Clara Barton National Historic Site: A Saga of Preservation 68
National Park Service Sites Associated with Clara Barton 72
National Park Service Sites Commemorating American Women 75
Related Sites 76
Armchair Explorations: Some Books You May Want to Read 78
Index 79
Clara Barton and Her Times
[Illustration: _The figures are, from left to right: Grand Duchess
Louise of Baden, Antoinette Margot, George Kennan, Julian Hubbell,
Clara Barton, and Jean-Henri Dunant._]
A Look at the Past
Clara Barton, humanitarian and founder of the American Red Cross, spent
the last 15 years of her life in a house in Glen Echo, Maryland, now
known as Clara Barton National Historic Site. Here her contributions to
American life and her personal achievements are memorialized. Here you
can see many of her personal effects and some of the awards given to
her. Here, too, you can learn of the substance of her life and see how
she lived and worked.
From Glen Echo, you can go on to several other National Park System
sites associated with Clara Barton: Antietam, Andersonville, Manassas,
Fredericksburg, and Johnstown. Together these diverse sites document her
life, her work, and her legacy. Begin here at her house and fill in
details of her life as you come across them at the other sites. For
example, the lumber you see in the building at Glen Echo was originally
used as temporary housing for victims of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania,
flood in 1889. After Clara Barton and the Red Cross finished helping the
injured and the homeless in that city, the structure was dismantled and
shipped to Washington, D.C. Two years later, the materials were used at
Glen Echo to construct a national headquarters for the American Red
Cross.
The new building had essentially the same lines as the Johnstown
structure with various alterations to accommodate the needs of the
American Red Cross and Clara Barton herself.
Initially she planned to use this building as a warehouse for American
Red Cross supplies. Six years after its construction, the building was
remodeled and used not only as a warehouse, but also as the headquarters
of the new organization and as the residence for her and her staff. The
structure served all purposes well. Clara Barton did not distinguish
between herself and the organization she founded. The lines were
blurred; she was the Red Cross, and the Red Cross was Clara Barton. That
is evident here in the house, for she did not separate living space from
working space. The building’s purposes merged in its principal resident.
Using the place as a home, Clara Barton learned to love the passage of
the seasons, to enjoy the way the light came in at different times of
the year, to plant the yard and garden the way she wanted. As a
headquarters and warehouse for the Red Cross, the building served her
well, too. She met there with many dignitaries and volunteers on Red
Cross business and stored supplies for potential disasters. Her home and
office testify to her complete and unequivocal devotion to the Red
Cross.
Less sharply focused is Clara Barton’s role in women’s rights. Miss
Barton was neither a traditional woman nor a radical feminist, although
Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Austin were friends. She did not repudiate
the traditional roles for women. Instead she succeeded in enlarging that
accepted sphere so that the traditional skills of women—teaching
children, nursing the sick—became acceptable in the public sphere. Clara
Barton argued for women’s equality and believed in their right to vote.
But concern for her fledgling organization overrode her dedication to
women’s rights and all other causes.
At her home and office in Glen Echo you can begin to sense this complex,
fascinating individual: the public and private person so inextricably
intertwined. You sense the space in which Clara Barton moved, worked,
and thought. Impressions coalesce into an image. And yet that image
cannot become distinct without understanding her many ideas, desires,
and efforts noted in her diaries, letters, and papers. This handbook
tells the story of her eventful 90 years. The next few pages contain a
brief chronology of her life and times. Part 2 provides a full-length
biographical essay by historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor. Barton in both
triumph and defeat is here for the reader to accept, reject, or wonder
at. Many of her own words are here to explain more fully what she was
thinking—and worrying—about. The biography amplifies the chronology,
making it come alive with the whims and inconsistencies of human nature.
It’s a book within a book. And Part 3 is a guide to sites, managed by
the National Park Service and other public and private organizations,
associated with Clara Barton and her career.
Together the three parts of this handbook provide a clear image of one
of the most outstanding women of the 19th century, Clara Barton.
A Chronology
1821 Clara Barton is born December 25 in North Oxford,
Massachusetts
1825 John Quincy Adams becomes President; Erie Canal opens
1829 Andrew Jackson becomes President
1830 U.S. population is 12,866,020; Peter Cooper builds first
U.S. locomotive
1832 Clara Barton nurses brother David back to health; Louisa
May Alcott is born
[Illustration: _Louisa May Alcott_]
1834 Cyrus McCormick patents reaper
1835 Sarah and Angelina Grimké become active abolitionists;
Samuel Colt patents revolver
[Illustration: _Sarah Grimké_]
[Illustration: _Angelina Grimké_]
1837 Martin Van Buren becomes President
1839 Clara Barton begins teaching school in North Oxford and
continues teaching for the next 11 years; Mount Holyoke,
first college for women, opens
[Illustration: _Clara Barton as a schoolteacher_]
1841 William Henry Harrison becomes President, dies April 4 and
is succeeded by John Tyler
1842 Use of anesthetics begins in U.S.
1844 First telegraphic message sent by S.F.B. Morse
1845 James K. Polk becomes President; Margaret Fuller publishes
_Woman in the Nineteenth Century_; Frederick Douglass
publishes _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave_
1846 Mexican War begins, ends in 1848
1847 American Medical Association is founded
1848 First Women’s Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls,
New York
1849 Zachary Taylor becomes President, dies July 9, 1850, and is
succeeded by Millard Fillmore; Elizabeth Blackwell becomes
first woman to receive M.D. degree
1850 Clara Barton plans to enter Clinton Liberal Institute,
Clinton, New York; Harriet Tubman begins helping slaves
escape via Underground Railway
[Illustration: _Harriet Tubman_]
1851 Clara Barton’s mother dies
1852 Clara Barton starts free school at Bordentown, New Jersey;
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ is published
[Illustration: _Harriet Beecher Stowe_]
1853 Franklin Pierce becomes President; Singer sewing machine
factory opens
1854 Clara Barton moves to Washington, D.C., and becomes clerk
in Patent Office—at that time the _only_ female employed by
U.S. Government
1857 Battle of Solferino is fought June 24; James Buchanan
becomes President
1859 Edwin Drake drills first oil well
1860 U.S. population is 31,443,321 (includes 3,953,760 slaves
and 448,800 free blacks)
1861 Clara Barton begins aid to Union soldiers; Abraham Lincoln
becomes President, is assassinated April 15, 1865, and is
succeeded by Andrew Johnson; American Civil War begins with
firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and ends 1865 at
Appomattox Court House, Virginia
[Illustration: _Union soldiers near Falmouth, Virginia_]
[Illustration: _Abraham Lincoln_]
1862 Clara Barton’s father dies; _Un Souvenir de Solferino_ is
published by Jean-Henri Dunant
1864 Clara Barton becomes supervisor of nurses for the Army of
the James; Treaty of Geneva is signed, thereby establishing
the International Red Cross
1865 Clara Barton works at Andersonville, Georgia, to establish
national cemetery
1867 U.S. purchases Alaska; first practical typewriter is
developed by Christopher Sholes
1868 Andrew Johnson is acquitted in impeachment proceedings;
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton begin
publication of _The Revolution_
[Illustration: _Susan B. Anthony_]
[Illustration: _Elizabeth Cady Stanton_]
1869 Clara Barton begins travels in Europe that last until 1873,
and meets Dr. Louis Appia of the International Committee of
the Red Cross; U.S. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish
rejects Treaty of Geneva; Ulysses S. Grant becomes
President; first state board of health is established in
Massachusetts
1870 Clara Barton works with Red Cross during Franco-Prussian
War, which lasts until 1871
[Illustration: _Grand Duchess Louise of Baden_]
1872 Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman to run for U.S.
President
1873 First school of nursing is established at Bellevue Hospital
in New York City
1874 Clara Barton meets Julian Hubbell in Dansville, New York;
Frances Willard founds Women’s Christian Temperance Union;
electric streetcars begin running in New York City
[Illustration: _Julian Hubbell_]
1876 Clara Barton collaborates with Susan B. Anthony on
biographies of noted women; Alexander Graham Bell invents
telephone
1877 Clara Barton begins correspondence with Louis Appia with
goal of having U.S. ratify Treaty of Geneva; Rutherford B.
