Battling for Ratification

Andersonville prison camp in Georgia

Confederate dead at Antietam

Scanty as her supplies were, Barton’s aid was timely and competent. An army surgeon, Dr. James I. Dunn, wrote to his wife: “At a time when we were entirely out of dressings of every kind, she supplied us with everything, and while the shells were bursting in every direction ... she staid [sic] dealing out shirts ... and preparing soup and seeing it prepared in all the hospitals.... I thought that night if heaven ever sent out a homely angel, she must be one, her assistance was so timely.”

Dunn’s letter was widely published during the Civil War, and he was embarrassed that his private portrayal of Barton as a “homely angel” ever saw print. She, too, seems to have been embarrassed, for she crossed the word out on the newspaper clippings she kept and substituted the word “holy” for “homely.” Although the original letter shows that Dunn did indeed mean “homely,” Barton’s biographers have taken their cue from her and given her the title “the holy angel.”

These early battles taught Clara Barton how poorly prepared the Union army was for the immense slaughter taking place and how immediate battlefield aid meant much more than a battalion of nurses back in Washington.

In quick succession the battles of Fairfax Court House and Chantilly followed second Bull Run. A surgeon recalled that at Chantilly “we had nothing but our instruments—not even a bottle of wine. When the [railroad] cars whistled up to the station, the first person on the platform was Miss Barton again to supply us with ... every article that could be thought of. She staid [sic] there till the last wounded soldier was placed on the cars.” She worked for five days in the pouring rain with only two hours of sleep. As at all battles, she took time to jot down the names of many wounded men, so that their families could be informed.

Barely two weeks later, on September 14, she again went to the field, this time with advance information about a battle to be fought near Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). She arrived too late but rushed on to Antietam, which she reached at the height of battle on September 17. Once again, she cooked gruel, braved enemy fire to feed the wounded, and provided surgeons with precious medical supplies. She had a narrow escape from death when a bullet passed under her arm, through the sleeve of her dress, and killed the wounded soldier cradled in her arms.

In all this fury, Barton was unflappable. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, “a shell destroyed the door of the room in which she was attending to wounded men,” recalled co-worker Rev. C.M. Welles. “She did not flinch, but continued her duties as usual.” And she was working at the Lacy House, where hundreds of men were crowded into 12 rooms, when a courier rushed up the steps and placed a crumpled, bloody slip of paper in her hands. It was a request from a surgeon asking her to cross the Rappahanock River to Fredericksburg where she was urgently needed. As always, hospital space was inadequate, and dying men, lying in the December chill, were freezing to theground. With shells and bullets whistling around her, Barton bravely crossed the swaying pontoon bridge. As she reached the end of the bridge an officer stepped to her side to help her down. “While our hands were raised, a piece of an exploding shell hissed through between us, just below our arms, carrying away a portion of both the skirts of his coat and my dress.” She made her way into Fredericksburg without further mishap. She was lucky; the gallant officer who helped her on the bridge was brought to her a half hour later—dead.

Bravery and timeliness were conspicuous elements of Barton’s Civil War service. But of equal importance was her compassion for the individual soldier. And she treated the wounded of both sides alike. Her relief work was also notable for its resourcefulness. She built fires, extracted bullets with a pocket knife, made gallons of applesauce, baked pies “with crinkly edges,” drove teams, and performed last rites. When all other food gave out she concocted a mixture of wine, whiskey, sugar, and army biscuit crumbs. “Not very inviting,” she admitted, “but always acceptable.” When she lacked serving implements, she emptied jars of fruit and jelly and used them. When tired she propped herself against a tent pole or slept sitting up in a wagon. The common soldier remembered her sympathy and tenderness, the officer her calmness and alert activity under fire.

As historian R.H. Bremer notes, Barton viewed her role in the war as something of a family matter. If she was a “ministering angel,” she was also “everybody’s old-maid aunt”—fussing over “my boys,” worrying over clothes and food, and treating the men as fond nephews. Much of her success with quartermasters, officers, and men was due to this attitude, which eclipsed suspicion of her as a woman and radiated the sentimentality of the time.

