The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross (Vol. 2 of 2)

by William E. Barton

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This was written shortly after the disastrous Chicago fire.

CHAPTER III
HER ILLNESS FOLLOWING THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

There are few letters and no diary during the winter of 1871 and 1872. Clara Barton was at Carlsruhe endeavoring to recover from nervous overstrain, and learning to write without much use of her eyes. She supposed that she had finished her work for French relief, but a letter from a Boston committee informed her that they still had funds for this purpose, but were not having good success in the matter of local distribution. They begged her to take charge of what remained of their working fund. Almost blinded though she was, she set out in winter and traversed again a route that had become familiar to her, through Mülhausen, Montbéliard, and Strassburg. Her work for women was still going on, and she gave it substantial encouragement and repeated her Christmas banquet of the preceding year in a New Year’s Eve banquet at Strassburg. She arranged for the continuation of the work in a way that did not pauperize the women. Then she returned to Carlsruhe and spent the remainder of the winter. Our chief knowledge of her oversight of these activities, as well as of her living arrangements during this period, is contained in a letter to her sister Sarah. She had been living in a hotel, but had taken lodgings of her own, had a little maid to wait on her, and was able to get a breakfast to her liking, which was beefsteak and baked potato, instead of the Continental breakfast of hard rolls and a gallon of coffee. The beefsteak for breakfast is interesting because Clara Barton ate comparatively little meat. She never, however, became a strict vegetarian. Even in her old age she now and then indulged in the luxury of a good, thick beefsteak; but this was exceptional. Her meals, as a rule, were severely frugal, and mostly vegetable.

Carlsruhe, Last Day of January, 1872

Dear Sister:

I believe I can write you a readable letter without looking on at all. I have used my eyes pretty much of late, and they complain so sadly of my bad treatment, that I have decided to give them a rest, and not write any more at present, but, as I don’t know how long the rest must continue, I don’t want you to wait without news of me for an indefinite period. I want to tell you that I did receive your good long letter, and was exceedingly glad of it. It had been a little age that I had not heard of you. I must write without a reference to your letter, for I could not read it to-day; my poor eyes ache too badly for that. It was long ago that I wrote you, I believe. I don’t know if I have written since the 25th of November, when I remember to have done so. If not since, I have never told you anything of my going to Montbéliard to give something to the poor people there who suffered so much by the war. I went from Carlsruhe about the middle of December in the coldest time we have had in all the winter. It was fearfully cold. Miss Margot went with me. It was a day and a half’s travel, and some of the way it was so cold in the train I dared not let Miss Margot fall asleep. I knew she was exceedingly cold, and I kept her awake through precaution. We spent the first night at Mülhausen with Mr. and Mrs. Dolphus, French people of literary note, whom I have known during all the war. Next day we went to Belfort and passed the night and Sunday with the Administrator, Monsieur Leblue, and arranged some trunks I had left there in October, and Monday morning we went to Montbéliard and called on the Prefect (a Jew), to whom I had previously made a donation of money, and informed him that I wanted to make the next donation in person. I wished to see, therefore, myself. He was very amiable and would arrange it, and I left him to do so while I went still on to Besançon to see the Prefect of Doubs. Here it was so cold and cheerless I could not sleep at night and returned next day. I was made the guest of the noble families of the town, for Montbéliard was an old Court town, and the grandmother of the Czar of Russia was a Princess of Montbéliard, so they have still relics of royalty there and a pretty old castle. I found excellent arrangements for taking care of the poor, the best I have seen in all France. They have committees of both gentlemen and ladies and the president of the ladies’ committee is a Mrs. Morell, a person so much like Mrs. Greffing that I feel as if I had really seen Mrs. Greffing and worked with her a few days this winter. They assembled in their hall and called their poor there, and they came in hundreds, and waited in a long line, or two long lines, reaching from the doors away through the yard and down the snowy street. At the suggestion of Mrs. Morell I gave them orders for wood and rent, so that the husbands could not compel the women to give up the money to them to get drunk on and abuse the family. We wrote hundreds of orders. I signed them, and then we went to the hall and received the women. They were my women then. I admitted them, and gave them the order and took in the next, and so day after day till all was done. The orders were drawn immediately, and when I left just before Christmas all the poor had wood for two months and rent paid until the first of April. They looked so poor, but were so happy at such an unexpected fortune and I was so glad to have been able to do it. It was Boston that did this good little thing—I have written the committee about it, a long letter. I thought they would be glad to know it while the fires were still burning.

Then I came back, and I wanted to go to Strassburg and give something to my old working-women there. They would not be so poor as the women of Montbéliard, for much had been done for them, but I wanted to see and remember them, and so I said I would go. I invited Miss Zimmermann to go with me, as she helped me to organize the Strassburg work last year. I said I would not give anything in charity to these women; I had not permitted them to beg—they had always worked for me and been paid. I would give them a Christmas fête and invite them like other people. So we bought two splendid pine trees fresh from the Black Forest, and I knew all my women, so I had only to count the heads and buy purses. I purchased three hundred good strong morocco purses with steel clasps, prettily lined, and pretty little things for the children, and to ornament the trees many dozens of little wax candles and holders to light the trees. I had stopped at Strassburg on my way back from Montbéliard and hired the best hall in town for Saturday night the 30th December. On Wednesday night we went to Strassburg, had our invitations printed and sent to the women by post; then I ordered at a good bakery twenty cakes, I cannot tell you how large and high. Each cake would cut from twenty to twenty-five slices, big slices; and five hundred rolls, and I took a caterer I knew there to arrange chocolate and coffee. The hall had a fine kitchen and dining-rooms, and I asked the banks to change my money into the last issue of French silver, never used, and they did. The best ladies of the city came to help us, and the trees were set, the purses filled, the hall arranged, the tables spread and set so white and clean, and, oh, the trees were so pretty, on a long platform across all one end of the hall in front of two enormous mirrors and all the floors spread with moss, all scattered full of fine-cut white paper and isinglass, which made perfect snow and ice, and brightened with handfuls of little scarlet berries; and the hall was so brilliant with chandeliers and mirrors that one could read the finest print in its most distant corner. I tell you all this so particularly because I think it was the prettiest thing I ever saw. Don’t say it was that that made my eyes sore; it wasn’t. The hour was seven; at six-thirty the women began to arrive. Mr. Kruger, Vice-Consul from America, received and seated them in the anteroom till it was time to light the trees. I had not seen them yet, and did not know that so many were there, but some one came to tell us that our little wounded children had come and we went to that room to see and welcome them. When we entered the doorway, all these hundreds of women rose up before us like an army—not a word, still like so many soldiers—and stood for us to pass. At seven, the trees were lighted and the doors opened, and all this regiment of women walked in and took seats. A fine parlor organ stood under the trees, a Christmas hymn was struck, and these poor women in the fullness of their hearts joined in a burst of song such as I never heard before. They sang as if they meant God should know how glad they were and how grateful they were to be there. Then there was prayer, an address of welcome (I wouldn’t have them instructed), and then Mr. Kruger and your sister went under the trees upon the platform where all the purses hung. There were elegant ladies to take them down from the trees and hand them to me while Mr. Kruger called each woman’s name and she came up and gave her hand to me, and I put in it a purse of silver with her name and a pretty buff card attached to it; then the ladies took her round to see the trees and to sign her name at a table presided over by the Misses Rausche, of Strassburg Boarding School. Afterward they were taken to the refreshment room and the daughters of the clergymen of the city, with Miss Zimmermann at the head, received and served them to chocolate and all the good things; and then they did talk and laugh and cry for joy, and such a time some hundreds of poor women almost beggars I think never had. “It was worth going a mile to see.”

All this time Mr. Kruger and I were giving the gifts, but when it was done I went and ate with them; then I came back and gave the gifts to my eleven cutters, ten pretty young girls and one tailor. I gave them workboxes and portfolios, etc., and then the Comité de Secours had arranged a little surprise for me, which the women enjoyed exceedingly. M. Bergmann, my old esteemed friend, the president of the syndicate of Alsace, addressed the women, and they all crowded up around the front of the platform like so many children, to listen to him. He told them, among other things, that Miss Barton had said she wished they would all keep the money in the little purses as a keepsake and make it the beginning of a sum for the savings bank, which would reopen next week. Having told them this, he said to them, so pleasantly and familiarly, “I think we ought to make her this promise, eh?” You should have heard the storm of, “Yes, yes, we will,” that filled the room. This finished the evening, only their good-bye to me, which each one insisted on making for herself. This occupied almost an hour, till the last one was gone, and then it was past eleven, almost twelve, and we went home to our hotel and to bed; but all the time I knew I had seen a very pretty thing.

There were about sixty women who did not get their invitations. It was no wonder; they never had a letter before in their lives and the letter carriers never heard of them, and they lived in such old alleys and garrets and cellars they could not be found. But the next day I made a list of all these and put it in all the papers of the city, and it was told to them and they came to our old workrooms a few days afterward and we gave them their purses. When it was all done, we came back to Carlsruhe, one of the first days of January, and I have been here ever since. I had a good deal of writing to do, and I suppose I have used my eyes a little too much. I was going over to London directly after leaving Strassburg to stay with Abby and Joseph Sheldon, who are continually writing for me to come to them. I meant to have been there now, but I received a letter on my return from Strassburg from the head of the Boston Committee saying that they had held a meeting after hearing something from me and decided to ask me to take charge of all their unfinished business in France. They see that it is going wrong and beg me to take it in hand, even if I cannot do anything personally, to take the oversight of it. I replied to them and will wait for their answers. I thought then it would be nonsense to cross the Channel if I must recross to France again in a few weeks, so I decided to remain here until I could finish up on the Continent and go to England free.

I do long to be free of work once more for a little while. I have been rather busy. I have a little home here in Carlsruhe. I got tired of the hotel and took some small rooms, a little apartment, and furnished it to suit me (rented) and have a little German girl. She was the private waiting maid of Madame de Mentzinger and I knew her, so I live as independently as I please. I can arrange my living to suit myself better. I can have a beefsteak and baked potato for breakfast and not be driven to a choice between a piece of dry bread and a gallon of coffee, and I can have my dinner at four and not be forced to eat at eight o’clock at night, as is done here.

I am sure you have had a great deal of trouble with my things and so has Lieutenant Westfall; I am sorry but can’t help it. I want to write the Lieutenant, but dare not send him one of my blind letters. I must wait till I can use my eyes again. I am glad you went and visited all the world of Massachusetts. I want to see our old brother Dave more than I can tell, and I think I shall sometime. I don’t understand if Ida has left the Treasury for all time or on a rest. Is she not well? I am sorry you wandered about waiting for some one to carry you from post to pillar. Wait a little, Sall, and we will have a coach and one and ride when we please. I will have it sent over to you every day to take a ride on condition that you will promise to come and take tea with me every time, and you shan’t wait to be carried somewhere—it was all vexatious and heart-aching. I know it all by experience, so old that it seems to me it must have been a part of another existence; but it wasn’t; it was only the first end of this old patched and tangled web. What a good soul-stirring time you had at the Convention, didn’t you? That was splendid; shall I ever see something like that, I wonder? What a meeting! How I want to see and know Mrs. Livermore. I don’t suppose I ever shall, but I knew her so long ago. What beautiful things she wrote when she must have been so young; no wonder she can speak well. I speak very much of these things with the Grand Duchess. She sent for me about a week ago to spend an evening and she spoke of little else than the progress of woman and schools for girls in America. She had evidently been reading something, I presume some German criticism upon the too liberal spirit of America, and wished to compare notes, I think. I told her all as it was, and I said I believed in special training for all kinds of life, but that I thought it possible to train too much till the original spirit was crushed out and ashes left in the place of coals, and there was danger of Germany’s doing this with her great respect for discipline; that I thought them too strict, and that they cramped their people by rules and regulations and hurt many good original minds. This was plain speech for a woman in a plain black gown without even a ring on her hands to address to a Princess and Sovereign, but when I am asked I answer, let it be where it will. I guess it didn’t offend, for she sent me a very pretty letter next morning.

I can’t think what the dress is that you speak of having made up and washed. I can just recall that I sent something by Dorr, but it couldn’t have been anything but a piece from my shelves where we cut for the women. I can’t think if it was calico or cotton gingham. I know I wanted to send something good, but he was afraid to take it lest he have trouble at the custom house, and they trouble him about his own things for it. I know we packed his boxes in terrible haste one night after midnight and I can’t think of anything more about them. This was the day but one before I cleared up in Strassburg and started for Paris. It wasn’t a quite sure thing if one would get there very safely, and so difficult was it that it took three days to do the traveling of one day in ordinary times. But it is better now.

This winter is easier than the last was. I have made some friends and I am not a stranger in Europe any longer, and I have warm friends in Strassburg, and, if I do say it, last week Mr. and Mrs. Bergmann came to Carlsruhe to visit us, i.e., Miss Zimmermann and me. I had them to tea with me twice (they were at hotel) in my house, and I arranged a visit for them at Court. This is, I expect, the first social exchange of visits between a leading French officer and a German Court since the war—a gentleman may have visited, but not the ladies, but Mrs. Bergmann and the Grand Duchess visited, and, better still, the poor women came over to Germany to visit me. I have made some peace between them if they won’t fight again and spoil it all. I will enclose in this one of my invitations to the Women’s Fête and Christmas Tree. Your German letter-carrier will read it to you. Now I think, in mercy to your eyes, I must stop. Don’t be troubled about me; my eyes will be well soon. I will be very careful. I know you can’t read near all of this, but some maybe.

Lovingly
Clara

I thought I couldn’t write any more, but I find it so funny to write with my eyes shut, as if I were playing blindman’s buff, that I think I must do another sheet. I was afraid to commence to tell you how nice I thought your picture gallery was; indeed, I think it was splendid. How could you think of it all? How did you get up your ideas? I laughed till I cried again and again; indeed, I am not sure but that hurt my eyes some. I wish you had told me more about it. I wanted all the particulars. I related it one evening at tea at Madame General de Freystadt’s, and you should have seen the merriment of those German Court ladies—they have a great deal of fun in their heads. They were especially amused at the old hoop and line, as I explained to them our bold President swinging around the circle to gain popularity. Miss Margot has not been initiated into the mystery of your gallery yet, as she is at Lyons with her people, but is expected to return any day now to resume her studies here. I will make her full explanations as soon as she is back. She caricatures me sometimes, to her great amusement. She would not be bad help for you on such an occasion, as she would be in the seventh heaven if she could do it.

No, I didn’t think of the 17th of September as being the day of Lake City. How well I remember that day, and how anxious a day it was, but after all, not unhappy. We thought that we had gained so much; our experiment had not failed and it did not fail in the end; it accomplished just what you say it did. Our dear boy lived to feel that he had done his work and was ready to go; a little life it was, but full and had in it much more than many another of fourscore and ten. I had not heard of Lizzie Learned’s last affliction. Can this be so? Where did Lizzie get such a complication of maladies, and is there anything in the new remedy? I have heard of it. The Grand Duchess asks me about it. Her first maid of honor, Mademoiselle de Sternberg, of whom you must have heard me make mention, is supposed to be dying of a cancer, but she also seems to have a multitude of illnesses. I called on her a few weeks ago. She was a mere skeleton and is too sick now to see any but her nurses.

Does Nancy do the work at home, and are she and Uncle John all there are? I cannot think how it would seem there without—“Bamma”—poor dear, honest, faithful, Christian, guileless Bamma! who worked faithfully up to the last day without complaint and lay down bravely with the harness of life about her, without a murmur.

Do you have much fruit this year? I am out of patience with Europe. I never find fruit here,—it is always a “scarce year,” they say. Indeed, there was none in all the Rhine Valley. Little gnarly apples are two and three cents apiece; prunes, which are only the plums which grow here, dried, are fifty cents a pound, and I have searched the town over without success for a little dried apple. All oranges here are always either sour or bitter. I have nearly forgotten, but it seems to me that we had better fruit arrangements at home. You see by this that I am quite hungry, don’t you, or I shouldn’t write of it. Now I think I have finished for this time. I have let my letter wait two days and my eyes are better.

Ever your Sis
Clara

Returning to Carlsruhe, she continued her oversight of American relief for French destitution by correspondence, though still suffering greatly with her eyes. She passed “some very dull weeks, very green and shady, with exceedingly long nights”; after the acute pain was over, she learned to write with bandaged eyes, and wrote a good deal.

Her friends Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon were in London and were not satisfied to have her in Germany alone. They sent her peremptory orders to be ready to accompany them when they came, as they were presently to come, down the Rhine. She went with them, left Carlsruhe, visited Strassburg on her last tour of inspection, and set out for London by way of Paris. On reaching Paris, they encountered an American family by the name of Taylor, friends of the Sheldons, who had just left London for a tour of Italy and besought Miss Barton to accompany them. Hastily she changed her plans, and, after six weeks’ travel in Italy, she came to London. She had dropped her diary altogether, and her correspondence with her relatives had nearly ceased on account of her impaired eyesight, but in London she wrote the story of her wanderings to her sister Mrs. Vassall. The last page is missing and the letter ends abruptly, leaving her in Venice. The Italian tour was finished, however, and in the early summer she arrived in London.

No. 5 Hewson Street—Wanrey Street
Walworth Road
London, July 5th, 1872

Dearest Sister:

In one way and another I imagine you must have become aware of me in England, although I believe I have never told you so directly. By the presence of a half-finished letter to you, dated March 29th, between Paris and Turin, Italy, I see that I cannot have written you since I left Germany just previous to the above-named date. This has all been very wrong, for I received your good and welcome letter here, via Berne, early in June. You know me as neither abundant nor graceful in apologies, although it never hurts my spirit to ask pardon, and your good intuition will perceive this rather extraordinary sheet of note-paper to signify contrition, confession, and serious effort at amendment. For all the interesting details contained in your letter I thank you very much. They constitute my only landmarks of the old coast for months; my explorers have been very silent and my scouts brought small tidings.

I remember that I wrote you when nearly blind. I had used my eyes too hard, and at night, which I ought to have known I could not do with impunity. I passed some very dull weeks, very green and shady, with exceedingly long nights; although after the greater pain and nervous excitement was over, I wrote a great deal with them closely bandaged. This helped to pass the time, but Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon, who were in London, became altogether dissatisfied with this state of things, and determined to put an end to some of it by coming after me and taking me, willing or not, to London. They had given me a short notice and ordered me to pack my knapsack, while they came down the Rhine. I obeyed, and, after a visit of a couple of days, we set out via Strassburg and Paris. I was infinitely better by this time; still must not put any close strain upon my eyes. I made my “good-byes” in Strassburg, which was not an easy thing for the “soul,” and, on reaching Paris, we met a family party of Americans, friends of the Sheldons, that had just left London for a trip of six weeks through Italy. There were four of them, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes and their only daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. Mr. Holmes was the American Commissioner to the Great International Exhibition in London in 1862 and in Paris in 1867, and with his family has resided in London and Paris since, as American representative of science, skill, invention, etc. They were fine travelers, Italy was a familiar route to them, and it entered their heads to attach me to their party. I felt it to be a great piece of temerity on my part to think of dropping “sans cérémonie” plump into the middle of an elegant family party arranged for a private travel, and I said so, and said all I could, but all was overruled, and even Mrs. Sheldon said “go.” It was “too good an opportunity to lose,” she said, and added at the end of her advice, “What a fool I am. I always did give up all that I wanted most”; and so we separated in the streets of Paris, March 28th, five o’clock in the afternoon, she for London and I for Italy. I had only a little hand satchel, having stored all my European luggage with my Paris bankers till my return. I have never written up my trip, so I cannot give it you, but if I can recall the days a little in order will try to account for some of them. I will draw hard upon my memory, which will probably help me accurately to whatever she will help me at all, she being, not so generally treacherous as repudiatory. I wonder if that is an English word—it ought to be; if not, I can only plead two years’ life in Germany, and surely out of all that I must have earned the right to manufacture one word.

As sightseers, it was not, of course, our policy to travel at night, and we did it only twice, of which the first night was one. The road between Paris and Macon, just above Lyons, being as familiar to each one of us, as that between New York and Washington, we could afford to miss it. Reaching Macon at sunrise, from there to Euloz and, passing the custom house, proving ourselves innocent of liquors and tobacco, we were ushered into Italy through the famous Mont Cenis Tunnel, eight miles under a mountain, which rises almost six thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is a well-laid track in the solid rock, well ventilated and lighted by powerful reflectors each half-mile. You remember that it was over Mont Cenis that Napoleon I constructed a road to march his armies into Italy. At ten o’clock at night we were at Turin. By this time I was conscious of being some tired; altogether I was not very strong, and, just for variety, I had a chill in the night, and, of course, decided to abandon my journey and return. But as Turin was one of the cities to be visited and naturally two or more days were to be given it, I could afford to wait and watch further developments. My chill did not recur, and, although I continued weak for some time, I kept on the journey.

Turin is a charming city, by far the most modern in appearance of anything in Italy, well laid out, fine broad streets, excellent markets, abounding in fruit, clean, and entirely free from beggary. It seems also to have no poor quarter, the general practice being for every wealthy family to take into its service and care one, two, or more entire families, lodging them in tenements fitted in the attic stories of their own residences, rather than below on the streets, thus at the same time holding surveillance and compelling respectability. I liked the plan. I don’t know if it is one of Victor Emmanuel’s ideas. You know that Turin was always his Capital residence, till a few years ago, when he established himself at Florence, which now is in turn abandoned for Rome. It has over one hundred churches, very rich in jewels and antiquities. I remember in the Metropolitan Church to have seen the marble figure, sitting, lifelike, of Marie Adelaide, the wife of Victor Emmanuel, and mother of Princess Clothilde of France. The private jewels of the church were shown us (for a consideration—everything in Italy is displayed for a consideration), but for no consideration could I undertake to describe them; images of solid silver, men and women, weighing hundreds of pounds and covered with jewels, where sometimes one was of greater value than the massive silver image it adorned. The Royal Palace was most magnificent; the rooms were all shown. Here, in this gilded salon where their busts stand, were married Princess Clothilde, and the Queen of Portugal. The plate-glass mirrors are twenty feet high, and everything accords with them. The armory contains an entire gallery of mounted knights in armor, full dress, horses like life, armed to the teeth, and among them lies the sword that Napoleon used at Marengo. Above the city is a fine old monastery to which we climbed for a view of Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and all the chain of southern Alps, snow-white and dazzling, stretching away into the eternal blue.

On the second of April, Tuesday, we took train for Milan, riding for hours in the bright spring sunshine of northern Italy, the Alps behind us, and the Apennines before, the wheat waving in all the freshness of early green, and the vines just bursting into leaf. Here at Milan, we were met by a young lady protégée of Mr. Holmes, a young American girl who is to come out soon as a prima donna. She is finishing her musical studies in Milan, and, while we were installed at an excellent hotel, our dinners were always with Mademoiselle Katrina.

The great sight of Milan is its cathedral, the second in size and magnificence in Europe; this also I could not justly describe. It is built entirely of marble, commenced in the thirteenth or fourteenth century and, like all these old massive structures, never finished. It covers many acres, and seems to be one sea of turrets rising at irregular heights toward the clouds. Although the comparison would be most inelegant, I will say that it reminded me of a shipping-yard, where the marble turrets and statues take the place of thousands of masts; indeed, if my memory serve me well, it has 135 spires, and 1923 statues on the outside from the ground to the top and 700 inside. There is on one of the roofs, which you pass as you ascend (far above to the top), an entire flower garden in marble, hundreds of flowers forming minarets, and no two flowers carved alike or representing the same flower. It was a long way to the top, which at length was gained after many times of sitting, and (for me) even lying down to rest on the various roofs passed in leading from one flight of stairs to another, roofs of pure white marble polished and glistening in the sunshine like the crust of the snowbanks on the New England hills on bright winter days. (I wonder if I ever will see them again.) Here again we saw marvelous jewels, “gold, silver, and precious stones.” The tomb of Carlo, who “stayed the plague,” is in a chapel beneath; the coffin and even the roof of the chapel are of solid silver; mass is held here each morning, and on certain days of the year miracles are wrought. There are many sacred relics in the cathedral, as several nails from the Cross, the Virgin’s shroud, and a seamless coat of the Lord Jesus Christ, etc., etc. The picture galleries were especially fine, many celebrated originals, among which is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper of the Master and Disciples” in the original fresco. And the celebrated “Ambrosian Library,” so old and rare its volumes were indeed a curiosity—illustrated volumes of the fourth century. And the Royal Palace erected on the site of the old palace of the early Dukes of Lombardy, where Attila thundered about in his destruction. Later this Palace, like nearly all in Italy, had been at some time or another occupied by Napoleon I. Here was his bedchamber, unchanged, decorated in scarlet and gold, heavy velvet curtains richly wrought in flowers of pure fine gold thread. Then the celebrated theater “La Scala,” the largest in the world, its stage one hundred feet in depth, and wide in proportion, and this, not including the recesses. The pit alone holds eleven hundred people, and there are six rows of galleries; one hundred musicians in the orchestra; the principal boxes are purchased by the nobility for the season, a single box from four hundred to five hundred dollars (the season). I name all these particulars for Vester’s benefit; he may be interested in the facts. Our young prima donna stepped upon the stage (as our visit was in the daytime) and sang to us; she had sung there before to an audience of five thousand, but I think she took just as much pains for us, and I am sure we were not less enthusiastic. I expect some day to hear her sing when she is famous, but it will never afford me greater pleasure than when she sang to her audience of five in the great “Scala” of Milan.

One little incident, happening not long before, was so pretty that I am tempted to tell it you. “Katrina” (who is of German parents, but born and always lived in New York) had only been led before the public once,—i.e., last winter she was the “leading lady” of the first opera in Turin,—and on the evening of the close of the engagement she was “called out” to sing a little national air, in which she had been exceedingly popular. When she stepped before the curtain she found the entire house a blaze of light, which at first nearly “upset” her, but, gathering up, she went through her air, to the last strain, when four men entered and placed at her feet an enormous bouquet of the choicest flowers, nearly four feet across. She managed to accept it, but attached to it was a note which requested her, when it should be faded, before throwing it away to open it with care, and at the end of a week this was done, and hidden among the flowers were found a magnificent gold watch and chain, pins, necklaces of coral, turquoises and pearls, bracelets and rings, which I could not enumerate. It had been ordered and arranged in Geneva, and sent all the way through the mountain passes to her. I thought this was a pretty success for the début of a little American girl, studying in a strange land with little money. As a child she used to sing in New York with Patti.