Hayes becomes President
[Illustration: _Rutherford B. Hayes_]
1879 Edison invents incandescent light bulb
[Illustration: _Drawing from Thomas Edison’s notebook, September
1879_]
1881 Clara Barton founds American Association of the Red Cross,
is elected president, establishes first local chapter of
the America Red Cross at Dansville, New York, and aids
victims of Michigan forest fires; James A. Garfield becomes
President, is shot July 2, and is succeeded by Chester
Arthur
[Illustration: _James A. Garfield_]
[Illustration: _Chester Arthur_]
1882 Clara Barton helps victims of Ohio and Mississippi river
floods; U.S. Senate ratifies Treaty of Geneva, March 16,
and ratification is proclaimed July 26
[Illustration: _Steamboats left high and dry by floodwaters_]
1883 Clara Barton serves for a short period as superintendent of
Women’s Reformatory Prison in Sherborn, Massachusetts, and
aids victims of tornadoes in Louisiana and Alabama
1884 Clara Barton assists survivors of Ohio and Mississippi
river floods; International Red Cross adopts “American
Amendment;” study of tuberculosis begins in earnest
1885 Ottmar Mergenthaler invents linotype machine; Grover
Cleveland becomes President
1886 Clara Barton sends relief to Charleston, South Carolina,
after earthquake
1888 Clara Barton organizes care of Jacksonville, Florida,
yellow fever victims; George Eastman perfects hand camera
1889 Clara Barton works at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood scene;
Benjamin Harrison becomes President; Jane Addams opens Hull
House in Chicago; Mayo brothers open clinic in Rochester,
Minnesota
[Illustration: _Jane Addams_]
1890 U.S. population stands at 62,947,714
1891 Clara Barton builds house at Glen Echo, Maryland
[Illustration: _The house at Glen Echo_]
1892 Clara Barton organizes relief for victims of drought and
famine in Russia
1893 Clara Barton sends relief to victims of Sea Island
hurricane; Grover Cleveland becomes President; Lillian Wald
establishes Henry Street Settlement House in New York City
[Illustration: _Lillian Wald_]
1895 Röntgen discovers X-rays
1897 Clara Barton moves to Glen Echo; William McKinley becomes
President, is shot September 6, 1901, dies September 14,
and is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt
1898 Clara Barton takes the Red Cross to the front lines during
Spanish-American War, which lasts from April 11 to August
13, and publishes _The Red Cross in Peace and War_
[Illustration: _Red Cross ambulance used during the Spanish-American
War_]
1900 Clara Barton organizes relief for Galveston, Texas, after
hurricane and tidal wave, and receives growing criticism
for way she is managing the Red Cross; Federal charter
granted to the American National Red Cross; Walter Reed
discovers that mosquitoes transmit yellow fever
1901 Jean-Henri Dunant shares, with Frederic Passy, the first
Nobel Peace Prize; Marconi transmits first radio signal
across the Atlantic
1902 Arthur Little patents rayon
1903 Wright brothers fly their first airplane
[Illustration: _The first flight_]
1904 Clara Barton resigns as president of the American National
Red Cross; Mabel Boardman takes control until 1946
[Illustration: _Mabel Boardman_]
1905 Clara Barton forms the National First Aid Society
1907 Clara Barton publishes _The Story of My Childhood_
[Illustration: _At her desk in Glen Echo_]
1909 William Howard Taft becomes President
1912 Clara Barton dies April 12 at Glen Echo at age 90
1915 President Woodrow Wilson lays cornerstone for American
National Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C.
1963 Friends of Clara Barton, Inc., purchases house at Glen Echo
1974 The U.S. Congress establishes on October 26 Clara Barton
National Historic Site
1975 National Park Service assumes responsibility for Clara
Barton National Historic Site
The Professional Angel
[Illustration: _Clara Barton and Red Cross workers in Tampa,
Florida, await transportation to return to Cuba in 1898._]
Square as a Brick
As a woman of 87, Clara Barton remembered “nothing but fear” when she
looked back to her childhood. She portrayed herself as an introspective,
insecure child, too timid to express her thoughts to others. Yet this
girl who felt terror in all new situations possessed the qualities that
enabled her to overcome that fear, indeed to become the woman most
universally acclaimed as courageous in American history.
Her childhood was unusual. She was born on December 25, 1821, in North
Oxford, Massachusetts, and named Clarissa Harlowe Barton after an aunt,
who in turn had been named for a popular novel of her day. Her parents,
Capt. Stephen Barton and Sarah Stone Barton, had four other children,
all at least 10 years of age by the time this child was born. Thus
Clara—as she was always called—was born into a world of adults and, as
she later recalled, “had no playmates, but in effect six fathers and
mothers.” She might well have added “six teachers,” for she noted that
“all took charge of me, all educated me according to personal taste.”
[Illustration: _Sarah Stone Barton was a native New Englander and
was born in 1787. She married at age 17, and in her first seven
years of marriage, she gave birth to her first four children. The
last, Clara, followed after a ten-year interval._]
Sally Barton, her mother, was an erratic, nervous woman, with a
reputation for profanity and a violent temper. She vented her
frustrations in compulsive housework, and Clara Barton later recalled
that her mother “never slept after 3 o’clock in the morning” and “always
did two days work in one.” Sally Barton spent little time with her
youngest daughter, preferring to leave her with other family members.
Thus Clara Barton learned political and military lore from her father,
mathematics from her brother Stephen, and horseback riding from brother
David. Her two sisters, Sally and Dolly, concentrated on teaching her
academic subjects. Besides this household instruction, she attended both
private and public schools in the Oxford area.
She was a serious child, anxious to learn, but timid to try. Her later
reminiscences of childhood were filled with stories of frightful
thunderstorms, intimidating schools, encounters with snakes, and
crippling illnesses. When she was six her sister Dolly, who had been an
intellectual girl, became mentally unbalanced, and the family had to
lock her in a room with barred windows. Once Dolly escaped and chased
David’s wife, Julia, around the yard with an ax in her hand. Clara
Barton never publicly mentioned her sister’s insanity, but she privately
thought the illness had been brought on by Dolly’s unfulfilled desire to
obtain a higher education. This rather frantic home-life and the
presence of Dolly in the Barton household must have added greatly to her
timidity and to her later emotional instability.
Barton developed great loyalty for her family, eccentric as they were.
On one occasion she nursed her brother David for two years after he was
seriously injured in a fall. Later she used her political influence to
assist family members; for example, to defend a cousin’s job or to
secure suitable military appointment for a relative. Throughout her life
she was a faithful correspondent, continually interested in the affairs
of nephews, nieces, cousins, brothers, and sisters. And in later years
she described her family life in glowing terms, never mentioning her
mother’s tantrums or Dolly’s insanity. Her devotion also extended to
family friends.
The Bartons were quintessentially industrious. David and Stephen Barton
were businessmen, successful pioneers of milling techniques. Clara
Barton’s two sisters taught school; a cousin became the first woman Post
Office official in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Such diligence was
one of the great influences in Clara Barton’s life. “You have never
known me without work,” she wrote when in her eighties, “and you never
will. It has always been a part of the best religion I had.”
She began work early. She had been an intellectually precocious child
and by her late teens was competent to teach. She first taught in the
Oxford schools, and later she conducted classes for the children of
workers in the Barton family mills. In these one-room schools she gained
a reputation for first-rate scholarship and excellent discipline. She
expelled and whipped students when necessary, but mostly she cajoled
them into obedience through affection and respect. When her first school
won the district’s highest marks for discipline, she remonstrated: “I
thought it the greatest injustice ... [for] there had been no
discipline.... Child that I was, I did not know that the surest test of
discipline is its absence.”
Barton was introspective and keenly aware of herself as an individual,
and this enabled her to view her students individually. She gave them
such personal attention that scores of former pupils wrote to her in
later years, confident that their uniqueness had touched her. Barton in
turn called her pupils “my boys” and made no apologies for her loyalty.
“They were all mine,” she recalled in the second part of her
autobiography, “second only to the claims and interests of the real
mother.... And so they had remained. Scattered over the world, some
near, some far, I have been their confidant.... I count little in
comparison with the faithful grateful love I hold today of the few
survivors of my Oxford school.”
Teaching thus reinforced her loyalty and her sense of individuality. Her
excellence as an instructor also had the effect of mitigating her
introversion and strengthening her self-assurance. Indeed, she became
confident enough to teach the roughest district schools and to demand
pay equal to a man’s. “I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing,”
she told one school board, “but if paid at all, I shall never do a man’s
work for less than a man’s pay.”
In 1850, after more than ten years of successful teaching, she felt
compelled to “find a school ... to teach _me_ something.” Female
academies were rare. She settled upon the Clinton Liberal Institute in
Clinton, New York, and took as many classes as possible in her course.
