she ventured.
Timid as a fawn, “the sweet voiced retiring little woman” emerged from Youth’s environs. She had dreams romantic, but her romance was wrecked. She had visions of a mission, but for her no mission materialized. Things came to her “as if by a world controlling power.” In whatever her field of service, she stumbled over opportunities to be brave and good;—there seems to have been for her a decree of the Fates against “how circumscribed is woman’s destiny.”
Having a wide vision, she laid the foundation for the superstructure. She was a student of the best English writers; of the classics that gave prestige to Aspasia, the mentor of Socrates and Pericles. She studied sanitary methods at Jackson Sanitorium, and treatment of diseases with Doctor Carpenter at London and with her co-worker, Doctor Hubbell. In statesmanship she learned at the feet of Webster, Calhoun, Sumner and Lincoln. In military tactics and military strategy, she studied Napoleon at Ajaccio, his birth-place, and at Paris made by him “Paris Beautiful,” whence the leader of men promulgated the Napoleon Code of Laws;—“Paris Beautiful” and the Code, two services which of themselves entitle Napoleon to lasting fame.
Of great versatility, she had varied accomplishments. She conversed in French, and was a close student of Holy Writ. In crayon and painting, she produced work highly commended by artists. In letter writing, as evinced by letters which “excelled all others in literary merit that come to the White House,” and by tens of thousands of other letters, she must ever rank in a class with Cornelia, the Roman matron; and Abigail Adams, the illustrious American. In poetry, as tokened in “Marmora,” “A Christmas Carol,” “The Women Who Went to the Field,” and in many other published and unpublished poems, she at times received real inspiration from some gentle muse. In pedagogy, as through Pestalozzi in Switzerland so through Clara Barton in New Jersey, “pauper schools” were transmuted into public schools.
In oratory, through her six war lectures and many other public addresses, she established her reputation as a public speaker. Speaking from the same platform, receiving a like fee and being as great a “drawing card” as John B. Gough, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and Henry Ward Beecher, she must rank for all time as one of the greatest orators of a half century ago. Mr. W. J. Kehoe, having reported thousands of speeches and for twenty-five years official reporter of Congress, says: “Clara Barton evinced qualities of diction and oratory hardly excelled by any other American.”
Separate and distinct from that of man is the inner machinery of woman’s mind; distinctive also are the outward manifestations. Whether as the ruler of a nation or the ruler of a cottage, a woman’s mind rules in its own inimitable way. In the realm of heart, woman is the queen and in that realm there can rule no king. Of our many great American heroes and statesmen, only one has been honored in having had accorded to him the heart of woman—all Americans worship at his shrine. Of a woman’s mind, the inner workings and outward manifestations, no man has made portrayal, none save perchance the Bard of Avon through his fifty heroines. Having “the brain of a statesman, the command of a general and the heart and hand of a woman” no man, as indicated by Lincoln, could have become world-adored through services such as were rendered by Clara Barton.
Equipped a leader among women, she became no Zenobia with thirst for fame; no Cleopatra, with Cæsars and Anthonys at her beck and call; no Catherine the Great, with political and military support; no Joan of Arc, with a frenzied and despairing soldiery at her heels; no Elizabeth nor Victoria, with an Empire to acclaim her reign; Clara Barton became the self-termed “lonesomest-lone-woman-in-the-world”;—a woman “majestic in simplicity,” who went about merely doing good and, in enduring influence for good, surpassed them all.
She came not from a line of ancestors reliant mainly on social prestige. Her inheritance from environments was a spirit intensely practical—the puritan spirit.
HENRY WILSON
To President Lincoln: Clara Barton is worthy of entire confidence.—Henry Wilson. U. S. Senate, 1855–1873; Chairman Committee on Military Affairs, Civil War; Vice-President, 1873–1875.
Senator Henry Wilson was my always good friend.—Clara Barton.
See page [48].