Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian / Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America

by Charles Sumner Young

CLARA BARTON AND THE OAK

The Memorial Address

The tree is the longest lived of all the lives of earth. Trees are in existence whose birth antedates that of our Christian civilization. The Cedar of Lebanon of the Old World is a part of the religious sentiment of the human race. The General Sherman Sequoia of the New World had battled against the warring elements of Nature for thousands of years before existed the warring forces of the Anglo-Saxons, on this continent. If there “be tongues in trees” every historic tree might say: “What I have seen and known is identified with the human race.”

Every country has its trees, historic, sacred through association with an individual or with some great national event. Of the tree, historic, the historian writes, the poet sings, and in delineating its beauties the painter exhausts his art. He who plants an historic tree transmits history and poetry and art to posterity. The tree becomes a part of a country’s history.

England has her Parliament Oak, under whose branches King John held his parliament; her Pilgrim Oak, associated with Lord Byron, her Falstaff Tree, her Shakespeare Tree. The United States has her Penn Treaty Elm, under whose possible inspiration, for once at least, faith was kept with the North American Indian; her Charter Oak that became the guardian of the parchment that held the liberties of the Puritans; her Cambridge Elm within whose cooling shades George Washington took command of the Colonial forces in the struggle for human liberty; her Liberty Tree, whose very soil wherein it grew, said Lafayette, should be cherished forever by the American people.

At the nation’s capital there are trees historic. On Capitol Hill there is the great elm, said to have been planted by George Washington in 1794. On the grounds of the Woman’s National Foundation, near Dupont Circle, is the tree known as the Treaty Oak. Its history is of pathos, possibly in part of fiction, but whether of fact or of fiction, like the wanderings of Ulysses the tree is of never-ceasing interest. In the Botanic Gardens is the Peace Oak, said to have been planted by a Southerner who tried desperately to prevent the Civil War, and died broken-hearted over his failure. And near by this historic tree is the picturesque oak that came from an acorn picked up by the grave of Confucius, in far away Shantung.

Of all the trees of ancient and modern times the oak is the most historic. The Ancient Greeks and Romans thought that the oak was Jupiter’s own tree; the Ancient Britons, that it belonged to the God of Thunder—groves of oaks were their temples. Among the Celts the oak was an object of worship; the Yule log was invariably of oak.

We plant an oak to commemorate a career, sacred, sacred to one who loved the world—to one whom all the world loves. As in Japan a certain tree is sacred, in America every tree is sacred that is love-planted. Our act, and sentiment, is in consonance with hers whose almost last wish was that an oak sapling be planted at the shrine of her beloved horse; that it might be his monument, and with the hope that the children would love and protect it as Baba’s Tree.

“Sing low, green oak, thy summer rune,

Sing valor, love, and truth.”

In no other atmosphere of her native land as here is a place so appropriate to plant this historic tree. Through this atmosphere, into yonder edifice, came the cry “Come and Help Us”;—from Cuba that cruelty, pestilence and starvation were the portions of thousands; from Galveston that still other thousands of men, women and children had become victims of disaster, on her storm-swept coast. In every instance to the cry for help was there response, and on wings of love the Angel of Mercy sped forth to minister with her own hands to suffering humanity.

It was here that she basked in the sunset rays, as they dipped gently towards the west. Yonder are the trees which she planted with her own hands; yonder the soil wherein grew her beautiful flowers; yonder humanity’s centre from which flowed her charities to almost every part of the known world; yonder the chamber from whose bed of sorrow she cried: “Let me go; let me go”; yonder the window through whose casement on Easter Morn, in 1912, her spirit flew to the Great Unknown.

Nature that springs from the soil decays and dies; deeds that spring from the soul never die. Nature’s foliage that ornaments is destroyed by the frosts of winter; the spiritual foliage that ornaments is perennial. The American Red Cross whose bud, in 1881, opened to the sunlight in the forests of Michigan is now the sheltering tree for the world’s millions; the woman that planted the seed and nourished it with her tears, as later she planted that other tree known as THE NATIONAL FIRST AID, is now the spirit that stands sponsor for certain charities, charities the most widely known of all the charities of earth.

Neither marble nor canvas is so venerated as the tree, from out of GOD’S FIRST TEMPLES—a tree to commemorate the individual is the most venerated memorial in the world. The world will little care, or note not at all, what we say and do here and yet the spirit of these environments may become the inspiration of future ages. The mound that soon must shut out from view our mortality will be leveled and covered with earth’s foliage, only to be forgotten or marked “UNKNOWN.” But let us pray that the tree, whose sentiment is world-humanity, may take highest rank among the world’s other historic trees; that through the centuries the children of successive generations will love and protect THE CLARA BARTON OAK, NATURE’S EASTER-TRIBUTE TO IMMORTALITY.

Planting the “Clara Barton Rose”—Miss Carrie Harrison, Chairman Clara
Barton Centennial Committee of the National Woman’s Party.

MEMORIAL TREE PLANTING TO THE MEMORY OF CLARA BARTON

Charles Sumner Young, while delivering the memorial address.

25. Summer of 1865 at Andersonville identifying the dead, and laying out the first National Cemetery, by request of the Government. Raised the first United States flag over Andersonville.

26. 1865–67 Searching for the 80,000 missing men of the army. Found 19,920 of them at an expense to herself without pay of $17,000. The Government reimbursed $15,000 of this sum.

27. The Lecture Field. Delivered 300 at $100 per lecture on the battlefields of the Civil War, 1867–8.