She pursued her self-appointed task with remarkable tenacity. Her contribution was unique, for she worked directly on the battlefield, not behind the lines in a hospital. She worked primarily alone—and liked it that way. Although she respected such organizations as the Sanitary Commission, she felt that by working independently she could comfortably assist where she saw need. She wanted to be her own boss and be appreciated for her individual efforts. She did not seek glory, but she needed praise and did not wish to have it bestowed on the name of an impersonal group or commission.

There is no question that Clara Barton hugely enjoyed acclaim. She liked being in the inner elite of wartime politics, for it gave her the chance to shine as a personality, to be revered as an “Angel of the Battlefield.” In later life she enjoyed trips to Europe that amounted to triumphal tours.

Barton’s relief work benefitted her in another way. Throughout her life she was self-conscious and introspective, preoccupied with small personal incidents which she magnified out of proportion to their importance. She once described herself as “like other people ... only sometimes a ‘little more so,’” and the description is apt. She was inwardly pessimistic, and highly sensitive to criticism. She confided to her diary that she felt “pursued by a shadow” and spent years with “scarcely one cheerful day.” Periodically she became so depressed that she could not “see much these days worth living for; cannot but think it will be a quiet resting place when all these cares and vexations and anxieties are over, and I no longer give or take offense. I ... have grown weary of life at an age when other people are enjoying it most.”

Continues onpage 30

Dorothea Dix (1802-87) started teaching Sunday School at the East Cambridge House of Corrections in Massachusetts in 1841. The appalling conditions she observed there spurred her to attempt to reform prisons and mental institutions. This work preoccupied her the rest of her life. She died in Trenton, New Jersey.

Clara Barton was not the only civilian who ministered to the wounded during the Civil War. The nature of this conflict was so personal and so immediate that many hundreds of volunteers gave enormously of their time in hospitals and on the field. In the North, Dorothea Dix interrupted her pre-war work with the insane to become superintendent of Female Nurses; Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Dana Gage, and “Mother” Mary Ann Bickerdyke are a few of the other famous names connected with such service. Of especial importance were the Christian and Sanitary Commissions, organizations which worked with the government in camp and on the battlefield to improve the lot of the Union soldier. In the Confederacy, stringent financial conditions and widely scattered population prevented relief efforts from being as organized as those of the North. But charity had a deep-rooted meaning for the Southern cause, and self-denial became a matter of pride. “We had no Sanitary Commission in the South,” wrote one Confederate veteran, “we were too poor.... With us each house was a hospital.”The United States Sanitary Commission was established in April 1861. It was originally designed for inquiry into the health of the troops and as an advisory board to the government on improvement of sanitary conditions in the army. In the early months of the war, the Sanitary Commission attempted to methodize the fragmented benevolent efforts of the Union. It fought favoritism to particular regiments with equitable distribution of supplies, administered from a network of regional and local auxiliaries. By 1863, however, the commission was, of necessity, drawn to the battlefield, where it established hospital and transport ships, supply stations, and gave direct aid to the wounded. Several million dollars were raised by the commission through “Sanitary Fairs,” large fund-raising bazaars. At one point the Sanitary Commission had more than 500 agents working in the field. By its impartiality and organization, the Sanitary Commission was the forerunner of the Red Cross in concept, if not in actuality.Another organization, drawn along similar lines, was the United States Christian Commission. Established by a group of New York churches in 1862, its object was to “give relief and sympathy and then the Gospel.” Volunteers in the Christian Commission were called “Ambassadors of Jesus;” they were chosen largely from the ranks of clergymen and YMCA members but many women were among its workers. The Christian Commission did give battlefield relief, and sought to supply reading material, clothing, and medicine.

The United States Sanitary Commission was established in April 1861. It was originally designed for inquiry into the health of the troops and as an advisory board to the government on improvement of sanitary conditions in the army. In the early months of the war, the Sanitary Commission attempted to methodize the fragmented benevolent efforts of the Union. It fought favoritism to particular regiments with equitable distribution of supplies, administered from a network of regional and local auxiliaries. By 1863, however, the commission was, of necessity, drawn to the battlefield, where it established hospital and transport ships, supply stations, and gave direct aid to the wounded. Several million dollars were raised by the commission through “Sanitary Fairs,” large fund-raising bazaars. At one point the Sanitary Commission had more than 500 agents working in the field. By its impartiality and organization, the Sanitary Commission was the forerunner of the Red Cross in concept, if not in actuality.

