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

TEMPERANCE—CLARA BARTON AND THE HIRED MAN—STRANGER THAN FICTION

Way back in 1857 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clara Barton showed her humanitarian spirit and organization ability. Under the Reverend Horace James, she assisted in the organization of the Band of Hope,[^[3]] a society originating in Scotland whose object was: “To Promote the Cause of Temperance and Good Morals of the Children and Youth.”

[3]. First Temperance Society organized in America, in 1789; First National Temperance Convention, in 1833; a “temperance revolution” urged, in 1842, by Abraham Lincoln; Women’s Christian Temperance Union organized in 1874; National Prohibition went into effect January 16, 1920.

On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Reverend James became Chaplain of the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, and two of the boys that Clara Barton induced to join the society became officers of the Fifty-seventh Massachusetts Regiment. One was Colonel J. Brainard Hall and the other Captain George E. Barton. At the Battle of the Wilderness the Colonel Hall referred to was seriously, then thought to be fatally, wounded. Clara Barton was the first at his side to nurse, and to care for, him. As soon as he was able to be moved, she sent him to Washington to be cared for there by one whom she told him was her very dear friend. Stranger than fiction, on reaching Washington, Colonel Hall discovered this friend to be the “Hired Man,” previous to 1839, who worked in his grandmother’s shoe-shop,—the late Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United States.