The institute was, in many ways, an ideal academy for Barton. The
school’s liberal philosophy and broad approach to education for women
corresponded with her family’s liberal traditions and her own political
and religious feelings. Moreover, the climate of New England and New
York in the 1830s and 1840s was one of intellectual and moral
progressiveness: Horace Mann instituted far-reaching educational reforms
in Massachusetts; Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about the philosophic basis
of human liberty; religion lost its evangelistic approach; William Lloyd
Garrison expounded on the plight of the enslaved black; and a few women
such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton realized that their position was little
better than that of slaves and protested against it.
None of this activity was lost on Clara Barton, who possessed an innate
sense of honesty and justice. She became an early advocate of rights for
women. “I must have been born believing,” she wrote, “in the full right
of woman to all the privileges and positions which nature and justice
accord her in common with other human beings. Perfectly equal
rights—human rights. There was never any question in my mind in regard
to this.” She supported the cause of woman suffrage, for she maintained
that while a woman was denied the vote she “had no rights and ... must
submit to wrongs, and because she submits to wrongs she isn’t anybody.”
Yet she steadfastly asserted her rights and deemed it “ridiculous that
any sensible, rational person should question it.” Although she did not
participate in women’s rights rallies until later in her life, she
always acted on her principles. In February 1861, for example, Barton
began to champion the cause of her cousin, Elvira Stone, a postmistress
who was about to lose her job to a man. Barton laid the unpleasant facts
before her friends in Washington without hesitation: “As Cousin Elvira
had never taken any parts [_sic_] in politics ... political tendencies
can scarcely be made a pretext, neither incompetence, neglect of
business, location or lack of a proper recognition of, or attention to,
the wants of the community in any manner—And it would not _look well_ to
commence a petition with _Mankind_ being naturally prone to selfishness
we hereby etc., etc.—And I have been able to divine nothing except that
she is guilty of being a woman.” By April she had secured her cousin’s
position. She dryly remarked that Elvira Stone was certainly entitled to
it, for, “I have never learned that the [post office] proceeds arising
from the female portion of the correspondence of our country were
deducted from the revenue.”
[Illustration: _Stephen Barton was a descendant of Edward Barton who
had come to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1640. Stephen, born in 1774,
served in the Indian Wars in Ohio Territory during the 1790s under
Mad Anthony Wayne._]
[Illustration: _David Barton was a keen horseman. In later years
Clara Barton referred to him as the “Buffalo Bill of the
neighborhood” when recalling the events of her childhood. David and
his brother Stephen owned and operated a satinet mill: satinet was a
kind of cotton cloth._]
Barton felt that by winning such small battles, her larger feminist
principles were upheld. But her real contribution in these early years
was her own attitude and actions. By demonstrating that her talents,
courage, and intellect were undeniably equal to a man’s she quietly
furthered the women’s cause as much as parades and speeches did. “As for
my being a woman,” she told the men who questioned her, “[you] will get
used to that.”
Her interest in the extension of liberties for women was not selfishly
inspired. Rather it was a product of her deep-rooted sense of integrity
and fairness. She believed rigidly in human rights, especially in the
rights of those unable to defend or help themselves. “What is
everybody’s business is nobody’s business,” Barton once declared. “What
is nobody’s business is my business.” Her advocacy of equality colored
her political views.
Neither could Barton tolerate dishonesty and petty arrogance. More than
once during the Civil War she railed against “the conduct of improper,
heartless, unfaithful Union officers” who blithely ignored the plight of
the “dirty, lousy, common soldiers.” She expected high standards of
politicians, soldiers, and schoolboys alike. Once when a former pupil
had misused some money she had entrusted to him, she lamented: “I am
less grieved by the loss than I am about his manner of treating my
trust.... I am as square as a brick and I expect my boys to be square.”
In 1852, Barton demonstrated the sincerity of her principles in a
dramatic way. She left Clinton to stay with a schoolmate near
Bordentown, New Jersey, and taught at a private subscription school, for
there were no free public schools. She felt uneasy about the numbers of
children whose parents could not afford private instruction, and she
began to agitate for a free school. But the popular view was that free
schools were a form of charity. She refused to give in and eventually
swayed the local school board. A small house was outfitted, and she
began to lead one of the first free schools in the state.
The Bordentown free school was a pronounced success. In its first year
the number of pupils rose from 6 to 600, and the town built a new
school-house. The town, however, could not accept a woman as the head of
a school of 600 pupils and a man was named principal. She became his
assistant. “I could bear the ingratitude, but not the pettiness and
jealousy of this principal.”
Whether the pettiness was real or imagined, Barton could not endure a
secondary position. While she debated resignation, her nerves gave way,
causing a case of laryngitis. Early in 1854, she resigned and left for
Washington, D.C., where she hoped to improve her health and “do
something decided” with her newly realized “courage and tolerable
faculty of winning [her] way with strangers.”
Barton’s health did improve in Washington, and she was soon able to “do
something decided.” Charles Mason, the commissioner of patents, hired
her as a clerk. At this time no women were permanently employed by the
Federal Government though previously there had been. Most officials
agreed with Secretary of the Interior Robert McClelland who declared
that there was an “obvious impropriety in the mixing of the two sexes
within the walls of a public office.” She gained the confidence of
Commissioner Mason, however, and became his most competent and trusted
clerk. Moreover, she combatted the many dishonest clerks who sold patent
privileges illegally. The whole affair, she concluded, made quite a
commotion, and the clerks “tried to make it too hard for me. It wasn’t a
very pleasant experience; in fact it was very trying, but I thought
perhaps there was some question of principle involved and I lived
through it.”
[Illustration: _James Buchanan (1791-1869) held several public
offices before becoming President in 1857. He was a member of the
Pennsylvania House of Representatives and of the U.S. House of
Representatives and Senate. He was secretary of state for James K.
Polk and ambassador to Great Britain during the Presidency of
Franklin Pierce. As President he felt powerless to deal with the
States that seceded in the last months of his administration though
he abhorred their actions. He retired to his home in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania._]
Although she lost her job at the Patent Office under the Buchanan
administration in 1856, Barton was reappointed late in 1860. She enjoyed
living in Washington, for she was fascinated by politics and liked
knowing such prominent figures as Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson.
She often sat in the Senate gallery to watch the proceedings and became
astute and well-informed on political matters.
Clara Barton was still a clerk at the Patent Office when the Civil War
began. Like many other intelligent and independent women of her day, she
was often filled with restless discontent, probably stemming from having
more to give than life demanded. Her job as Patent Office clerk demanded
little but self-effacement and neat penmanship. The conflict that arose
in 1861 provided her with an outlet for her energy and satisfied her
longing to lose herself in her work and to be needed.
Doing Something Decided
[Illustration: _When President Lincoln issued his call for
volunteers to maintain the Union, the response was immediate and
troops began heading for Washington. Some Massachusetts volunteers
passing through Baltimore, which was decidedly Southern in
sentiment, were attacked by local citizens._]
In late April 1861, less than two weeks after the bombardment of Fort
Sumter in South Carolina, the Massachusetts Sixth Regiment arrived in
Washington, D.C., from Massachusetts. This regiment hailed from the
Worcester area and many of the men were friends or former pupils of
Clara Barton. Their train was mobbed while passing through Baltimore,
and Barton, concerned that one of her “boys” might have been injured,
rushed to their temporary quarters in the Senate Chamber. She found the
Regiment unharmed, but sadly lacking in basic necessities—“towels and
handkerchiefs ... serving utensils, thread, needles ... etc.” She bought
and distributed as many of these items as she could, then wrote to the
anxious families in Massachusetts to send preserved fruits, blankets,
candles, and other supplies to supplement the unreliable army issues.
“It is _said_ upon proper authority, that ‘our army is supplied,’” she
wrote to a group of ladies in Worcester, “how this can be so I fail to
see.” When the generous New Englanders inundated her with useful
articles and stores, Barton’s home became a virtual warehouse. “It may
be in these days of quiet idleness they have really no pressing wants,”
she observed, “but in the event of a battle who can tell what their
needs might grow to in a single day?” Such garnering of supplies against
unforeseen disaster eventually became a central characteristic of her
relief work in the years to come.
Barton’s earliest concern with aiding the Union army stemmed from her
loyalty to the Massachusetts men. She felt a personal involvement with
those who “only a few years ago came every morning ... and took their
places quietly and happily among my scholars” and an allegiance to
others from her home state. “They formed and crowded around me,” she
noted. “What could I do but go with them, or work for them and my
country? The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.”
