direction of originating and applying the methods of the Red Cross in
this country, written by one connected officially with the society is
presented, with the editor’s apologies to the modesty of the President
of the Red Cross: “It is with great pleasure I am permitted to add a
few words of explanation to Miss Barton’s story of the Red Cross, and
in as brief a space as possible present the colossal magnitude of this
remarkable woman’s work on Battlefield, in Hospital, amid Cyclone,
Fire, and Flood; Standing ‘_alone_’ among women even as a Napoleon or
a Lincoln does among men.
“Endowed by nature with a dual being, as it were; possessing the
strong, reasoning, powerful brain of a leader and the gentle, tender,
loving heart of the most delicate of women, Clara Barton stands before
us a symbol of what woman might be when she bursts the bonds that
dictate to her ‘woman’s work.’
“Confined in this note to the relation of Miss Barton with the ‘Red
Cross work,’ I still consider it fitting to suggest that the services
rendered by her in the war for the Union, in organizing, conducting,
and leading the service of field nurses upon actual battle-fields, in
directing hospital organization, in managing other details of field
relief, and, more than all, in conceiving and carrying out the great
work of tracing and recording the fate of many thousands of missing
soldiers, were naturally and necessarily a proper prelude to the great
service she has since rendered in European combat, in presenting the
Geneva Treaty to her own government, and in so broadening its field of
service as to include that of help in great natural and national
calamities.
“Miss Barton has herself explained the object of the Geneva
International Committee; and has given an account of the long-delayed
acceptance of the Treaty by the United States.
“In 1870 Miss Barton joined the Red Cross workers in the
Franco-Prussian War. We see her leading in beneficence in Strassburg;
working day and night organizing the frightened and bewildered women
and children; not doling out charities, but vitalizing and making them
self-reliant by work; presenting the truest of all ways of helping
themselves by helping others. In sober words, Miss Barton’s work in
Strassburg was the founding of workshops and the employment of women
and others to labor therein. So successful was she that when Metz
passed into German hands, with loaded cars, bearing clothes and food,
she entered that city again to help the stricken inhabitants;
afterward in Paris, at that awful hour when the ‘Commune fell,’ and
the streets were black with fire and red with blood, we see this
American woman reaching the stricken city with her train of garments,
ready for the naked; hope and comfort following in her path; healing
and binding wounded bodies and minds. She was called on by Monsieur
Thiers himself, and honored as few men are. The cross of the Legion of
Honor should be among her rewards, but the law governing its bestowal
is that it be formally solicited by the one by whom it might be
received.
“Clara Barton has never sought it. In 1873, invalided and entirely
prostrated, Miss Barton returned to America, promising to use her
influence with the government to open the Red Cross treaty. Her health
entirely failing her, it was 1877 when she was able to call for the
documents lying unused in our State Department; the communications
were all in foreign languages, and they seemed almost incomprehensible
to the American mind.
“From the year 1877 to 1881, we see Miss Barton in a new rôle. She
translated, wrote, published, and lectured, all at her own expense,
trying to educate some minds into the work of the Red Cross. In
constant communication with the heads of foreign governments, with the
eyes of all of them watching and waiting for the success of this
patient, earnest, pleading woman with her stubborn nation, ready to
publish the least progress in her task, it was not until 1881, at the
commencement of President Garfield’s administration, that her labors
had any success. President Garfield and his Cabinet listened,
comprehended, and approved.
“President Arthur faithfully carried out his noble predecessor’s idea.
After one year’s consideration, during which Miss Barton personally
explained, before the Senate and House Committees on Foreign Affairs
and Relations, the work of the Red Cross, the United States
unanimously acceded to the Treaty of Geneva.
“Since the adhesion of the United States to this treaty, there have
been two International Conferences, to which Congress appointed Miss
Barton as chief delegate to represent the United States. The
conferences were composed of delegates sent by the heads of the
nations adhering to the treaty. The first conference met in Paris, the
second in Berlin, the third in Geneva, the fourth in Carlsruhe. Miss
Barton was present at the two latter.
“The legal application of the Red Cross to great national calamities,
already referred to as the American Amendment to the Red Cross, is the
work of Clara Barton.
“The practical demonstrations of the administrations of the American
Amendment, which Miss Barton has had to lead in and carry on, are:
First, in the relief work of the Michigan forest fires; second, in the
overflow of the Mississippi River in 1882; third, in the cyclone of
Louisiana in 1883, and the floods of the Ohio River in the same year;
fifth, in the overflow of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in 1884. In
the drought of Texas in 1886. In the Mount Vernon cyclone, Ill., in
1887. In the yellow fever pestilence of Florida. And in 1889, when the
world received the shock of the Johnstown horror, we see this
wonderful being, like some subtle, silent, force, appearing
noiselessly on a scene of such horrors as a Dante never conceived, and
by the power of her will and a remarkable endurance, as if by the hand
of an enchantress, work order out of horror and chaos, restoring life
and comfort where all was before desolation and death!
“These feeble words are all I can now say in this brief way of the
work of Clara Barton—_The Woman_ in the Red Cross!”
Footnote 220:
Statistics of 1887–88.
Footnote 221:
Statistics of 1887–88.
Footnote 222:
Statistics of 1887–88.
Footnote 223:
Statistics of 1887–88.
Footnote 224:
Statistics of 1886–87.
Footnote 225:
Statistics of 1887–88.
Footnote 226:
Colored.
Footnote 227:
Majority of the pupils are colored.
Footnote 228:
Statistics of 1887–88.
Footnote 229:
Colored.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to
individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like
1^{st}).