But you must be tired of Milan, and wish I would hasten on if I am going. Well, I will, and so imagine this to be Saturday the 6th of April, 9 o’clock A.M., and I just taking the train eastward. The day was so lovely, so full of the springtime, the grass and grain so green, the swinging vines swaying over all the fields, the birds literally bursting their little throats, the fields filled with peasants in gay dress working to merry tunes, and when you could draw the eyes away from these near scenes they fell to the northward, first upon a line of dim, hazy blue, but over this, skirting the horizon again, the whole chain, peak after peak, of ranging Alps, such an unbroken line of glittering snow—here on the south only four miles away the field of Solferino where France lost one thousand officers in a day.

At 4 P.M. we were at “Verona” wondering if we should see its “gentlemen” and giving certainly more than our usual interest to this subject, and at five we halted at a singular dépôt, with no rattle of cabs, or hacks, no tramping of horses, still as death all about us, and as we walked out there lay waiting us hundreds of gondolas, black as a pall, some covered, some open, all drawn up to the side of the Canal to take us weary travelers to our hotels. This was, indeed, novel, but we selected our carriage, stepped in with our luggage, sat down, and, leaning lazily back, left it to our gondolier to pick his way through the watery streets, some wide, some narrow, leading into and out of each other, like veritable city streets and lanes, the ways on each side lined perfectly thick with old palaces and majestic buildings of centuries ago, their fronts to the sea and their magnificent stone steps leading directly into the water, and when one would pay a call, the gondolier had only to bring his boat alongside and you stepped out as from another carriage to the steps of a mansion. We were taken to “Hotel Victoria,” made as comfortable as a first-class Italian hotel can make one, and after supper commenced upon the sights. Ah, but there was so much to see, not that it is a city of enterprise, a flourishing mart of trade or business. Oh, no, far from it. Venice only exists upon the record of its former greatness; take all this away and the travelers consequent upon it and I believe twelve months would find a famine there, but there is little danger of this while Byron and Shakespeare remain bright in English literature.

Here, as everywhere in Italy, one must commence with the cathedral, and having gone through this, and some scores of churches, the “Campo Santo” and the Bell Tower, one is at liberty to enter upon the palaces, gardens, and theaters. But Venice offers some deviations from this general rule; most cities have prisons, but they have not all the dungeons of Saint Marc. All have bridges, but all have not a “Rialto” nor a “Bridge of Sighs.” I suspect I do not need to remind you of many old or historical facts. You who are always digging into the past will have them all “papered and labeled” and stored away ready for use. But I might mention the seventy-two little islands upon which Venice was built, which were only a part of the Adriatic, and not reckoned as land at all. A set of not warlike people from here and there in the vicinity, having grown weary and afraid of their fighting and troublesome neighbors, mostly from Austria, determined to place themselves in a position more difficult to attack, came far over the sea to these little islands and commenced a city, and gave a general invitation to all war-pestered, peace-loving citizens of the world to come and join them; from time to time they united their islands, built their houses for dwelling and trade upon the streets laid down upon the piles, with one side opening upon the street of earth and the opposite upon the sea, as I have before described. But—the depravity of human nature!! No sooner were they a little strong and comfortable themselves than they sent out their ships to prey upon and plunder their neighbors, and well-nigh ravaged the cities of the earth. They decorated their palaces with the spoils of other nations, married the sea, and declared themselves Omnipotent and Divine. Among other things their religion and church must have a Hero, and they sent afar, and got (as they said) the body of Saint Mark, brought it, and great numbers of relics belonging to him, buried it with the divinest honors in their principal church, and named it Saint Mark, or “San Marco.” This was as early as the ninth century. It is a large but not handsome edifice, facing a paved court, a “piazza” some six hundred feet in length, surrounded by palaces, now used for public purposes, stores, etc. All the world of Venice walks in the “Piazza of San Marco.” The pigeon was esteemed a sacred bird with them, and he is still cherished here and treated with great honor. One of the curiosities to be seen are the “pigeons of San Marco.” I cannot at this moment recollect definitely enough to state to you how many hundreds are supposed to reside in the immediate vicinity, but their dinner hour is two o’clock in the afternoon. The great bell of the clock strikes three quarters past one and they commence wheeling and circling into the court, they cover the fronts of all the buildings, sit as thickly as possible upon every window seat, hang in all the cornices, and stand in full platoons in every foot of spare pavement for a number of rods around the especial corner where their dinner is served. A young man (it was formerly a young girl) is appointed by the Government as feeder of the pigeons. It is not necessary to say that he is punctual with his repast—he could not live with his tumultuous boarders if he were not. As the bell strikes two, he pours the grain from—

The rest of this letter is missing, but from this time on her letters became frequent, and we are able to follow her, almost day by day.

Her health by this time was much improved. She established pleasant lodgings in London, where her old friends the Sheldons and her new friends the Taylors were, and followed her lifelong habits by rising at five o’clock in the morning and getting in four and a half hours’ activity before any one else in the house appeared for breakfast. She heard Stanley, who had just returned from Africa, and, in the controversy which ensued between him and the Geographical Society, she became a warm partisan of Stanley. Antoinette Margot joined her. She, too, had lived through the war without breaking down, but, when she had nothing to do but to sit down at Carlsruhe and paint, she gave way to nervous overstrain. Mrs. Taylor found her Italian trip rather too much for her and wanted a quiet place outside of London, so they rented a summer home in the Isle of Wight and there spent some restful and health-giving weeks. For a company of nervous invalids, they appear to have had a very merry time. The following jingle was written in London in 1872 for reading at a social gathering of a few families and America’s friends, who met once a week for social intercourse over a cup of tea and light refreshments, enlivened by recitations.

The family names are somewhat significant—Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Bacon, Mr. and Mrs. Darling, and Mrs. Cynthia Care, a friend then absent.

Mr. Taylor was the inventor of the McKean drill.

Since time commenced its cycles, or the memory of man
Hath record or tradition of pastoral tribe or clan,
They have never failed to chronicle that men from far and near
Have met to sharp or blunt their wits in liquor, wine or beer.
This ancient custom, reaching back into the hoary past,
Wears a dignity and prestige that rivals even caste;
And bold are they who dare to meet in social gathering free,
And call not to the festal board one of the classic three.
But here’s a jolly company, from far across the sea,
Dares tune its mirth and sharp its wit in a cup of good Bohea.
We’re here from many hundred miles, where the western ocean foams,
But, though a paradox it seems, we have not left our Holmes.
The social homes of England draw us to her like a band,
For we are but the children of this true old glorious land.
Of the “merry homes” of England our great-grandsires used to tell,
But with pride and joy we prove it here, that we’ve Merry Holmes as well.
Disclaiming all comparison, we write ours brave and free
And kindly and hospitable as any Holmes can be.
But we have very English grown, so soon we habits take on,
We cannot even sip our tea, but we must have our Bacon.
But English or American, it matters not a straw,
For both hang out before the world without a taint or flaw.
Go search through British literature, down to her Common Laws,
And find what strength and nourishment it from its Bacon draws;
And if you doubt America can follow in the van,
Go test our “Cincinnati sides,” and “West Virginia ham.”
So perfect in itself is each, it’s patent to my mind
The choicest Bacons that can be, are just the two combined.
By the watery distance we have come one might judge us merely sailors,
But we’re nae thoughtless nor improvident, for we’ve even bro’t our Taylors.
One doesn’t know how long ago, the unjust trick began
To stigmatize a tailor as the ninth part of a man;
But though as old and honored as the Judge’s wig and gown,
Before the faithless falsehood I throw my gauntlet down:
Yes, tho’ it was with Adam for the modest blush that came
When he sewed his scanty fig leaves, and dropped his head for shame;
Tho’ old as this—and thick, and black, and firm as granite, too,
We’ll drill it to a honeycomb, and let the daylight through.
So lay upon our Taylor here your nicest chalk-line true,
And measure him, in soul and vim, as he would measure you;
You’ll find, Sir Scandal, when you’ve done the best you ever can,
In reach of thought, and breadth, and depth, he’s every inch a man.
What did I say? I’m wrong—crave grace—to err is ever human—
Ah, with what pride of sex I claim, his better half a woman—
Tho’ fair Fidele and tender she walketh by his side,
He can neither make nor mend her, but hold fast in his pride;
And though no mortal’s meeker, we find from far and wide
The best and wisest seek her, for a pattern and a guide.
And does the critic here step in, and call us frozen-hearted,
And lacking in paternal love, that we so long are parted
From clinging dear ones left to pine like caged and crying starlings?
Hold, sir! Here’s ointment for your wrath, for we have bro’t our Darlings.
We hold them very near us, with tender love and true;
Their happiness and welfare are never from our view;
And though we’re willing sometimes that they abroad should roam,
We would not spare our darlings forever from our home.
There’s one, methinks, whose eloquence erst charmed this happy band,
Who stays away through many a day in a sunny foreign land—
Who lingered where the soft moonlight plays through the Colosseum,
And troops of idle beggars wait for strangers’ hands to fee ’em.
Or where the setting sun goes down on Monte Rosa’s crest,
And hoary Blanc bids grand good-night to the cloudlets in the west,
And who strays even now, ’mong the vines and the trees,
And walks the green slopes of the dark Pyrenees.
Given us to be jurors and judge of this action,
We’d reduce this delay to a very small fraction;
But being quite powerless our cause to defend,
We must learn to endure what we cannot amend.
As the best of a bad case, let’s forgive her, shall we,
And drink to her health in a cup of Bohea?
And now for our bumpers but one greeting waits
While we roll back our thoughts to the United States,
For United as one they must ever remain,
Since the blood of a million hath rusted the chain.
With a link in each hand died the true and the brave,
And sunk side by side in the low martyr’s grave.
Their bones rest in peace ’neath the soil of their love,
While their souls keep calm watch on the ramparts above.
We would hide nae her faults, this dear land of our pride;
We know she has errors on many a side;
She’s restless, impatient, hurries on through her day,
And treads on old customs that lie in her way.
She’s bold in her speech, but there’s nae lack of truth,
And her faults, let us hope, are the failings of youth.
Yes, she’s young—oh, so young—and her robes are so bright,
For she’s made herself gay with the stars of the night,
And thrown o’er her shoulders a mantle of light
That the oppressed of all nations keep ever in sight.
Oh! each grasp the tissue that floats on the wind,
For hid in its folds lie the hopes of mankind!
Oh! guard Thou her ways, Great Eternal Lord God;
Let her meekly but safely pass under thy rod!
With her faults and her virtues we trust her to Thee
And drink to her life in our cups of Bohea.

Clara Barton

CHAPTER IV
RETURNING HOME

It would be pleasant to record that the benefits derived from this happy outing on the Isle of Wight proved permanent, but unfortunately that was not the case. Had Clara returned to America in the autumn, it might have been better, but she went back to London for the winter determined to brave its fogs. She had discovered, with many of her countrymen, that it is a mistake to expect relief from cold weather by going to a warm climate. The people who live in warm climates do not know how to prepare for the cold. In London they knew at least the value of a fire. To London she went, and the results were depressing. Her throat and chest were affected badly by the London fogs. All the gains of previous months seemed to have been lost, and she was as far from well as she was at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. At this time she wrote to Mrs. Vassall, who had returned from Washington and was living in Worcester:

London, July 11, 1873
Euston Road

Dearest Fannie:

Your dear good letter and that of your “Bear” came a few days ago. It is funny to be interviewed at that distance, and I am glad that you got no worse reports than you did. I don’t think I am so homesick as it would seem, but I am weak, and little things seem such a burden to me that it hinders me from doing many things that would make me more at ease if they could be done. However, one must be patient; it is not a month yet that I was in my bed most of the day, and now I can go about town, and even once have been out of town, but not for a long trip.

It is kind of you all to offer to come to help me, but I believe I shall be able to get over my difficulties without giving so much trouble to any one. By “getting over them,” I mean measurably over them. I cannot say that I even hope to be strong again as I was before this last illness. I cannot tell, but it would be a wonder to me if sufficient nervous strength returns to permit any degree of real usefulness. The greatest trouble I meet now is to bear the little burdens of contact with the persons and things around me, and not show too plainly that I have not strength and composure to bear them calmly; in short, to “hold my horses,” You, dear Fannie, will know what that means, and how to the weak the grasshopper becomes a burden. I am glad you have found a physician who has some strength for you, if it is really so; but I must confess that my previously small share of confidence in medical aid and wisdom has not increased by the last year’s experience.

I hear of you in the most trying heat at home. It is just warm in England some days, but to-day, for instance, ladies are generally clothed in wool suits and a shawl. I went out just now for a few minutes with Mamie, while our rooms were put in order, and came back because I was too cold, and it is never very bright in London. I suppose this has its due influence on one’s nervous system, and I would have been glad at any time within the last month to be made ready and go over to France or Germany. I think it would be better, but I could not get strong enough to get ready and go. You wonder what “getting ready” means. It seems to you that it requires little preparation to put up a bag or small trunk of things and cross the Channel, and so it does, but it is summer, and I have several trunks of mainly woolen things for this cool climate. My little strength since I have been in Europe has made it necessary to have them, of course, unpacked, and in a state of utter confusion, for some trunks I have not had my hand in for months and months, but to others I constantly go, and in haste. The moths in London are like flies in abundance. It wouldn’t mend my nerves to know I had gone off traveling and left all I have to be devoured, and I have been made worse several times by simply attempting to get a dress or some little article from a trunk. My weak chest will not admit of the least labor of the arms yet. Let Mamie do it? Mamie is only a weak little girl, and until lately could not have packed her own trunk without harm to herself. So I wait for strength as an army waits for quartermaster and commissary supplies before it can march. I made one little trial or two, to see what I could do. Papa Holmes (with whose family I went to Italy) came one day to ask me if I could go to Liverpool where he was going, and over into Wales, and pass a week. It was about the time Colonel Hinton was going to sail, and I thought, with so many good friends on the road, I might try it. So I went as far as Stratford-on-Avon, but I grew so tired I gave out and let the party go on and I came home. It wasn’t much of a journey,—only a few hours,—but I found it quite sufficient.

It is really quite astonishing what those sleeping fellows tell, and how they look us all through! I don’t think I am so homesick, if that is the term they give it, but no one knows—only those who have tried it—what the depressing atmosphere of London may be to one who is not strong, and more especially to one who feels he is never to leave it, as I expected last winter. I think I could have faced the prospect of the dark river with a stouter heart if I had been strengthened by a few glimpses of sunlight sometimes, but I waited such months watching my little window panes for a patch of sky over which one could discover that a cloud moved, but the surface was never light and thin enough for this. It was as immovable as a sheet of zinc; one felt himself already in a metallic coffin, only waiting to be closed in a little snugger, and have the screws turned down. But I have tried to be cheerful and as full of life and fun as I could be, with so little ability to speak as I have had, and it may be that you and your Mamma Sally’s sleeping men see deeper and get nearer to the reality than those about me, or than perhaps even I am well aware of. It is possible I have at times succeeded in cheating myself a little; all the better if it is so. I should be glad to be spared the trial of going on to the continent of Europe again. I am so tired of it, I never want to see it again, but it may be best, and then Mamie ought not to leave Europe without going there. I should be sorry to embark her for America having seen only poor smoky old London. If some one of our friends had been coming over, with whom I could have sent her to journey some, I should have been very glad of it. I can perhaps arrange it from here, but up to the present moment I have not been able to find the right opportunity. I thank you very much, dear Fannie, for all your interest and care, and hope I may never find a chance to repay it in the same manner.

Afternoon

Mr. Sheldon has just drawn a letter out of his pocket and, looking very wise, announced to me that he had just commenced a correspondence with a very pleasant lady of Worcester and, showing the envelope, I judged the correspondence had been commenced with the lady’s husband. But I read it, and became convinced that it was from the lady herself. He informed me that he had replied at the earliest moment, and it happened to be just when they had succeeded in pushing me off for my trip, so he had an opportunity to talk large, but he had scarce time to answer until I was back, and he waited a day or two to see if he might show your letter to me.

I hope Ber will have had an opportunity to hear direct from me, as I gave his Boston address to Colonel Hinton, who promised to see him if he could find him. I have seen no one who was going to Worcester or I would have sent him to you. As for me, I shall try to go home this autumn, I suppose. America will at all events be as well as here, and has a greater range of climate with easier travel. As for the prospects of a full recovery of my original health (i.e., previous to last winter) I cannot decide yet. I may, when once out of this climate and atmosphere in which I have fallen, recover at once and fully; and I may never be able to throw off the effects of such prolonged prostration. My own opinion inclines strongly to the latter. I do not think any one need come to see me home; I should be sorry to give that trouble to any one, and will do my best to get on by myself. And now, with a kiss and great love to all, and the best to your own dear self, I am as ever

Yours
Clara

To Fannie’s husband, Bernard Barton Vassall, the “Ber” or “Bear” of her playful letters, she had already written:

5 Heusen St., Wansey St.
Walworth Road, London, April 8, 1873

My dear Good Boy Ber:

I cannot tell you how good and kind it was of you to hasten to write me as soon as you knew I had need of a word of sympathy; neither can I tell how it did me good and made me better and stronger. I was so weak and ill that day. It came at night with one from your mother, and they were the first words of sympathy that had come to me from the old home. I almost hesitate to tell you how long I held them in my hands. I looked at them till they were damp with fever and perspiration before I opened them and kept saying softly to myself, “There’s something good for me in there; there are good kind words and sympathy.” I waited still and held them close till I got a little accustomed to them, and then I got raised up a little in my hot bed and read them all through and through, and Mamie read them all to me again. How they helped me on after that worst and weakest and hardest of all the days I have passed in all this illness! It seemed providential that they should come just then. It was not my cough that was holding me so low at that moment. I don’t know if in all I have written your mother, I have ever told her how I got a part of my illness. I had two physicians, one daily and one consulting occasionally. He came one day in early March, and recommended me to be taken out of bed and bathed in water each day, put back awhile, then taken up and dressed. I could not stand alone, but this was done two days. I had only my cough then, but the third morning after the bathing and “gaping” I couldn’t straighten a limb. It proved to be inflammatory rheumatism from my body to my toes; then in two weeks a relapse and a rheumatic fever set in, which was at its height when your letters arrived. But the port wine broke the fever and I am nearly past the effects of the rheumatism, have little or no pain, and my cough is not dangerous now, I am sure; I sleep pretty well for me, and I eat good substantial food. Now, if I can hold fast to all these improvements, I cannot think it will be necessary for any person to leave home and business to come to me. I could not be come for at present, for I should not dare attempt the voyage yet, and I hope to be able to get along by myself, especially as it is almost summer now. But, dear Ber, I think every moment how good and kind it was of you to say you would come if I needed you, and if I should “go to the bad” again, I fear I shall need you. If such a miserable state of things comes, I will telegraph, and you will all consult, and do what seems best to you to do. You know much better than I what would be well to do, and, if it must be done, you will do it. Doesn’t the State want to send you over to make some investigations? In that case it wouldn’t seem such waste of ammunition on small game as to come just to look after poor miserable me, who never amount to anything anywhere.

But, Ber, I shall never have done thinking how quick and kind you were in writing me, and what strength and purpose I felt in every line of your letter, and it strengthens me still. You saw so clearly how I needed a strong arm near me; all about me is so weak. I have managed everything since my illness, for myself, and all around me, from my banking business and correspondence to my butcher and grocer, the airing of my linen, and the arranging of the chairs in my room. There is no mind or will or thought that can go one inch beyond me, when I stop. There is no hand that has enough magnetic force to take away one nervous twinge, not a hand that does not take magnetism from me even now, and days when I am weakest, I cannot let a hand be laid upon me, to rub, or even comb my hair. I feel the loss of strength directly and fall into nervous perspiration. I tell you all this because I read between the lines of your dear letter that you half divined the case, and I may as well confess it. I believe I can bring myself up out of this weakness, and then I will come home to thank you, and be “put in my little bed.” Won’t you write me again soon, now you know how it does me good?

Dear Fannie offers her “Bear” to me,—what a good Bearess she is, isn’t she? Now, dear Ber, with a great big kiss, and I can’t say that there aren’t a few other little things dropped along with it, here, my good boy, is my good-bye.

From Your Old Sick Auntie
Clara

Ber, you must hold your good mother steady and not let her get alarmed. It will never do for her to come all this way on such an errand. In any case it would be too hard for her.

Though neither medicine nor the climate availed to help her, she found some measure of relief in a cheerful spirit. Of her system of mental therapeutics she wrote to her niece Mamie Barton, Mrs. John Stafford:

Auntie wants to write Mamie a little letter. She is more sorry than she can tell that she has such a stupid illness that forbids her to be company for any one.

Auntie does not feel less social for this and, although it is hard and painful, she will not feel despondent a moment, but hopeful and cheerful for the present and future, if the circumstances immediately about her do not combine to depress her to a degree which she cannot control. If she had a headache or a nervous head which a noise would disturb or make ache, there would be some good reason for all about her to keep quiet, and leave her to her rest and reflections; but she has nothing of this, and never has. Her head is strong physically. (She will not refer to its mental qualities.) And as she has nothing to do all night but to rest and reflect, she does not need special opportunity for these during the day. If she were all alone, she would not get lonely or nervous on account of the quiet and silence about her. She has had great experiences in this and is accustomed to it. But when she feels herself imposing a dull dead silence on all persons about her, those whom she loves most dearly and for whose hourly comfort and happiness she would sacrifice anything in reason and see her dear little girls gliding about without speaking a sentence,—never sees a laugh or scarce a smile,—it makes her feel herself such a restriction, such a detractor from their happiness and leaves her such a prey to sad reflections and makes her feel the misfortune of her illness so deeply that at times it seems impossible to bear it. She grows more and more depressed every minute and the poor strained nerves refuse longer control, and, in spite of all her womanly determination, break into tears and groans. This would make me very ill in time. Mamie doesn’t want this of all things, Auntie knows, and she writes this poor little letter to explain to her the causes and the results, and tell her how to avoid the one and improve the other.

Just, then, throw away the old-time, never-to-be-departed-from notion, handed down from nobody knows where, that all ill or ailing persons are to be treated the same, and that mainly like a dead person, surrounded by dumb watchers, and dim tapers, waiting to be buried, and remember that one whose heart is cheery and one whose mind is active, but whose mouth is closed to speech, might like to borrow the use of the mouths of those around them—might and must want, most of all, some one to talk for them—to say the nonsense and make the fun they cannot say and make for themselves. And that nothing so much as a good funny time a day would so shorten and deaden the pain that must be borne in either case. Now, if the two dear good little girls could only bring themselves to have the same chatty day that Auntie knows they would have if they were in their own room by themselves, laughing, singing, doing nonsense, and, in short, feeling themselves perfectly free to enjoy themselves as I always know they do when by themselves, Auntie would be more grateful to them than for anything else they could do for her. And she has faith in the good understanding of her dear Mamie, to believe that she still sees the real state of the case as she could not see it before. And she knows that once she sees it, that big lump of Benevolence just on the top of her head, will not permit her to do anything but have a good jolly time in spite of her disagreeable old Auntie who can’t just now help a bit to make it, but who needs it more than ever, and most of all.

Mamie needn’t work on that old puzzling dress unless she greatly desires to.

Now, with great love, and great hopes, and sincere commiseration, Auntie closes this her first epistle to the daughter of David and waiting to hear her cry out in a “loud voice,” she remains as usual

Old Dolorous

The summer, however, did her some good. She was able to get out and do a little sight-seeing, her longest journey being to Stratford-on-Avon. Early in October she sailed for home on the steamship Parthia.

Only a few weeks before she had believed that she had but a short time to live, or that if she lived it must be as a hopeless and permanent invalid; but with even the beginning of a restoration to health she recalled her determination to introduce in America the Red Cross, under whose auspices she had labored on the battle-fields of Europe. She knew that America had no knowledge of, or interest in, the Red Cross. She had good reason to question whether it would be possible for her immediately to stir up any great enthusiasm for it. But she was determined to live and bring this to pass.

As usual on trans-Atlantic voyages, there was a concert in the cabin of the Parthia. Clara Barton, returning to America as the heroine of two wars, was asked to participate. She made her contribution to the evening’s entertainment in a poem which she wrote on shipboard, in which she expressed her ardent desire and her solicitude. She was going back to America after a long absence. Was there anything for her to do when she got here? For daily bread she had no concern and no need for concern. Her modest income was adequate for her still more modest needs. Even while traveling abroad she had found no occasion to encroach upon her principal, and her expenses at home were certain to leave her each year a little margin between income and outgo. But there had entered into her soul a vision of the contribution which she might be permitted to make to America and the world by securing America’s adhesion to the international treaty which included the recognition of the Red Cross. Would America listen to her when she pleaded for this? Had it room for her and her mission?

HAVE YE ROOM?

Five days from New York—five days did he say?
Only five days from the glistening bay,
That four years ago I sailed tearfully o’er
Watching the sunny light fade from the shore!
As the kerchiefs had faded along the dense pier,
And the God bless you’s died on the listening ear.
Tearfully, prayerfully, sailing away,
Past the green islands, and out of the bay,
Recalling in pain they who sorrowed and wept,
More painfully still the brave who had slept;
Tearfully, prayerfully sailing away
In search of the strength that went out in the fray.
It were easy to search for the gems of the sea,
The jewels and gold hid in mountain and lea,
The thin veins of silver that line the green sod,
But health is of wisdom, and strength is of God.
Four wearisome years in lands strange and old,
Watching the changes that over them rolled,
How the calm shadows lay in the valley of rest,
And the black war cloud gathered from out of the west;
How lancer and tireur dashed o’er the plain
And the smiles fled the face of sweet Alsace-Lorraine.
And helmet and turban lay soaked in the rain
And the masterless dog lapped the wounds of the slain.
Fair sons and brave husbands there lingered not one,
And the far childless widow prayed—Thy will be done.
How the old nations groaned on their unstable beds,
As the great car of progress rolled over their heads,
Uprooting old forms, time-honored of sages
Sowing new truths for the incoming ages.
Republics have sprung on the steps of the throne,
Kingdoms have crumbled, empires have grown;
Princes and prelates have listened their doom,
And ermine and gold-decked the refugee’s tomb.
Strange sights for strange eyes as the old cities burn,
And battle and siege follow each in their turn.
I have heard the faint note of the last sentry’s call,
And seen the white flag flutter out o’er the wall;
I have bound up death wounds lying dark and alone,
And the language that blessed me was strange and unknown.
The homeless and famished clung wild with despair,
And the noble and gentle have cherished me there.
Still trustingly,—loyally: loving and true,
Anxious and glad, I am coming to you.
Have ye place, each beloved one, a place in your prayer,
Have ye room, my dear countrymen, room for me there?
How the strength rose and fell in those perilous years!
What torture it made of my hopes and my fears,
When I joyed in its rise or wept for its fall,
It was never myself that I thought of at all.
But if only once more I might tread the loved land,
And toil for its weal with my heart, and my hand;
Have ye place, each beloved one, a place in your prayer,
Have ye work, my brave countrymen, work for me there?
Plow on, old Parthia, steady and true,
Each plunge of thy prow brings them nearer to view;
Brings me nearer the days that shall settle the doubt
If they’ve kept me within—or have left me without.
For my feeble hands failed while care rested on all,
And trouble and grief wrapped them round like a pall.
Who shall say that the storms have not scattered my sheaves,
Or the winter winds buried the fallen autumn leaves,
Or the gaping seas closed without anger or frown,
And the freighted ships crowd where the lone wreck went down?
Have ye place, each beloved one, a place in your prayer,
Have ye room, my dear countrymen, room for me there?