Her patriotism also was aroused by the Union cause. Although she
maintained that the purpose of the war was not solely to abolish
slavery, she also held little sympathy for the Southern way of life and
aligned herself with such Republicans as Henry Wilson who believed that
historically the Southern states had conspired to tyrannize the North.
“Independence!” she once scoffed, “they always had their independence
till they madly threw it away.” She was exhilarated. “This conflict is
one thing I’ve been waiting for,” she told a friend, “I’m well and
strong and young—young enough to go to the front. If I can’t be a
soldier I’ll help soldiers.” And feeling even more exalted, she declared
that “when there is no longer a soldier’s arm to raise the Stars and
Stripes above our Capitol, may God give strength to mine.”
For a year Barton contented herself with soliciting supplies. Then, as
the horrible effects of battle were reported in Washington, she began to
think of aiding soldiers directly on the battlefield. She had visited
hospitals and invalid camps, but what disturbed her most were the tales
of suffering at the front. Soldiers often had wounds unnecessarily
complicated by infection due to neglect, or died of thirst while waiting
for transportation to field hospitals. Nurses were urgently needed at
the battlefield, but she wondered if it was seemly for a woman to place
herself directly in the lines of battle: “I struggled ... with my sense
of propriety, with the appalling fact that I was only a woman whispering
in one ear, and thundering in the other [were] the groans of suffering
men dying like dogs.”
Her father encouraged her to go where her conscience directed. When
Captain Barton died in March 1862, she felt that her duties to the
family had closed. She petitioned Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew and
other government officials for permission to join General Burnside’s
division at the front. Late in the summer of 1862, at the Battle of
Cedar Mountain, Virginia, she “broke the shackles and went to the
field.”
At Cedar Mountain, and the subsequent second battle of Bull Run, she
began a remarkable service which continued to the end of the war. Here,
for the first of many times, Barton and her “precious freights” were
transported in railroad cars or by heavy, jolting army wagons to a scene
of utter desolation and confusion. When she arrived at Bull Run, 3,000
wounded men were lying in a sparsely wooded field on straw, for there
was no other bedding. Most had not eaten all day; many faced amputations
or other operations. She was unprepared for such carnage, but she
distributed coffee, crackers, and the few other supplies she had
brought. With calico skirt pinned up around her waist, she moved among
the men and prayed that the combination of lighted candles and dry straw
would not result in a fire that would engulf them.
[Illustration: _Andersonville prison camp in Georgia_]
[Illustration: _Confederate dead at Antietam_]
Scanty as her supplies were, Barton’s aid was timely and competent. An
army surgeon, Dr. James I. Dunn, wrote to his wife: “At a time when we
were entirely out of dressings of every kind, she supplied us with
everything, and while the shells were bursting in every direction ...
she staid [_sic_] dealing out shirts ... and preparing soup and seeing
it prepared in all the hospitals.... I thought that night if heaven ever
sent out a homely angel, she must be one, her assistance was so timely.”
Dunn’s letter was widely published during the Civil War, and he was
embarrassed that his private portrayal of Barton as a “homely angel”
ever saw print. She, too, seems to have been embarrassed, for she
crossed the word out on the newspaper clippings she kept and substituted
the word “holy” for “homely.” Although the original letter shows that
Dunn did indeed mean “homely,” Barton’s biographers have taken their cue
from her and given her the title “the holy angel.”
These early battles taught Clara Barton how poorly prepared the Union
army was for the immense slaughter taking place and how immediate
battlefield aid meant much more than a battalion of nurses back in
Washington.
In quick succession the battles of Fairfax Court House and Chantilly
followed second Bull Run. A surgeon recalled that at Chantilly “we had
nothing but our instruments—not even a bottle of wine. When the
[railroad] cars whistled up to the station, the first person on the
platform was Miss Barton again to supply us with ... every article that
could be thought of. She staid [_sic_] there till the last wounded
soldier was placed on the cars.” She worked for five days in the pouring
rain with only two hours of sleep. As at all battles, she took time to
jot down the names of many wounded men, so that their families could be
informed.
Barely two weeks later, on September 14, she again went to the field,
this time with advance information about a battle to be fought near
Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). She arrived too late but
rushed on to Antietam, which she reached at the height of battle on
September 17. Once again, she cooked gruel, braved enemy fire to feed
the wounded, and provided surgeons with precious medical supplies. She
had a narrow escape from death when a bullet passed under her arm,
through the sleeve of her dress, and killed the wounded soldier cradled
in her arms.
In all this fury, Barton was unflappable. At the Battle of
Fredericksburg in December 1862, “a shell destroyed the door of the room
in which she was attending to wounded men,” recalled co-worker Rev. C.M.
Welles. “She did not flinch, but continued her duties as usual.” And she
was working at the Lacy House, where hundreds of men were crowded into
12 rooms, when a courier rushed up the steps and placed a crumpled,
bloody slip of paper in her hands. It was a request from a surgeon
asking her to cross the Rappahanock River to Fredericksburg where she
was urgently needed. As always, hospital space was inadequate, and dying
men, lying in the December chill, were freezing to the ground. With
shells and bullets whistling around her, Barton bravely crossed the
swaying pontoon bridge. As she reached the end of the bridge an officer
stepped to her side to help her down. “While our hands were raised, a
piece of an exploding shell hissed through between us, just below our
arms, carrying away a portion of both the skirts of his coat and my
dress.” She made her way into Fredericksburg without further mishap. She
was lucky; the gallant officer who helped her on the bridge was brought
to her a half hour later—dead.
Bravery and timeliness were conspicuous elements of Barton’s Civil War
service. But of equal importance was her compassion for the individual
soldier. And she treated the wounded of both sides alike. Her relief
work was also notable for its resourcefulness. She built fires,
extracted bullets with a pocket knife, made gallons of applesauce, baked
pies “with crinkly edges,” drove teams, and performed last rites. When
all other food gave out she concocted a mixture of wine, whiskey, sugar,
and army biscuit crumbs. “Not very inviting,” she admitted, “but always
acceptable.” When she lacked serving implements, she emptied jars of
fruit and jelly and used them. When tired she propped herself against a
tent pole or slept sitting up in a wagon. The common soldier remembered
her sympathy and tenderness, the officer her calmness and alert activity
under fire.
As historian R.H. Bremer notes, Barton viewed her role in the war as
something of a family matter. If she was a “ministering angel,” she was
also “everybody’s old-maid aunt”—fussing over “my boys,” worrying over
clothes and food, and treating the men as fond nephews. Much of her
success with quartermasters, officers, and men was due to this attitude,
which eclipsed suspicion of her as a woman and radiated the
sentimentality of the time.
She pursued her self-appointed task with remarkable tenacity. Her
contribution was unique, for she worked directly on the battlefield, not
behind the lines in a hospital. She worked primarily alone—and liked it
that way. Although she respected such organizations as the Sanitary
Commission, she felt that by working independently she could comfortably
assist where she saw need. She wanted to be her own boss and be
appreciated for her individual efforts. She did not seek glory, but she
needed praise and did not wish to have it bestowed on the name of an
impersonal group or commission.
There is no question that Clara Barton hugely enjoyed acclaim. She liked
being in the inner elite of wartime politics, for it gave her the chance
to shine as a personality, to be revered as an “Angel of the
Battlefield.” In later life she enjoyed trips to Europe that amounted to
triumphal tours.
Barton’s relief work benefitted her in another way. Throughout her life
she was self-conscious and introspective, preoccupied with small
personal incidents which she magnified out of proportion to their
importance. She once described herself as “like other people ... only
sometimes a ‘little more so,’” and the description is apt. She was
inwardly pessimistic, and highly sensitive to criticism. She confided to
her diary that she felt “pursued by a shadow” and spent years with
“scarcely one cheerful day.” Periodically she became so depressed that
she could not “see much these days worth living for; cannot but think it
will be a quiet resting place when all these cares and vexations and
anxieties are over, and I no longer give or take offense. I ... have
grown weary of life at an age when other people are enjoying it most.”