Another organization, drawn along similar lines, was the United States Christian Commission. Established by a group of New York churches in 1862, its object was to “give relief and sympathy and then the Gospel.” Volunteers in the Christian Commission were called “Ambassadors of Jesus;” they were chosen largely from the ranks of clergymen and YMCA members but many women were among its workers. The Christian Commission did give battlefield relief, and sought to supply reading material, clothing, and medicine.

“They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,The nurses, consolers and saviors of men."The Women Who Went to the Field

“They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,

The nurses, consolers and saviors of men."

The Women Who Went to the Field

Field hospital.

Clara Barton was familiar with these organizations, and, especially in the latter part of the war, often worked alongside them. But though she wrote publicly that their labor was always in “perfect accord, mutual respect and friendliness,” she chose to work alone rather than align herself too closely with the commissions. Barton’s natural leadership and difficulty in working with others prompted her to remain independent, where she would not be “compromised by them in the least.” Furthermore, she secretly scorned the commissions’ work, which she thought inexperienced and impractical: “an old fudge” she called the Sanitary Commission in her journal.Barton also chose not to work with Dorothea Dix’s “Department of Female Nurses.” A compulsive humanitarian worker, Dix had volunteered her services to the War Department at the opening of hostilities. Her offer was accepted and Dix began the impossible task of collecting supplies, selecting nurses, and supervising hospitals for the Union army. Dix was a perfectionist and her dogmatic and strident opinions won her few friends. But her sharp altercations with physicians and officers resulted more from frustration because she could not relieve the massive misery, than from an over-bearing personality. Feeling that she had failed to achieve her mission, Dix wrote at war’s end: “This is not the work I would have my life judged by.”The use of female nurses was an innovation during the Civil War and Dix was anxious for the women under her to be taken seriously. Fearful that nursing would become a sport among adventurous young women, she laid down stringent and inflexible rules for nurses. These rules would have greatly hampered Clara Barton’s independent spirit and this is one reason she chose not to join Dix’s force.In addition to the official organizations there were numerous “unsung heroes” during the Civil War. Most notable were the religious orders such as the Sisters of Charity who calmly defied the army’s restrictions and worked both at the front and in hospitals. Despite the fact that such diverse groups inevitably caused conflicts and jealousies, the Civil War provided a field large enough for all of the humanitarian organizations which labored in it.

Barton also chose not to work with Dorothea Dix’s “Department of Female Nurses.” A compulsive humanitarian worker, Dix had volunteered her services to the War Department at the opening of hostilities. Her offer was accepted and Dix began the impossible task of collecting supplies, selecting nurses, and supervising hospitals for the Union army. Dix was a perfectionist and her dogmatic and strident opinions won her few friends. But her sharp altercations with physicians and officers resulted more from frustration because she could not relieve the massive misery, than from an over-bearing personality. Feeling that she had failed to achieve her mission, Dix wrote at war’s end: “This is not the work I would have my life judged by.”

The use of female nurses was an innovation during the Civil War and Dix was anxious for the women under her to be taken seriously. Fearful that nursing would become a sport among adventurous young women, she laid down stringent and inflexible rules for nurses. These rules would have greatly hampered Clara Barton’s independent spirit and this is one reason she chose not to join Dix’s force.

In addition to the official organizations there were numerous “unsung heroes” during the Civil War. Most notable were the religious orders such as the Sisters of Charity who calmly defied the army’s restrictions and worked both at the front and in hospitals. Despite the fact that such diverse groups inevitably caused conflicts and jealousies, the Civil War provided a field large enough for all of the humanitarian organizations which labored in it.