Steamship Parthia, Mid-Atlantic
October 8, 1873

CHAPTER V
THE YEARS OF SICKNESS AND RECOVERY
1873-1880

Clara Barton came back from Europe wearing the jewel of the Red Cross presented to her by Queen Natalie of Serbia. She was the only person in America who then, or for nine years thereafter, wore the Red Cross. She was the sole person in the United States who, by service or any form of official recognition, was entitled to that decoration. She wore also the Iron Cross of Merit, presented to her by the Emperor and Empress of Germany. She wore a Gold Cross of Remembrance, presented to her by the Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden; and from Louise, the Grand Duchess, she wore, and prized beyond all wealth, a magnificent amethyst, said to have been the finest amethyst in this country. From poor, defeated France she wore no official decoration, but she brought the love and gratitude of innumerable people there to whom she had ministered.

On her return to America, she went to her old home in Washington, on Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill, the home she had purchased before leaving, but occupied so short a time before her nervous breakdown. But she was not permitted to live there very long, because the corner was too noisy. Her physician, Dr. Thompson, commanded her to live elsewhere. The doctor assigned her her limits, “jail-limits” she called them; she might live somewhere between Seventh and Sixteenth Streets, and on the farther side of New York Avenue.

She established herself at the corner of Fourteenth and F. Her letters to her nieces in this period are cheerful, but written under the burden of physical pain and nerve fatigue.

On May 23 she received word that her sister Sarah, Mrs. Vester Vassall, was fatally ill. Though far from well, she hastened to Massachusetts, arriving in the evening to find that her sister had died that morning. The shock of her sister’s death, coming as it did when her own health was so precarious, brought back her old trouble with full force. For several months she remained in Oxford and Worcester, and then went to North Grafton—New England Village it was called—where her relatives, the Learned family, had a country home. There she took a house, and remained for a considerable time attended by Minnie Kupfer, who had served with her in the Franco-Prussian War, and, like Antoinette Margot, had followed her to this country. Her health varied with the season and with other conditions not all of them easy to determine. There were times when she had hard chills, followed by dripping sweats. There were weeks when she had no strength even to lift her head. There were bright days also, when she moved about with some approach to health.

What was the real nature of Clara Barton’s illness during this long period of suffering? Material is not lacking for a fairly accurate diagnosis. Having exhausted the resources of local physicians, she entered into correspondence with a series of doctors, each of whom professed to be able to bring her permanent relief. Some of these called for very little information about her condition. Their remedies were supposed to cure almost anything. But others sent long lists of questions calling for full and minute replies. Copies of these questions and of her answers, she preserved.

From her replies it would appear that there was hardly a bodily function which was not disturbed. She was subject to hard colds, to severe headaches, a weak back, digestive trouble, and to periodic attacks of camp diarrhœa from which so many soldiers suffered for so many years after the war, this condition alternating with stubborn constipation.

But it is evident, as one reads critically these pathetic catechisms, that she had after all a basis of sound physical health. Her careful answers to these questions do not appear to indicate a single organic disease. She had yet to learn that her back, which she thought so weak, was really remarkably strong, and that her head had little need to ache when her eyes were not overstrained. And her digestion need not be seriously disturbed if her nerves were not worn and shattered.

The most serious symptom that Clara Barton had, through all these years, was a temperament abnormally sensitive. She was capable of enduring almost any possible physical or nervous strain, and of standing up under it well, but when the strain was over and she met some trivial exhibition of ingratitude, some captious and wholly negligible criticism, some petulant and despicable bit of opposition, her nervous energy gave way with a sudden collapse. Her voice failed; her eyes failed; whatever organ was weakest gave way first, and she went to pieces like the deacon’s “one-hoss shay.”

To one who reads those letters at this distance, it seems a thousand pities that some one, whose scientific judgment she could trust, did not say to her: “You are organically sound. There is no good reason why you should be sick. You are tired, and that is not surprising. And you have magnified innumerable foolish little matters of irritation. Forget them. Believe that you are well. Half your years are yet before you,—the better and happier and far the more useful half of your life. Get out in the fresh air. Live simply. Throw medicine away, and you can be strong again.”

In an undated letter written in the early spring of 1876, she gives to Mr. Dwight an account of her experience since her return to America:

[Undated. 1876, early spring]

Dear Mr. Dwight:

I am at New England Village. Some good angel must have inspired you to write me. I was so anxious to hear of you, and only my physical weakness has kept me from commencing a search for you long ago. I had “somewhat” to say to you, as you know, and as soon as I am strong enough shall find a way to say it. Yes, it is true I am at New England Village and have been since last April.

The “world” has not treated me badly in the last four years; but I could have better borne some bad treatment from others than all I have had to bear from myself. I have been an invalid most of the time. I grew very weak at Carlsruhe directly after Belfort, recovered a little, went to England in the spring of ’72, kept about some months, but in October broke down with a cough, became too ill to get off the island, was confined to my bed eight months; in June, ’73, was able to get over to Paris and recovered sufficiently to come home in October. My cough had left me, but I was weak, and fearing its return went to Washington as soon as I could for the winter, broke down again with “prostration of the nervous system,” if any one knows what that is, which was deepened and nearly rendered fatal by the illness of my only sister in Worcester, whom I strove for months to reach. Was finally brought to Worcester at the peril of my life on the 23d of May, ’74, arriving at 4 P.M. to find that she had died at 6 in the morning. I never saw her dead face even. It was one year from that time before I left the house again, and that to be removed here. I could not tell you the suffering, physical and mental, of that year, and I would not if I could. Only a small portion of the time could I stand alone; averaged less than two hours’ sleep in twenty-four for almost a year; could not write my name for over four months, and could not have a letter read to me or see my friends or scarcely my attendants. Little by little I have grown better until now I am about my house (for I always keep house). I have for attendant and nurse and housekeeper Miss Kupfer, of Berne, Suisse, a friend I made there, and who came to me as soon as she heard of my illness here a year or more ago and who never leaves me. I am gaining slowly, though weak still; have had neither physician nor medical treatment for over a year. Nature does her work as best she knows how; what measure of strength she may ever give me back I cannot know, probably not great. I suppose diseased nerve centers and worn-out systems are not likely to mend very firmly. But one day I shall want to see you, and you will let me do so, I think. If I am not able to go to Boston, you will come to see me, I believe, and when I see how it is likely to be with me I shall write and tell you. Meantime, it would interest me just as deeply to know how the world has treated you in these last few years as it does you to hear of me. Can I not know something of you and can I not send my most sincere and respectful regards to Mr. Jackson, whom I hope one day to see?

While Clara Barton was touring New York State on her lecture tours, she spoke at Dansville, New York, and was entertained at the sanitarium, popularly spoken of as the water cure. On March 16, 1876, a lady from Worcester who had been a patient at Dansville called and spent the greater part of a day with her. She told her that Dansville was “The place to go and get well.” Miss Barton had resumed her diary, and she recorded that this Miss Adams seemed to her “not an enthusiast, but a calm, sensible girl; looks at things in the light of reason and common sense; and I feel that I can take her reports without discount, and her opinions on trust.”

Before many days she had practically determined to go to Dansville, and that place became her home for about ten years. At first she lived in the sanitarium; then she bought a home of her own. She adopted the simple habits of life which there were inculcated. Little by little her strength returned, until, instead of being an invalid, she was for her years a woman in remarkably good health. With the return of health came back her determination to establish the American Red Cross, and it was in Dansville that the first local organization in America was established under that name. How she secured the organization and official recognition we shall presently learn. From her letters at this time, two may be selected which give some account of the troubled years through which she had passed, and the great hope which she was now ardently cherishing. One of these was addressed to the Public Printer at Washington, whose services she remembered kindly, and with whom she hoped to have dealings. The other was to her cherished friend, the Grand Duchess Louise of Baden.

Dansville, Sept. 8, 1877

John D. De Frieze, Esq.
Public Printer, Washington, D.C.
Dear and Esteemed Sir:

It occurs to me that it may not be entirely necessary to introduce myself to you. Even after a lapse of almost a decade you will not quite have forgotten that there was once a woman by the name of Clara Barton who, in common with the rest of the moving world, gave you more or less trouble. However faint these traces remain in your memory, that cannot dim the brightness which gilds her recollection of the uncounted favors you so kindly and generously meted out to her in the hard, busy days when she tried, with little strength and less power, to carry heavy burdens, and accomplish hard things. Through all these years the grateful memory of these kindnesses has never waned, and it so presses itself upon me that I cannot resist the desire to pick up my pen, far away in this quiet nook of the country, and tell you how glad I am, and have been, to know you are back again at your old post, which you ought never to have left, and how thankful I am to our good President for having recalled you. My first impulse was to thank him directly, but unfortunately he does not know of my existence, and could never have found an excuse for my boldness, but you, my good and honored friend, will excuse it and will not call it even bold that a hard-worked woman has remembered the strong, kind hands that helped her on, and after long years has ventured to speak of it.

Physically these intervening years have not been easy years for me, four of them with broken health and a wanderer in foreign lands, two of them in the Franco-Prussian War and its devastations, four more a helpless invalid in my own country, and this year for the first, once more on my feet walking about like other persons, but up to the present never leaving my home even for a short journey. I think of you all in that busy capital and wonder if it is true that I too was once a part of it, and stood erect amid its jostling and excitement. Thank God He has given you strength to endure to the end!

Lest I give a wrong impression, let me add that it was physically only that I referred to my life as hard. Socially and pecuniarily it is and has been easy and beautiful. I have all the world for friends and no unsatisfied wants, no necessities, no regrets except that I am not strong enough to do the work around me which the world needs to have done. Until now it has not in five long years dared ask of me the smallest service. Lately the European people have laid upon my hands an international matter pertaining to humanity for which it seems proper that I see the President. If I should be able to go to Washington for this purpose after his return, would you think it probable I could see and speak with him?

I hope, Mr. De Freize, my long letter has not been too great a burden to you. If so, let it console you that it is not without its uses, for it is a great relief to me to have said a little of that which I wanted to say so much, and I beg to remain with the highest esteem,

Always gratefully your friend

Clara Barton

Dansville, Livingston Co., N.Y.
May 19, 1877

My dear Grand Duchess:

How shall I commence to write you after all these years of silence? Can it ever appear to you inexcusable? Will the generosity of your noble nature make you equal to the overlooking of an act which all the world, less noble and generous than yourself, would condemn as neglectful or forgetful? But, my preciously beloved friend, if these thoughts have ever taken hold upon your mind, and left their unpleasant shadow over the memory of your old-time friendship for me, and led you to feel that not only Republics, but their people as well, are ungrateful, and that you are only too happy in being relieved of such as you have known,—if all these dark thoughts and shadows lay there in your memory of me to-day, and I knew it, and knew also that they could only be removed by a full portrayal on my part of all the days and years of weakness, illness, suffering, and affliction which have caused the silence, I should hesitate long before I brought the picture to you; your active life and needed energies are not to be clogged and burdened by woes which do not belong to you, and the tax upon your sympathies is great enough from those who feel that they look rightfully to you for sympathy and help. Then let me say as little as possible of all this, and pass on to other things, and that little is, that during almost two years of the time since I last saw you in London, I have been not only too ill to write you, but too weak to have heard read a letter from you if it had been sent to me. You will understand from theory, and I pray the great and good God that you may never know by experience, what helplessness and suffering may follow in the train of utter “prostration of the nervous system.” This was the misfortune that fell upon me directly upon my arrival in this country at the close of the year 1873, hastened and deepened by the death of my only sister whose life had been always dearer to me than my own. It was only last year, 1876, that I was able to leave my bed and learn to walk feebly about my room, sometimes see a friend, write a letter, and read my letters; then I was removed from my home in Massachusetts to this place, the largest and most noted water and rest cure in the country, where I have resided since, gradually regaining my strength, and coming back to life a little, but whether to usefulness remains to be seen. I have done everything to surround myself with healthful and strength-giving influences. The climate is delicious and I nearly live in the open air. Sleep, which in all years has been only a visitor, has come back to abide with me more constantly, and there is no night now in which it quite forsakes me. This was the great necessity, and I feel my strength returning under its blessed influence. My flesh is also returning and I am regaining some power of endurance. So far as any usefulness to others is concerned, I can see in all these years of helplessness only entire loss, but to myself I hope they may not have been without their uses and benefits. Through them I have walked narrower and darker paths than ever before, and stood very close to the dark still river. Aye, I have pitched my tents and rested there, waited calmly and sometimes, I fear, looked longingly over on to its other restful and brighter shore; but its shadows have not alarmed, its waters have not terrified. God has stood very near, my trust in Him has never faltered, and my faith has never wavered nor changed. I have known no fear, and if weakness, suffering, and inaction have made me more tender and thoughtful, it is well; if the silvery hair they have spread over temple and brow are a daily reminder that I have no longer the vigor of young strength, that, too, is well, and I will hope for added wisdom and gentler kindness.

Now, my dear, this is all of me, but how is it with you and yours? For I have heard of you ill and suffering, and dared not ask more. I trust that is all past, and I should see only the bright, happy face that left its lovely picture on my memory. The noble husband, is he well? The beautiful “children”—I can scarcely picture them, for some of them are men and women now, and I never forget to pray God to keep and bless them all for the wife’s and mother’s sake. You will remember that the first great love in my heart for you carried me at one bound beyond all lines of courtly etiquette, blinded me to the positions and conditions of rank and royalty, and made me stupidly, awkwardly dumb to every titled phrase and courtly sentence; it closed and sealed my senses to all these, but opened them to the loving, tender wife and mother, the noble woman and the priceless friend. I could not have spoken a word of flattery to you sooner than I could have put it in my prayer; it could never have entered my thought to courtesy or bend the knee in your presence, but I should have lain in the dust at your feet without knowing it, if I had felt that it could serve you. A strange, uncourtly friend you have in me, this far-away American woman, my child, but a friend, nevertheless.

And now comes up that dread theme that first brought me to know you—war, dreadful war. My heart has stood still for weeks in anxiety, fear, and dread. Is Germany, dear Germany, to be drawn into that terrible vortex? Are her mothers to give out their sons, and her wives their husbands again so soon? Are the graves to be opened again almost before they are green, and the wounds before they are healed? Are the fair fingers of her maidens again to ply the busy hours with bandages and lint and the trembling grandmothers to labor again with shirts and socks? And you and yours, who hold and guard the weal of all, are you to stand in jeopardy, and watch in agony again so soon? Are these dreadful days I so well remember all to be lived over again? I cannot yet believe it; neither can I yet rid me of the fear which haunts me day and night. Constantly the question rises, What can I do? And my weakness answers back, “Nothing, nothing.” If I had the strength of ten years ago, and the war opened upon you, I should prepare myself and go, not single-handed and alone, as I was overtaken in 1870, but I would make my arrangements with my people here for all material to work with, select my assistants from the German and German-speaking populations here, take my surgeons and nurses, and go at once and ask you for a field of labor. Surely you and your good husband and father and mother would assign me one somewhere! But it is all too late for this; at the best I can only use my influence and the little strength I have at home. As a means to this, I have written our good friend, Dr. Appia, of Geneva, to ask if any help from me would be desirable, and to say that if it would be acceptable, I would, upon his writing me to that effect, make the effort to establish an international organization in my own country for the collection and receipt of supplies, which should work under the insignia of the Red Cross, and forward through a headquarters which I would attempt to establish somewhere near or at New York. Thus would I try to bring the early and organized efforts of America into direct communication with the activities of Europe, and try for once to make our charities of some timely and real benefit, which the great distance and want of proper organization has hitherto greatly hindered, or nearly prevented. Our people are generous, tender of heart, and quick in their sympathies, but they are busy and spread over a quarter of the globe. They do not become aware of the necessities for assistance in other lands till great suffering exists and the general Press brings it to their knowledge. Then they spring with a bound of sympathy and generosity and give without stint, but their stream has no channel prepared for it to flow in and runs over and wastes, so that little, very little, ever reaches the real scene of suffering and want for which it is so generously given. If I can learn that it would be acceptable and that there can be established a direct coöperation between the charitable activities of America and Europe, and that Europe desires it, I shall do all in my power to organize the work early, at once in America. It is for this I have written Dr. Appia to have him send me his request that I would do it, that I may use it as a lever with our Government to gain its sanction, protection, prestige, and coöperation so far as I can. I shall watch with all interest every movement and I would be so grateful for any information that I might gain from European sources regarding the true condition of things. How glad I should be of any published work or matter, if any exists, which explains the working of your remarkable system of, or what we term, “Relief Societies.” I do not know where to send for this but to you who were the originator and head. If the condition of Europe renders it desirable, and I am strong enough to organize aid in America, every word of information on these points would be held priceless. I am gleaning all I can from such foreign papers as I can get; both the German and French languages are familiarly used in my house. My amanuensis is Swiss and speaks both natively, of course. The more I read, the more I fear what the next months may bring to you, to dear Germany and to all Europe. And the more I fear, the more anxious I am to help. Let us pray God the storm may pass, but if it must come, give us strength and wisdom to meet it well.

I have long been the debtor of good Madame de Mentzinger, and my next European letter will be to her, who I hope will forgive my delay. I was not able to answer her in time. To our dear Hannah I have not written in years, nor heard. I know the parent family is nearly gone, and that she has one of her own. I shall hope to hear of her some day,—the precious child!

And dear Princess Wilhelm, who seems to me always to be a part of yourself, may I dare send my love through you to her? I remember once she graciously told me I might write her. I wonder if the privilege still exists, or has time annulled it? I know she has had her griefs and that her precious mother has gone home.

All that happens to you there in that beloved Court circle is reflected and felt here in my distant home as if it were a part of it. I joy in your prosperity and sorrow for your griefs as if in some way they belonged to me or mine. I could not if I attempted to divest myself of this interest. I even could not help feeling a solicitous interest in all that pertained to Prince Alexis in his recent visit to my country, and rejoiced with a kind of motherly pride in all the good impressions he made, and felt that I ought to see him, because he was of your house, and the home cousin of dear Princess Wilhelm. He, the gallant, princely man, would have laughed at the idea of a plain, unpretending American woman cherishing a family pride in him and keeping a motherly watchfulness for his welfare, but your love and kindness to me when a stranger in your country won my gratitude and love forever for all that pertains to you. I have followed the late journeying and visits of your noble father with wonder and joy for his continued vigor. I so well remember the tender care and love that dwelt in my heart for my honored father when fourscore winters had whitened his locks and bared his brow, yet his firm marching step told not more than fifty summers, and his eye was still clear and his voice strong; but he left me, the brave old soldier.

I always regret that I never saw your honored mother, and it was my purpose not to have left Europe without this distinguished pleasure. But her precious gift, the beautiful cross, is the chiefest among my treasures, lying always beside yours. You cannot conceive, I am sure, how precious those gifts are to me, and do you recollect the sweet picture of yourself you once sent me for a Christmas gift? It has comforted me every day through all these suffering years, always near my bed. It was the first to greet me in the morning, and now, in these days of better strength and activity, it is no less the admiration of my friends than it has been the companion of my weakness.

But I must somewhere make an end to this seemingly endless letter, and with one thought more I will.

May I entreat you that, if disturbances and war come upon you, and there arises any contingency, any want, any point upon which it may seem that I could, being here, be of the smallest or largest use to you, or your people, you will not hesitate a moment in making any use of me that you possibly can; consult with me upon any plan (that it shall be strictly confidential I need not add) and it will be always possible for me to confer directly with the head or heads of our Government, and so far as I can I will influence our people to any charitable activities or movements which might be desired and which you kindly suggest to me. How glad I should be to feel myself once more working with you, that I was perhaps helping you a little, and the American people would be glad, for you are no stranger to them, and I want them to know you better still. I pray you let

Your grateful and loving friend

Clara Barton

What she found at Dansville that restored her health is shown in some of her home letters. She found congenial society, wholesome and simple food, and an atmosphere that believed health to be possible. The world is moderately full of sick and half-sick people who could be well if they knew how, and would believe that they were well.

She grew strong enough for short tours to neighboring cities. She became a star performer in the evening entertainments in the sanitarium, reciting poetry, sometimes writing a poem for a special occasion, and after a time giving a short lecture about her experiences abroad. A few of her letters will show her state of health and of mind. There was nothing miraculous or sudden about her recovery. She had periods of depression and times of weakness, but she gained strength and gained it permanently, and was able to take up the greatest work of her life and carry it through triumphantly.

“Our Home on the Hillside”
Dansville, Livingston Co., N.Y.
July 15, 1876

Dear Coz:

If Miss Kupfer had not written me that she had written to you since our departure, I should have written earlier, but I knew she had told you of our safe arrival, and I thought I had then nothing of interest to say until I could tell you how I liked my surroundings. I have now been here seven weeks and find no occasion to regret coming. The place is simply beautiful in its location and surroundings, made up of hills and valleys under a high state of cultivation and taste.

The institution is larger and more flourishing than I had expected, with about three hundred patients, or persons as patients, and I think I never saw together any group of people that combines the degrees of intellect, general intelligence, and culture as is collected here. The speech of every person one meets is kind, charitable, and refined.

The faculty connected with the institution is, I should judge, skillful and competent, but the general means for promoting health through proper food, water, bathing, dress, rest, sunshine, open air, and pleasant surroundings are mainly relied upon; little or no medicines are ever used. I have neither seen nor heard of any being used by any person since I have been here; indeed, the great struggle and effort seems to be to get out of the patients the remnants of the medicines already taken in the past.

We have several excellent lectures in the hall during the week and services on the Sabbath. The Hall is so situated that all can attend. No change or addition of dress required, more than to go from one room to another. If one is not able to walk, he is carried if he chooses to be, and if one does not wish to sit up, he lies down and listens, so there is no getting weary, no exhaustion, no getting over-tired. One gets all the good without the bad.

The tables are excellent and most abundantly supplied. Meats plainly but well cooked, the freshest of vegetables from their own gardens, and such abundance of fruit as I never saw, all in its turn. We have passed through the era of strawberries and cherries and currants, and are now in the raspberries, white, red, and black. I believe the blackberries follow next, and so on to the peaches, pears, and apples of autumn, but the astonishing thing after their freshness and perfection is their abundance. They are not served to us in saucers, or on individual plates, but placed in large fruit dishes once in about three feet through all the scores of tables, each one to help himself over and over, the dishes being refilled to the last, and we leaving the tables filled as we find them. The fruit is mainly picked from the gardens that day for dinner, or the evening before for breakfast, from two hundred to four hundred quarts for a meal. Besides this we have always the greatest abundance of “Shaker” dried fruits cooked for those who cannot take the fresh. New milk from their own dairy (they have forty or fifty cows), all one can use at every meal; the freshest of oatmeals and grahams, sweet butter, tapioca, etc. The vegetables are largely cooked in milk, and harmless. With all these fruits and vegetables there is no summer complaint here. I have not heard of a case, and among all these invalid people not a person in bed, except a few rheumatics who were brought here in beds and are not up yet. No fevers, no colics, but all out and about in the sunshine, and on the Hillside’s stretchers and hammocks under the trees. One has only to be lazy and jolly and get well if they can.

There are a good many very pretty cottages outside the Main Institute where persons room, but all meet in the same dining-hall, and in the same parlor for prayers and singing after breakfast and the distribution of the mail after dinner. I am in the Institute, or main building. The views from the verandas are as fine as many I have heard extolled in foreign countries. A single glance takes in a stretch of the valley of over ten miles in length, as handsome as a landscape garden. We are so high above the town that we seldom walk, but there are always livery teams waiting orders at the door. One drives or is driven as the choice may be. Dr. Jackson has a stable of about twelve horses for his and family uses and the work. They are handsome enough for a fair, and I occasionally find that they are good roadsters. The village below us is pretty and thriving.

Miss Atwater lives in the village about a mile from me, but comes to lectures. She is well and seems very happy. I have ridden down to see her a few times. Her uncle is still with her. He had worked hard in his hotels for a great many years, been broken of his rest a great deal, and was considerably worn down, and seems to be glad of an opportunity to rest a little outside of a hot city. It makes it pleasant for Fanny till she gets more acquainted, but the people are very kind and social here. There is no stiffness.

There are something like fifty people employed as help to do the work of this Home, but not one servant; the word, nor position is not known here, all are treated equally, all ladylike and gentlemanly, all treated alike. There is an amusement society, and one of its features is a beautiful dance once a week from 5 till 8 P.M. Piano and violin music,—no round dances,—but cotillions and all dances which are not injurious, and the prettiest and most elegant dancers in the hall are from among the help.

There is a regularly organized fire company on the grounds, and the houses are watched and patrolled all night like a first-class manufactory. No doors are ever locked; all stand open if not too cold. I have never turned a key in the house. Now, I believe I have told you all the most important features of the place I have come to, but I have been very careful not to overdraw it, for I hope some of your journeys may sometime bring you to take a look at it for yourself, and I would not like you to be disappointed.

I hope this severely hot weather has not been too much for you, and that sometime you will find time to drop a line to your

Affectionate Coz

Clara

I neglected to say that I find a good many old friends here. Our chaplain was a member of the Sanitary Commission in Washington, and the Reverend Dr. Abbott, who is here with his family, was President of the Christian Commission. Love to any who may inquire.

Clinton Hotel, Rochester
Sunday [1876]

Dearest Mamie:

Does the date take you by surprise? Don’t be alarmed, it’s all right. I am only on a visit of a few days. Dr. Jackson, Miss Austin, and several other lady friends made a party and came last Friday to stay several days in Rochester, and enjoy the change and rest, and here we are having a glorious time. All but I can go to operas, church, lectures, galleries, etc., etc., and I can stay by and keep guard and direct the servants how to order the rooms, to have all ready and jolly for them when they get back. Mrs. Jones, principal of the Dansville Seminary, and a Miss Reynolds, who is “Thirza Ann” in a Betsey Bobbet Club we have here and a capital dramatist, are my room companions in the hotel. There is no lack of fun with two such fertile brains about. We go home next Tuesday.

