only the weak mortal; not less so Clara Barton. Lincoln was an
orator,—clear, sincere, natural, convincing. In her hundreds of lecture
engagements, made through the same literary bureau, speaking from the
same platform, Clara Barton was classed with Charles Sumner, Wendell
Phillips, John B. Gough, and Henry Ward Beecher, the greatest orators of
half a century ago.
Lincoln broke the shackles of the blacks in bondage; Clara Barton broke
the shackles of education in America, as Pestalozzi in Europe, and
transformed “pauper schools” into public schools. She broke the shackles
of her sex, and her name was placed on the payroll as the first woman in
the government’s service at the nation’s capital. She broke the shackles
of war-ethics, and was the first woman “angel” on the battlefield.
She broke the shackles as to national lines, and was the first woman to
traverse the ocean to minister to the war stricken of another continent.
She broke the shackles as to national disasters, and was the first human
being to organize a system to relieve human distress in times of peace,
this now the system of every Red Cross organization in the world. She
broke the shackles of women in educational life, in military life, in
social life, in humanitarian life. Through the centuries Clara Barton,
as Abraham Lincoln, will stand as the sentinel on the parapet between
the warring forces of humanity and inhumanity.
Lincoln advocated the admitting of “all whites to the right of suffrage
who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.” Clara Barton
advocated “the admission of women of whatever race to all the rights and
privileges—social, religious and political—which as an intelligent being
belongs to her.” Lincoln directed the greatest political organization of
his time; Clara Barton, the greatest humanitarian organization. Lincoln
bore malice toward none,—charity for all; equally so Clara Barton.
Lincoln is the strongest tie that binds together all classes of
Americans; Clara Barton is the strongest, tenderest tie that binds
together humanitarians. Lincoln was the grandest man in the Civil War,
is now receiving the highest homage; Clara Barton, the grandest woman,
and now the most beloved.
Lincoln was denounced a failure, inefficient as an executive and
disloyal to the Union. Clara Barton was accused of “inharmony,
unbusinesslike methods and too many years.” Lincoln passed without
warning and could make no defense; in her own words Clara Barton says:
“When it becomes necessary for _me_ to defend _myself_ before the
_American people_, let me fall.”
Fleeing the scene of his crime, and referring to Lincoln, there emitted
from the lying tongue of the assassin: “_Sic semper tyrannis_”; in
answer from the regions of the dead to the woman with the serpent’s
tongue, Clara Barton replies: “Truth is eternal; evil conspiring and
their kindred are doomed to die at last—my own shall come to me.” If
Lincoln dead may yet do more for America and Americans than Lincoln
living, so Clara Barton dead may yet do more for America and world
humanity than Clara Barton living. Abraham Lincoln and Clara Barton,
humanity’s martyrs, the two immortals.
A score of “the Immortals” lost to memory in any nation and that nation
might well exclaim: “I have lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal
part of myself.” Efface from memory the twenty, or fewer, immortals of
Carthage, of Greece, of Rome, of Italy, of France, of Germany, of
England, of America, then in the centuries hence over the tomb of every
such nation only could be written “Nation Unknown.” In all the world
destroy a score of “the Immortals” respectively in religion, in
literature, in science, in art, in the heroic,—a hundred names and their
influence,—and wealth greater to the human race shall have been
destroyed than if were destroyed every public structure possessed by one
billion six hundred millions of people now living.
Whether real or imaginary, the heroes of Homer and Virgil are worth more
to the literature of that ancient period than all the physical wealth of
Greece and Rome. What legacy to a nation could be greater than to have
inherited the name and influence of a Homer, a Socrates, a Michael
Angelo, a Queen Victoria, a Washington, a Franklin, a Lincoln, a
Florence Nightingale, a Clara Barton? In the long centuries ago, of fame
it was decreed: “Fame (’tis all the dead can have) shall live.” Through
the centuries, Church and State have fought for their respective heroes
and heroines not unlike Peter the Hermit and his followers, in the cause
of Him on whom depended their future happiness. Now, as in all the past,
the chiefest of a nation’s enduring wealth are the immortal names that
were not born to die.
[Illustration:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(Picture taken in June, 1860)
The President, March 4, 1861–April 15, 1865
Miss Barton, I will help you. A. LINCOLN (in 1865).
President Lincoln was good and kind to me in whatever I tried to do
for the soldiers. CLARA BARTON.
]
As an inspiration to the millions yet to be, the name of America’s Angel
of Mercy will live—live heroic in the deathless songs of peace and of
war. There is Second Bull Run, and Chantilly, and Antietam, and
Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, and Strasburg, and Sedan, and Paris, and
Johnstown, and Santiago, and Galveston,—there on tablets of memory her
heroism is inscribed, there to remain forever. Neither will the millions
forget, nor cease to cherish, The American Red Cross and The American
Amendment and The National First Aid,—forever theirs and their
children’s, through the constructive genius of the American
philanthropist. If “gratitude is the fairest of flowers that springs
from the soul,” perennial must spring millions of fairest flowers over
her whose services to the millions are unending, and world-wide.
At Glen Echo on the Potomac when the world-humanist received her final
orders, sustained by an unfaltering trust, she exclaimed: “Let me go,
let me go!” Thence, as if by imperial summons called, the spirit of
Clara Barton arose triumphant and on Easter Morn winged its flight to
that undiscovered bourne amid the Islands of the Blest.
In yonder Silent City,
Pointing heavenward,
Stands a granite shaft;
Above that shaft of gray,
The granite Cross of Red,
and there a shrine for the human race till the end of time.
[Sidenote: CLARA BARTON]
_Clara Barton_
Born at Oxford, Massachusetts
Christmas Day, 1821
Died at Glen Echo, Maryland
Easter Morn, 1912
President of the American Red Cross Society
from
1881 to 1904
President of the National First Aid
Association of America
from
1905 to 1912; now, The President
In Memoriam.
[Sidenote: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
Born at Hodgensville, Kentucky
February 12, 1809
Died at Washington, D. C.
April 15, 1865
President of the United States
from
1861 to 1865
[Illustration:
THE RED CROSS MONUMENT
Built by Stephen E. Barton, Executor of the Estate of Clara Barton in
the Cemetery at North Oxford, Massachusetts.
How peaceful and powerful is the grave. LORD BYRON.
Her memory deserves a monument. Nashville (Tenn.) _Banner_.
Her monument is the sign of the Red Cross. Sioux Falls (S. D.)
_Press_.
Clara Barton needs no monument, her fame is written on the world’s
battlefields. Albany _Press Knickerbocker_.
Congress should provide for the erection of a handsome monument to the
woman who has served the nation in war and in peace. Baltimore
_Sun_.
The Red Cross will serve as her monument and that is her work which,
we trust, will keep alive her merciful spirit through the oncoming
centuries.
Boston _Journal_.
Clara Barton needs no monument; her name will live in the hearts of
the people. Jackson (Mich.) _Patriot_.
The whole civilized world owes Clara Barton more than it can ever pay
in the form of tributes or material monuments.
Worcester (Mass.) _Telegram_.
Long after the funeral service, as we passed on the way home, pathways
were full of people coming from a distance; and next day hundreds
trod the worn by-path in the cemetery to the still-standing Red
Cross—a path that the feet of the world will tread to the end of
time.
_Clara Barton In Memoriam._
]
“Clara Barton joined the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.
So has she joined the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 40, changed “she would could and recount” to “she would count and
recount”.
2. P. 274, changed “responded to a Red Cross call for $ 00,000,000.” to
“responded to a Red Cross call for $100,000,000.”.
3. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
4. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
5. Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and moved to the bottom of
the paragraph.
6. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.