on the
banks of the quiet Potomac, in the midst of Nature’s foliage, in the
presence of the oak, the elm, the cedar, the poplar,—within “God’s first
temples,”
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
CHARLES E. TOWNSEND
Michigan people have special reason to venerate the memory of Clara
Barton.—CHARLES E. TOWNSEND, of Michigan. Senate, 1911——.
]
UNITED STATES SENATORS WHO SAW THE WORK OF CLARA BARTON
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
JACOB H. GALLINGER
In my investigations (in Cuba) I visited the orphanage under the care
of that sainted woman, Clara Barton. I wish I could command language
eloquent enough to pay just tribute to her,—a very angel of mercy,
and of human love and sympathy. God bless Clara Barton.—JACOB H.
GALLINGER, of New Hampshire. Senate 1891–1915.
]
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
H. D. MONEY
Everybody knows Clara Barton’s work, and when I mention the name of
that lady, it is not only with respect but reverence, for I have
seen her work in foreign lands, in hospitals, and amid scenes of
suffering and distress.—H. D. MONEY, of Mississippi. Senate
1897–1911.
]
where birds sang to her beautiful songs, and where flourished sweetest
scented flowers.
Within that house on the Potomac, Clara Barton received from President
McKinley the command: “Go to the starving Cubans with your relief ship,
and distribute as only you know how.” In haste to carry out that
command, when nearing the point of service, she begged that she might
have the right of way. “Not so,” said the Admiral of the Navy; “I am
here to keep the supplies out of Cuba; I go first.” Clara Barton
replied: “I know my place is not to precede you. When you make an
opening, I will go in. You will go and do the horrible deed; I will
follow you, and out of the human wreckage restore what I can.” Having
herself achieved a place in unusual fields of public service, in this
war timely the advice of Clara Barton: “Woman, there is a place for
thee, my hitherto timid, shrinking child; go forth and fill it, that in
thee mankind may be doubly blessed.”
Following the precedent of him who was “first in war, first in peace,”
in war and in peace at her own expense and without salary, Clara Barton
served her country. Hers was the patriotism of a Washington, “What is
money without a country.” In the early days of the Civil War, as to the
probable capture of the City of Washington by the Confederates, she
exclaimed: “If it must be, let it come, and when there is no longer a
soldier’s arm to raise the Stars and Stripes above the Capitol, may God
give strength to mine.” In defiance of sentiment as to the propriety for
a “lone-woman” to go with the soldiers on the battlefield, she conformed
to her father’s patriot-sentiment, “Go, if it is your duty to go.”
Through the thousands of years of Pagan and Christian history there had
existed the sentiment “Humanity in war must stand aside.” Among men,
war-trained and war-sacrificed, rare the word of pity that reached the
Most High for the wounded soldier. On the battlefield there had been
seen no angel of mercy until was seen the angel nurse, with the candles
of her charity lighting up the gloom of suffering and death.
At the second Bull Run, in August, 1862, with a tallow candle in her
hand through the darkness, in tears the ministering angel moved gently
among the suffering thousands, putting socks and slippers on the
wounded, feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty. Her own life
then in peril, while on that field of carnage there came from her lips
the heroic words: “I should never leave a wounded man, if I were taken
prisoner forty times.” Was hers patriotism to country? Greater than
patriotism. Was hers woman’s love—woman’s love for her friend? It was
love divine, a woman’s love for all mankind.
On, on to Chantilly, mid darkness and gloom,
Fire, thunder and lightning, guns boom upon boom.
At Chantilly the rain came down in torrents, the darkness impenetrable
save when lit up by the lightning or the fitful flash of the guns. There
up the hill to her tent she goes, falling again and again from
exhaustion,—only to find a few moments’ rest on her bed of earth soaked
with water. From her tent at midnight, the dead grass and leaves
clinging to her, her hair and clothes dripping wet, she comes back to
heartrending scenes. Forgetful of self, she carries army crackers mixed
with wine, brandy and water for her compatriots, such work continuing
for more than one hundred consecutive hours, save two hours of dreamful
sleep.
[Illustration:
© _Harris & Ewing_
NELSON A. MILES
Clara Barton is the greatest humanitarian the world has ever
known.—NELSON A. MILES, Major-General Civil War, Commander American
Army, 1895–1903; made Lieutenant General, 1900.
]
It was on Sunday morning, September 14th, 1862, in plumed hats, costly
jewels, silken dresses and French-made shoes, that the ladies with their
equally well-attired escorts were on their way to church. Adown
Pennsylvania Avenue at the same time at our national capital, on an army
wagon, the wagon loaded with well filled boxes, bags and parcels for the
suffering—and seated with the driver—again there goes to the scene of
war-carnage a woman, the woman self-styled as to theoretical religion a
“well-disposed pagan.” For more than half a century past she has been,
and for centuries to come the woman who went to the front on that Sunday
morning—as to practical religion—will be known as the purest Christian
womanhood.
“Chaste and immaculate in very thought,” chosen from above “by
inspiration of celestial grace, to work exceeding miracles on earth!”