Now that I am through with myself, let me turn to you and say how glad I am that you have been to the Centennial and enjoyed it so well, made so much of it, and got home so well. What a beautiful gift that was from Mr. and Mrs. Shrubler, to you, that trip, a hundred-fold more than the beautiful dress which was a thing to be most grateful for, but it will wear out in time, while nothing short of eternity can take from you the knowledge and benefits of that exhibition. It is a thing for a lifetime, not only its pleasure but its profits. Please thank them both for me for this thoughtful courtesy to you and for the good dress also, and indeed for all their kindnesses to my little girl, who I know is grateful for herself, but I am also grateful for her.

Now, you see I have not your letter here and cannot answer it as I ought, for I really do not recollect the questions it asks, neither do I recollect when I wrote you last, or what I told you then, so this letter is liable to be a repetition or an omission, but you will forgive this in either of the circumstances. I had a good letter from Ida just an hour before I started from Dansville and have answered it from there. She is a very easy, natural correspondent and would make a fine writer in some special directions if she could be cultivated. She sends me advertisement of your Papa D.’s farm. I was a little surprised at this, but it shows him in earnest in his assertion that he would like to be rid of it, and I do not wonder that he feels it a burden. It is more so than if it were larger and would afford more and efficient help, and pay for outlays. I consider it one of the most laborious sizes that a farm can have if one intends to use it as a farm, and if not, then it is too large. Four acres of nice buildings would really be worth more in the way of comfort, and these buildings have got to an age which will call for constant repairs, and the house is never convenient nor built for a farmhouse; in fact it was not intended for a farm by Grandpa, and there was no farm till your father made it so by his cultivation, for it was waste land.

Did I tell you that the Taylors had sailed for England? They must be there now. How sweet and beautiful they were when here, and how in the two or three little days they spent here they made themselves felt and beloved. Mrs. Taylor is really one of the sweetest women I have ever known. Fannie is at the Centennial and I have just one line from her. She is almost frantic from the confusion. You know her head gets troubled easily, and she had not got it rested from the journey and the first days of the great show. She will remain long enough to find herself and look clearly and see what she “went for to see,” I trust. I am glad you have heard from Etta and glad they are getting on so well. Please give a great deal of love to dear Anna and congratulate her on her Centennial trip which, I trust, she enjoyed to its fullest, and thank Mr. Shrubler for his good gift to my dear old brother. I know it has made a warm spot in his heart for all the time he will live to wear it, and with his poor health and tendency to melancholy his joys are not too many. Mr. Shrubler has given him a great many pleasures, and I thank him most earnestly for them all.

My kitty is charming. She knows almost as much as folks, and has just taken to mousing. She often carries in two and three and sometimes four and five bits of game a day, and all the family have to recognize each one before she will be at all quiet. She is too comical, standing at the door with her nice white face and her mouth full of mouse and grass, calling all the household out to see her.

Yours lovingly

Clara

Miss Barton’s views on health, on politics, on society, on idle women, and incidentally, perhaps, her best description of herself, her tastes and habits, is contained in a letter of this period to a learned German professor, who, knowing of her life in Germany, wrote to her, and proposed to visit her. It is interesting to note that in this letter she speaks of her hair as having been dark brown and changed in a few months of illness to a silvery gray. It did not remain gray, but with her return of health resumed its color of brown, though not so dark as before:

Dansville, Livingston Co., N.Y.
April 17, 1877

Esteemed and dear Friend:

I beg you not to be alarmed even if you were correct in your conjecture that illness caused my silence. It is very true, but I am so far recovered now that, although not released from my bed, I have taken up my pen again, and yesterday, before receiving your card, had laid out your last letter as one of the first to be answered. I might, or I might not, have reached it to-day in regular order, but now, I place it first, and commence my morning roll-call with “Prof. Thed. Pfau,” and a long, narrow, blue-tinted envelope responds, half wearily, half impatiently, “Here.” So “here” we have it.

First, having admitted illness, which I never do if possible to avoid, I must settle your apprehensiveness; it is no new play, or act or scene, simply a calling before the curtain for repetition. I have in these exhausted days only a given amount of strength, and if, by any accident or oversight, I overdraw on my accounts, I am at once bankrupt, and can carry on business no further. Having been in former days accustomed to draw from an unlimited and ever-recruiting stock of strength and health, I find it a difficult problem to solve, how to bring myself down to the necessary economies of my present condition. I cannot realize that a few hours, a few rods, a few steps even, a little overwork at my desk, the quiet arranging of a simple room, a little overrun of company, may use up all my little capital, and I must wait and compromise with my creditors, start business anew on a smaller scale, and work my way up again to the lost point, probably only to lose it again. A month or six weeks ago I committed some one of these extravagances, and immediately comes a notice from my physical banker shutting off my supply of sleep. He had been allowing me nearly seven hours in the four and twenty, but he cut it down to three, two, one, a few minutes, none at all, and so left me for several days and nights, then let it come back in a similar ratio up to—Oh, well, no matter how much, but not seven hours, no, nor for a long time to come; but I can get up and walk about my room and sit part of the day; and I write, because it is better for me to write chatty letters, with no thought in them, than to relapse into solid thinking as I would in doing nothing. One sometimes needs to be saved from himself.

I do not know if I have ever told you of my illness, or what holds me so weak. It is what is known as “prostration of the nervous system,” and very complete at that, I suppose. I am not aware of any decided organic disease, only as all the organs are affected by this great letting down of nerve power and force. Of the class of disease generally denominated “female weaknesses” I know nothing experimentally. Of the lame backs and aching lower spine, that the majority of feeble women suffer torture from, I am ignorant, and can sympathize with them only through observation, but of the hot sore spot on the spine, high up between the shoulders, leading up to the base of the brain, bursting into flame at every over-taxation of mental energy, I know all. It is the same thing that over-worked public men sink under, in sudden deaths, softening of the brain, paralysis, or something analogous to these. This is the illness that has become my master and will one day prove my conqueror. There is no looking forward to “restored health,” soundness and security. The price of not only my liberty, but my life is “eternal vigilance.” Now a truce to illness, to which, thank God, you are a comparative stranger, and I pray Him you always may be.

I have received “Puck” since his advent into this warring world, and he is growing to be a fine little fellow, stout and healthy, a jolly little elf, isn’t he? His wit will get him some clips over the nose by and by, when it begins to be felt, but this he does not care for, for he means to bite. I laughed heartily at his satire on Stanley two weeks ago, and yet Stanley is a valued friend, and I have fought terrible battles for him on both continents, but the imitation is excellent and full of ingenuity. The cuts are, of course, inimitable. Mr. Kepler’s pencil has a master touch, and I wish him long life, abundant success, full pockets, and artistic fame.

The spring is opening well here. We have had a succession of charming days, followed now by a rain which is bringing up the green grass and swelling the buds almost to bursting, but we have no leaves yet. Some wild trees which precede their leaf life by their flowers are out in spring dress; a kind of woods willow, which bedecks itself in deep yellow, is very gaudy just now; the peach trees are pushing out their little soft gray pussy toes all over their red branches, and the horse-chestnuts, with their blunt ends tipped with swollen round buds, look as if they had doubled up their fists for fighting and said to all their more tapering, slender neighbors, Come on, we are ready! We are yet a month too early for the first roses.

Perhaps I told you that I removed to a snug brick city-built house for the winter. I have changed it this spring for a much older and country-like wood house, which has some trees, grass, and shade, a garden, and perhaps some flowers if the sunshine brings them up. I am, of course, all too unpretending and simple in my life to have a gardener, so shall lack the beauties which such assistance would develop. I was once a very tolerable gardener myself among flowers, but I have no longer strength to spend on the strong lap of Mother Earth, much as I love her and her dear little nurslings of cowslip and violets, but good sturdy old dame, she does a great deal without help, and knows very well how to dress herself without the aid of a fille de chambre.

But here I am on this fourth large page, and not even yet noted the contents of your letter. The photograph! I am sorry that you withheld it, I should have been very glad to receive it, if you would entrust it to me, and I still hope you will decide to do so. I should prize it, but I cannot say when I should be able to return the favor. I have no photographs either good or bad. I am never able to go to a gallery to sit for one. The last time was in Paris. All I ever had have been picked away long ago. I am the debtor of all my friends for pictures, some of them several times over, but they know how it is, and I hope excuse me. If I should ever again be in condition to sit, and can get a result that my friends will accept, I will take them by the hundred and relieve myself from embarrassment, but you should know that as a picture my photograph is not at all to be coveted. If natural, it must be uncomely. I was never what the world calls even “good-looking,” leaving out of the case all such terms as “handsome,” and “pretty.” My features were strong and square, cheek-bones high, mouth large, complexion dark; my best feature was perhaps a luxuriant growth of glossy dark hair shading to blackness, but that is comparatively thin now, and silver gray, all within the last three years. It changed from its original blackness to its present shade in the first six weeks of this present illness in 1874. I never cared for dress, and have no accomplishments, so you will find me plain and prosy both in representation and reality if ever you should chance to meet either. I beg you to believe this and to remember it to avoid any disappointment which might possibly occur. Not that I think it could change the friendship of a sensible person, but I like people, and especially my friends, to know me as I am, and not hold a false estimate of me.

Of poor Miss R. (Lorraine Raymond) I never hear a word. It is charitable to attribute her silence to want of scholarship, but I am inclined to disbelieve the verity of this. I believe her to be a very fair scholar, and an average (to say the least of it) correspondent; but she seldom writes, I know. She wrote me a few letters from Europe years ago, none of late years. She has a kind heart, and I am so so sorry for her.

I hope the trial of your brother will not result disastrously to him. Perhaps one cannot easily control a dislike, but he has certainly chosen a most powerful foe, and the odds seem unequal. I agree with you in more than word, when you declare the Imperial Family of Germany to be a respectable one; it is all of that, nothing in Europe stands before it, and those of it whom I have known personally are of the highest excellence and purest worth. I am sure the more intimately they are known, the better they must be beloved. The Grand Duchess of Baden is to me the loveliest woman on the earth; in this term I mean to combine all qualities of both mind and body; both nature and culture have made her a Princess. And I cannot see why she is not as good a Republican as if she had been born a peasant, or a Suisse, or American citizen; in no position would she knowingly do a wrong or commit an act of tyranny to the lowest human being whether subject or not. “Tired of Republics,” you say. Perhaps if you study your own meaning closely you will find that you are rather tired of politics than Republics. And, my esteemed and valued friend, let me in all childlike simplicity suggest what does not perhaps clearly appear to you, viz., that the standpoint one occupies, the surroundings one has, the outlook one takes, have a great deal to do in forming the opinion and swaying the judgment. I am sorry that you must perforce see our country, its political, moral, and social sides, through the slum, and mire, and haze of a lens like New York City. Out on our millions of acres of hills, valleys, and plains is a better, purer, nobler population, the force of whose earnestness and honesty will save our Nation long ages after the pollution of its cities would have turned it into a Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a true, steady, honest pulse beating in the veins of the yeomanry of this land that never throbbed a second in a city like New York, and never will; but when the trial comes, it is the pulse that will tell. Tweed and his “ring” didn’t go to the farmers sweating in their hay-fields with their bargains. They went to the politicians, and burrowed in the cities and made their nests like the bats and owls, under the eaves of churches and in halls and steeples; they can plan, and connive, and twiddle and fiddle with the lines a long time while the farmers work in their fields, but when real danger appears, when the load topples and is likely to upset, stouter hearts than theirs will come to the front, stronger hands than theirs will take the reins, and bring out the load in safety. We are not so near destruction as it would seem from your standpoint, and because a few poor, vain, foolish women, with little money and less brains and shriveled hearts, have betaken themselves to the boarding-houses of New York City, and are living false, empty, silly, idle lives for show, it does not make it that this is the character or life of all the women of America, nor that well-regulated homelife is not the rule of the country, for it is; and I, who am a part of it, and have lived it, and over and among it, all my lifetime, know it well. Shall we judge France and its whole people by the courtesans of Paris, or Germany by Berlin? Oh! my friend and brother, do, I beseech of you, get another standpoint, and a wider outlook and a clearer, purer atmosphere than New York City with its floodtide of immigration before you judge, in final judgment, the whole population, male and female, of this great country.

I thank you very much for the hope expressed that we may meet in Paris in ’78, but there is small prospect of this. I shall scarcely cross the ocean again. I have much to do to save my strength with no unnecessary waste, but the hope expressed that we may meet before that time is something nearer home, and more within the range of possibilities. I should never dare by any means to invite you to visit me, and I never go to your part of the country, so the prospect of our meeting is small. Perhaps I ought to explain the above remark, having very incautiously made it, and I will. I am a so much more simple person in my mode of life than you have probably ever seen (except those whom poverty compelled to simplicity) that you would not feel happy or homelike in my house. I am simple in my tastes, and plain, avoiding luxuries from choice and principle, both about my house and in its dress, and my table and its furnishings. My living is simple as a hermit’s, heavy meats, and wines, teas, and coffees are unknown at my table, my rooms plain. I have only my housekeeper—no retinue of servants at all, no show, no ornaments, no excuses; but with all this there is great peace and quiet, no worry, no fret, no fears of what the world will think or say, no pressure in any direction, abundant supplies for all necessities, no scandal either spoken or listened to, no backbiting, and no “skeleton in the closet,” not even the shadow of one. Now, all this simplicity and plainness, and the absence of excitement and luxurious surroundings and living, must be so different from all that you are accustomed to that you could not be happy or even comfortable among it, so I should never dare invite you to visit me, even if you were journeying near me, and so, when you see that I do not, you will understand the true reason and assign the right motive on my part and not feel piqued or slighted, or that I am cold, or eccentric, or reserved, or in any way unaccountable, or any other thing, but just what I am, a plain woman with enough of common sense to perceive that our modes of life are so different that you could not enjoy visiting me, and fearless candor enough to tell you so.

Your sincere friend

Clara Barton

How Clara Barton was regarded at Dansville is shown in many ways, as in the following cutting from the Dansville “Advertiser” of June 7, 1877, giving account of an exercise on the previous Memorial Day:

Ovation to Miss Clara Barton

Toward noon on Memorial Day the bustle of preparation to go downtown to the procession and oration seemed to arouse a new impulse of gratitude to the soldiers’ friend, Miss Clara Barton, which spread rapidly through Our Home, and soon organized itself in a programme of proceedings for the evening, when she should have rested a little from the fatigue of her participation in the public celebration.

By six o’clock a goodly number of men and women and children had gathered in Brightside and on the surrounding lawn. Soon this company, consisting of doctors and other officials, the stronger patients and helpers from the Cure, a few near-by neighbors, and the inmates of Brightside, were marshaled two by two on the walk before the gate. Of the hundred nosegays which the girls had hastily tied up and heaped on a server, none were left when each person had taken one; and these, with numerous “flags a-floating,” made the procession gay as it moved on, led by the clergy. The Conesus brass band, taking tea at the seminary, had patriotically agreed to add to the dignity of the enterprise by their numbers and their music. Meanwhile one of the company had casually (apparently) in a neighborly way dropped into Miss Barton’s parlor, and lured her on to the front piazza in time to witness the approach as the allies joined their forces. Being entirely taken by surprise, she could only exclaim to her attendant, “What does it all mean? What shall I do?” when she saw the battalion bearing down—rather up—on her castle. Evidently she was completely subjugated without a gun being fired, and looked helplessly and speechlessly around on the lines of exultant faces which, filing right and left, had environed the piazza in a semicircle. It still required some gentle force, however, to seat her on the chair in readiness for her. At this juncture Miss Austin, stepping forward, said:

Miss Barton: After joining our sympathies with our fellow citizens at large in paying a tribute of respect and gratitude to the brave men who fought and suffered and died for their country’s salvation, the inmates of Our Home come with gladness to greet a living woman—one who worked and suffered and gave her strength and health in alleviating the pains and sorrows, the homesickness and heart-sickness of our soldiers. And we are thankful that your mission was not alone to our soldiers, but that you represented a vastly broader and nobler sentiment than mere patriotism—that you were actuated by that grand humanity which forbade you even in war-times to know any North or any South; but that every man to whom you could in any way minister was your brother. We rejoice in this, because you then represented the selfsame spirit which must yet bridge over the chasm that has hitherto divided the two sections and make us one united brotherhood—a happy and prosperous country.

But, dear Miss Barton, your life and labors have carried you beyond our country, and through you we hold fraternal bonds to the whole world. In foreign countries and in a foreign war, you spent your sympathies and your efforts, not on the Germans, nor on the French, nor on any nationality; but everywhere, every man, every woman, every little child who needed help or loving succor, received these from you in the full measure of your capacity to bestow.

We come, then, to lay our honors at your feet as a citizen of the world, as a friend to humanity, as a lover of your race; recognizing the work which you have done as a foreshadowing of that time when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, when nations shall not lift up sword against nations, neither shall they learn war any more.

Miss Austin then introduced Reverend Miss Anna Oliver, of Passaic, New Jersey, who said:

The feeling of enthusiastic admiration with which I have long regarded one whose course has reflected honor upon her country, upon womanhood and humanity, prevent me from making a set speech on this occasion.

Several years ago I had the pleasure, Miss Barton,—I may say the sad pleasure,—of visiting Andersonville Prison, and the cemetery laid out under your supervision, placing a flower on each of those several thousand graves. During that visit through the South, I frequently heard the name of Miss Barton mentioned with gratitude and love, both by those who had served in the Confederate and in the Union armies.

War is terrible, and we all know, of course, that no such thing as a necessary war ever occurred. But as long as wars are actualities, how blessed is the thought that the barbarities of past ages may be superseded by the gentle Christian ministrations, a representative of which we delight to honor to-day.

We mourn the fratricidal strife
That digs each soldier’s grave;
We strew the flowers on the sod
In honor of the brave;
But most of all we rev’rence those
Who seek man’s life to save.
They marched on the advancing foe
They nobly fought and fell;
But there were those attending near,
’Mid shower of shot and shell,
As brave in a diviner cause,
Who did their part as well.

To-day we pay our tribute of respect to the names of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton.

Dr. Jackson then, being called by Miss Barton to her aid, thanked her friends in her behalf and happily expressed what he imagined might be her feelings on the occasion. When he had finished, the “Star-Spangled Banner” was sung by the choir.

Miss Barton now spoke briefly and feelingly of the honor done her and the happy memory to be cherished. Sometime she might express herself better. The most she could do now was simply to offer these friends a hand-grasp.

Then each person laid down his offering of flowers till her lap was piled high and her feet were buried deep in a pink-and-white mound, each as he passed claiming the promised hand-shake. While this was going on, the band played an inspiring air and the people of the hillside retired with the pleasant consciousness of having enjoyed a happy half-hour.

Afterward Miss Barton had a personal introduction to each member of the band, who had so kindly assisted in paying honor to one enjoying the reverence and affection of the American people, as of all classes, from the lowest peasantry to the crowned heads in Europe.

CHAPTER VI
THE FORERUNNERS OF THE RED CROSS

When Clara Barton began her ministry in the Civil War, she had practically no knowledge concerning work that had been done in America or elsewhere for the relief of wounded soldiers. She did not remember even to have heard of Florence Nightingale until she was actually engaged in work of a similar character. When, at Port Royal, she was serenaded and hailed as “the Florence Nightingale of America,” she knew what it meant, but she had not known very long. She took up the duty just as Dorothea Dix and other brave women did, in an earnest effort to do the thing that needed to be done, and she learned how to do it by doing it. She discovered the defects in other systems then employed, but did not criticize them. She realized the difficulties under which volunteer workers were working, and she carefully refrained from passing any unkind judgments upon organizations that were laboring under almost insuperable difficulties. But she found her own method of work, and she performed it with a success which, without robbing any other brave woman of any portion of her due fame, wrought for Clara Barton a crown of unfading laurel.

Not until she found herself in Switzerland, and was asked by Swiss representatives of the Red Cross why America had refused to join in that movement, had she found occasion to study the history of movements for the relief of wounded on the battle-field.

The sick and wounded in the wars of the Crusades were cared for, inadequately but nobly, by the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. These Christian knights ministered alike to Christian and Saracen. In some of the subsequent wars of Europe the Sisters of Charity of the Roman Catholic Church rendered such service as they were able.

And yet the history of the care of the wounded in all the wars, from the dawn of history, is one of cruel and, in many respects, of needless suffering.

During the Crimean War Florence Nightingale with thirty-eight nurses went from England to Scutari, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople, and rendered service which made her name a household word the world around. It was Clara Barton’s lifelong regret that she did not meet Florence Nightingale during her long stay in England, but she was sick and so was Miss Nightingale, and neither thought of the other as being within call.

The real beginning of the movement which resulted in the organization of the Red Cross began with Henri Dunant, who was born at Geneva in 1828. When he was thirty-one years of age, in 1859, the forces of Sardinia and of Victor Emmanuel, with the allied army of France under Napoleon III, waged war against Austria for the freedom of northern Italy. At the battle of Solferino, forty thousand soldiers were killed or wounded. The defeated Austrians retreated, and the French and Italians pursued, leaving the wounded almost deserted. Surgeons at that time were not protected from attack, and the surgeons of each army moved on with the army. Dunant gathered women of the neighborhood and gave what relief he could without distinction of nationality.

On his return to Geneva, filled with tragic memories of the scenes of horror he had witnessed, he issued a pamphlet entitled “Souvenir de Solferino.” In this he described the scenes which he had witnessed, and propounded this question: “Would it not be possible to found and organize in all civilized countries volunteers which in time of war would render succor to the wounded without distinction of nationality?”

Geneva had an organization for philanthropic and humane work, known as the “Society of Public Utility.” Its president was Monsieur Gustave Moynier. He was deeply moved by Dunant’s pamphlet, and sent out an invitation for a conference to organize “An International Conference for Investigating Means to Supplement the Inadequacy of Medical Services of Armies in Campaigns.”

This led to the conference of August, 1864, to which reference has already been made, in which the United States was unofficially represented by Mr. George C. Fogg, American Minister to Switzerland, and Mr. Charles S. P. Bowles, European Agent of the Sanitary Commission.

All this Clara Barton learned as she studied the history which lay behind a movement in which she was to have so important a share. Of movements in the United States she already knew.

The United States Sanitary Commission was organized in New York City on May 18, 1861, with the Reverend Henry W. Bellows, D.D., as president. The good which it did in the Civil War was incalculable. In cooperation with it was the Western Sanitary Commission, organized in St. Louis on September 5, 1861.

The Young Men’s Christian Associations of the country led in the organization of the United States Christian Commission, which was formed in New York, November 16, 1861. Besides these were innumerable societies which were formed by women for the furnishing of supplies, the establishment of rest homes, and the distribution of comforts to soldiers.

When, in 1864, the United States was asked to participate in the work of the Red Cross, there was very little inclination on the part of Government officials, to treat this request with any more courtesy than official etiquette required. The Government did not feel very kindly toward European Governments for their attitude during the war of our rebellion. We had established our own agencies for the relief of suffering, and had no inclination to add another.

When the war was over, however, Dr. Bellows was confident America would join in the International Red Cross. He issued a long letter addressed to Monsieur Henri Dunant, who was acting as “Secrétaire du Comité International de Secours aux Militairet Blessés.” This Dr. Bellows did as President of “The American Association for the Relief of Misery of Battle-fields.” On its title-page was emblazoned a Red Cross as the insignia of the organization, the first time that symbol was used in America, and, until Clara Barton’s day, the last.

In this long and earnest and discriminating letter, intended to arouse public sentiment in America, Dr. Bellows told, with great plainness of speech, of the inadequacy of even those splendid organizations with which he himself had been associated. He said:

Good intentions and humane sentiments are not alone qualifications for this duty.... Volunteer agents are the dearest that can be used.... It is useless to expect correct information on the wants of the soldier from the Government, or the Medical Bureau, or even the General Officers. The last thing to which a Government attends in an active war is the sick and wounded. The Medical is the least interesting bureau to it, and as a rule army surgeons have hard and coarse views of humanity to soldiers. General officers seldom see with their own eyes the details of want and suffering.

He paid a high tribute to the work of the women in the war. He said that virtually the whole womanhood of the Nation was engaged in it. He spoke of the women in hospitals, and said that some of them had done well, but that “detailed men are the appropriate nurses in military hospitals. Women are rarely in place at the front, or even at the base of armies.” He said that, of the women who went to the front, “most of them were in the way, with a few rare exceptions, where tact and humanity were united with force and endurance.” His letters to Clara Barton leave no doubt as to one whom he considered in the forefront of these exceptions, combining, as she did, tact and humanity with force and endurance.

Dr. Bellows’s effort fell completely flat so far as the organization of the society was concerned. He became thoroughly discouraged and gave it up, and years afterward rejoiced when he saw Clara Barton accomplish what he had vainly striven to do.

This was the situation as Clara Barton learned it, when returning health brought back to her the strong purpose of proceeding at once to the organization of an American Red Cross.

CHAPTER VII
THE YEARS OF LONELY STRUGGLE

For several years after the Franco-Prussian War, Europe was at peace. But trouble was brewing between Russia and Turkey, and no one knew what the end of it would be. The probability that there would be war in Europe appeared to Clara Barton to indicate a possibly favorable condition of public sentiment in America for the consideration of the Red Cross. If there was to be war in Europe, and we were to be asked to help in the relief of the suffering it would cause, it would seem fitting that there should be some international organization by which relief could be gathered on this side and distributed upon the other. The American public would then see some reason why America should be interested in an organization of this character.

Clara Barton communicated with Dr. Louis Appia, who had called upon her in Switzerland, and with whom she had been associated in the Franco-Prussian War, offering to assist, in such way as she might be able, in effecting a suitable organization.