Mary Ann Bickerdyke

Walt Whitman

While aiding others, Barton, for a time, forgot herself. Her “work and words,” she insisted, were solely bound up in “the individual soldier—what he does, sees, feels, or thinks in ... long dread hours of leaden rain and iron hail.” As she gained self-confidence and acclaim, she shed her morbid introspection. Once when she was asked if her work had been interesting, she gave a revealing reply: “When you stand day and night in the presence of hardship and physical suffering, you do not stop to think about the interest. There is no time for that. Ease pain, soothe sorrow, lessen suffering—this is your only thought day and night. Everything, everything else is lost sight of—yourself and the world.”

In April 1863, Barton transferred her base from Washington to Hilton Head Island off the coast of South Carolina. She had been advised that a major siege of Charleston would be attempted and believed she could be most useful there. She also hoped to be closer to her brothers: Stephen lived behind Confederate lines in North Carolina, and David had been sent by the army to Hilton Head in the early days of 1863.

During the eight-month siege of Charleston, she worked on the battlefields of Morris Island and Fort Wagner and helped nurse soldiers dying of malaria and other tropical fevers. Charleston proved to be a less active spot than anticipated, however, and this fact, coupled with a growing rift between Barton and hospital authorities, led her to leave the area in January 1864. She returned to Washington, where she continued to gather supplies as she awaited her next chance for service.

Her chance came in May 1864, when “the terrible slaughter of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania turned all pitying hearts once more to Fredericksburg.” Here she witnessed some of the most frightening scenes she ever encountered. Fifty thousand men were killed or wounded in the Wilderness Campaign. “I saw many things that I did not wish to see and I pray God I may never see again,” she told a friend. Rain turned the red clay soil of Virginia to deep mud, and hundreds of army wagons, crowded full of wounded and suffering men, were stuck in a tremendous traffic jam. “No hub of a wheel was in sight and you saw nothing of any animal below its knees.”

She immediately set about feeding the men in the stalled wagons, but another, more appalling situation arose. Some “heartless, unfaithful officers” decided that it was, in fact, a hardship on the refined citizens of Fredericksburg to be compelled to open their homes as hospitals for “these dirty, lousy, common soldiers.” Always a champion of the “army blue” against the “gold braid,” she hurried to Washington to advise her friend Henry Wilson of the predicament. Wilson, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, swiftly warned the War Department. One day later the homes of Fredericksburg were opened to Union soldiers. She returned to thebattlefield with additional supplies and continued to help the wounded. “When I rose, I wrung the blood from the bottom of my clothing before I could step, for the weight about my feet.”

After the Wilderness Campaign she served as a supervisor of nurses for the Army of the James, under Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, until January 1865. She organized hospitals and nurses and administered day-to-day activities in the invalid camps that received the wounded from Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and other battles near Richmond. Many of these soldiers remembered her thoughtfulness. If a wounded man requested codfish cakes “in the old home way,” he most likely got them; a young soldier, wasted to a skeleton, was tenderly cared for until his relatives arrived to take him home; requests to have letters written were never too much trouble.

Throughout the Civil War Benjamin Butler (1818-93) was a controversial figure as he invariably was at odds with the national administration on the treatment of the civilian population and the black slaves. Leaving the Army, he went into politics and served in the U.S. Congress and one term as governor of Massachusetts. It was as governor that he appointed Clara Barton superintendent of the Women’s Reformatory at Sherborn.

At the end of the Civil War an exhausted Clara Barton felt certain of one thing: “I have labored up to the full measure of my strength.” And she labored without pay and often used her own funds to buy supplies. In the field she shared the conditions of the common soldier: “I have always refused a tent unless the army had tents also, and I have never eaten a mouthful ... until the sick of the army were abundantly supplied.” Her pragmatic judgment and ability to work under the most dangerous and awkward of conditions earned her the respect of surgeons and generals who ordinarily considered they had “men enough to act as nurses” and did not want women around to “skeddadle and create a panic.” General Butler described her as having “executive ability and kindheartedness,with an honest love of the work of reformation and care of her living fellow creatures.”