_Continues on page 30_
“They Saw in High Purpose a Duty to Do”[1]
[Illustration: _Dorothea Dix (1802-87) started teaching Sunday
School at the East Cambridge House of Corrections in Massachusetts
in 1841. The appalling conditions she observed there spurred her to
attempt to reform prisons and mental institutions. This work
preoccupied her the rest of her life. She died in Trenton, New
Jersey._]
Clara Barton was not the only civilian who ministered to the wounded
during the Civil War. The nature of this conflict was so personal and
so immediate that many hundreds of volunteers gave enormously of their
time in hospitals and on the field. In the North, Dorothea Dix
interrupted her pre-war work with the insane to become superintendent
of Female Nurses; Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Dana Gage,
and “Mother” Mary Ann Bickerdyke are a few of the other famous names
connected with such service. Of especial importance were the Christian
and Sanitary Commissions, organizations which worked with the
government in camp and on the battlefield to improve the lot of the
Union soldier. In the Confederacy, stringent financial conditions and
widely scattered population prevented relief efforts from being as
organized as those of the North. But charity had a deep-rooted meaning
for the Southern cause, and self-denial became a matter of pride. “We
had no Sanitary Commission in the South,” wrote one Confederate
veteran, “we were too poor.... With us each house was a hospital.”
The United States Sanitary Commission was established in April 1861.
It was originally designed for inquiry into the health of the troops
and as an advisory board to the government on improvement of sanitary
conditions in the army. In the early months of the war, the Sanitary
Commission attempted to methodize the fragmented benevolent efforts of
the Union. It fought favoritism to particular regiments with equitable
distribution of supplies, administered from a network of regional and
local auxiliaries. By 1863, however, the commission was, of necessity,
drawn to the battlefield, where it established hospital and transport
ships, supply stations, and gave direct aid to the wounded. Several
million dollars were raised by the commission through “Sanitary
Fairs,” large fund-raising bazaars. At one point the Sanitary
Commission had more than 500 agents working in the field. By its
impartiality and organization, the Sanitary Commission was the
forerunner of the Red Cross in concept, if not in actuality.
Another organization, drawn along similar lines, was the United States
Christian Commission. Established by a group of New York churches in
1862, its object was to “give relief and sympathy and then the
Gospel.” Volunteers in the Christian Commission were called
“Ambassadors of Jesus;” they were chosen largely from the ranks of
clergymen and YMCA members but many women were among its workers. The
Christian Commission did give battlefield relief, and sought to supply
reading material, clothing, and medicine.
“They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,
The nurses, consolers and saviors of men."
_The Women Who Went to the Field_
[Illustration: Field hospital.]
Clara Barton was familiar with these organizations, and, especially in
the latter part of the war, often worked alongside them. But though
she wrote publicly that their labor was always in “perfect accord,
mutual respect and friendliness,” she chose to work alone rather than
align herself too closely with the commissions. Barton’s natural
leadership and difficulty in working with others prompted her to
remain independent, where she would not be “compromised by them in the
least.” Furthermore, she secretly scorned the commissions’ work, which
she thought inexperienced and impractical: “an old fudge” she called
the Sanitary Commission in her journal.
Barton also chose not to work with Dorothea Dix’s “Department of
Female Nurses.” A compulsive humanitarian worker, Dix had volunteered
her services to the War Department at the opening of hostilities. Her
offer was accepted and Dix began the impossible task of collecting
supplies, selecting nurses, and supervising hospitals for the Union
army. Dix was a perfectionist and her dogmatic and strident opinions
won her few friends. But her sharp altercations with physicians and
officers resulted more from frustration because she could not relieve
the massive misery, than from an over-bearing personality. Feeling
that she had failed to achieve her mission, Dix wrote at war’s end:
“This is not the work I would have my life judged by.”
The use of female nurses was an innovation during the Civil War and
Dix was anxious for the women under her to be taken seriously. Fearful
that nursing would become a sport among adventurous young women, she
laid down stringent and inflexible rules for nurses. These rules would
have greatly hampered Clara Barton’s independent spirit and this is
one reason she chose not to join Dix’s force.
In addition to the official organizations there were numerous “unsung
heroes” during the Civil War. Most notable were the religious orders
such as the Sisters of Charity who calmly defied the army’s
restrictions and worked both at the front and in hospitals. Despite
the fact that such diverse groups inevitably caused conflicts and
jealousies, the Civil War provided a field large enough for all of the
humanitarian organizations which labored in it.
[Illustration: _Mary Ann Bickerdyke_]
[Illustration: _Walt Whitman_]
While aiding others, Barton, for a time, forgot herself. Her “work and
words,” she insisted, were solely bound up in “the individual
soldier—what he does, sees, feels, or thinks in ... long dread hours of
leaden rain and iron hail.” As she gained self-confidence and acclaim,
she shed her morbid introspection. Once when she was asked if her work
had been interesting, she gave a revealing reply: “When you stand day
and night in the presence of hardship and physical suffering, you do not
stop to think about the interest. There is no time for that. Ease pain,
soothe sorrow, lessen suffering—this is your only thought day and night.
Everything, everything else is lost sight of—yourself and the world.”
In April 1863, Barton transferred her base from Washington to Hilton
Head Island off the coast of South Carolina. She had been advised that a
major siege of Charleston would be attempted and believed she could be
most useful there. She also hoped to be closer to her brothers: Stephen
lived behind Confederate lines in North Carolina, and David had been
sent by the army to Hilton Head in the early days of 1863.
During the eight-month siege of Charleston, she worked on the
battlefields of Morris Island and Fort Wagner and helped nurse soldiers
dying of malaria and other tropical fevers. Charleston proved to be a
less active spot than anticipated, however, and this fact, coupled with
a growing rift between Barton and hospital authorities, led her to leave
the area in January 1864. She returned to Washington, where she
continued to gather supplies as she awaited her next chance for service.
Her chance came in May 1864, when “the terrible slaughter of the
Wilderness and Spotsylvania turned all pitying hearts once more to
Fredericksburg.” Here she witnessed some of the most frightening scenes
she ever encountered. Fifty thousand men were killed or wounded in the
Wilderness Campaign. “I saw many things that I did not wish to see and I
pray God I may never see again,” she told a friend. Rain turned the red
clay soil of Virginia to deep mud, and hundreds of army wagons, crowded
full of wounded and suffering men, were stuck in a tremendous traffic
jam. “No hub of a wheel was in sight and you saw nothing of any animal
below its knees.”
She immediately set about feeding the men in the stalled wagons, but
another, more appalling situation arose. Some “heartless, unfaithful
officers” decided that it was, in fact, a hardship on the refined
citizens of Fredericksburg to be compelled to open their homes as
hospitals for “these dirty, lousy, common soldiers.” Always a champion
of the “army blue” against the “gold braid,” she hurried to Washington
to advise her friend Henry Wilson of the predicament. Wilson, chairman
of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, swiftly warned the War
Department. One day later the homes of Fredericksburg were opened to
Union soldiers. She returned to the battlefield with additional supplies
and continued to help the wounded. “When I rose, I wrung the blood from
the bottom of my clothing before I could step, for the weight about my
feet.”
After the Wilderness Campaign she served as a supervisor of nurses for
the Army of the James, under Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, until January
1865. She organized hospitals and nurses and administered day-to-day
activities in the invalid camps that received the wounded from Cold
Harbor, Petersburg, and other battles near Richmond. Many of these
soldiers remembered her thoughtfulness. If a wounded man requested
codfish cakes “in the old home way,” he most likely got them; a young
soldier, wasted to a skeleton, was tenderly cared for until his
relatives arrived to take him home; requests to have letters written
were never too much trouble.
[Illustration: _Throughout the Civil War Benjamin Butler (1818-93)
was a controversial figure as he invariably was at odds with the
national administration on the treatment of the civilian population
and the black slaves. Leaving the Army, he went into politics and
served in the U.S. Congress and one term as governor of
Massachusetts. It was as governor that he appointed Clara Barton
superintendent of the Women’s Reformatory at Sherborn._]
At the end of the Civil War an exhausted Clara Barton felt certain of
one thing: “I have labored up to the full measure of my strength.” And
she labored without pay and often used her own funds to buy supplies. In
the field she shared the conditions of the common soldier: “I have
always refused a tent unless the army had tents also, and I have never
eaten a mouthful ... until the sick of the army were abundantly
supplied.” Her pragmatic judgment and ability to work under the most
dangerous and awkward of conditions earned her the respect of surgeons
and generals who ordinarily considered they had “men enough to act as
nurses” and did not want women around to “skeddadle and create a panic.”
General Butler described her as having “executive ability and
kindheartedness, with an honest love of the work of reformation and care
of her living fellow creatures.”