From Dr. Appia and from President Gustave Moynier, she received prompt letters, and, with these, official appointment to represent in America the International Committee of the Red Cross. This correspondence is lengthy, but of the greatest possible value and must be included in full:

Dansville, May 17, 1877

Dr. Louis Appia
Member Société Internationale of the Red Cross of Geneva
My Esteemed and dear Friend:

If years have passed since any word from my pen told you of my existence, and if the precious letter from you has lain many months unanswered, it has not been the fault of my memory, nor the loss of friendship, nor interest in you nor in the glorious and holy work which engrosses and fills your noble life. It has been simply that, ill, weak, worn, and suffering, I have been lost to the work of the world, and to the friends I honored and loved. Four long years have found and held me powerless to strike a blow on the great anvil of humanity, or labor one day in its vineyards, and for the most part too weak even to hear of those who did. But the strong brothers and sisters have toiled bravely on while I waited. The great wheels have slowly turned, until they have ceased to crush me so low, and grind me so small, and once more I begin, under God’s Providence, to reach out my hands into the passing atmosphere of life and feel the breezes blow over the seared and fevered palms. Once more I dare turn my eyes toward the labor-fields and their faithful workers; in my land, bright with its western sunbeams, aglow with beauty and abounding in plenty, they sew and glean in peaceful valleys.

But beyond the eastern waves, in that dear old land that four years of life there taught me to love so well, I see again the flash of the bayonet, the march of armies trampling down the harvests; the terror-stricken fly for rescue, and the wounded cry for help. Again the Red Cross, like the bow of promise, rises over the scene, again the shout from its inspired origination rings out amid the din of arms, and its clear, brave tones reach me even here in my quiet chambers, and my heart, with all its old memories stirred to their depths, goes out in response; it bids me seize my pen and say to you that what there is of me is still ready for my work; that like the old war horse that has rested long in quiet pastures, I recognize the bugle-note that calls me to my place, and, though I may not do what I once could, I am come to offer what I may. Then, would I have taken the next steamer, and in two weeks have stood beside you, asking where to go, and what to do, but as that is not for me now, my brain and heart must do what my hands cannot. My plans are made, and, such as they are, I send them to you for acceptance and coöperation.

First, I cannot quite rid myself of the lingering hope that the terrible vision of war before you will vanish before its full realization, but if not and the nations are drawn into its vortex, God only knows the end. I cannot foresee it, but I can foresee that my country will open its heart and its hand in aid as soon as the cry of want and suffering shall reach it; this never fails. The American nature is free and impulsive, its sympathies are quick and responsive, and it has neither power nor desire to withhold aught from the distressed. But, ready as America will be, she is far away from the scene, can understand but vaguely the steps necessary to the proper gathering, sending, and bestowal of her gifts. So without some definite and well-arranged organization, however large and generous her donations, she will fail of accomplishing any real or perceptible good, as she has always failed before in all similar efforts, at foreign aids. Foreseeing this, I would, if possible, step in to fill this place, and hold back this waste of waters till they can be turned into their proper channels. And for this, my honored friend and brother, I write to you, to ask if I can be of service in this direction. If so, I will do my best to form such an organization in America, if you and your Committee desire it. As it is now, in spite of all efforts which you have so generously made to spread the knowledge of your society and its great objects in this country, it is almost unknown, and the Red Cross, in America, is a Mystery. I am safe in asserting that not one person in a hundred on this side of the Atlantic ever heard of it; not one in five hundred has any clear idea of its uses or design. The Franco-German War failed entirely in introducing it either to the people or the Government, and so will this present war, unless some active hand takes hold of it, to organize the war reliefs under its escutcheon. It is not enough that some good person stands inactively as the representative of the society in this broad country. To be learned it must be brought into active use. It must have a National Headquarters, sanctioned by the Government, where the flag of the beautiful Red Cross floats day and night, in war and in peace. It must have its different State organizations, and its smaller relief societies all working under its insignia. This accomplished, the charities gathered from the people should be passed to the State and thence to the National Headquarters, and, these being always in communication with you, they would be shipped intelligently and reach at once a field in need of them. My heart aches when I think of all the thousands upon thousands of dollars in goods and grains sent to France in the best of faith by our people in 1871 and wasted; lost, squandered, and sold on its borders, it being impossible to gain transportation or penetrate the army lines; and all for the want of the proper knowledge and organization at home. It will be the same thing again unless some method is taken to centralize, organize, and prevent.

I have only a word more to add, and I feel called to make the suggestion I make by the fact that I am perhaps almost the only American who you can feel has been a co-worker with you, whose manner of work you know something of, and whom you can class as a personal friend and thus address familiarly. And my suggestion is, that if you feel that I can serve your cause, and humanity through it, in the manner I have described, you will let me know your desires at once. If you will write me immediately upon receipt of this, asking in your own name or that of the International Society, that I do all in my power to aid you in the work, and to use my power with my people and my Government, so that it can be seen here that such a want is felt, such a work needed, and that the call is from the highest and original source of international relief in war, investing it with the highest importance, I will have your letter placed before our President and Government and ask their sanction and approval, if not the pecuniary aid; for that I never ask. And if it is inclined to be so gracious, it may perhaps appoint a Head to the work, thus, by its notice, investing it with an importance, and throwing about it a protection, which it could in no other wise secure. This would forever establish the knowledge and the work of the Red Cross for which its noble founders have striven so bravely and faithfully in every mile of American soil. The soldier would learn to trust it, the father would honor and bless it, the mother would bind it over her torn and aching heart as she kissed her soldier boy good-bye, and the little children even in the wilds would come to know and love its beautiful face.

Now, my honored friend, this is not an appeal that you make me the head of your noble order in this country, the active working head I mean, for I have little ambition at best and none now, but it is to tell you that such a head must be made before the order here can ever come to be of the smallest possible use to the world. Thus far it has failed, and I see no way to establish it but by a call coming earnestly from you and being actively and unselfishly and powerfully and wisely placed before the moving powers of this Nation and the people. If you have already some person in your mind who will do this, or who you prefer should attempt it, then it is all well, only see that he does his duty and is not asleep at his post. There is no more time for this. But if you have not such a person in mind, and feel that I can serve you acceptably, you have but to let me know and I will do all in my power. Please write me at once. The stronger your appeal to me, the better use I can make of it, and meanwhile I shall not be idle or inactive, but will hope to hear from you within the next six weeks, say by the 1st of July.

Please accept my most grateful thanks for the kind sympathies expressed in your letters of last year which I was too ill to answer, and remember me in great respect to your family and the mutual friends in my home in Geneva.

Perhaps to you, as a physician, it would be proper to state that my long illness has been, as you most likely would suspect, “prostration of the nervous system,” and you know how slowly one rallies from this, and with what difficulty the strength is regained. I am now at my best by far since 1873; am about my house and grounds, ride, walk, meet friends, and sleep tolerably well, not as in the old days on the ground without bed or pillow, but comfortably, and am always gaining a little in strength.

I trust this may find you well, and it will carry to you the best wishes and most sincere esteem of

Your friend

Clara Barton

[Translation]

Paris, June 14, 1877

Miss Barton, and Honored Friend:

It is in French that I write to you, for you would laugh at my bad English. I am at present in Paris on a visit at my brother’s. I hear that Mr. Moynier has written to you on the same subject which will make the contents of this letter. I expect Mr. Moynier in Paris in a few days, which will give me the opportunity to talk the proposition over with him, which we both wish you to take an interest in.

Mr. Moynier has undoubtedly told you that our Committee has tried for these last ten years to give to an American Committee an active existence, but we failed. In the first years our communications were made through a Mr. Bowles, then residing at Paris, with whom we ceased to correspond, not seeing that we arrived to any certain result by this channel. Later we have been in direct communication with Dr. Henry W. Bellows, President of a phantom Committee in New York, from whom we seldom receive an answer. Having therefore no proof that that committee was active, we ceased to correspond, and we at last learned officially that that committee was officially and entirely dead. From that time, about a year since, we considered the Red Cross as not existing any more in America. I need not speak here of the disease which has caused that death. You are an American and you know better than we the temperament of your Nation. Our hope to entertain the life has been nourished in us by the reading of the admirable work which America had made for the care of the wounded during the Secession War. We spoke of it at length in the thick volume which Mr. Moynier and myself have published under the title, “The War and Charity,” and which obtained the integral prize of the central committee in Berlin. Mr. Moynier has told you, without doubt, how happy we should be to see a work come into life again in your rich and generous America, which had shone with such a bright luster at the epoch when it was stimulated by the mighty auxiliary of the patriotic motive. We know little what America has done for the victims of the Franco-German War, which you have seen and during which we have for some time worked together, and I am not surprised that many generous gifts have been lost for want of a good organization, and especially for want of being able to establish regular communications with the armies by the channel of an American auxiliary committee residing in Europe and which would offer all the security.

If you, my honored friend, could succeed in organizing something durable in America, in relation to the Oriental War which appears only in its beginning, you would have nobly crowned the work of devotedness to which you have consecrated your life. I do not know what means of execution Mr. Moynier proposed. I shall write again upon that subject, when I shall have seen him, so that we agree completely together in what we tell you. Permit me, however, now to communicate to you some ideas. You can without doubt become the soul of this revising work, but you cannot be its body. America is not so different from Europe that my experience cannot profit you for your country. Now, medicine teaches us that a soul without a body has no life at all, at least upon earth. Perhaps even it is better that a woman should be the soul; her moral influence, her earnest entreaties near the Governments and authorities are often better accepted and consequently more efficacious. I do not therefore see any inconvenience that you should be for America the head of the Order, the active working head,—why not? If you feel to have the brain power as much as I know you have the moral power, but then create immediately under that head a body, arms to write, to arrange methodically, to publish, to keep the correspondence, either alone or under your dictation, for copying, etc., after that, feet for running, to go, to come, to collect, to buy, to make multitudes of visits and receive visitors, as we were obliged to do in Geneva in 1870, where during two months my ten rooms were never empty all day long, each one containing a secretary, man or woman, to write and to receive a host of visits which would have killed a President, and of which hardly a quarter had really any other practical use than to enlighten the public and to keep up its zeal, not always rational.

Surround yourself at once with a little body of persons full of good-will and capacity, docile to your directions, either women or young men, especially doctors. Amongst the latter choose a secretary who must be entirely at your service and who probably ought to be paid.

1. The first work seems to me to be to awaken the attention, the sympathy, and the confidence of the public. Without the public, no money, and without money no material help. You know as well as myself the means to attain this end is publicity, the power of which is, I believe, greater in America than in any other country.

2. Complete study of the practical and sure means to carry an efficacious relief to the armies in the Orient. To that effect one needs to correspond very often with all the relief committees of Russia, of Rumania, of Serbia, of Montenegro, and even of Constantinople. It is necessary not to conceal to one’s self that these intercourses, easy enough on paper, are very difficult in reality, if one does not want the money or the relief to be lost to the profit of the war, rather than to the profit of the unhappy victims.

In order to obtain this, and our Committee can be of use to you, and between Mr. Moynier and myself we shall do all we can to help to enlighten you. But you must also have direct intercourse with the relief committees of the different countries which are at this moment engaged in the war, although administratively the international communications from neutral countries are made by the International Committee. You know by experience that many letters are in that case lost in the hands of employees, subordinates, or men too much occupied, and that one needs to throw the bait often and on several sides, at the risk of losing much time.

3. You must put yourself in direct communication with your President. I see in it the use, first, to augment your credit in the country; second, especially to obtain that your letters and your sendings be given up by persons in high positions and influential, in particular ambassadors and consuls. You know that question by your experience in the American war better than I do, and I shall not enlarge upon it.

4. You must have money, and you know the means to procure it. The Sanitary Commission has collected sixty millions of francs during your war, especially by immense bazaars. In our country bazaars always succeed, much more so than collections, and produce three to four times as much. They always succeed, while collections oftentimes fail.

5. Once having the necessary money, the question rises, if it would be advisable to choose two commissaries,—for example, two young physicians supplied with a recommendation from your President,—who should go together to Europe with instructions and plein-pouvoir from your new Committee, directed to go first to Geneva to the International Committee and from there to go directly to the Headquarters of the Russian army, in order to make its acquaintance and to obtain from it the authorization to circulate in the army and to gather all the information necessary for your work. It would be desirable that they speak tolerable French, this language being the official one in Europe; if they speak and write only English, they would lose time and would not always be understood. Those two or three commissaries should be posted on the theater seat of the war and should give you all the news by an active correspondence. They ought probably to engage themselves not to write on politics. I never did it in war-time of Italy, Schleswig, and France. Besides these commissaries, you need an office or an agency in Europe to whom all the relief funds must be addressed and who would take the charge of sending them on wherever the commissaries indicate. I do not know what our International Committee will decide upon this, but I think it will be disposed to be an intermediary between America and the belligerent armies, as it has done during the War of 1870 by the agency residing at Bâle placed there by us. This agency has received five hundred letters, besides other correspondence, every day, either for France or Germany. Notice, however, that our Committee wish to show an absolute neutrality and should certainly refuse to coöperate in anything like a political party. It is, therefore, necessary that your publications speak out your intention to remain neutral and to carry the relief indifferently to all those who suffer. That will not hinder you to correspond more particularly with the Russian army, which for you is more accessible, with whom the communications are easier, and for whom I believe America has more political sympathy; but you must insist on your principle of neutrality in your publications and let this position be known in Constantinople, and especially to the Committee newly formed in that city. Your commissaries, after their arrival at Geneva, might remain there some days in order to study a little our library which contains everything that has appeared since the beginning of our work. It would be desirable, however, that the Committee of the Red Cross in America should buy the principal works, and that there should be a commission of several established persons who would take it upon themselves to study them and to give an account of them; there is a little in every language.

I have sent you a number of our International Bulletins which appear every three months, and in which I have spoken of you. The annual subscription being only six francs, your Committee would take two subscriptions and by it would know all that is done in the different countries. Last year we sent three delegates to Montenegro, an interesting little country, where with material help and money we can do a great deal of good, and where one is received like a Divinity by this enthusiastic population, but which is also jealous and suspicious.

Our old delegates being at Geneva, yours could receive numerous and useful information. Before realizing this ambassador, we had three months’ study and treating.

I send you my discourse made in Brussels, which for your case does not contain any immediate application. I might give one to your hypothetical delegates as they pass through Geneva.

As you see, Miss Barton, and honored friend, I began with the idea that the American Society of the Red Cross should revise and assure its stable existence by an immediate employment of its power through a practical application; relief funds to send to the belligerent armies of the Oriental War. Once consecrated by action by the remembrance of what it has done, its basis will be firmer, its credit more assured, and then you will be able to give it a definite form and shape which experience will have shown you to be the most useful.

Not knowing yet what Mr. Moynier has done during my absence, I shall not send you the letter which I wish to address to your President, but shall do it as soon as I shall have seen him, if he has not already done it.

Write to me at any time concerning the affairs of the Red Cross and I shall reply as well as I can, being always in accordance with Mr. Moynier’s wishes, who does not know English.

You would do well to have Mr. Moynier’s pamphlet translated into English, “What the Red Cross is.” My little volume, entitled “The Surgeon at the Ambulance,” has been translated into English either in England or in America; perhaps it would be well to have a new edition of it for the circumstance. At last our volume “The War and Charity” has also been translated into English. For all our publications of the International Committee and its members it suffices to address Mr. George, Librarian at Geneva. Perhaps it would be necessary and useful, after you have plenty of money and fellow-laborers, to publish every three months a small bulletin of your work in one of the good American journals.

And now, my dear Miss Barton, I have talked enough to you about the Red Cross. I have given you my ideas provisionally, expecting better ones later. You see, I have spoken to you familiarly and with an entire confidence and fraternal friendship which our intercourse and our common work in Europe has brought forth.

May God sustain you, if you do undertake this new work, and, in entertaining and augmenting your corporal strength and brain power, may He continue to inspire you with that moral irresistible power, that invincible strength, which He alone can give and which the incredulous humanitarian never can give.

Accept, Miss Barton, and honored friend, the assurance of my respectful friendship.

Louis Appia, Dr.

Dansville, July 1st, 1877

Docteur Louis Appia
Membre Comité International de Secours aux Militaires blessés, Geneva
Docteur and Honored Friend:

I cannot find the words to properly express to you my gratitude for the kind and careful manner in which you have treated my letter. But first allow me to thank Madame Appia for her generous part, and all the prompt care she took to place it in the proper hands, and let me thank both for the excellent photograph, so welcome now, and for all the future to be preserved among my choicest and most honored keepsakes.

How kind it was of you, my good friend, to give me so much of your time and labor, embodied in that long letter so filled with valuable suggestions! If nothing more comes of it, it will at least bring us to an understanding in reference to the actual existence and standing of the Order of the Red Cross in America. I was extremely guarded in my letter, not at all knowing how you stood in regard to your selected representative in this country, for I knew you had one, and, if you were satisfied, I did not wish to ripple the calm waters of confidence and security by even one pebble of discontent or doubt. I wrote cautiously like a woman. You have spoken out like a man, and it is well. With the pains your Comité have taken, the Red Cross should have been known and honored in every household in America to-day. It has not died here: it was still-born; it has never once gasped on our shores; the nurses to whom you delivered it have never even uncovered its face, and America does not know that this holy child was ever an applicant for her adoption. She would have received it with open arms at the close of our war, when her own wounds were unhealed, and her memories fresh and tender. She will be less enthusiastic now at the end of a ten years’ peace, and no prospect of war. Still, the understanding and heart of the American people will lead them to examine and promote whatever cause has for its object the benefit of mankind, or the alleviation of human woe. I think I know my people, and although, through want of proper opportunities, or physical strength, or mental capacity, I may not be able to move them in this matter, this fact will in no way affect their general character, and, when all things combine for the proper presentation of this subject to them by whomsoever it may be, it will be received and adopted by them. Your suggestions are excellent and lay out much such a field of labor as I had looked forward to, and all this would be easy of accomplishment in America, if an urgent necessity existed. Until it does, it would be, I suspect, a difficult task to work up sufficient enthusiasm, but it was in anticipation of such a necessity that I was endeavoring to prepare the way. The simple war between Russia and Turkey might not be able to awaken the people, for we have a comparatively small element of either nationality among our populations, but if other European nations engage and Germany, France, and England, or all become involved, the interest in America will be scarcely less than on the other side. Then would be a repetition of the old sad days of the Franco-Prussian War, when every heart was sad and every purse open, they tell me, and half America in mourning.

Now, my idea was, in anticipation of such a state of affairs in Europe as should call for the sympathies and aid of the Americans, to be prepared with an organization, which would be only the body of clay, like the first man Adam, until the breath of life was breathed into its nostrils. This breath would be the necessity and the call for help from the suffering fields and peoples of Europe; then it would be well that the body were created to receive it. The first step, it seems to me, is to find and appoint to the head of the work some person in America who will have the spirit, the interest, the enterprise, the determination to push the work, and bring it before the country and the people, or the honest conscience to resign the position in favor of some one who will, and not hold it for years, as an empty honor, smothering out its life, and leaving the country in ignorance of its existence.

I am very grateful to you for the kindly interest you take in the subject of my health. My sleep, which I know to be the great want, is always gaining, and digestion improving, and these without the slightest artificial aid. I never took a grain of morphia in my life, and probably never in all combined a tablespoonful of medicine to produce sleep, and now I take nothing; for the last three years not one particle of medicine, relying entirely upon my food, rest, and open air for my restoration. All I have gained has been by the aid of nature alone; thus I know the foundation is solid and sure. I allow nothing to trouble me, as indeed I have no cause for trouble. I walk, or work in my garden, or lie on my stretcher like a soldier under the trees several hours every day; and here come around me the memories of the past, the busy present, and the needful future. I wonder what you are all doing over this broad world, and how I can help you. If I find myself able to carry on a work I shall do it; if not, I shall endeavor to inspire those who are.

Your friend

Clara Barton

[Translation]

To Miss Clara Barton
Dansville, Livingston Co., N.Y.
Miss Barton, and Worthy Friend:

According to my promise I write to you after having seen Mr. Moynier, although I have nothing very new to tell you, and have only to confirm what I have written to you in detail. I can therefore be brief this second time. Mr. Moynier and myself are equally sympathetic to your plan, and we shall be happy if you succeed in founding in America a permanent work of the Red Cross. And we shall help you in it with our influence to the extent of our power.

Mr. Moynier has written me that he has already told you so. He has added to his communication a suggestion which indeed is very important, i.e., that you obtain from the Government of the United States the signing of the Convention of Geneva, which has already been done by all other civilized states in Europe and out of Europe. Without this signature, the private work of the Red Cross is paralyzed. Here is an example of what has very recently taken place in Montenegro, of which we have asked the signature before putting ourselves in relation with it, and before sending to it our three delegates with help for their wounded. All succeeded very well, and Montenegro has entered eagerly into the general alliance of the Convention of Geneva. It will be the same with America, we will hope, which has remained back until now. But in order to ensure its success, it will probably be necessary to make a summary communication to the Government what the Convention of Geneva is, its destiny, and what the Red Cross is. You will find all the desirable details upon this point in the pamphlets or works which Monsieur Moynier mentions or sends to you. It will be necessary that some person take cognizance of this work with you, and assist you in it. The Red Cross has existed since 1863. Since then it has given birth to an entire new literature, so as to make by itself a real library.

And now, my worthy friend, go on courageously with faith and hope. The cause is good: let us defend it everywhere and let us be firm in upholding the banner of charity. It will be ever the surest means of combating the principle of war.

Write to me when you have done something, with or without translation. My previous letter will give you all the details of my manner of viewing it.

As to our participation in your sending of secours, I think with Mr. Moynier that it would be better that we offer our coöperation directly, when we succeed this time in founding an International Agency. As formerly in 1870 we have founded one in Basle, which has been very active and useful, and consequently if you have any substance or provisions to send, it would be better that you send directly.

Besides we shall always be at your service to help and advise you, and we shall be very glad to be kept informed what you are doing, and we shall publish your work in our trimonthly Bulletin.

I could not see again Mr. Moynier, but I know he has nothing important to add to what I say and to what he has already written to you. I believe, therefore, you have from us all the indications and information which we can give you. There remains nothing else for me, Miss Barton, than to repeat my good wishes for your useful enterprise. May you feel your physical strength to keep up and increase, as much as your moral, for the good of others and for your own satisfaction.

I have nothing more to add, and I will not put off any longer this last letter.

Accept, Miss Barton, and worthy friend, the expression of my respectful devotion,

Louis Appia, Dr.

[Rough draft of letter without date, but evidently written about July 1st, 1877]

Monsieur S. Moynier
Président du Comité International de la Croix rouge
My Esteemed Friend:

Permit me to thank you, as I do most sincerely, for your kind and excellent letter of June 20th, and say how happy I am to find you so fully concurring with the ideas I had advanced in relation to the action to be taken in the attempted establishment of your beautiful Order of the Red Cross in America. It is unnecessary for me to assure you that I will do all that lies in my power to accomplish this end, believing as I do most implicitly that every step taken toward softening and humanizing the conditions of war is a double step toward its extirpation from a place among the codes of nations. This proves itself by the unfailing fact that the more barbarous a nation and the more inhuman its modes of warfare, the more frequent and unmitigated its wars. This conviction, added to the strong desire which has grown within me to lessen the sufferings of those who must compose armies while they do exist among the nations of the earth, will prove a sufficient stimulus to all the powers of my nature, and I will bring to the object the fullest strength I possess, and then, if with your best aid I fail in my purpose, I must be content to submit to the inevitable.

My intelligent friend and your compatriot, Mademoiselle Küpfer, has begged to add a letter to you, which I am most thankful for, as she can speak to you in your own tongue, and with a clearness of expression which I could not. I shall be very busy for the few coming hot weeks of August translating the many valuable pamphlets so kindly sent me, from which I hope to gather a knowledge of the action of the Society and familiarity with its spirit, which may enable me to convince my Government of the right and propriety of what we ask it to do, the wrong and absurdity of withholding it, and secure from it at least an official reply to your invitation to join the Convention.

I will not make this communication longer, excepting to repeat my thanks for your kind letter, and the generous spirit in which it was written, and assure you of the great pleasure it will afford me to be of never so small a service in a cause so noble and holy. With assurances of the highest esteem I remain,

Most honored Sir
Very truly

Clara Barton

Dansville, Livingston Co., N.Y.
Sept. 27, 1877

Monsieur Moynier
President
Esteemed Sir:

Your communication of the 19th August, enclosing a letter addressed to the President of the United States, arrived in due time, and my impulse was to write at once assuring you how kind and satisfactory I found them both to be. But at that moment I hoped it would be possible to see the President and present your letter very soon, and thought it better to defer my reply to you until this were accomplished, and I had some results to communicate. But you will perhaps have observed that the President and several members of his Cabinet are making very extensive travels over the country this summer, and since the arrival of your letter he has never been in Washington or acting in his official capacity in any place, long enough for me to reach him. We had expected an extra session of Congress to be convened on the 3rd of October, which would have ensured his presence in Washington, but even this being now uncertain, I feel that I must not longer delay my letter to you, with the assurance that it shall be my pleasure to present your letter to the President at the earliest moment in which I can reach him, and whenever this is done, I shall at once transmit to you the results as well as the nature of the interview.

With kind regards to Dr. Appia and sentiments of the highest esteem for yourself,

I am
Very truly

Clara Barton

Washington, D.C., United States
January 14, 1878

Doctor Louis Appia
Geneva, Switzerland.
My Esteemed Friend:

I feel that it is time I should tell you gentlemen of Geneva what I am doing or trying to do in America with our favorite subject of the Red Cross, but, as my present letter, from the incompleteness of my work, cannot take the form of a report, I will address it, not to Monsieur Moynier, as the President of the Convention, but familiarly to you, as my friend and co-worker.

I remember to have written in the autumn that I could not get an opportunity to present the letter of Monsieur Moynier to our President until his summer journeyings were ended. But when he returned to Washington in October, I came here also, a distance of some four hundred miles, and commenced slowly and carefully my work.

I found the great difficulty to consist, not in the opposition I should meet at first, but in the facts that no one understood the subject, and there was no printed literature pertaining to it in the language familiar to the people to whom I desired to present it (with the exception of our State Department, which is, of course, conversant with all languages).

Thus my only method was to translate, write and rewrite, and explain until an understanding and interest were created. I did not think it wise to present the letter of Monsieur Moynier to President Hayes until the subject was somewhat understood by the parties to whom he would be compelled to refer it, viz., the State and War Departments, leading members of the Bar, as counsellors, and some of the prominent members of Congress. I accordingly commenced with these parties myself, explaining the subject, and doing my best to create an interest and secure coöperation whenever the matter should come up for discussion or decision. From Congress I proceeded to the heads of departments and their assistants, and, gaining an audience, explained the cause to them one by one. The interviews were frequently very long, and I have, with most of them, not only left a full translation of the Resolutions, but read them with them, hearing their queries, and explaining the practical working of the system as I had seen and known it.

When I thought I had sufficiently guarded the outposts, I ventured to ask audience of the President (this was only last week) and presented to him the letter of Monsieur Moynier and a copy of the Resolutions.