“Inspiration of celestial grace!” That inspiration carried Clara Barton
on an army wagon, through the night, past the sleeping artillery to the
front of the battlefield of Antietam. There with her own hands she
bandaged the wounds of the boys that were falling, falling and bleeding
to death, herself escaping with a bullet through her clothes; carried
her to another point on that battlefield, and there while supporting on
her arm and knee a soldier his head by a cannon ball was severed from
the body. That inspiration carried her with the soldiers under fire over
the pontoon bridge at Fredericksburg, amidst the hissing of bullets and
exploding of shells; across the Rappahannock where a cannon ball tore
away a part of the skirt of her dress and where a few moments later the
officer, who had assisted her off the bridge, was brought to her shot to
death.
It was that inspiration which gave her the strength with an axe to chop
the ice from around the wounded “boys in gray”; to carry them to a negro
cabin; to feed them gruel and to bind up their wounds; that nerved her
with a pocket knife on the field of battle to cut the bullet from the
face of a wounded soldier. It was that inspiration which gave her the
courage to assist in a hospital where amputated human limbs were stacked
in piles like cordwood. It was this scene to which General Butler
referred, and of her in her presence at a public reception in Boston, to
say, “I have seen those beautiful arms red with human blood to her
shoulders.” Inspiration! “Inspired to save lives,” says of her the
_London Times_.
“A great mind is an appreciative mind”; Clara Barton was appreciative.
Of a simple New Year’s greeting she says: “’Twere worth the passing of
the year to be so remembered.” At various periods in her life, from
those she served and whose minds could appreciate, upon her honors fell
thick and fast as fall the autumn leaves in your maple groves. As the
daughter of the twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment stood on the banks
at Aquia Creek by no divine command did the waters part that she might
cross on dry land; but by command of a chivalric officer, in an instant
and proud of the honor, on the left knees of that line of boys in blue
with the soldiers’ helping hand Clara Barton crosses over. With tears
streaming down her cheeks, she relates this incident and says “This is
the most beautiful tribute of love and devotion ever offered me in my
life.” On the three cheers given her as she entered Lincoln Hospital by
the seventy soldier boys, boys she had served on the battlefield of
Fredericksburg, she says “I would not exchange their memory for the
wildest applause that ever greeted conqueror or king.”
[Illustration:
© Harris & Ewing
JOHN J. PERSHING
It gives me sincere pleasure to add an expression of appreciation for
the inestimable services which Miss Clara Barton rendered to her
country and to mankind in founding and fostering the American Red
Cross, of which she was the President for twenty-three years, as
well as for her unselfish interest and splendid achievements during
a life devoted to public welfare work. The accomplishments of the
Red Cross during the past few years constitute an historical
monument to the memory of this noble woman.—JOHN J. PERSHING, (1919)
Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe;
made General of the Armies of the United States, September 4, 1919.
]
From the days of Benjamin Franklin honors in Europe have been showered
upon the dignity of the American office, on two ex-Presidents in private
life, but high and above office-holders and ex-Presidents in the list of
royal honors received stands Clara Barton. Her royal receptions, her
royal decorations in all history have not been equaled. Czar and
Czarina, Emperor and Empress, King and Queen, Prince and Princess, Duke
and Duchess, all royalty so poor as to do honor to the richest in
world-service. Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Geneva, Carlsruhe, Vienna,
Baden-Baden, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Santiago,—no city too
great, no city too unchristian, to open her gates to welcome Clara
Barton.
At the great international sittings of the Red Cross in Geneva, in
Carlsruhe, in Vienna, in St. Petersburg,—Clara Barton, the only woman
officially representing any government among the representatives of
forty nations. As the unpretentious woman of five feet three comes
into the hall, the great men of the earth rise to their feet,—eyes
eager, handkerchiefs in air, then huzzas that echo the heart throbs of
a world humanity greet the ear and touch the heart of the
“lonesomest-lone-woman” as she walks down the aisle of the auditorium
to take her seat among the great world-humanitarians. Small in stature
but great in deeds, a galaxy of deeds!
Peasants,—Russians, German, Austrian, Turk, Greek, Swiss, Cuban,
Spaniard, Armenian, American soldier,—all so rich in gratitude as to
“God bless her,” the angel of the world’s battlefields. Was it mere
pastime that moved the famous generals of Europe to kneel in front of
her and kiss her hand, accompanied by greetings of the highest praise?
Did the Czar of all the Russians honor himself most or her when he
declined to permit her to kiss his hand, as is the custom in the
presence of royalty? Of Puritan origin, in _peasant_ attire, she was
recognized as royalty itself, American royalty, the highest type of
royalty.