Barton’s perceptive and sympathetic nature led her to foresee
innumerable social problems after the Civil War. A champion of the
underdog, she was concerned with the precarious situation of the newly
freed slaves. What she saw on her travels to the South was alarming:
uneducated, dependent blacks were being duped by their former masters,
and freedom was, in many cases, a burden, not a blessing. Few blacks
knew of the laws passed for their benefit and many did not understand
that they must continue to work. She observed that the former “owners
were disposed to cheat [a] great many.” Wherever she went, Barton tried
to explain the law and the meaning of freedom to the blacks, many of
whom walked great distances to ask her advice.
[Illustration: _Frederick Douglass (1817?-95) was born in Talbot
County, Maryland, the son of a white man and a slave woman. He was
an eloquent spokesman for American blacks before and after the Civil
War and spent his life fighting for equality. He was appointed U.S.
minister to Haiti in 1889._]
Barton, however, did more than advise. She consulted with Senator Wilson
about the best possible personnel for the Freedman’s Bureau and lobbied
Congress for a bill allowing blacks to use surplus army goods. She
attended meetings of the Freedman’s Aid Society and sent reports on
blacks’ conditions to the Freedman’s Bureau. She also worked for the
extension of suffrage through “Universal Franchise” meetings and the
American Equal Rights Association; she spoke at their rallies and formed
lifelong attachments with such prominent leaders as Frederick Douglass
and Anna Dickenson. During October of 1868, she began to formulate a
plan for helping “the colored sufferers.” The plan, modelled on the work
of Josephine Griffing, apparently involved the use of abandoned barracks
and former hospitals near Washington for “Industrial Houses.” Here
Freedmen could learn a trade and be “provided with the means of
self-support and so command the respect of [their] former masters.” She
discussed her ideas with several people, but unfortunately, the project
was dropped because of her failing health.
Barton remained a staunch ally of blacks during her lifetime. Blacks
employed by her received wages consistent with those of whites and
generally received additional training and education. When few other
charitable groups were willing to aid blacks who were the victims of
natural disasters, such as the storm that hit the Sea Islands of South
Carolina in 1893, Barton’s Red Cross never hesitated. And those who
denied the bravery or competence of black troops in the Civil or
Spanish-American Wars found her an outspoken opponent. Made honorary
president of a society honoring soldiers of the Spanish-American War,
she resigned when she found that it was open only to whites.
At the same time she was promoting the enfranchisement of freedmen, she
embarked on a project aimed at diminishing another major post-war
problem: the whereabouts of thousands of missing soldiers. She
appreciated the difficulty of keeping accurate records in the confusion
of battle and understood that it was often nearly impossible to
recognize the dead, or identify individual graves among the hastily dug
common trenches. Her wartime notebooks and diaries are filled with names
of missing and wounded soldiers and lists of those who died in her arms
with perhaps no one else to know their fate. With official permission
from President Lincoln, she devised a plan to identify missing soldiers
by publishing in newspapers monthly rolls of men whose families or
friends had inquired. Any person with information could write to her and
she would forward it to those concerned.
As she went about her work she learned that not everyone was willing to
be found. Soldiers who were attached to Southern sweethearts, who had
deserted, or who simply wished to start a new life, preferred to remain
missing. One young man wanted to know what he had done to have his name
“blazoned all over the country” in newspapers. “What you have done ... I
certainly _do not_ know,” she replied. “It seems to have been the
misfortune of your family to think more of you than you did of them, and
probably more than you deserve from the manner in which you treat
them.... I shall inform them of your existence lest you should not ‘see
fit’ to do so yourself.”
In all, Barton’s “Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing
Men of the United States Army” worked for four years to bring
information to more than 22,000 families. The most help she received
came from a young man named Dorence Atwater, a former Andersonville
prisoner. He fortuitously had copied the names of more than 13,000 men
who had died during his confinement. With his aid, she identified all
but 400 of the Andersonville graves and caused the camp to be made a
National Cemetery.
Atwater’s help was invaluable, and he became a close personal friend.
She was highly indignant when the Federal Government arrested Atwater on
charges that his death list was government property. Federal officials
claimed that he had “stolen” back the list after turning it over to the
War Department. The case appears to have been actually based on
confusion and a stubborn refusal of both sides to back down, but Clara
Barton was incensed. She fought for Atwater’s release with every
influential person she knew; she advised and prompted his statements
from prison and carried on a monumental publicity campaign to elicit
public sympathy. Largely because of her efforts, he was freed.
Atwater’s defense and her work with the missing men further developed
her publicity efforts, which she had used so effectively in the Civil
War. As time went on, her relief work relied more and more on public
support. “We enter a field of distress,” she wrote, “study conditions,
learn its needs, and state these facts calmly, and truthfully to the
people of the entire country through all its channels of information and
leave them free to use their own judgments in regard to the assistance
they will render.” Still, she knew how to publicize her causes
dramatically. In 1886, when a tornado struck Mount Vernon, Illinois, she
wrote: “the pitiless snow is falling on the heads of 3,000 people who
are without homes, without food, or clothing.” The response was
immediate.
Oral publicity also proved helpful during her attempt to identify
missing men. In 1866, she began a successful lecture tour that
publicized both her cause and her name. She gave lectures throughout the
North and West and was featured on tours with such prominent speakers as
Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, and Mark Twain. Her talks
centered on “Work and Incidents of Army Life.” The flyer portrayed her
lectures as “exquisitely touching and deeply interesting, frequently
moving her audience to tears.” As always, she enjoyed the notoriety and
in her diary wrote a flattering description of herself at the lecturn:
“easy and graceful, neith[er] tall nor short, neith[er] large nor small
... head large and finely shaped with a profusion of jet-black hair ...
with no manner of ornament save its own glossy beauty.... She [is]
_well_ dressed.... Her voice ... at first low and sweet but falling upon
the ear with a clearness of tone and distinctness of utterance at once
surprising and entrancing.”
Although she enjoyed being in the limelight, many of her old
insecurities returned. “All speech-making terrifies me,” she said,
“first I have no taste for it, lastly I hate it.” In 1868, while
delivering a lecture in Boston, she suffered what was apparently a
nervous breakdown and was ordered by her doctors to recuperate in
Europe.
The periodic nervous disorders she suffered appear to have been directly
related to her sense of usefulness. When she was not working, her diary
entries often begin “Have been sad all day,” or “This was one of the
most down-spirited days that ever comes to me.” She once remarked that
nothing made her so sick of life as to feel she was wasting it. As long
as she was needed, admired, demanded, she could perform near miracles of
self-denial and courageous action. When the crisis ebbed, she became
despondent and sick, requiring attention of a different sort. As a
single woman, often removed from her family, she had no other way to
attract notice than to excel as an individual. When such an opportunity
faded, or when she found herself an object of criticism, she was, in
several senses, prostrated. When her interest was again aroused by the
chance of giving service, her health and spirits rebounded.
Battling for Ratification
[Illustration: _Jean-Henri Dunant_]
Clara Barton arrived in Great Britain in late August 1869 with no
definite plans. Her doctors had ordered rest and a change of scene. She
toured London, visited Paris, then proceeded to Geneva. She thought she
might stay in Switzerland, but the depressing fall weather changed her
mind; she moved to Corsica, seeking sun and wishing to visit the haunts
of her longtime hero, Napoleon I.
She was ill, edgy, and demanding. Corsica, although beautiful, did not
suit her and by March she was back in Geneva. Here, by chance, she was
introduced to Dr. Louis Appia, a member of the International Committee
of the Red Cross. This organization was the result of the Geneva
Convention of 1864, which produced a treaty dealing with the treatment
of wounded and sick soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians under
wartime conditions. The convention was inspired by a book entitled _Un
Souvenir de Solferino_ (A Memory of Solferino), in which author
Jean-Henri Dunant described the horrors of the Battle of Solferino. At
the time of her meeting with Appia, she had not heard of the Geneva
Convention nor of Dunant. When she finally read Dunant’s work, she must
have identified strongly with it, for he expressed perfectly the concern
for the individual which had prompted Barton’s Civil War aid: “A son
idolized by his parents, brought up and cherished for years by a loving
mother who trembled with alarm over his slightest ailment; a brilliant
officer beloved by his family, with wife and children at home; a young
soldier who had left sweetheart or mother, sisters or old father to go
to war; all lie stretched in the mud and dust, drenched in their own
blood.”
At their first meeting, Appia asked Barton why the United States had not
signed the Treaty of Geneva. A U.S. delegate, Charles Bowles, had been
at the Geneva Convention, and Dr. Henry Bellows, president of the
Sanitary Commission, had urged the government to accede to the treaty.