President Hayes received the letter with great respect and will refer it to the Secretary of State for decision.

I had previously found, by examination at the State Department, that the subject had once come before our Government at the time of the Convention in Paris, and been declined by President Grant, and his Secretary of State, Mr. Fish, on the ground of danger from entangling alliances, which it was a fundamental principle of our Government to avoid. This record stands in my way, and the greatest difficulty I shall have to meet and overcome will be this previous decision. If it had never been presented at all, and I had thus no former decision to reverse, I should hope for a comparatively easy task, but formalities and courtesies stand greatly in the way of reversing or setting aside the decisions of a previous authority, and especially such authority as General Grant and his popular Secretary, Mr. Fish. This adverse decision I hold to have been the result of a hasty and improper presentation of the subject without suitable explanation, and, from the lack of a full understanding of the system, it was considered wisdom on the part of our Government to let it alone.

Now, I do not despair of success in the end, for I have met only the greatest courtesy and most patient attention on the part of all officials, and I promised the President that I would wait within call, in order to be ready to make any explanations and answer any questions which he or the members of his Cabinet might desire to ask. I have no definite idea of the length of time they may hold the matter under consideration before deciding, but it is so far progressed that my own attorney can probably assist me, and he will arrive here in a day or two. This is the Honorable Judge Hale, of the State of New York, one of the best counsellors in the country, and is not only my personal attorney of many years, but also a near relative. I did not call him until I had thoroughly prepared the ground, but now that the heads of the Government understand the subject properly through my explanations, I must wait and let them make their points of law upon it and decide. One thing I am certain of, that it would have been of very little use for any one to have presented the request in an ordinary manner, or who had not time to spend upon it, or was not willing to work for the cause. With that previous refusal in the way, it will require great care, labor, and perseverance to gain the point desired, but I shall not despair until I must. I regret that I have not in all this time a more certain progress to report, but I thought it proper to let you know what stage of the work I am in, and that all that is possible is being done. It is almost three months since I left home and came here to work for this cause. My health has not suffered, but has held firm beyond any expectation of mine. I must think this is largely due to the great kindness and friendly courtesy which has been extended to me on every hand. Every official person listens patiently to all I have to say, and asks with the greatest kindness what I would like him to do to further my wishes or aid my cause, and I know that, if in the end the Government refuses to sign, it will be only upon a strict point of law, which it feels bound not to overstep (after mature deliberation), and it will be grieved to feel compelled to disappoint either the members of the Convention or myself. The Government of so vast a country as the United States is a great body to move, and, in order to accomplish anything under it, it is necessary that one have some knowledge of it, some weight with it, and an endless patience and perseverance.

I hope it will not be another three months before I can send some more decisive information, which I shall not fail to do at the earliest moment.

My address while in this city will be in the care of that most worthy and estimable representative of your Republic, the Honorable John Hitz, Consul-General of Switzerland, whose guest I am.

Begging pardon for so long a letter which tells so little, and hoping that this finds both you and Mrs. Appia in excellent health, and with most respectful regards to Monsieur Moynier, I remain, my esteemed friend,

With assurances of the highest esteem

Truly yours

Clara Barton

Armed with this authority, Clara Barton now undertook to secure public interest in and official recognition for the Red Cross which existed in Europe, but in America had no existence whatever excepting in her dream and hope and prayer. There still are extant a very few copies of the thin little pamphlet which she issued in 1878 addressed to the people of the United States and the Senators and Representatives in Congress. It will bear quoting entire. It contains the sum total of the knowledge which America had of the Red Cross in 1878:

THE RED CROSS OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION
WHAT IT IS
By Clara Barton

To the people of the United States, Senators and Representatives in Congress:

Having had the honor conferred upon me of appointment by the Central Commission holding the Geneva Convention, to present that treaty to this Government, and to take in charge the formation of a national organization according to the plan pursued by the committees working under the treaty, it seems to me but proper, that, while I ask the Government to sign it, the people and their representatives should be made acquainted with its origin, designs, methods of work, etc. To this end I have prepared the following statement, and present it to my countrymen and women, hoping they will be led to endorse and sustain a benevolence so grand in its character, and already almost universal in its recognition and adoption by the civilized world.

Clara Barton
Washington, D.C.

WHAT THE RED CROSS IS

A confederation of relief societies in different countries, acting under the Geneva Convention, carries on its work under the sign of the Red Cross. The aim of these societies is to ameliorate the condition of wounded soldiers in the armies in campaign on land or sea.

The societies had their rise in the conviction of certain philanthropic men that the official sanitary service in wars is usually insufficient, and that the charity of the people, which at such times exhibits itself munificently, should be organized for the best possible utilization. An international public conference was called at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1863, which, though it had not an official character, brought together representatives from a number of Governments. At this conference a treaty was drawn up, afterward remodeled and improved, which twenty-five Governments have signed.

The treaty provides for the neutrality of all sanitary supplies, ambulances, surgeons, nurses, attendants, and sick or wounded men, and their safe-conduct, when they bear the sign of the organization, viz., the Red Cross.

Although the convention which originated the organization was necessarily international, the relief societies themselves are entirely national and independent; each one governing itself and making its own laws according to the genius of its nationality and needs.

It was necessary for recognizance and safety, and for carrying out the general provisions of the treaty, that a uniform badge should be agreed upon. The Red Cross was chosen out of compliment to the Swiss Republic, where the first convention was held, and in which the Central Commission has its headquarters. The Swiss colors being a white cross on a red ground, the badge chosen was these colors reversed.

There are no “members of the Red Cross,” but only members of societies whose sign it is. There is no “Order of the Red Cross.” The relief societies use, each according to its convenience, whatever methods seem best suited to prepare in times of peace for the necessities of sanitary service in times of war. They gather and store gifts of money and supplies; arrange hospitals, ambulances, methods of transportation of wounded men, bureaus of information, correspondence, etc. All that the most ingenious philanthropy could devise and execute has been attempted in this direction.

In the Franco-Prussian War this was abundantly tested. That Prussia acknowledged its beneficence is proven by the fact that the Emperor affixed the Red Cross to the Iron Cross of Merit.

Although the societies are not international, there is a tacit compact between them, arising from their common origin, identity of aim, and mutual relation to the treaty. This compact embraces four principles, viz., centralization, preparation, impartiality, and solidarity.

1. Centralization. The efficiency of relief in time of war depends on unity of direction; therefore in every country the relief societies have a common central head to which they send their supplies, and which communicates for them with the seat of war or with the surgical military authorities, and it is through this central commission they have governmental recognition.

2. Preparation. It is understood that societies working under the Red Cross shall occupy themselves with preparatory work in times of peace. This gives them a permanence they could not otherwise have.

3. Impartiality. The societies of belligerent nations cannot always carry aid to their wounded countrymen who are captured by the enemy; this is counterbalanced by the regulation that the aid of the Red Cross societies shall be extended alike to friend and foe.

4. Solidarity. This provides that the societies of nations not engaged in war may afford aid to the sick and wounded of belligerent nations without affecting any principle of non-interference to which their Governments may be pledged. This must be done through the Central Commission, and not through either of the belligerent parties; this ensures impartiality of relief.

That these principles are practical has been thoroughly tested during the fifteen years the Red Cross has existed.

The Convention of Geneva does not exist as a society, but is simply a treaty under which all the relief societies of the Red Cross are enabled to carry on their work effectually. In time of war, the members and agents of the societies who go to the seat of war are obliged to have their badges vizéed by the Central Commission, and by one of the belligerents—this is in order to prevent fraud. Thus the societies and the treaty complement each other. The societies find and execute the relief, the treaty affords them the immunities which enable them to execute.

And it may be further made a part of the raison d’être of these national relief societies to afford ready succor and assistance to sufferers in time of national or widespread calamities, such as plagues, cholera, yellow fever and the like, devastating fires or floods, railway disasters, mining catastrophes, etc. The readiness of organizations like those of the Red Cross to extend help at the instant of need renders the aid of quadruple value and efficiency compared with that gathered hastily and irresponsibly, in the bewilderment and shock which always accompanies such calamities. The trained nurses and attendants subject to the relief societies in such cases would accompany the supplies sent and remain in action as long as needed. Organized in every State, the relief societies of the Red Cross would be ready with money, nurses, and supplies, to go on call to the instant relief of all who were overwhelmed by any of those sudden calamities which occasionally visit us. In case of yellow fever, there being an organization in every State, the nurses and attendants would be first chosen from the nearest societies, and, being acclimated, would incur far less risk to life than if sent from distant localities. It is true that the Government is always ready in these times of public need to furnish transportation, and often does much more. In the Mississippi flood, a few years ago, it ordered rations distributed under the direction of army officers; in the case of the explosion at the navy yard, it voted a relief fund, and in our recent affliction at the South, a like course was pursued. But in such cases one of the greatest difficulties is that there is no organized method of administering the relief which the Government or liberal citizens are willing to bestow, nor trained and acclimated nurses ready to give intelligent care to the sick; or, if there be organization, it is hastily formed in the time of need, and is therefore comparatively inefficient and wasteful. It would seem to be full time that, in consideration of the growth and rapidly accumulating necessities of our country, we should learn to economize our charities, and ensure from them the greatest possible practical benevolence. Although we in the United States may fondly hope to be seldom visited by the calamities of war, yet the misfortunes of other nations with which we are on terms of amity appeal to our sympathies; our southern coasts are periodically visited by the scourge of yellow fever; the valleys of the Mississippi are subject to destructive inundations; the plains of the West are devastated by insects and drought, and our cities and country are swept by consuming fires. In all such cases, 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. Still more does it concern, if not our safety, at least our honor, to signify our approval of those principles of humanity acknowledged by every other civilized nation.

CHAPTER VIII
THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS

It is important that this book shall make plain, by means of all necessary emphasis, and if need be by reiteration, that the United States did not come automatically or promptly into the sisterhood of nations associated under the banner of the Red Cross. From 1864 until 1881 was a period of seventeen years. The United States was the last of the great civilized nations of the world to ratify the treaty. It is also important to make plain that the work of securing this tardy recognition of the Red Cross on the part of the United States did not devolve upon an organization in this country, or upon a group of people laboring together. If ever a great enterprise came into being as the result of the persistent, indefatigable effort of one person, that result was achieved by Clara Barton in securing the adhesion of her own country to the international agreement which included the Red Cross.

Clara Barton undertook to secure national recognition for this organization during the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes. She had already begun work in this direction as early as 1876, and it seemed that she had every requisite for success when, in 1877, President Moynier addressed an official letter to President Hayes informing him of Miss Barton’s appointment, and asking that the United States come into the agreement. But the promised success was delayed.

President Hayes received Miss Barton at the White House, and listened courteously but not enthusiastically to her story. So did the Attorney-General of the United States, the Honorable Charles Devens, to whom the President referred her, and who found no serious legal obstacle in the way of her desire. Each sent her with a note of introduction to the Secretary of State. President Hayes wrote the following little note:

Executive Mansion
Washington, 4 Jany, 1878

My dear Sir:

Miss Clara Barton of New York State has some plans regarding the mitigation of the cruelties of war which she wishes to present to you. Please give her a hearing and such aid and encouragement as may be deemed by you fit.

Sincerely

R. B. Hayes

Hon. W. M. Evarts
etc., etc.

But the movement encountered apathy and quiet but determined opposition, and resulted in no executive action.

In a little scratch-book I find Clara Barton’s own account of this disappointment. Her narrative goes back to Civil War days and then proceeds with her experience overseas, and her service in the Franco-Prussian War:

As I journeyed on and saw the work of the Red Cross Society, more accomplished in four months under their systematic organization than in our four years without it, no mistakes, no needless suffering, no starving, no lack of care, no waste, no confusion,—all busy and at work, a whole continent marshaled under the banner of the Red Cross, working instead of weeping, nursing instead of waiting,—as I saw all this and journeyed and worked with it, I said to myself, “If I live to return to my country I will try to let her people understand the Red Cross.” I did more than resolve; I promised other nations I would do it. In 1873 I returned, more broken than I went. There had been years of helplessness in which I forgot how to walk; still I remembered my resolution and my promise. I came to Dansville and I brought that resolution and that promise with me. After about two years I was able to go to Washington with a letter from the International Committee of Geneva to the President of the United States asking once more that America sign the Treaty of Geneva.

Being made the official bearer of this letter, I presented it in 1877 in person to President Hayes. He received it kindly and referred it and me to his Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, who in his turn referred it to his Assistant Secretary, Mr. Frederick Seward, as the person who would know all about it, examine it, and report for decision. Mr. Seward had been the Assistant Secretary of his father and of Secretary Fish when it had been previously presented. He remembered this refusal and referred me to the record. He regarded it as a settled thing. I saw that it was all made to depend on one man, and that man regarded it as settled. I had nothing to hope for then, but did not press the matter to a third refusal. It waited and so did I.

Nor had she any better success in her approach to members of Congress. They were either apathetic or positively hostile. They knew nothing about the Red Cross and they cared less. The United States was not going to have any more wars. If it ever should have any wars, this country would manage them in its own way. It did not care that any one in Europe should tell it how to provide for the care of sick and wounded men. As for relief to be sent from America to any countries in Europe that might be in war, the American people were fully competent to create their own agencies on this side of the water, and to distribute relief through such agencies as they might select or constitute upon the other side.

Even Miss Barton’s staunch friends in the Senate and in the House could give her very little aid or comfort. If she could enlist the interest of the President or of the Secretary of State, something might possibly be done. Otherwise, it was useless to try.

So far as is known, Clara Barton’s little eight-page pamphlet, issued in 1878, had no more effect than Dr. Bellows’s sixteen-page pamphlet in 1866. If a single newspaper had taken it up and commented favorably upon it, Clara Barton would have been practically certain to have clipped and treasured the article or editorial. There is not in her papers a single letter or newspaper clipping which indicates that any man, woman, or child in the United States responded favorably to her published letter which was quoted in the last chapter. She used her pen and her voice and her power of personal persuasion without avail. The seed of that sowing appeared to fall upon the rocks, and it took no root.

In November, 1880, James A. Garfield was elected President of the United States. Miss Barton knew him somewhat. She wrote him a letter of congratulation, to which he returned a brief but gracious reply. Soon after his inauguration she called on him at the White House and presented the following letter which nearly four years before she had brought to the attention of President Hayes:

International Committee for the Relief of Wounded Soldiers
Geneva, August 19, 1877

To the President of the United States, at Washington:

Mr. President: The International Committee of the Red Cross desires most earnestly that the United States should be associated with them in their work, and they take the liberty of addressing themselves to you, with the hope that you will second their efforts. In order that the functions of the National Society of the Red Cross be faithfully performed, it is indispensable that it should have the sympathy and protection of the Government.

It would be irrational to establish an association upon the principles of the Convention of Geneva, without the association having the assurance that the army of its own country, of which it should be an auxiliary, would be guided, should the case occur, by the same principles. It would consequently be useless for us to appeal to the people of the country, inasmuch as the United States, as a Government, has made no declaration of adhering officially to the principles laid down by the Convention of the 22d August, 1864.

Such is, then, Mr. President, the principal object of the present request. We do not doubt but this will meet with a favorable reception from you, for the United States is in advance of Europe upon the subject of war, and the celebrated “Instructions of the American Army” are a monument which does honor to the United States.

You are aware, Mr. President, that the Government of the United States was officially represented at the Conference of Geneva, in 1864, by two delegates, and this mark of approbation given to the work which was being accomplished was then considered by every one as a precursor of a legal ratification. Until the present time, however, this confirmation has not taken place, and we think that this formality, which would have no other bearing than to express publicly the acquiescence of the United States in those humanitarian principles now admitted by all civilized people, has only been retarded because the occasion has not offered itself. We flatter ourselves with the hope that appealing directly to your generous sentiments will determine you to take the necessary measures to put an end to a situation so much to be regretted. We only wait such good news, Mr. President, in order to urge the founding of an American Society of the Red Cross.

We have already an able and devoted assistant in Miss Clara Barton, to whom we confide the care of handing to you this present request.

It would be very desirable that the projected asseveration should be under your distinguished patronage, and we hope that you will not refuse us this favor.

Receive, Mr. President, the assurance of our highest consideration.

For the International Committee:

G. Moynier, President

President Garfield heard her story with genuine cordiality. He knew her and the work she had done both in this country and abroad. He assured her of his warm personal interest and referred her to the Secretary of State for a further discussion of the matter. His note was brief and to the point:

Executive Mansion, Washington

Will the Sec’y of State please hear Miss Barton on the subject herein referred to?

J. A. Garfield

March 30, 1881

It was several days before Clara Barton succeeded in securing an appointment with Secretary Blaine; she did not want merely to present the President’s note, but to have time to tell the story of the Red Cross. Mr. Blaine agreed to see her on Monday, April 11, 1881. Her nephew, Stephen, who had come to Washington for a few days, accompanied her on this visit; and it is fully recorded in his diary. The beginning of the interview was not encouraging; for Mr. Blaine, after appointing the time, apparently forgot about it, and was occupied when they called.

The appointment had been made for 11.30 at the Department of State. Clara and Stephen waited for an hour in the Diplomatic Chamber. At the end of that time Mr. Blaine came in accompanied by Mrs. Dr. Loring, of Massachusetts. Introductions ensued, Mrs. Loring said she would “esteem it an honor to make the acquaintance of Miss Barton,” and arranged for an interchange of calls. Mr. Blaine referred to Miss Barton’s call at his residence, and “hoped it would not be the last.” Mrs. Loring then withdrew, and Mr. Blaine apologized for having kept Miss Barton waiting. She told him the nature of her visit and presented the letter of President Garfield. Mr. Blaine told her that he knew practically nothing about the Red Cross, and asked her to state briefly its object. He thought it would come more clearly under the supervision of the Secretary of War, but she explained the necessity for the treaty. The international aspect of the organization had not previously occurred to Mr. Blaine; he had supposed it would be purely an American Society operating under the War Department; and that any encouragement given by the Secretary of State would be incidental and personal; Miss Barton replied that if he could give her time she would like to tell him in detail what was involved in the relation of the United States to the Red Cross. He replied, “Miss Barton, I can give you all the time you need.”

Clara then told him the whole story from beginning to end, and Mr. Blaine listened with intent interest.

He inquired why President Hayes had not pushed the matter to a successful conclusion, and she told him of Mr. Seward’s objections which went back to his father’s secretaryship in Civil War days, and based upon the Monroe Doctrine.

Mr. Blaine replied that “the Monroe Doctrine was not made to ward off humanity.” He told her that “the grounds for Mr. Seward’s objection would not stand in the way of the present Administration.” He assured her that he was “in full sympathy with her proposal,” and promised her that he “would coöperate fully with her in carrying the matter successfully through.” As for the official letter from M. Moynier, he assured her that he would be prepared to reply to that letter approvingly now on the sole basis of her statement of the case; but he said that he wanted to do more than this.

She replied that she knew it would be necessary for the Senate to approve. He told her, “if it needed the action of the Senate, that could be had.” The confidence with which he spoke was most reassuring. He asked her to leave her little pamphlet with him for a few days that he might become a little more familiar with the history of the movement. It was all new to him; but it was obviously a thing in which the United States should have its part with other nations; he could promise her that it would be done, and done promptly.

Mr. Blaine suggested that it would be well for Miss Barton to talk over the matter of the Red Cross with the Secretary of War. On the following day she went by appointment to see Secretary Robert T. Lincoln. Again Stephen accompanied her and made a record of it.

Miss Barton first expressed to Mr. Lincoln her appreciation of the kindness of his father. Stephen wrote, “He was much affected and very grateful.”

The adhesion of the United States to the treaty was a matter for the State Department; but Robert Lincoln was greatly interested, and assured Miss Barton of his support in the operation of the Red Cross in case the Administration agreed to it.

In the next few days she made calls on other members of the Cabinet. Nowhere did she encounter opposition or apathy. The interest of President Garfield and Secretary Blaine appeared to be contagious. All official Washington seemed suddenly to have wakened to the importance of the Red Cross. She called upon several Senators and was introduced by Senator Conger, who told them of Clara Barton’s work in Michigan. With this introduction and a knowledge of the President’s approval, they met her with prompt and unreserved approval of her plans. Most of them had never heard of the Red Cross, but, when she told them how many other nations had approved it, and that the President and Secretary of State were ready to approve the treaty, they gave her on the spot their heartiest endorsement. She thought she understood Secretary Blaine’s complete confidence that the Senate would ratify the treaty as a matter of course.

More than a month elapsed before anything else occurred. Nothing unfavorable developed. On the other hand, neither the President nor Mr. Blaine took any immediate steps. The Conkling difficulty had arisen and both Garfield and Blaine had many other things to think about. Clara Barton began to wonder whether she could induce the Senate to remind the Secretary of State of his interest in the matter.

On May 17, 1881, the Honorable Omar D. Conger, of Michigan, submitted to the United States Senate the following resolution:

Resolved, That the Secretary of State be requested to furnish to the Senate copies (translations) of the Articles of Convention signed at Geneva, Switzerland, August 22, 1864, touching the treatment of those wounded in war, together with the forms of ratification employed by the several Governments, parties thereto.

It took a little time for the Department of State to gather the documents necessary to answer the request of the Senate. But Secretary Blaine did not wait for this formality. He remembered that there was an earnest little woman awaiting some definite answer from him, and he sent her the following letter:

Department of State,
Washington, May 20, 1881

Miss Clara Barton
American Representative of the Red Cross, etc.
Washington.
Dear Madam:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the letter addressed by Mr. Moynier, President of the Red Cross International Convention, to the President of the United States, bearing the date of the 19th August, 1877, and referred by president Garfield on the 30th March, 1881, to this Department.

It appears from a careful perusal of the letter that Mr. Moynier is anxious that the Government of the United States should join with other Governments of the world in this International Convention.

Will you be pleased to say to Mr. Moynier, in reply to his letter, that the President of the United States and the officers of this Government are in full sympathy with anywise measures tending toward the amelioration of the suffering incident to warfare? The Constitution of the United States has, however, lodged the entire war-making power in the Congress of the United States; and as the participation of the United States in an International Convention of this character is consequent upon and auxiliary to the war-making power of the Nation, legislation by Congress is needful to accomplish the humane end that your society has in view. It gives me, however, great pleasure to state that I shall be happy to give any measures which you may propose careful attention and consideration, and should the President, as I doubt not he will, approve of the matter, the Administration will recommend to Congress the adoption of the international treaty which you desire.

I am, madam, with very great respect, your obedient servant,

James G. Blaine

It would be interesting to know just how Clara Barton received the news. Unfortunately, her diary affords us no information. She must have gone forth from the office of the Secretary of State with wings upon her feet. There still would be months before Congress could act, but she sent the glad news at once to President Moynier and received from him an official reply which she transmitted to the Secretary of State.

Geneva, June 13, 1881

To the Honorable the Secretary of State
James G. Blaine, Washington

Sir: Miss Clara Barton has just communicated to me the letter which she has had the honor to receive from you, bearing date of May 23, 1881, and I hasten to express to you how much satisfaction I have experienced from it. I do not doubt now, thanks to your favorable consideration and that of President Garfield, that the United States may soon be counted among the number of signers of the Geneva Convention, since you have been kind enough to allow me to hope that the proposition for it will be made to Congress by the Administration.

I thank you, as well as President Garfield, for having been willing to take into serious consideration the wish contained in my letter of August 19, 1877, assuredly a very natural wish, since it tended to unite your country with a work of charity and civilization for which it is one of the best qualified.

Since my letter of 1877 was written, several new governmental adhesions have been given to the Geneva Convention, and I think that these precedents will be much more encouraging to the United States from the fact that they have been given by America. It was under the influence of events of the recent war of the Pacific that Bolivia signed the treaty the 16th of October, 1879, Chili on the 15th of November, 1879, Argentine Republic on the 25th of November, 1879, and Peru on the 22d of April, 1881. This argument in favor of the adhesion of your country is the only one I can add to my request, and to the printed documents that Miss Barton has placed in your hands, to aid your judgment and that of Congress.

I now await with full confidence the final result of your sympathetic efforts, and I beg you to accept, sir, the assurance of my high consideration.

G. Moynier, President

There lies before me as I write a little pad of paper, about three by five inches in size, of which more than half the sheets have been used and torn off, and of the remainder all but the top six leaves are blank. Those six pages are filled with writing in pencil, and the writing is that of Clara Barton. It is just such a pad as she habitually kept by her hard and narrow cot, with a candle and a pencil at hand, so that when she woke in the night she might sit up and write the thoughts that came to her. She seldom retired before eleven o’clock, and was habitually up as early as five, but if she had waking hours between, and she often had them, she wrote down what was in her mind, put out the candle, and finished what was for her a good night’s rest by sunrise or before.

“In almost any part of the world except the United States,” the tablet begins, “the words Red Cross, and the emblem for which they stand, would be as familiar as are to us the words Internal Revenue or National Board of Health.”

Was there ever such a time? Most of us have forgotten whether there is a National Board of Health, but “the words Red Cross, and the emblem for which they stand,” have become as familiar as the Stars and Stripes.

Yet there was a time when all other countries knew of it, but in the United States we knew of Internal Revenue and of the National Board of Health, but not of the Red Cross!

The little tablet is not dated, but I have no difficulty in supplying the date. These six pages were penciled on a night between June 9 and July 1, 1881. They appear to have been intended as the basis of an article for the Associated Press, endeavoring to call a little more attention to the fact that on May 21 of that year the American Red Cross had actually been organized and that on June 9 it had elected officers. The Associated Press had sent out a paragraph announcing the organization, May 21, and this was to tell that “A subsequent meeting has been held, and the following officers elected: President, Miss Clara Barton; secretary, George Kennan,” and so on. She might have told, but did not, that her own name as president was presented by President Garfield himself.

She had to explain what the Red Cross was for, although “During the last three or four years the public eye has been growing familiar with the term,” through constant efforts to secure for it such recognition in America as it long had had abroad.

“Nation after nation has recognized its benign mission,” the narrative runs on, “until twenty-seven countries have welcomed, received, and incorporated its humane principle into laws which govern their rules of warfare. In twenty-seven lands, wherever the national emblem is thrown to the breeze in token of war, there floats beside it this beautiful emblem of mercy, pity, justice, charity, and neutral care for the wounded, comfort for the dying, and burial for the dead. To us alone it is a stranger. For seventeen years it has knocked at our door, but our great, noisy family failed to hear.”

That was her first great triumph!

