(b) that the property and funds of the Red Cross were not at all times distributed upon the order of the treasurer of the society, as alleged to be required by the by-laws of the society; and
(c) that a certain tract of land in Lawrence County, Indiana, had been donated to the society by one Joseph Gardner; that the society was reincorporated after such donation, and such donation was never reported to the new corporation.
The reply to these charges, in brief, was that, in the main, proper books of account had been kept, but, in so far as accurate books of account had not been kept, it was due to the impossibility of keeping them while active work was in progress on the field of disaster, and, in so far as the by-laws of the society had not been complied with in the making of disbursements through the treasurer, it was impossible to do so during the stress of active relief work in the field; that so far as the Gardner donation of Indiana land was concerned, no Red Cross money had ever been invested in it; that the title to the real estate was always in the Red Cross and in the then existing corporate entity of the Red Cross, but that the land had not been found to be suited to the work of the Red Cross and the title thereto had been allowed to lapse because of the accumulation of taxes and charges for maintenance which were found to be in excess of the utility of the land to the Red Cross.[4]
The committee of investigation held three meetings, on April 12, April 26, and May 2, 1904. Clara Barton did not attend in person, but was represented by counsel. It never became necessary for her to present her defense. At the close of the third meeting the chairman of the committee adjourned the hearing without day and the investigation came to an end. The committee never presented a report; there was no occasion to do so. The proceedings of the committee are obtainable by any one who cares to read them, and they indicate with sufficient clearness the reasons which presumably influenced the committee in terminating the hearing after one side had been presented. There was no reason why the committee needed to hear anything in defense of Clara Barton.
The investigation having ended, Clara Barton presented her resignation June 16, 1904. The resignation was accepted. The American Red Cross came under its new form of organization with the President of the United States as nominal President of the Red Cross. The committee of the opposition had proposed that Clara Barton be made honorary president for life with a salary to continue as long as she lived. She did not accept either the office or the money. She retired from the Red Cross, leaving it to the management of those who with her resignation came into its control. Her own relation with the organization ceased entirely.
Clara Barton was normally responsive to praise and abnormally sensitive to criticism. In all the years of her public life she never recovered from that supersensitiveness which had characterized her childhood. Fulsome and excessive praise disgusted her, but she enjoyed discriminating appreciation. Straightforward opposition she could meet and bear, but she shrank from criticism at the hands of those who had been her friends, and such criticism hurt her far more than any one could imagine who beheld her self-possession and outward calm. She seemed to the world to take opposition somewhat lightly, but she bled within her armor from wounds which the world never suspected.
She retired from the Red Cross broken-hearted. Her common sense ought to have saved her from nine tenths of the suffering which she endured in that unhappy experience. She felt that she had been denationalized, repudiated by her own country, expatriated. She thought for a time that she could not continue to live in the United States. She turned her eyes toward Mexico, and thought of going there partly to escape from the sorrows which confronted her, and which she painfully exaggerated, and partly with the thought that she might there establish something corresponding to the American Red Cross. She had a friend in California, Mr. Charles S. Young, who knew much about Mexico. On January 13, 1904, after the appointment of the congressional committee and before any of its hearings, she wrote the following letter which came as near to being hysterical as anything that Clara Barton ever wrote:
You will never know how many times I have thought of you, in this last hard and dreadful year to me. I cannot tell you, I must not, and yet I must. So much of the time, under all the persecution, it has seemed to me I could not remain in this country, and have sought the range of the world for some place among strangers, and out of the way of people and mails, and longed for some one to point out a quiet place in some other land; my thoughts have fled to you, who could, at least, tell me a road to take outside of America, and who would ask the authorities of Mexico if a woman who could not live in her own country might find a home or a resting-place in theirs.
This will all sound very strange to you—you will wonder if I am “out of my mind.” Let me answer—no. And if you had only a glimpse of what is put upon me to endure, you would not wonder, and in the goodness of your heart would hold open the gate to show me a mile track to some little mountain nook, where I might escape and wait in peace. Don’t think this is common talk with me. I have never said it to others; and yet I think they who know me best mistrust that I cannot bear everything, and will try in some way to relieve myself.
To think of sitting here through an “investigation” by the country I have tried to serve—“in the interest of harmony” they say, when I have never spoken a discordant word in my life, meaningly, but have worked on in silence under the fire of the entire press of the United States for twelve months,—forgiven all, offered friendship,—and still am to be “investigated” for “inharmony,” “unbusinesslike methods,” and “too many years”—all of these I cannot help. I am still unanimously bidden to work on for “life,” bear the burden of an organization—meet its costs myself—and am now threatened with the expense of the “investigation.”