Barton’s perceptive and sympathetic nature led her to foresee innumerable social problems after the Civil War. A champion of the underdog, she was concerned with the precarious situation of the newly freed slaves. What she saw on her travels to the South was alarming: uneducated, dependent blacks were being duped by their former masters, and freedom was, in many cases, a burden, not a blessing. Few blacks knew of the laws passed for their benefit and many did not understand that they must continue to work. She observed that the former “owners were disposed to cheat [a] great many.” Wherever she went, Barton tried to explain the law and the meaning of freedom to the blacks, many of whom walked great distances to ask her advice.

Frederick Douglass (1817?-95) was born in Talbot County, Maryland, the son of a white man and a slave woman. He was an eloquent spokesman for American blacks before and after the Civil War and spent his life fighting for equality. He was appointed U.S. minister to Haiti in 1889.

Barton, however, did more than advise. She consulted with Senator Wilson about the best possible personnel for the Freedman’s Bureau and lobbied Congress for a bill allowing blacks to use surplus army goods. She attended meetings of the Freedman’s Aid Society and sent reports on blacks’ conditions to the Freedman’s Bureau. She also worked for the extension of suffrage through “Universal Franchise” meetings and the American Equal Rights Association; she spoke at their rallies and formed lifelong attachments with such prominent leaders as Frederick Douglass and Anna Dickenson. During October of 1868, she began to formulate a plan for helping “the colored sufferers.” The plan, modelled on the work of Josephine Griffing, apparently involved the use of abandonedbarracks and former hospitals near Washington for “Industrial Houses.” Here Freedmen could learn a trade and be “provided with the means of self-support and so command the respect of [their] former masters.” She discussed her ideas with several people, but unfortunately, the project was dropped because of her failing health.

Barton remained a staunch ally of blacks during her lifetime. Blacks employed by her received wages consistent with those of whites and generally received additional training and education. When few other charitable groups were willing to aid blacks who were the victims of natural disasters, such as the storm that hit the Sea Islands of South Carolina in 1893, Barton’s Red Cross never hesitated. And those who denied the bravery or competence of black troops in the Civil or Spanish-American Wars found her an outspoken opponent. Made honorary president of a society honoring soldiers of the Spanish-American War, she resigned when she found that it was open only to whites.

At the same time she was promoting the enfranchisement of freedmen, she embarked on a project aimed at diminishing another major post-war problem: the whereabouts of thousands of missing soldiers. She appreciated the difficulty of keeping accurate records in the confusion of battle and understood that it was often nearly impossible to recognize the dead, or identify individual graves among the hastily dug common trenches. Her wartime notebooks and diaries are filled with names of missing and wounded soldiers and lists of those who died in her arms with perhaps no one else to know their fate. With official permission from President Lincoln, she devised a plan to identify missing soldiers by publishing in newspapers monthly rolls of men whose families or friends had inquired. Any person with information could write to her and she would forward it to those concerned.

As she went about her work she learned that not everyone was willing to be found. Soldiers who were attached to Southern sweethearts, who had deserted, or who simply wished to start a new life, preferred to remain missing. One young man wanted to know what he had done to have his name “blazoned all over the country” in newspapers. “What you have done ... I certainlydo notknow,” she replied. “It seems to have been the misfortune of your family to think more of you than you did of them, and probably more than you deserve from the manner in which you treat them.... I shall inform them of your existence lest you should not ‘see fit’ to do so yourself.”

In all, Barton’s “Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army” worked for four years to bring information to more than 22,000 families. The most help she received came from a young man named Dorence Atwater, a former Andersonville prisoner. He fortuitously had copied the names of more than 13,000 men who had died during his confinement. With his aid, she identified all but 400 of the Andersonville graves and caused the camp to be made a National Cemetery.

Atwater’s help was invaluable, and he became a close personal friend. She was highly indignant when theFederal Government arrested Atwater on charges that his death list was government property. Federal officials claimed that he had “stolen” back the list after turning it over to the War Department. The case appears to have been actually based on confusion and a stubborn refusal of both sides to back down, but Clara Barton was incensed. She fought for Atwater’s release with every influential person she knew; she advised and prompted his statements from prison and carried on a monumental publicity campaign to elicit public sympathy. Largely because of her efforts, he was freed.