So she obtained her official recognition, and then on the very next day held her meeting for organization, and that fall secured her incorporation, and the next year the treaty, and so on, and so on, one step leading to another; and when she had gotten the consent of the White House, she undertook to educate the great American Republic, and let them know what the Red Cross stood for. She hoped the time would come when the name and symbol would be as well known in America as the words Internal Revenue or National Board of Health.

She had no publicity organization, nor press committee; but one night she sat up in bed, lighted her candle, took her little pad and pencil, and began to write:

“In almost any part of the world except the United States of America the words Red Cross, and the emblem for which it stands, would be as familiar—” and so on.

She did not finish the article in this form, though I find what use she made of it later in that year, in a pamphlet entitled “A Sketch of the History of the Red Cross.” That document was reissued with added material in 1883, after the adoption of the international treaty. The two lie before me, the completed pamphlet, with the endorsement of Secretary Blaine, and the nomination, by President Garfield himself, of Clara Barton to be president of the American Red Cross Association, and the three-cent pencil tablet on which Clara Barton began, on one night very soon after June 9, 1881, to teach the great American people what the words Red Cross and its emblem were intended to represent. She was not much given to weeping, but her tears would have wet through the little pad of paper many times before she accomplished what she undertook. But she succeeded. She lived to see the name and emblem of the Red Cross as familiar in her own country as in any of the twenty-seven that had previously adopted it. And that was what she hoped and prayed to do.

It will be noted that all these documents from the President and the Secretary of State, on the one hand, and from President Moynier and Dr. Appia on the other, are addressed to Clara Barton. So far as is now known there was no other person in America to whom they might have been properly addressed. From the time when she returned from the Franco-Prussian War until the President and the Congress of the United States had officially approved the Red Cross, and the Senate had agreed to the Treaty of Geneva, there was, so far as is known, precisely one Red Cross in the United States, and that was the one which Clara Barton had brought back from the red fields of France.

Not only so, but so far as is now known, in all those years no other voice than hers, after Dr. Bellows gave up hope, was raised on behalf of it. No one else had a vision of its possible relation to the future life of the United States. One little woman, barely recovered from her nervous prostration, trudged wearily from desk to desk in Washington, and with voice and pen pleaded in season and out of season until the American Red Cross became a fact.

Yes, the American Red Cross was now a fact. The President had consented; the Secretary of State had become an enthusiastic protagonist of the treaty; the Secretary of War heartily favored it; and the entire Senate appeared a unit in its favor. The preliminary resolution had passed the Senate without a single dissenting voice. There were certain formalities which needed to be completed before the treaty could actually be signed and ratified, but that was not worth worrying about. President Garfield and Secretary Blaine encouraged Miss Barton to go straight ahead and complete her organization.

She asked President Garfield to become the president of the American Red Cross, but he declined. She told him that in other countries kings and chief magistrates were its presidents; but President Garfield thought he knew a person to whom that honor belonged in America. When the American Red Cross was actually organized, Clara Barton was made its president on nomination of James A. Garfield, President of the United States.

On the very next day after receipt of Secretary Blaine’s letter, Clara Barton held a meeting and organized a National Society of the Red Cross. The society was duly and promptly incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia.

At a subsequent meeting, held on the 9th of June, 1881, the following officers were elected:

Miss Clara Barton, President.
Judge William Lawrence, First Vice-President.
Dr. Alexander Y. P. Garnett, Vice-President of the District of Columbia.
A. S. Solomons, Treasurer.
George Kennan, Secretary.

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Judge William Lawrence, Chairman.
Dr. George B. Loring.
Gen. S. D. Sturgis.
Mrs. S. A. Martha Canfield.
Mr. Walter P. Phillips.
Miss Clara Barton.
Mr. Walker Blaine.
Col. Richard J. Hinton.
Mrs. F. B. Taylor.
Mr. Wm. F. Sliney.
Mr. John R. Van Wormer.
Gen. R. D. Mussey, Consulting Counsel of the Association.
Miss Clara Barton, Corresponding Secretary.

Nothing could have seemed more auspicious than the outlook of the American Red Cross on the day of its organization. It had the support of the President, his Cabinet, and the Senate, and its birth was hailed with satisfaction by all civilized nations. The signing and approval of the treaty appeared a trivial formality.

Just when everything was proceeding finely, President Garfield was shot by a fanatic on July 2, 1881. He lingered through the summer, and on September 19th he died.

The Red Cross Treaty had not been signed.

CHAPTER IX
THE TRIALS OF A TREATY

The methods of treaty-making in the United States have varied. In a few instances the Senate has taken the initiative and asked the President’s concurrent action. In at least one instance the President has negotiated the treaty without the assistance of the Senate and requested the Senate to adopt it without change. In several cases the coördinate treaty-making powers have moved together, the President concurring with the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations. In the matter of the Red Cross Treaty, as we have seen, the President took the initiative in coöperation with the Secretary of State, and the Senate in due time requested the Secretary of State to submit the documents bearing upon the matter. This was the status when President Garfield was shot. During the weeks of his illness the Nation’s interest centered in his sick-room.

It is interesting to know that the first local organization of the Red Cross was established at Dansville, New York. Clara Barton returned thither after the shooting of President Garfield, and without waiting for his death or recovery, called the people of that village together and established a local organization, the first in the United States. Some years afterward the Dansville “Express” went back over its files and found material for this brief article:

THE RED CROSS IN DANSVILLE

The First Local Society in the United States was Organized in Dansville

From the files of the Dansville Express of Aug. 25, 1881, we find the first local Red Cross Society in the United States was organized in this village Aug. 22d, 1881, at a meeting held in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, called for that purpose. Rev. P. A. Strobel, pastor of the church, presided and Dr. B. P. Andrews acted as secretary. Miss Clara Barton, then a resident of Dansville, explained the objects of the society.

Rev. Geo. K. Ward, Dr. J. H. Jackson, Rev. P. A. Strobel, Rev. A. P. Brush, Mrs. Mary R. Smith, and Mrs. James Faulkner, Jr., were made a committee to present a constitution, and they reported the same. Wm. Kramer and Dr. J. H. Jackson were a committee to secure names of members and 57 were recorded.

The officers elected were: President—Geo. A. Sweet; vice-president—Mrs. Fanny B. Johnson; secretary—Mrs. Mary Colvin; treasurer—Jas. Faulkner, Jr., executive board—Miss Clara Barton, Major Mark J. Bunnell, G. Bastian, Jas. H. Jackson, Major E. H. Pratt, Mrs. Geo. Hartman, Thomas E. Gallagher, Wm. Kramer, Oscar Woodruff, Mrs. Reuben Whiteman, Mrs. L. Q. Galpin.

Later, Major Bunnell was made secretary of the executive board and Hon. J. A. VanDerlip consulting counsel.

The society was active in good works for a few years and when Miss Barton moved to Washington it was allowed to die.

Soon after the inauguration of President Arthur, Clara Barton returned to Washington from a summer spent at Dansville. She was already acquainted with President Arthur; she had met him at the White House, and he had expressed interest in her undertaking. She now called on him again and reminded him that President Garfield had promised her his assistance; that there already had gone forth a letter signed by the Secretary of State, committing the United States to the Red Cross Treaty; and that there still lay on the President’s desk the official request of the Senate for information concerning the Treaty of Geneva.

President Arthur gave to Miss Barton a most cordial reception. He assured her of his own personal interest and of the obligation under which he felt to carry out every promise made by President Garfield. He promised her to call the attention of the Senate to the matter in his first address to Congress, and he kept his promise in the following paragraphs:

I cannot too strongly urge upon you my conviction that every consideration of national safety, economy, and honor imperatively demands a thorough rehabilitation of our Navy.

We have for many years maintained with foreign Governments the relations of honorable peace, and that such relations may be permanent is desired by every patriotic citizen of the Republic.

But if we heed the teachings of history we shall not forget that in the life of every nation emergencies may arise when a resort to arms can alone save it from dishonor.

No danger from abroad now threatens this people, nor have we any cause to distrust the friendly professions of other Governments.

But, for avoiding as well as for repelling dangers that may threaten us in the future, we must be prepared to enforce any policy which we think wise to adopt.

At its last extra session the Senate called for the text of the Geneva Convention for the relief of the wounded in war. I trust that this action foreshadows such interest in the subject as will result in the adhesion of the United States to that humane and commendable engagement.

This part of the message was immediately taken up in the Senate and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, consisting of the following named gentlemen, to wit: Hon. William Windom, Minnesota; Hon. George F. Edmunds, Vermont; Hon. John Miller, California; Hon. Thomas W. Ferry, Michigan; Hon. Elbridge G. Lapham, New York; Hon. John W. Johnston, Virginia; Hon. J. T. Morgan, Alabama; Hon. George H. Pendleton, Ohio; Hon. Benjamin H. Hill, Georgia.

The Committee on Foreign Relations opened its door wide to Clara Barton and listened with the greatest interest to her story. President Arthur followed the recommendation of his message with a special communication in response to the Senate’s request of the preceding May:

(Senate Ex. Doc. No. 6, 47th Congress, 1st Session)

Message from the President of the United States, transmitting in response to Senate resolution of May 17th, 1881, a report of the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, touching the Geneva Convention for the relief of the wounded in war.

December 12, 1881.—Referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed.

To Senate of the United States:

I transmit herewith, in response to the resolution of the Senate of the seventeenth of May last, a report of the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, touching the Geneva Convention for the relief of the wounded in war.

Chester A. Arthur

Executive Mansion
Washington, December 12, 1881

To the President:

The Secretary of State, to whom was addressed a resolution of the Senate, dated the seventeenth of May, 1881, requesting him “to furnish to the Senate copies (translations) of Articles of Convention signed at Geneva, Switzerland, August 22, 1864, touching the treatment of those wounded in war, together with the forms of ratification employed by the several governments, parties thereto,” has the honor to lay before the President the papers called for by the resolution.

In view of the reference made, in the annual message of the President, to the Geneva convention, the Secretary of State deems it unnecessary now to enlarge upon the advisability of the adhesion of the United States to an international compact at once so humane in its character and so universal in its application as to commend itself to the adoption of nearly all the civilized powers.

James G. Blaine

Department of State
Washington, December 10, 1881

With such support from the President and the Secretary of State, and with the Senate a unit in support of the treaty, the end of the struggle appeared to be in sight. But many anxious months had yet to pass before Clara Barton’s dream came true.

Even after the movement was inaugurated and recognized by Congress, very few people in America attached to it any considerable degree of importance. Among those who appreciated its full significance and hastened to give Clara Barton full credit for her splendid achievement was the man who had labored so faithfully for the organization of an American Red Cross at the close of the Civil War, Dr. Henry W. Bellows. He had labored in earlier years and had given it up, but rejoiced in the prospect of her success:

New York, 232 E. 15
Nov. 21, 1881

My dear Miss Barton:

It has been a sore disappointment and mortification to those who inaugurated the plan of organized relief, by private contributions, for sick and wounded soldiers in our late war, since so largely followed by other nations, that they should still find the United States the only great Government that refuses to join in the treaty, framed by the International Convention of Geneva, for neutralizing battle-fields after the battle, and making the persons of surgeons and nurses flying to the relief of the wounded and dying free from arrest. This great international agreement for mitigating the horrors of war finds its chief defect in the conspicuous refusal of the United States Government to join in the treaty! The importance of our national concurrence with other Governments in this noble treaty has been urged upon every administration since the war, but has thus far met only the reply that our national policy did not allow us to enter into entangling alliances with other powers. I rejoice to hear from you that our late President and his chief official advisers were of a different opinion, and encouraged the hope that in the interests of mercy and humanity it might be safe to agree by treaty with all the civilized world, that we would soften to non-combatants the hateful conditions that made relief to the wounded on battle-fields a peril or forbidden act. I trust you will press this matter upon our present administration with all the weight of your well-earned influence. Having myself somewhat ignominiously failed to get any encouragement for this measure from two administrations, I leave it, in your more fortunate hands, hoping that the time is ripe for a less jealous policy than American self-isolation in international movements for extending and universalizing mercy towards the victims of war.

Yours truly

H. W. Bellows

Public sentiment in America is a strange and somewhat capricious thing. Clara Barton issued her little booklet in 1878 and it appeared to fall flat. The newspapers paid no attention to it; Congress treated it with complete indifference if not with hostility, and the President and his Cabinet ignored it. She reissued it in 1881 with added matter, and not less than three hundred newspapers and periodicals spoke kindly of it, many of them more than once, so that more than five hundred press clippings were collated as the result of that and Miss Barton’s little article written for the Associated Press. Congress, that had been partly hostile and where not hostile apathetic, became suddenly and unanimously interested. The Honorable William Windom, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and afterward a member of President Garfield’s Cabinet, became a stanch friend, perhaps the first genuinely interested and largely influential friend of the movement. Senators Hoar and Wilson, of Massachusetts, and Hawley, of Connecticut, and Edmunds, of Vermont, lent to the movement intelligent and vigorous support. The Honorable Omar D. Conger, of Michigan, first in the House and afterward in the Senate, took an active part in promoting the cause. When the matter began to be discussed in Congress as the body which alone could declare war, and later came before the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate on the proposal to ratify the Geneva Treaty, there was not a dissenting voice in either house, nor was there in the press through the country, so far as is known, a single unfavorable comment. Clara Barton’s campaign of publicity had been a little handful of corn upon the top of the mountains and the fruit thereof shook like the Cedars of Lebanon. The whole Nation was suddenly converted to faith in the Red Cross.

Foreign nations stood in amazement when they saw this change of sentiment. They were unable to account for it, nor could any one else explain it to them. After eighteen years of indifference and hostility America came over to the banner of the Red Cross with whole-hearted acceptance of its humane principles.

But still the question was asked why America need concern herself with an organization for war, when she was never going to have another war. The answer to this question contained one of the distinctive principles of the American Red Cross as compared with the Red Cross in other countries. In Europe, the Red Cross was organized solely for relief in time of war. In America, it was organized to meet any great public need.

As yet, however, the Red Cross was proceeding without official authority. The death of President Garfield delayed for several months the official adherence of the United States to the Treaty of Geneva. Meantime, the Red Cross was in existence, by advice of President Garfield. It had, however, only a single local organization, but it cherished national and international aims and hopes. Miss Barton herself recorded the history of the organization:

The National Red Cross of America was formed nearly a year before the accession to the treaty. This was done by the advice of President Garfield, in order to aid as far as possible the accession. “Accordingly a meeting was held in Washington, D.C., May 21, 1881, which resulted in the formation of an association to be known as the American National Association of the Red Cross.”

Several years of previous illness on the part of its president had resulted in fixing her country home at Dansville, New York, the seat of the great Jackson and Austin Sanitarium and the acknowledged foundation of the hundreds of health institutions of that kind which bless the country to-day. The establishment of the National Red Cross in Washington had attracted the attention of persons outside, who, of course, knew very little of it; but among others, the people of Dansville, the home of the president, felt that if she were engaged in some public movement, they too might at least offer to aid. Accordingly, on her return to them in midsummer, they waited upon her with a request to that effect, which resulted in the formation of a society of the Red Cross, this being the first body in aid of the National Association formed in the United States. It is possible I cannot make that more clear than by giving an extract from their report of that date, which was as follows:

In reply to your request, given through the secretary of your association, that we make report to you concerning the inauguration of our society, its subsequent proceedings and present condition, the committee has the honor to submit the following statement:

Dansville, Livingston County, New York, being the country residence of Miss Clara Barton, president of the American Association of the Red Cross, its citizens, desirous of paying a compliment to her, and at the same time of doing an honor to themselves, conceived the idea of organizing in their town the first local society of the Red Cross in the United States. To this end, a general preliminary meeting was held in the Presbyterian Church, when the principles of the Treaty of Geneva and the nature of its societies were defined in a clear and practical manner by Miss Barton, who had been invited to address the meeting. Shortly after, on the twenty-second of August, 1881, a second meeting, for the purpose of organization, held in the Lutheran Church and presided over by the pastor, Rev. Dr. Strobel, was attended by the citizens generally, including nearly all the religious denominations of the town, with their respective pastors. The purpose of the meeting was explained by your president, a constitution was presented and very largely signed, and officers were elected.

Thus we are able to announce that on the eighteenth anniversary of the Treaty of Geneva, in Switzerland, August 22, 1864, was formed the first local society of the Red Cross in the United States of America.

While the Red Cross hung, like the coffin of Mohammed, between heaven and earth, a disastrous forest fire occurred in Michigan. Clara Barton at once issued, in the name of the Red Cross, an appeal for help. The first city to respond was Rochester, forty miles from Dansville, and Syracuse followed. The money was placed in the hands of the County Clerk of Livingston County, New York, who went at once to Michigan, and distributed financial help under direction of Clara Barton. She also went to Michigan, and took care of the distribution of food and clothing.

Here, in Michigan, for the first time on American soil, the banner of the Red Cross was displayed above the supply tent of Clara Barton. A part of the report of that first effort follows:

Before a month had passed, before a thought of practical application to business had arisen, we were forcibly and sadly taught again the old lesson that we need but to build the altar, God will Himself provide the sacrifice. If we did not hear the crackling of the flames, our skies grew murky and dark and our atmosphere bitter with the drifting smoke that rolled over from the blazing fields of our neighbors of Michigan, whose living thousands fled in terror, whose dying hundreds writhed in the embers, and whose dead blackened in the ashes of their hard-earned homes. Instantly we felt the help and strength of our organization, young and untried as it was. We were grateful that in this first ordeal your sympathetic president was with us. We were deeply grateful for your prompt call to action, given through her, which rallied us to our work. Our relief rooms were instantly secured and our white banner, with its bright scarlet cross, which has never been furled since that hour, was thrown to the breeze, telling to every looker-on what we were there to do, and pointing to every generous heart an outlet for its sympathy. We had not mistaken the spirit of our people; our scarce-opened doorway was filled with men, women, and children bearing their gifts of pity and love. Tables and shelves were piled, our working committee of ladies took every article under inspection, their faithful hands made all garments whole and strong; lastly, each article received the stamp of the society and of the Red Cross, and all were carefully and quickly consigned to the firm packing-cases awaiting them. Eight large boxes were shipped at first, others followed directly, and so continued until notified by the Relief Committee of Michigan that no more were needed.

Among the fruits of Clara Barton’s work in Michigan was the confidence and friendship of Senator Omar D. Conger and of Mrs. Conger, who, seeing the actual workings of the Red Cross, under direct control of Clara Barton, became its enthusiastic supporters, and her fast friends. The Michigan experience also exhibited to the Nation the value of such an organization, and showed that a country which did not intend ever to have another war might still find use for the Red Cross.

But still the treaty halted. No one was opposing it. Every known influence was favorable to it. Its adoption and signature were the merest formality. Clara Barton was at liberty to go on with her work with the full approval of the President and his Cabinet, and wait for the adoption of the treaty which was certain to follow.

It did follow; but before it was adopted the heart of Clara Barton was well-nigh broken. She had learned the weariness and pain of working alone; she was now to learn the keener sorrow which emerges when one undertakes to work with others.

Clara Barton had succeeded; no one questioned her success. But the treaty was not yet adopted.

CHAPTER X
THE PERILS OF SUCCESS

Few people now remember that Clara Barton’s success encountered any difficulties at this point in her career. Her published writings make no reference to them. Her book on the Red Cross tells the story as though events proceeded automatically through this period of transition. President Garfield became interested and referred the matter to Secretary Blaine, who became heartily enthusiastic, and he and President Garfield told her to proceed with assurance that the United States would approve the treaty. She did so, and, although President Garfield was shot, his successor made the promise good, and the Senate unanimously concurred. That would seem to have been the whole story. But, as a matter of fact the months that followed the published approval of Secretary Blaine and President Garfield, and the formal approval of the treaty, were among the most anxious and sorrowful of Clara Barton’s whole life.

The nation-wide publicity which now was freely accorded the movement introduced Clara Barton to a new form of difficulty. She was well schooled in the discipline of disappointment and deferred hope. Now she came to know of the embarrassments of success. Swiftly after the Red Cross came to recognition there rose competing organizations, seeking to capitalize her success. The first day of August, 1881, saw the issue of Volume I, Number 1, of “The Red Cross.” It was a monthly magazine, of which there may have been no subsequent issues, the official organ of a society known as the Red Cross. It copied Clara Barton’s Associated Press article, and said:

We must say it is rather late for Miss Barton, or any one else, to talk about organizing the Red Cross.

It then proceeded to tell that this organization had been in existence since 1879:

We did not attempt to make this a national affair, as we were not in condition to do so. This country was not going to war, at any time, and the promoters first considered the propriety of getting the order on a good foundation. ’Tis true, we have not undertaken any public work as yet, but it is a very great undertaking when the territory to be gone over is taken into consideration. We have organized a body of men that no country in Europe can excel for the purpose of carrying out our objects.

The real and original Red Cross was, therefore, according to this journal, ready now to become national, and it warned Miss Clara Barton that it had the right of way. It also published a portrait of the real founder of the Red Cross, a gentleman born in England, who had come to this country when young, and engaged in “several enterprises which proved successful,” none of which were named; studied law, but gave it up; studied medicine, but apparently did not practice. He was, however, according to this journal, a very great and widely known man; and his portrait showed him with so many badges and decorations upon his right breast he would surely have had difficulty in drawing his sword. He was the “Organizer and Supreme Commander.” A “Grand Promenade Concert” was given in his honor in a very obscure hall in one of the American cities, with a programme which the magazine printed in full, consisting chiefly in a recitation (selected) by Miss Sadie Merryman; a song (selected) by Miss Mary C. Andrews; a reading (selected) by Miss Mary Prescott; a piano solo (selected) by Miss Mary C. Andrews; a reading (selected) by Elmer E. Prescott, and selected songs with guitar by the Misses Biederman and father. Besides these there was an “Address of Welcome,” and a “Response” by the much-decorated “Organizer and Supreme Commander.”

Clara Barton had a sense of humor. She could not only smile but laugh heartily at competition of this bombastic character. She collected and filed the literature, and it may be presumed that her files contain the only preserved mementoes of this organization which served notice on her that her Red Cross was an innovation.

But, nevertheless, this was a warning, and one which she had occasion to heed. For immediately a considerable number of competing organizations sprang up in several parts of the country, and some of them gave her great anxiety.

She was not superstitious, and apparently did not notice that the second Friday in January, 1882, fell on the 13th. But she recorded that it was a bad Friday for her. Two days before, she had notice that the wife of a United States Senator desired to call on her, and bring one or two other ladies with her. She had moved into her new quarters that very week, and not all her household goods were in place; so she hastened to put up her curtains and finish her unpacking; for it had rained on Monday when she expected to move, and her plans had been disarranged.

Friday afternoon the wife of the Senator came, and with her another lady.

She said she had come partly on business; that she had some months before joined a society called the “Ladies’ National Red Star Association”;[2] that this society had a meeting this week, and the question of a counter-society came up; that this counter-society was said to be called the Red Cross, and appeared to have been organized to step in and do the work which they were doing; and it was decided to adjourn the meeting for one week to inform themselves in relation to this Red Cross Society. What was it? What did it propose to do? What had it done? She said she learned near the close of the meeting that I was the head of that society, and she came to ask if it was true, and what did the Red Cross have to say for itself?

I told her I believed I was the head of the Society of which she wished to learn.

She asked what Bills we proposed to present to Congress; and I told her, None.

Why, yes, she said, they told her at the meeting that I had something before Congress.

I told her I had a treaty, which I had presented for four years.

She wanted to know what work we had done, and I told her of our work in Michigan.

She said she knew nothing about the Red Cross; had seen something about it, but thought it was some Catholic thing; where did we get our authority? Was it a national thing? Had I anything published about it?

I had a little pamphlet of two leaves, four years old. I gave her one. She said she was sorry not to get the information she came after. She left, evidently disappointed. I was sorry, also. I have no idea whether she came officially or at her own option, openly or as a spy.

Whatever the motive of the wife of the Senator who came to Miss Barton, the organization was one of which she had occasion to learn not a little. It was one that sprang up on the heels of her first success, and it crowded her hard before it was left behind and forgotten.

Clara Barton felt uneasy. The treaty was not yet ratified, and she knew not how many wives of Senators were in this rival organization, pushed by ambitious women and seeking Government approval. Not very much of such competition at that stage of the affair would be necessary to kill the treaty and the Red Cross. She went next day to see a man whose judgment she felt she could trust. She did not find him in his office, but on Sunday he called on her:

He had no special advice; was very busy. So are they all. All are busy; and I am to go on with this alone, as I plainly see. I shall make up my mind to let them all go, and I must gird myself for the work and go on with it by myself. I do not believe any member of my Society will be of any help to me in this hard work. They are all too busy.

The next day she went to the trial of Guiteau, and heard the closing pleas. She was recognized, and given a seat inside the rail, and “treated with marked attention,” which gratified her. That afternoon she went to see Senator Lapham, and asked him to take charge of the treaty in the Senate, and he cheerfully consented. She told him frankly that opposing organizations were already seeking recognition, but he encouraged her. A day or two later she saw Senator Windom, of the Foreign Relations Committee, on whose support she had counted; and he seemed to her to have grown sad and distant, and she felt sure he had been approached by those who were opposing her.

She found, too, that her return to Washington, with its late dinners, was not good for her. She resolved to forego heavy dinners; to eat her last hearty meal at three o’clock, and enjoy a big red apple before going to bed. A big red apple was always a means of grace to Clara Barton. On one of the most desolate of these nights, when she came home late in the rain after a disappointing day, she gratefully records that her apple was good.

She had cheering word about her finances. Her business affairs, left in the hands of reliable New York bankers, had prospered during her absence abroad. She had used while in Europe considerably less than her income; her principal had swelled somewhat, and her annual income was more by quite a little than she had expected. About the middle of January she received her complete account, and found that she had more money than she thought; and this was a comfort. Her expenses at Dansville, though much increased by her hospitality, had kept well within her annual receipts, and she was safely provided for for life. She need never worry so far as money was concerned.

But she was worried. She began to question whether her dream of an American Red Cross would ever come true. It was bitter hard to have it fail after she had won over three Presidents, Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur; but fail she thought it must, even after it had shown in Michigan how useful it could be. She seriously thought of returning to Europe, and letting some one else take up her thankless task. She wrote:

I am so tired. I sleep very poorly. I can only think of some good way of getting out of this country. I feel as if I should be willing to let all go, if only I could get out, and hear no more strife and bickering lies. Why should I let my life be spoiled by those who are now opposing me, and who take the joy out of my sunshine?