But the United States remained the only major nation that had not
accepted the international pact. Barton said a key factor was probably
the American public’s almost total ignorance about the treaty, and she
asked Appia to provide her with further information about the
International Red Cross.
Barton soon found reason, in her words, “to respect the cause and
appreciate the work of the Geneva Convention.” On July 19, 1870, France
declared war on Prussia. She was restless and excited by hearing guns at
practice and wrote to Appia, offering her services to the Red Cross.
Before he could reply, however, she made her way to Basel, Switzerland,
where she worked with Red Cross volunteers making bandages. This tame
work exasperated her. “It is not like me, nor like my past to be sitting
quietly where I can just watch the sky reddening with the fires of a
bombarded city and ... have [nothing] to do with it.” Despite her
frustration, Barton’s work in Basel gave her great respect for the
garnering power of the Red Cross. Its warehouses were stocked with
supplies of all kinds, and trained nurses and clerks wearing Red Cross
armbands stood ready to assist. “I ... saw the work of these Red Cross
societies in the field, accomplishing in four months under this
systematic organization what we failed to accomplish in four years
without it—no mistakes, no needless suffering, no starving, no lack of
care, no waste, no confusion, but order, plenty, cleanliness, and
comfort wherever that little flag made its way, a whole continent
marshalled under the banner of the Red Cross—as I saw all this, and
joined and worked in it, you will not wonder that I said to myself, ‘If
I live to return to my country, I will try to make my people understand
the Red Cross and that treaty.’”
The opportunity to be useful and to forget petty irritants restored her
health. “I am so glad to be able to work once more,” she told her
cousin, Elvira Stone, “I _have_ worked ... all year, and grown stronger
and better.” She then made her way toward the battlefields of France
accompanied by Antoinette Margot, a young Swiss woman. On their way
toward Mulhouse, where several battles had been reported, they met
hundreds of refugees who pleaded with them to turn back. But when they
encountered trouble from German troops, Barton brought out a sewing kit
and speedily tacked a cross of red ribbon onto the sleeve of her dress.
Thus began her first service under the Red Cross badge, which she would
wear long and proudly.
[Illustration: _Napoleon III, Emperor of France_]
[Illustration: _Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany_]
[Illustration: _Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany_]
Barton was disappointed to learn that she was not needed at the front,
but she found her niche elsewhere. As she traveled through France, she
wrote to newspaper editor Horace Greeley that she had seen deserted
fields, “crops spoiled ... by both friend and foe. Her producing
population stands under arms or wasting in prisons—her hungry cattle
slain for food or rotting of disease—her homes deserted or smouldering
in ashes.” When Louise, grand duchess of Baden and a Red Cross patron,
asked her to help establish hospitals and distribute clothing to
destitute civilians, she undertook the work with zeal.
Barton’s accomplishments during the Franco-Prussian War lay mainly in
aid to civilians. Her most notable work was in Strasbourg, where she
used her powers of organization and publicity to establish a sewing
center to clothe the city’s destitute population. In a letter to a
generous English philanthropist in May 1871, she wrote: “Thousands who
are well to-day will rot with smallpox and be devoured by body-lice
before the end of August. Against ... these two scourges there is, I
believe, no check but the destruction of all infected garments; hence
the imperative necessity for something to take their place. Excuse, sir,
I pray you, the plain ugly terms which I have employed to express
myself; the facts are plain and ugly.”
_Continues on page 40_
Jean-Henri Dunant and the Geneva Convention
On June 24, 1859, forces commanded by French Emperor Napoleon III and
Austria’s Emperor Franz Josef, met on the battlefield of Solferino, in
Northern Italy. More than 40,000 men were killed or wounded in the
battle, and towns and villages throughout the area became temporary,
crude hospitals. In nearby Castiglione, a stranger, dressed in white,
watched with horror as dazed and suffering soldiers were slowly
brought from the battlefield only to be met with a shortage of
doctors, inadequate accommodations, and an appalling lack of food and
supplies. With spirit and speed “the man in white” began to recruit
local peasants for volunteer service and to procure badly needed
bandages, water, and food.
The “man in white”—Jean-Henri Dunant—was not new to philanthropic
endeavors. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1828, he came of a
well-to-do family with a strong religious background and a tradition
of public service. As a young man Dunant had been an instigator of the
movement that created the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA),
which he hoped would promote fellowship and understanding between
young men of many cultural backgrounds. Until the age of 30, Dunant
was a banker, with business interests throughout Europe and Northern
Africa. In June of 1859, these financial affairs took him to
Castiglione.
In a sense, Dunant never completely left Solferino. The many startling
scenes he witnessed there continued to crowd his mind. “What haunted
me,” wrote Dunant, “was the memory of the terrible condition of the
thousands of wounded.” This horrible remembrance of men dying, often
for want of the simplest care, inspired him to publish in 1862 a vivid
account of the battle and its consequences. The book was called _Un
Souvenir de Solferino_ (A Memory of Solferino).
The realistic descriptions, and the compassion for the individual
soldier shown in Dunant’s book created an immediate sensation in
Europe. _Un Souvenir de Solferino_ wasted little space on the
traditional “glories” of war; Dunant was more interested in the plight
of the “simple troopers ... [who] suffered without complaint ... [and]
... died humbly and quietly.” The book advocated a radically new
concept of charitable action: that all of the wounded, friend and foe
alike, should be cared for. He had been inspired, said Dunant, by the
Italian peasant women who murmured “tutti fratelli” (all are brothers)
while treating the hated Austrians. Near the end of the book was a
brief paragraph, destined to have dramatic impact on the humanitarian
efforts of the world: “Would it not be possible,” wrote Dunant, “in
time of peace and quiet, to form relief societies for the purpose of
having care given to the wounded in wartime of zealous, devoted and
thoroughly qualified volunteers?”
The simple question may have been overlooked by readers caught up in
the battle scenes of _Un Souvenir de Solferino_. But it caught the
imagination of one influential man: Gustav Moynier, a citizen of
Geneva who headed the charitable “Committee for the Public Benefit.”
Moynier introduced a practical direction to Dunant’s dreams. He
contacted Dunant, and together they established a committee, headed by
Moynier, and including the commanding general of the Swiss Army,
Guillaume Dufour. Two distinguished doctors, Louis Appia and Theodore
Maunoir, completed the “Committee of Five.” This committee immediately
began plans for an international convention to discuss the treatment
of the wounded in wartime.
In February 1863, 16 nations met in Geneva to discuss “the relief of
wounded armies in the field.” Dunant’s proposals were debated and an
informal list of agreements was drawn up. This agreement established
the national volunteer agencies for relief in war. Then, in August
1864 a second conference was held which produced the international
pact, known as the Treaty of Geneva. The treaty rendered “neutral and
immune from injury in war the sick and wounded and all who cared for
them.” To distinguish the neutral medical personnel, supplies and
sick, an international badge was needed. Out of respect for Dunant and
the country which had been host of the conventions, the design adopted
was that of the reversed Swiss flag. Those working under the Treaty of
Geneva would thereafter be recognized by the emblem of a red cross on
a white flag. The United States signed this treaty on March 16, 1882.
Jean-Henri Dunant’s generous dream had been fulfilled, but he obtained
no glory or recognition for many years. Dunant had neglected his
business interests while promoting the Geneva conventions. By 1867 he
was bankrupt and spent most of his remaining life a pauper.
However, Dunant did live to receive, jointly with Frederic Passy, the
first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. It was a fitting tribute to the man
who, in the words of Gustav Moynier, “opened the eyes of the blind,
moved the hearts of the indifferent, and virtually effected in the
intellectual and moral realm the reformation to which [he] aspired.”
[Illustration: _In 1864, 11 European nations agreed to the terms of
the Treaty of Geneva, which established the Red Cross. This
painting, by Charles Edouard Armand-Demaresq, shows the ceremony of
signing the treaty._]
Barton did not confine her activity to Strasbourg. After eight months
work, she left her sewing establishment in the hands of local officials
and journeyed to Paris where she distributed clothing, money, and
comfort to citizens. From Paris she went to Lyons and surveyed the
surrounding countryside for a relief headquarters, finally settling in
Belfort. This small border town had heroically withstood Prussian fire
for more than eight months. The people were “very poor and their
ignorance ... something deplorable,” noted Antoinette Margot. Many of
the citizens had never seen paper money—so Barton used only coins—and
less than one in 15 could write his name. Her activities were still
loosely tied to the Red Cross, but in most cases she used her own
judgment to come to terms with the destitution she found. Money was
given according to need, solace indiscriminately. Desperate mobs often
stormed the home of “Monsieur l’Administrateur” in which she was
staying; assistant Margot was “amused ... to see Miss Barton _protecting
her policemen_” and pacifying the crowds with her dignified bearing and
calm admonition to “wait a little and be quiet.” Barton tried to help
the anxious families of prisoners who had lost their means of support
and provided some relief for the French leaving German-occupied Alsace.