Atwater’s defense and her work with the missing men further developed her publicity efforts, which she had used so effectively in the Civil War. As time went on, her relief work relied more and more on public support. “We enter a field of distress,” she wrote, “study conditions, learn its needs, and state these facts calmly, and truthfully to the people of the entire country through all its channels of information and leave them free to use their own judgments in regard to the assistance they will render.” Still, she knew how to publicize her causes dramatically. In 1886, when a tornado struck Mount Vernon, Illinois, she wrote: “the pitiless snow is falling on the heads of 3,000 people who are without homes, without food, or clothing.” The response was immediate.

Oral publicity also proved helpful during her attempt to identify missing men. In 1866, she began a successful lecture tour that publicized both her cause and her name. She gave lectures throughout the North and West and was featured on tours with such prominent speakers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, and Mark Twain. Her talks centered on “Work and Incidents of Army Life.” The flyer portrayed her lectures as “exquisitely touching and deeply interesting, frequently moving her audience to tears.” As always, she enjoyed the notoriety and in her diary wrote a flattering description of herself at the lecturn: “easy and graceful, neith[er] tall nor short, neith[er] large nor small ... head large and finely shaped with a profusion of jet-black hair ... with no manner of ornament save its own glossy beauty.... She [is]welldressed.... Her voice ... at first low and sweet but falling upon the ear with a clearness of tone and distinctness of utterance at once surprising and entrancing.”

Although she enjoyed being in the limelight, many of her old insecurities returned. “All speech-making terrifies me,” she said, “first I have no taste for it, lastly I hate it.” In 1868, while delivering a lecture in Boston, she suffered what was apparently a nervous breakdown and was ordered by her doctors to recuperate in Europe.

The periodic nervous disorders she suffered appear to have been directly related to her sense of usefulness. When she was not working, her diary entries often begin “Have been sad all day,” or “This was one of the most down-spirited days that ever comes to me.” She once remarked that nothing made her so sick of life as to feel she was wasting it. As long as she was needed, admired, demanded, she could perform near miracles of self-denial and courageous action. When the crisis ebbed, she became despondent and sick, requiring attention of a different sort. As asingle woman, often removed from her family, she had no other way to attract notice than to excel as an individual. When such an opportunity faded, or when she found herself an object of criticism, she was, in several senses, prostrated. When her interest was again aroused by the chance of giving service, her health and spirits rebounded.

Jean-Henri Dunant

Clara Barton arrived in Great Britain in late August 1869 with no definite plans. Her doctors had ordered rest and a change of scene. She toured London, visited Paris, then proceeded to Geneva. She thought she might stay in Switzerland, but the depressing fall weather changed her mind; she moved to Corsica, seeking sun and wishing to visit the haunts of her longtime hero, Napoleon I.

She was ill, edgy, and demanding. Corsica, although beautiful, did not suit her and by March she was back in Geneva. Here, by chance, she was introduced to Dr. Louis Appia, a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross. This organization was the result of the Geneva Convention of 1864, which produced a treaty dealing with the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians under wartime conditions. The convention was inspired by a book entitledUn Souvenir de Solferino(A Memory of Solferino), in which author Jean-Henri Dunant described the horrors of the Battle of Solferino. At the time of her meeting with Appia, she had not heard of the Geneva Convention nor of Dunant. When she finally read Dunant’s work, she must have identified strongly with it, for he expressed perfectly the concern for theindividual which had prompted Barton’s Civil War aid: “A son idolized by his parents, brought up and cherished for years by a loving mother who trembled with alarm over his slightest ailment; a brilliant officer beloved by his family, with wife and children at home; a young soldier who had left sweetheart or mother, sisters or old father to go to war; all lie stretched in the mud and dust, drenched in their own blood.”

At their first meeting, Appia asked Barton why the United States had not signed the Treaty of Geneva. A U.S. delegate, Charles Bowles, had been at the Geneva Convention, and Dr. Henry Bellows, president of the Sanitary Commission, had urged the government to accede to the treaty. But the United States remained the only major nation that had not accepted the international pact. Barton said a key factor was probably the American public’s almost total ignorance about the treaty, and she asked Appia to provide her with further information about the International Red Cross.