Why, indeed? She had money enough to live upon, in Dansville, or in Oxford, or for that matter in Washington; and she owned homes in each of those three places, and had income enough to live upon in any one of them or in Europe. Why should she expose herself longer to weariness, misrepresentation, and cruel disappointment?

It will be seen that Clara Barton had some reason to apprehend trouble growing out of the visit of the wife of the Senator. Powerful backing had already been secured for the first of the opposing organizations that gave her pain and sorrow.

But she prevailed, and the Senate at length ratified the treaty without a dissenting vote. Either the Senator’s wife was more favorably impressed than Clara Barton thought, or her husband refused to be guided by her opposition.

But the opponents of Clara Barton were active to the very hour when the treaty was ratified, and there were days when it seemed that she was working at a hopeless task. She went to see influential people, only to find them out or occupied or indifferent or strangely uncommunicative. She was almost in despair.

There came a day, Monday, February 6, 1882, when her own feelings changed:

It did not seem like other days. There was either much to do or nothing to do. I knelt at my bedside, and asked earnestly, tearfully, for guidance. I only want to know my way. I feel that I can walk it, if I can be made to see it. I am so weary of all this strife, this unrest, this doubt. I am willing to let the work go into other hands. If all goes as hoped, I can call an executive committee meeting, announce the ratification of the treaty, hand in my resignation, and get out of it all. If they want the Society, they can keep it; if not, it will die if let alone and some other can be organized, or they can take the one that is now opposing me. Then I can go and rest. It has been my part to do the work of the treaty. I have tried to do it faithfully, and it has met with little moral support, even from my own committee. I will try with God’s help to go on faithfully to the end, with no support but His; and if He will give it, when this is done, I shall be ready to lay the burden down, even if my enemies gain the advantage of it. This has been a day of instruction and discipline, and, I dare hope, not lost.

She went to the State Department. Mr. Adee reassured her. He did not think there would be any trouble about the treaty, or that she need fear the opposition.

She had notice of the committee meeting, and she went to the Senate. She was misdirected, and went to one or two wrong rooms, but finally found the Committee on Foreign Relations, with Senator Windom in the chair. He greeted her cordially, which surprised her after his recent apparent coldness and evasiveness. He introduced her to Senator Edmunds, but that Senator insisted upon greeting her as an old friend. They heard her with sympathy; took her little four-year-old two-leaved tract, and spoke no word about the opposition.

A few days later Senator Lapham called and told her things were not going as well as he had hoped. Senator Windom, he said, was favorable, but troubled. The matter seemed hung up at the State Department.

She told him she would go to the State Department herself and see what was the trouble.

“His good kind heart was touched, and his eyes were full.”

He did not know any other way than for her to do this. And so she went.

She was admitted immediately to the Department of State, and told confidentially that it was all right. The Secretary of State had conferred with the President, and they were all ready to recommend the treaty to the Senate.

Would she like to see the treaty?

Would she? Indeed, she would!

It must be a secret; unsigned documents were not supposed to be shown; but the Secretary of State would be pleased to know whether this treaty was exactly what she wanted.

She had never seen a treaty, and did not know what it looked like. It was a volume, a kind of unbound book, of soft parchment, something like fourteen inches square. She sat down and read it, word for word, the Secretary of State watching her intermittently as he busied himself about other matters. Line by line the full significance of it came over her. It quoted in full the text of the 1864 Convention, and recited in effect the whole situation into which this would bring the United States in its relation to other nations. It was a great and solemn document, such as she had never before handled; and her life and hope were bound up in it. At the very end were the formal words of ratification, with blank spaces for the signature of the President and Secretary of State, and a place for the big seal of the United States of America.

I had kept my eyes clear enough to read to the very end; but then I could hold up no longer, and how long a cry I indulged in, I do not know. But I know that it rested me; and after a while he stepped over and asked, very gently, “How does it suit you?” I told him it was all I could have hoped for, but I was ashamed to have done so badly myself. He, laughing, said that was all right. I asked him when it would be signed, and he said, “Any time, now.”

At last it was done!

Why had she worried so much about it?

She worried because she knew there was reason to worry; and because there were so few to worry; and because she did not know whether her worrying would do any good.

For it is necessary to tell a little, a very little, about why she worried.

There lie before me as I write certain letters written to Clara Barton by a woman who came to her in the latter part of her struggle to secure the recognition of the Red Cross, and who wrote to Miss Barton that to be associated with her in such work would be the crowning glory of her life:

I should think it a greater glory to be a doorkeeper in such a society as the Red Cross than to be—well, Mrs. President of the United States. If in the humblest way I can help you, I am at your service. There may be nothing for me to do, but if there is, command me.

Sadly, in after years, Clara Barton gathered up these and other documents, arranged them neatly in order, and endorsed them:

The enclosed papers will serve to show in part what the Red Cross had to meet in its incipiency before we had the treaty. This woman had been our secretary and trusted friend, but by some means became a strong competitor, and organized an opposing society.

That is all she said about it; no word of bitterness or of self-justification. But this was not the only woman who rushed to her when she first gained publicity, proclaimed that she would be a servant of the servants of Clara Barton, learned all her confidential affairs, and then betrayed her.

This volume will make no catalogue of those who ate of her bread and accepted her confidences and who proved base and ungrateful. This particular woman is mentioned because it seemed to Clara Barton that she might very possibly defeat all that Clara Barton was working for. She gained friends in high places, and she knew just whom Clara Barton counted to be her friends, and how to approach some of them.

There lie before the author, also, certain anonymous letters, received at this time, some of them written in one city and sent to other cities to be mailed. There were also some vicious newspaper articles, one of them first published in a remote Southern city, and later copied into Washington and Philadelphia papers, and these Clara Barton clipped, and labeled with the name of the person who, without any question, she believed to be their author. These and the anonymous letters and the letters of affection are all in the same package. Clara Barton arranged them, and she thought she knew.

Now, on the day that Clara Barton visited the office of the Secretary of State, she was so overjoyed that she went straight to the White House to thank the President. Mr. Arthur was not in, but her little note was accepted by his secretary, who smiled and assured her that he understood, and that the President would be glad to receive it. And she went home with a happy heart. And Senator Lapham sent her a big bouquet of roses that night.

The next Monday was the day set for Mr. Blaine to deliver the memorial address on President Garfield, and she had a seat in the gallery of the House of Representatives; which was a much-coveted honor. She rose in full expectation of going; and she went.

But at breakfast she received her mail; and there was a letter from her rival:

It was the most abusive of all I have ever received from her. She charged me with all little meannesses, and warned me if I do not stop people’s tongues, she will take redress upon me, either through the press or by law.

It had the effect to stun or daze me until I did not want to go to the Address. But I did go.

That was one of the things that was oppressing Clara Barton in those days. That was why she was troubled when the wife of a Senator came to see her and ask whether there was such a thing as the Red Cross, and what it was, and why it was opposing another organization of which the Senator’s wife was a member. That was why she was worried when the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations grew strangely distant.

But she went to hear Mr. Blaine, and she met prominent people, some of whom knew her.

Two days later she had confidential tidings that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had unanimously approved the treaty, and that it would doubtless be discussed in executive session of the Senate on the following Tuesday.

But it hung on for another month, a month through which it was hard for her to go, but through which she went bravely.

On Thursday, March 16, she felt as though hope was almost hopeless. She “had no heart to speak” that day; “had more tears than words.” “It has been a sad day.”

She wrote these words that evening, “weary and heart-sick”; but at this point was interrupted by a note from Senator Lapham. The note will bear printing:

U.S. Senate Chamber
Washington, March 16, 1882

Miss Barton:

I have the gratifying privilege of informing you of the ratification by the Senate of the Geneva Convention; of the full assent of the United States to the same, by the action of the Senate this afternoon. I had the injunction of secrecy removed so that it could be published at once. The whole is in print, and if I get time I will send you some copies in the morning. I go home to-morrow to be gone a week.

Laus Deo!

Very truly

E. S. Lapham

It ought to have brought her joy; but she wrote:

I had waited so long, and was so weak and broken, I could not even feel glad. I laid down the letter, and wiped my tired eyes.

Before she got to bed she had another sad tale to hear, of dissensions among those who should have been rejoicing with her, but were displeased. And she went to bed ill.

Many of the people who from this time came to Clara Barton with an earnest desire to be permitted to share in her labor were thoroughly and permanently loyal, and some of them are to this day among the foremost of those who hold her name in reverence. There were others, however, not less sincere, who were an embarrassment to her, coming in some cases with a maximum of enthusiasm and a minimum of discretion. There were still others who, after working with her long enough to gain her confidence, became fired with an ambition to organize societies of their own. There was a Blue Anchor Society, now entirely forgotten, but which caused her a great deal of anxiety. It was established by a woman whom she counted a sincere friend, who learned about the Red Cross from Clara Barton and utilized her knowledge in the formation of a rival society which at one time threatened to be more prominent in high places than the Red Cross itself. Later there was organized a White Cross Society, which gained such recognition that, in one of the Dewey parades at the end of the Spanish War, it was placed ahead of the Red Cross. It had powerful friends, and the bill for its recognition by Congress passed the Senate, but did not pass the House.

These rival organizations appear very puerile and futile now, but at the time they were a source of great anxiety to Clara Barton. It sometimes seemed to her that there were not many people whom she could trust to maintain permanently high and unselfish motives like her own. If she failed, as she was charged with failing, to share responsibility with her associates, that failure had behind it some very unhappy experiences that need not here be recorded.

Just at the point when her success, as we now view it, was practically assured, she went one Saturday to call on an influential woman whose friendship she had won in the work for the sufferers from the Michigan fires. Her heart sank within her when she found on this friend’s desk the literature of an opposing organization with an invitation to join. She wondered if this friend too would desert her, and she went home greatly depressed. So far as that friend was concerned, her fears were groundless. This woman and her husband had seen her work and they remained loyal to her through life. The next day was a family anniversary, and it set her to remembering her childhood. She wrote in her diary that day:

I wish I had always remained a little girl. I did not begin like other children; did not learn how to be a child, still less how to be a young girl and woman; and so had no knowledge of the right way to get on in society. I have made only mistakes, and have always been so sensitive that I could not bear the consequences of my mistakes. The longer I live the worse it gets, until now the menacing spirits hover about my poor beset pathway, darkening it with the shadows of approaching night; there is not a ray of brightness nor even of safety; they wait like robbers to see me far enough along to set upon me and slay me outright. But there is no way but to go on; I cannot hide. I wonder if it would not have been better if I had gone, the little five-year-old girl that was snatched from death? I often revert to that sharp illness, which I can remember, as the time when perhaps it would have been better if no remedy had been found. What years of unrest, pain to myself and to others it would have wiped out, and all the world would have been as well if not better! Looking at it as calmly as I am able and with my best judgment, I can only see failure of it all. There have been no successes in my life, only attempts at success and no realization.

At such times she felt her lack of experience in social matters. The women who organized these opposing societies were able to hold parlor meetings in aristocratic homes; to organize committees with long lists of names of society women as patronesses; to secure publicity, and to enlist strong political influence. She wrote in her diary:

I am very low-spirited. I am cold, alone, surrounded by harmful spirits. All the society people of the city and country seem to be arrayed in arms against me, with only my single hand, sore heart, and silent tongue to make my way against misrepresentation, malice, and selfish ambition.

These were some of the reasons why Clara Barton was not jubilant when her success finally came. She was too tired, too heart-sore to care very much. She was weary of Washington, and she thought she was ready now to go to one of her other homes and live the rest of her life in peace. The Red Cross was now an established fact; the treaty was signed and ratified. She had only to hand in her resignation and leave the work to be carried on by others; whether they were her enemies or friends, she did not greatly care, her part was done.

That was what she said in her diary, but a few days later the meeting occurred for the perfecting of the organization in its new and accredited character. She went to the meeting only partially recovered from her depression, but she returned in high spirits. “This has been a red-letter day for me,” she wrote; “the meeting was largely attended.” Quite a number of prominent people seemed eager to sign the constitution and become members of her organization. The cry from the flooded district along the Mississippi was loud and strong; there was work to be done immediately; it was no time for Clara Barton to resign. She wrote no more of the cruel things which she had been suffering, but went straight forward in her work of relief. It was many years before she had time to think again of resigning.

On the first day of March, 1882, the President, by his signature, gave the accession of the United States to the Treaty of Geneva of August 22, 1864, and also to that of October 20, 1868, and transmitted to the Senate the following message, declaration, and proposed adoption of the same:

Message from the President of the United States, transmitting an accession of the United States to the Convention concluded at Geneva on the twenty-second August, 1864, between various powers, for the amelioration of the wounded of armies in the field, and to the additional articles thereto, signed at Geneva on the twentieth October, 1868.

March 3, 1882.—Read; accession read the first time referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, and, together with the message, ordered to be printed in confidence, for the use of the Senate.

March 16, 1882.—Ratified and injunction of secrecy removed therefrom.

To the Senate of the United States:

I transmit to the Senate for its action thereon, the accession of the United States to the convention concluded at Geneva on the twenty-second August, 1864, between various powers, for the amelioration of the wounded of armies in the field, and to the additional articles thereto, signed at Geneva on the twentieth of October, 1868.

Chester A. Arthur

Washington, March 3, 1882

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of August, 1864, a convention was concluded at Geneva, in Switzerland, between the Grand Duchy of Baden and the Swiss Confederation, the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Kingdom of Spain, the French Empire, the Grand Duchy of Hesse, the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Kingdom of Würtemberg, for the amelioration of the wounded in armies in the field, the tenor of which convention is as follows!

[Here followed the treaty and additional articles.]

Now, therefore, the President of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, hereby declares that the United States accede to the said convention of the twenty-second August, 1864, and also accede to the said convention of October 20, 1868.

Done at Washington this first day of March in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and sixth.

(Seal) Chester A. Arthur

By the President:
Fred’k T. Frelinghuysen
Secretary of State

When the Senate finally took favorable action and President Arthur added his signature, Clara Barton did not wait for mail, but cabled the joyful news to Geneva, and received in reply the following official letter:

Geneva, March 24, 1882

Miss Clara Barton
President of the American Society of the Red Cross

Mademoiselle: At last, on the 17th instant, I received your glorious telegram. I delayed replying to it in order to communicate its contents to my colleagues of the International Committee, so as to be able to thank you in the name of all of us and to tell you of the joy it gives us. You must feel happy, too, and proud to have at last attained your object, thanks to a perseverance and a zeal which surmounted every obstacle.

Please, if opportunity offers, to be our interpreter with President Arthur and present him our warmest congratulations.

I suppose your Government will now notify the Swiss Federal Council of its decision in the matter, and the latter will then inform the other Powers which have signed the Red Cross Treaty.

Only after this formality shall have been complied with can we occupy ourselves with fixing the official international status of your society. We have, however, already considered the circular which we intend to address to all the societies of the Red Cross, and with regard thereto we have found that it will be necessary for us as a preliminary measure to be furnished with a document certifying that your society has attained the second of its objects, i.e., that it has been (officially) recognized by the American Government.

It is important that we be able to certify that your Government is prepared to accept your services in case of war; that it will readily enter into cooperation with you and will encourage the centralization under your direction of all the voluntary aid. We have no doubt that you will readily obtain from the competent authorities an official declaration to that effect, and we believe that this matter will be merely a formality, but we attach the greatest importance to the fact in order to cover our responsibility, especially in view of the pretensions of rival societies which might claim to be acknowledged by us.

It is your society alone and none other that we will patronize, because it inspires us with confidence and we would be placed in a false position if you failed to obtain for it a privileged position by a formal recognizance of the Government.

We hope that you will appreciate the motives of caution which guide us in this matter, and that you may soon enable us to act in the premises.

Wishing to testify to you its gratitude for the services you have already rendered to the Red Cross, the committee decided to offer to you one of the medals which a German engraver caused to be struck off in 1870 in honor of the Red Cross. It will be sent to you in a few days. It is of very small intrinsic value indeed, but such as it is, we have no other means of recompensing the most meritorious of our assistants. Please to regard it only as a simple memorial, and as a proof of the esteem and gratitude we feel for you.

Accept, Mademoiselle, the assurance of my most distinguished sentiments,

G. Moynier
President

On the 26th of July, 1882, the following proclamation was issued by the President:

By the President of the United States of America:

A PROCLAMATION

Whereas, on the 22d day of August, 1864, a convention was concluded at Geneva, in Switzerland, between the Grand Duchy of Baden and the Swiss Confederation, the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Kingdom of Spain, the French Empire, the Grand Duchy of Hesse, the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Kingdom of Würtemberg, for the amelioration of the wounded in armies in the field, the tenor of which convention is hereinafter subjoined;

And whereas the several contracting parties to the said Convention exchanged the ratifications thereof at Geneva on the 22d day of June, 1865;

And whereas the several states hereinafter named have adhered to the said Convention in virtue of Article IX thereof to wit:

Sweden	December 13, 1864.
Greece	January 5-17, 1865.
Great Britain	February 18, 1865.
Mecklenburg-Schwerin	March 9, 1865.
Turkey	July 5, 1865.
Würtemberg	June 2, 1866.
Hesse	June 22, 1866.
Bavaria	June 30, 1866.
Austria	July 21, 1866.
Persia	December 5, 1874.
Salvador	December 30, 1874.
Montenegro	November 17-29, 1875.
Servia	March 24, 1876.
Bolivia	October 16, 1879.
Chili	November 15, 1879.
Argentine Republic	November 25, 1879.
Peru	April 22, 1880.

And whereas the Swiss Confederation, in virtue of the said Article IX of said Convention, has invited the United States of America to accede thereto;

And whereas on the 20th October, 1868, the following additional articles were proposed and signed at Geneva, on behalf of Great Britain, Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, North Germany, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and Würtemberg, the tenor of which additional articles is hereinafter subjoined;

And whereas the President of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, did, on the first day of March, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two, declare that the United States accede to the said Convention of the 22d of August, 1864, and also accede to the said Convention of October 20, 1868;

And whereas, on the ninth day of June, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two, the Federal Council of the Swiss Confederation, in virtue of the final provision of a certain minute of the exchange of the ratifications of the said Convention at Berne, December 22, 1864, did, by a formal declaration, accept the said adhesion of the United States of America, as well in the name of the Swiss Confederation as in that of the other contracting states;

And whereas, furthermore, the Government of the Swiss Confederation has informed the Government of the United States that the exchange of the ratifications of the aforesaid additional articles of the 22d October, 1868, to which the United States of America have, in like manner, adhered as aforesaid, has not yet taken place between the contracting parties, and that these articles cannot be regarded as a treaty in full force and effect:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Chester A. Arthur, President of the United States of America, have caused the said Convention of August 22, 1864, to be made public, to the end that the same and every article and clause thereof may be observed and fulfilled with good faith by the United States and the citizens thereof; reserving, however, the promulgation of the hereinbefore mentioned additional articles of October 20, 1868, notwithstanding the accession of the United States of America thereto, until the exchange of the ratifications thereof between the several contracting states shall have been effected, and the said additional articles shall have acquired full force and effect as an international treaty.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twenty-sixth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and seventh.

[L.S.]

Chester A. Arthur

By the President:
Fred’k T. Frelinghuysen
Secretary of State

United States of America, Department of State, to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting:

I certify that the foregoing is a true copy of the original on file in the Department of State.

In testimony whereof I, John Davis, Acting Secretary of State of the United States, have hereunto subscribed my name and caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 9th day of August, a.d. 1882, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventh.

[L.S.]

John Davis

Thus was the American Association of the Red Cross welcomed into the fellowship of kindred associations in thirty-one other nations, the most prosperous and civilized on the globe, its position assured, and its future course made simple, direct, and untroubled.

The Official Bulletin of the International Committee also hailed the accession of the United States to the treaty in an article of characteristic caution, and of great significance. In that article the distinction was carefully pointed out between that which had already been fully agreed to, and had become invested with all the force and solemnity of international treaties, and the proposed treaty, which had been drawn up and considered with a view to ultimate adoption. This proposed treaty had received the sanction and signature of the International Committee at Geneva without ever having been formally adopted by any nation. The United States had, at the same moment, adopted both, thus becoming the thirty-second nation to adhere to the treaty of August 22, 1864, and the first to adopt that of October 20, 1868.[3] We quote the entire article:

ÉTATS-UNIS

ADHÉSION DES ÉTATS-UNIS A LA CONVENTION DE GENÈVE

Nous référant à l’article inséré dans notre précédent Bulletin, nous sommes heureux de pouvoir annoncer que l’acte d’adhésion, que nous pressentions, a été signé à Washington le 16 mars, à la suite d’un vote par lequel les membres du Sénat l’ont approuvé à l’unanimité. Nos lecteurs seront sans doute surpris, comme nous, qu’après la longue et systématique résistance du gouvernement des États-Unis pour se rallier à la Convention de Genève, il ne se soit pas trouvé dans la législature américaine, lorsque la question a été portée devant elle, un seul représentant de l’opposition. Un revirement d’opinion aussi complet ne peut s’expliquer, que si l’on admet que les chefs de la nation avaient nourri jusqu’à présent des préjugés à l’égard de la Convention de Genève, préjugés qui se sont évanouis le jour où ils ont bien compris ce que l’on attendait d’eux, et reconnu qu’il n’y avait là rien de compremettant pour la politique de leur pays.

Dans leur zèle de néophytes, ils ont même dépassé le but, car ils ont voté leur adhésion, non-seulement à la convention du 22 août 1864, mais encore au projet d’articles additionnels du 20 octobre 1868, qui n’était pas en cause puisqu’il n’a jamais eu force de loi. Nous ne donnons du moins cette nouvelle que sous toute réserve, car nous avons reçu à son sujet des renseignements contradictoires. Si ce vice de forme se trouve dans la pièce officielle qui sera envoyée au Conseil Fédéral Suisse, on peut craindre qu’il ne retarde la conclusion tant désirée de cette importante affaire, mais il ne faudra pas trop le regretter, puisqu’il aura permis de connaître l’opinion de la grande république transatlantique, sur les questions maritimes relatives à la Croix rouge.

[Translation]

United States International Bulletin for April—

No. 50, p. 92

ADHESION OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE CONVENTION OF GENEVA

Referring to the article inserted in our preceding Bulletin, p. 42, we are happy to be able to announce that the act of adhesion which we presented was signed at Washington the 16th of March, in pursuance of a vote by which the members of the Senate gave their approval with unanimity. Our readers will doubtless be surprised, as we are, that after the long and systematic resistance of the Government of the United States against rallying to the Convention of Geneva, there cannot be found in the American legislature a single representative of the opposition. So complete a reversal of opinion cannot be explained, unless we admit that the chief officers of the nation had cherished, up to the present time, prejudices in regard to the Convention of Geneva—prejudices which vanished as soon as they fully comprehended what was expected of them, and recognized that there was nothing compromising in it to the political condition of their country.

With the zeal of new converts, they have even gone beyond the mark, inasmuch as they have voted their adhesion not only to the convention of the 22d of August, 1864, but also to the plan of Additional Articles of the 20th of October, 1868, which was not the matter in question, since that had never had the force of law; we give this news only under every reserve, because we have received contradictory information on the subject. If this defect in form is found in the official document which will be sent to the Swiss Federal Council one could fear it might retard the so much desired conclusion of this important affair, but it need not be too much regretted, since it will enable us to understand the opinion of the great Transatlantic Republic upon maritime questions as they relate to the Red Cross.

We have seen how the final vote of the Senate, approving the treaty, found Clara Barton too weary and too ill to feel at the moment any thrill of joy in her success. The strength of will that held her to the end of these struggles was not born of sustained enthusiasm; it was the tenacity of a courage that had grown very weary, but that never gave up. It was not the joy of success that called her back to interest in life, but the stern call of duty. While the Senate was considering the treaty, the Mississippi River was rising higher and higher. That was her call back to life and labor.

The work done in Michigan had served widely to advertise the Red Cross, and it made way for a wider appeal. The first funds distributed by it were collected locally, in the two cities nearest to the summer home of Miss Barton.

The disastrous Mississippi flood occurred in the spring of 1882. Clara Barton at once called together her advisers and laid her plans for relief. It seemed to them wise that public appeal should be delayed until the Senate, then considering the treaty, should have taken favorable action; lest precipitate effort for temporary relief might prejudice the success of the greater end that now was almost in sight. But the preparations for relief were made, even though the public appeal was, for good reason, a little delayed. Indeed, before there was any official recognition, the Red Cross had its agents on the ground, effecting local organizations that became permanent. Of this Clara Barton wrote:

Again our infant organization sent its field agent, Dr. Hubbell, to the scene of disaster, where millions of acres of the richest valley, cotton, and sugar lands of America, and thousands upon thousands of homes were under the waters of the mightiest of rivers—where the swift rising floods overtook alike man and beast in their flight of terror, sweeping them ruthlessly to the gulf beyond, or leaving them clinging in famishing despair to some trembling roof or swaying tree-top till relief could reach and rescue them.

The National Association, with no general fund, sent of its personal resources what it was able to do, and so acceptable did these prove and so convincing were the beneficences of the work that the cities of Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans desired to be permitted to form associate societies and work under the National Association. This was permitted, and those societies have remained until the present time, New Orleans organizing for the entire State of Louisiana. The city of Rochester, proud and grateful of its success in the disaster a few months before, again came to the front and again rendered excellent service.

A few days were required to complete the official recognition. Then the American Red Cross issued its first national appeal to the American people, a copy of which appeal is still preserved:

Appeal to the American People

The President having signed the Treaty of the Geneva Conference, and the Senate having, on the 16th instant, ratified the President’s action, the American Association of the Red Cross, organized under provisions of said treaty, purposes to send its agents at once among the sufferers by the recent floods, with a view to the ameliorating of their condition so far as can be done by human aid and the means at hand will permit.

Contributions are urgently solicited. Remittances in money may be made to Hon. Charles J. Folger, Secretary of the Treasury, chairman of the board of trustees, or to his associates, Hon. Robert T. Lincoln, Secretary of War, and Hon. George B. Loring, Commissioner of Agriculture. Contributions of wearing apparel, bedding, and provisions should be addressed to “The Red Cross Agent,” at Memphis, Tenn., Vicksburg, Miss., and Helena, Ark.

Clara Barton
J. C. Bancroft Davis
Frederick Douglass
Alex. Y. P. Garnett
Mrs. Omar D. Conger
A. S. Solomons
Mrs. S. A. Martha Canfield
R. D. Mussey
Committee

Washington, D.C., March 23, 1882

The response to this appeal was generous. The Red Cross immediately effected its permanent organization; and during the next twenty years it was seldom without a task of some kind.