Margot later remarked that she wished “that her own people could see
their country-woman at work among European poor as not one European has
done.”
When the hostilities between France and Prussia ended, and with it the
need for Barton’s help, her health again declined. Despite the
decorations of several governments, she was despondent. Her eyes gave
out, her nerves collapsed. She had over-taxed herself in
nerve-shattering situations, and she suffered, in part, because she had
never really learned to care for herself. Troubled throughout her life
by insomnia, she often worked on four or five hours sleep. A sometimes
vegetarian, she took no pains to correctly nourish herself; dinner was
too often a large red apple or nothing at all. It is understandable, in
the light of this negligence and spiritual decline, that she suffered a
relapse into her old nervous disorders.
[Illustration: _German soldiers rout French troops at Bazeilles,
France, during the Franco-Prussian War._]
For a time Barton stayed in Germany. She then traveled with friends
throughout Italy, a tour highlighted by a visit to Mt. Vesuvius. In May
1872, she visited the Riviera and traveled via Paris to London. Though
somewhat improved, she was still weak, and her restlessness increased
daily. She stayed in London for more than a year, made many friends,
enjoyed horse shows and Madame Tussaud’s, and took part in a congress on
prison reform. But all the time she pondered her fate, bemoaned the
sacrifice of her time, and let small incidents unduly rankle. For a
while she considered writing for newspapers, but she felt too listless.
Visits from a niece, from the grand duchess of Baden, who had become her
devoted friend, and from Antoinette Margot could not rouse her. Finally,
on September 30, 1873, she sailed on the _Parthia_ for the United
States, still worried and uncertain about her future. “Have ye place,
each beloved one, a place in your prayer,” she plaintively asked in a
poem written aboard the _Parthia_, “Have ye work, my brave countrymen,
work for me there?”
Barton hoped to recover her spirits in America. Unfortunately, only a
few months after her return, she received word that her sister, Sally,
was critically ill. She hurried from Washington, D.C., to Oxford,
Massachusetts, only to find that Sally’s death had preceded her arrival
by hours. This blow was devastating; she collapsed utterly. A year
later, still shaky and depressed, she faced the death of Henry Wilson,
her political ally and close friend.
Barton was in serious need of a restful atmosphere. Through a young
woman in Worcester she learned of a sanitarium at Dansville, New York,
where the patients were treated with a popular “water cure.” There she
found “congenial society, wholesome and simple food, and an atmosphere
that believed health to be possible.” Her health did indeed improve at
Dansville. She eventually bought a house there, and made the small town
her home for the next ten years. She participated in plays, attended and
gave lectures, went on outings with other patients, and enjoyed her
position as the town’s most celebrated citizen. And, after one of her
lectures, she met one of the most influential people in her life: Julian
Hubbell, a young chemistry teacher at Dansville Seminary. They became
friends, and when she told him of the Treaty of Geneva and how she hoped
for its adoption in the United States, Hubbell asked what he could do to
help. “Get a degree in medicine,” she advised, and Hubbell complied. He
left his teaching position and entered the University of Michigan
medical school in 1878.
Julian Hubbell remained uncompromisingly loyal to Barton. When the
American Red Cross was established, he became its chief field agent. As
such he participated in more actual relief work than she did. His
skillful organization and quiet control were directly responsible for
much of the success of the early Red Cross. Upon her resignation, he too
gave up his career.
[Illustration: _During the Civil War Henry Bellows (1814-82) founded
and served as president of the United States Sanitary Commission. He
had graduated from Harvard University at the age of 18 and five
years later from Harvard Divinity School. He worked first in
Louisiana and Alabama, but his career began in earnest when he
became pastor of New York City’s Unitarian Church of All Souls.
Throughout his life, he was known as an inspirer of people._]
In the late 1870s, Barton began to be active again in political affairs.
Her long interest in women’s rights was re-kindled, especially by
Harriet Austin, a doctor at the sanitarium. For a time, Barton adopted
the mode of Austin’s dress reform—loose, corsetless garments, which
included baggy trousers. It pleased her to “shed flannels” and dress
“just as free and easy as a gentleman, with lots of pockets, and
perambulate around to suit herself.” In 1876 she advocated a series of
dress reform meetings and helped Susan B. Anthony compile biographies of
noted women. In 1878, she participated in suffrage conventions in
Washington, D.C., and Rochester, New York.
As Barton’s health improved she also renewed her interest in
establishing the Red Cross in the United States. She knew that her first
step was to obtain the official sanction of the International Red Cross
Committee and spent much of 1877 and 1878 corresponding with Dr. Louis
Appia about a plan for promoting the Red Cross. Always jealous of her
position as sole representative of the cause, Barton was not above
discrediting both Charles Bowles and Henry Bellows, early advocates of
the Red Cross in America. Bowles is “utterly unreliable ... and ...
never worthy of confidence,” Barton wrote to Appia, and Bellows “wears
[his title of representative] as an easy honor, and it never occurs to
him that he is retarding the progress of the world.” Neither allegation
was true. But Barton gained the official blessing of the international
committee, and as their representative began her crusade for
ratification of the Treaty of Geneva.
Her first concern was to educate the public, for she had found that “the
knowledge of [the] society and its great objects in this country ... is
almost unknown, and the Red Cross in America is a mystery.” In 1878, she
published a small pamphlet entitled “What the Red Cross Is.” She
realized that the American public did not expect to be engaged in
another war and emphasized peacetime uses of the Red Cross. Red Cross
action against natural disasters had actually been proposed by Henri
Dunant in the third edition of _Un Souvenir de Solferino_, but in her
pamphlet she gave it priority. “To afford ready succor and assistance in
time of national or widespread calamities, to gather and dispense the
profuse liberality of our people, without waste of time or material,
requires the wisdom that comes of experience and permanent
organization.”
[Illustration: _Frances Dana Gage (1808-84) found time while raising
eight children to write and speak on temperance, slavery, and
women’s rights. Her anti-slavery activities in Missouri met with a
hostile reception. During the Civil War she helped former slaves
adjust to freedom. In her later years she wrote children’s
stories._]
Barton also began mentioning the Treaty of Geneva in occasional lectures
to veterans and local citizens. She wrote persuasively to influential
friends, such as Benjamin F. Butler, and former minister to France Elihu
B. Washburne. “I am not only a patriotic but a proud woman,” she told
Washburne, “and our position on this matter is a subject of
mortification to me. I am humbled to see the United States stand with
the barbarous nations of the world, outside the pale of civilization.”
Other friends, among them Frances Dana Gage and Mrs. Hannah Shepard,
wrote articles advocating establishment of the Red Cross. Barton labored
many hours to translate, write, and explain materials on the Red Cross
to influential men in New York and Washington.
The same year, 1878, she presented information concerning the Red Cross
to President Rutherford B. Hayes. She also delivered an invitation to
the United States from International Red Cross president Gustav Moynier
to join the association. But she found little enthusiasm in the Hayes
administration. A fear of “entangling alliances” with other countries
still prevailed and the State Department shied away from permanent
treaties. Furthermore, the treaty had previously been submitted by Dr.
Bellows, and the Grant Administration had rejected it. Hayes considered
the subject closed.
When a Congressional joint resolution to ratify the Treaty of Geneva was
tabled early in 1879, she shelved her own plans for a while, traveled
between New York State and Washington, D.C., lectured some, and
entertained relatives at her Dansville home. But she remained alert for
an opportunity, and when James A. Garfield ran for President in 1880,
she campaigned in his behalf. With his election that November, she hoped
for a more sympathetic administration. To her relief, she found both
Garfield and Secretary of State James Blaine interested. Plans were made
to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification, and she continued
to lobby senators.
In June 1881, with success in sight, Barton and a few friends formed the
first American Association of the Red Cross. She was elected president,
an office she originally planned to keep only until the Treaty of Geneva
was signed. The organization’s main purpose at this stage was to promote
adoption of the treaty, without which the body had no international
authority or recognition. The first local chapter of the American Red
Cross, and the first to give actual aid, was established at Dansville,
New York, in August 1881.