As “fame comes only when deserved,” would you know Clara Barton? Follow
her into countless permanent and improvised hospitals, over nineteen
battlefields of the Civil War,—from Cedar Mountain in ’62 through the
Richmond Campaign in ’65; and I beg of you not to forget that
twenty-mile ride on one night in June, ’64, as on to Petersburg astride
her black horse in the darkness, in a rain storm amidst thunder and
lightning that “lonesomest-lone-woman” goes on her mission to the relief
of the thousands of victims of an explosion. Follow her into the
malarial climate through the “Campaign before Charleston,” water deadly
in character, on the barren sands under a tropic sun, sand granules
transforming brown eyes to eyes swollen and bloodshot, feet calloused
and blistered, where again she is seen under the fire of death-dealing
guns, serving the whites and blacks alike. Follow her through nineteen
national disasters,—from the Michigan forest fires in ’81 to the typhoid
fever epidemic in Butler, Pa., in 1904. Follow her as she accepts the
commission at the hands of President Lincoln and through the long,
mournful months, searches the records, and walks the cemetery in the
southland to identify the graves of the missing soldiers. Follow her
over four of the great battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War; and then
on the public highway as she walks into the city of stricken Paris.
Follow her again through numerous hospitals and on American relief
fields. Follow her as on the relief ship State of Texas, to the strains
of “My Country ’Tis of Thee” she leads the American navy into the
torpedo-mined Bay of Santiago, and from Santiago into the war-stricken
fields and the yellow fever camps of Cuba. Follow her as President of
the American Red Cross through a score of national calamities and as
President of the First Aid Association in untiring service. Follow her
into an American audience where she receives the official greetings of
Japan for her services in securing adhesion of the Japanese government
to the Red Cross International Treaty. Follow her, as the official
representative of our American nation, on four trips across the
Atlantic, thence into the halls of world conference where not hate but
love rules. Follow through half a century the woman whose deeds of love
are as lighted candles for vestal virgins to keep burning on the altar
in the Temple of Fame.
Of America’s heroine, Will Carleton sings:
A million thanks to one
Who hath a million plaudits won
For deeds of love to many millions done.
In having the fullest confidence of our Presidents, Clara Barton
expressed herself in 1909 as follows: “I never before have so fully
realized what a pleasure that privilege has been to me through half a
century.” That confidence, by the record, existed between her and
Lincoln, and Johnson, and Grant, and Hayes, and Garfield, and Arthur,
and Cleveland, and Harrison, and McKinley, a record with presidents
unequaled by any other American in public life. McKinley expressed the
sentiments of nine presidents when he said: “What Clara Barton says and
does is always honest and right.”
Nor might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure ’scape; back wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes.
All streams reach the ocean and calumny in the limpid streams of truth
is lost in the grand ocean of human thought. Whenever “back wounding
calumny” the nation’s heroine strikes, paraphrasing the words of
President Garfield to Secretary of State Blaine and relating to Clara
Barton, “Will the American people please hear the truth from the truly
great and good of America on the subject herein referred to?” General
Nelson A. Miles says: “Clara Barton is the greatest humanitarian the
world has ever known.” “Clara Barton rendered her country and her kind
great and noble service,” says Speaker Champ Clark. “The greatest of
American women, the whole world knew and loved her,” says Congressman
Joseph Taggart. Says Carrie Chapman Catt: “Clara Barton has won the
hearts of the women of the world.” Speaking of her, no less a scholar
and statesman than Senator George F. Hoar said: “Clara Barton is the
most illustrious citizen of Massachusetts, the greatest _man_ in
America.”
General W. R. Shafter says: “She was absolutely fearless. Miss Barton is
a wonder; the greatest, grandest woman I have ever known.” Mrs. General
John A. Logan, says of her: “One of the noblest, if not the noblest,
woman of her time—the greatest woman of the nineteenth century.” Says
Senator Charles E. Townsend: “The modest, unselfish and yet undaunted
Clara Barton did as much for the highest good of the world as any single
individual since the birth of civilization.” Says General Joe Wheeler:
“The good work done by Clara Barton will live forever and her memory
will be cherished wherever the Red Cross is known.” Mrs. General George
E. Pickett says of her: “A veteran of the ’60’s, with all the years
since filled with noble deeds, she is a marvel to the world; with all of
our executive women, social figures and ambitious Zenobias, we shall
never produce her like.”
Living at the same time, and serving in the same great struggle for
humanity, the two names alike adored and which for all time will be
associated in American history are ABRAHAM LINCOLN and CLARA BARTON.
Lincoln was born in obscurity, reared on the farm; so was Clara Barton.
Lincoln was inured to poverty, self-educated in mature years; similarly,
Clara Barton. Lincoln stands alone,—no type, no famed ancestors, no
successors; true of Clara Barton. Lincoln, in the opinion of Robert G.
Ingersoll, had the brain of a philosopher and the heart of a mother;
likewise Clara Barton. Lincoln was gracious to social aristocracy, but
did not court it; far from it, Clara Barton.
As was true of Lincoln, Vice-President Henry Wilson said of Clara
Barton: “She has the brain of a statesman, the heart of a woman.”
Lincoln was a many-sided man; Clara Barton a many-sided woman. Lincoln
had intellect without arrogance, genius without pride and religion
without cant; so had Clara Barton. Lincoln stood the test of power, the
supremest test of mortal; so did Clara Barton. Lincoln worked seventeen
years, paying in instalments a debt incurred in a mercantile adventure;
Clara Barton, while serving humanity, disbursed hundreds of thousands of
dollars without the appropriation of a penny to her personal use.