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

by William E. Barton

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.