Barton soon found reason, in her words, “to respect the cause and appreciate the work of the Geneva Convention.” On July 19, 1870, France declared war on Prussia. She was restless and excited by hearing guns at practice and wrote to Appia, offering her services to the Red Cross. Before he could reply, however, she made her way to Basel, Switzerland, where she worked with Red Cross volunteers making bandages. This tame work exasperated her. “It is not like me, nor like my past to be sitting quietly where I can just watch the sky reddening with the fires of a bombarded city and ... have [nothing] to do with it.” Despite her frustration, Barton’s work in Basel gave her great respect for the garnering power of the Red Cross. Its warehouses were stocked with supplies of all kinds, and trained nurses and clerks wearing Red Cross armbands stood ready to assist. “I ... saw the work of these Red Cross societies in the field, accomplishing in four months under this systematic organization what we failed to accomplish in four years without it—no mistakes, no needless suffering, no starving, no lack of care, no waste, no confusion, but order, plenty, cleanliness, and comfort wherever that little flag made its way, a whole continent marshalled under the banner of the Red Cross—as I saw all this, and joined and worked in it, you will not wonder that I said to myself, ‘If I live to return to my country, I will try to make my people understand the Red Cross and that treaty.’”

The opportunity to be useful and to forget petty irritants restored her health. “I am so glad to be able to work once more,” she told her cousin, Elvira Stone, “Ihaveworked ... all year, and grown stronger and better.” She then made her way toward the battlefields of France accompanied by Antoinette Margot, a young Swiss woman. On their way toward Mulhouse, where several battles had been reported, they met hundreds of refugees who pleaded with them to turn back. But when they encountered trouble from German troops, Barton brought out a sewing kit and speedily tacked a cross of red ribbon onto the sleeve of her dress. Thus began her first service under the Red Cross badge, which she would wear long and proudly.

Napoleon III, Emperor of France

Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany

Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany

Barton was disappointed to learn that she was not needed at the front, but she found her niche elsewhere. As she traveled through France, she wrote to newspaper editor Horace Greeley that she had seen deserted fields, “crops spoiled ... by both friend and foe. Her producing population stands under arms or wasting in prisons—her hungry cattle slain for food or rotting of disease—her homes deserted or smouldering in ashes.” When Louise, grand duchess of Baden and a Red Cross patron, asked her to help establish hospitals and distribute clothing to destitute civilians, she undertook the work with zeal.

Barton’s accomplishments during the Franco-Prussian War lay mainly in aid to civilians. Her most notable work was in Strasbourg, where she used her powers of organization and publicity to establish a sewing center to clothe the city’s destitute population. In a letter to a generous English philanthropist in May 1871, she wrote: “Thousands who are well to-day will rot with smallpox and be devoured by body-lice before the end of August. Against ... these two scourges there is, I believe, no check but the destruction of all infected garments; hence the imperative necessity for something to take their place. Excuse, sir, I pray you, the plain ugly terms which I have employed to express myself; the facts are plain and ugly.”

Continues onpage 40

On June 24, 1859, forces commanded by French Emperor Napoleon III and Austria’s Emperor Franz Josef, met on the battlefield of Solferino, in Northern Italy. More than 40,000 men were killed or wounded in the battle, and towns and villages throughout the area became temporary, crude hospitals. In nearby Castiglione, a stranger, dressed in white, watched with horror as dazed and suffering soldiers were slowly brought from the battlefield only to be met with a shortage of doctors, inadequate accommodations, and an appalling lack of food and supplies. With spirit and speed “the man in white” began to recruit local peasants for volunteer service and to procure badly needed bandages, water, and food.The “man in white”—Jean-Henri Dunant—was not new to philanthropic endeavors. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1828, he came of a well-to-do family with a strong religious background and a tradition of public service. As a young man Dunant had been an instigator of the movement that created the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which he hoped would promote fellowship and understanding between young men of many cultural backgrounds. Until the age of 30, Dunant was a banker, with business interests throughout Europe and Northern Africa. In June of 1859, these financial affairs took him to Castiglione.In a sense, Dunant never completely left Solferino. The many startling scenes he witnessed there continued to crowd his mind. “What haunted me,” wrote Dunant, “was the memory of the terrible condition of the thousands of wounded.” This horrible remembrance of men dying, often for want of the simplest care, inspired him to publish in 1862 a vivid account of the battle and its consequences. The book was calledUn Souvenir de Solferino(A Memory of Solferino).The realistic descriptions, and the compassion for the individual soldier shown in Dunant’s book created an immediate sensation in Europe.Un Souvenir de Solferinowasted little space on the traditional “glories” of war; Dunant was more interested in the plight of the “simple troopers ... [who] suffered without complaint ... [and] ... died humbly and quietly.” The book advocated a radically new concept of charitable action: that all of the wounded, friend and foe alike, should be cared for. He had been inspired, said Dunant, by the Italian peasant women who murmured “tutti fratelli” (all are brothers) while treating the hated Austrians. Near the end of the book was a brief paragraph, destined to have dramatic impact on the humanitarian efforts of the world: “Would it not be possible,” wrote Dunant, “in time of peace and quiet, to form relief societies for the purpose of having care given to the wounded in wartime of zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified volunteers?”The simple question may have been overlooked by readers caught up in the battle scenes ofUn Souvenir de Solferino. But it caught the imagination of one influential man: Gustav Moynier, a citizen of Geneva who headed the charitable “Committee for the Public Benefit.” Moynier introduced a practical direction to Dunant’s dreams. He contacted Dunant, and together they established a committee, headed by Moynier, and including the commanding general of the Swiss Army, Guillaume Dufour. Two distinguished doctors, Louis Appia and Theodore Maunoir, completed the “Committee of Five.” This committee immediately began plans for an international convention to discuss the treatment of the wounded in wartime.In February 1863, 16 nations met in Geneva to discuss “the relief of wounded armies in the field.” Dunant’s proposals were debated and an informal list of agreements was drawn up. This agreement established the national volunteer agencies for relief in war. Then, in August 1864 a second conference was held which produced the international pact, known as the Treaty of Geneva. The treaty rendered “neutral and immune from injury in war the sick and wounded and all who cared for them.” To distinguish the neutral medical personnel, supplies and sick, an international badge was needed. Out of respect for Dunant and the country which had been host of the conventions, the design adopted was that of the reversed Swiss flag. Those working under the Treaty of Geneva would thereafter be recognized by the emblem of a red cross on a white flag. The United States signed this treaty on March 16, 1882.Jean-Henri Dunant’s generous dream had been fulfilled, but he obtained no glory or recognition for many years. Dunant had neglected his business interests while promoting the Geneva conventions. By 1867 he was bankrupt and spent most of his remaining life a pauper.However, Dunant did live to receive, jointly with Frederic Passy, the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. It was a fitting tribute to the man who, in the words of Gustav Moynier, “opened the eyes of the blind, moved the hearts of the indifferent, and virtually effected in the intellectual and moral realm the reformation to which [he] aspired.”

The “man in white”—Jean-Henri Dunant—was not new to philanthropic endeavors. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1828, he came of a well-to-do family with a strong religious background and a tradition of public service. As a young man Dunant had been an instigator of the movement that created the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which he hoped would promote fellowship and understanding between young men of many cultural backgrounds. Until the age of 30, Dunant was a banker, with business interests throughout Europe and Northern Africa. In June of 1859, these financial affairs took him to Castiglione.

In a sense, Dunant never completely left Solferino. The many startling scenes he witnessed there continued to crowd his mind. “What haunted me,” wrote Dunant, “was the memory of the terrible condition of the thousands of wounded.” This horrible remembrance of men dying, often for want of the simplest care, inspired him to publish in 1862 a vivid account of the battle and its consequences. The book was calledUn Souvenir de Solferino(A Memory of Solferino).

The realistic descriptions, and the compassion for the individual soldier shown in Dunant’s book created an immediate sensation in Europe.Un Souvenir de Solferinowasted little space on the traditional “glories” of war; Dunant was more interested in the plight of the “simple troopers ... [who] suffered without complaint ... [and] ... died humbly and quietly.” The book advocated a radically new concept of charitable action: that all of the wounded, friend and foe alike, should be cared for. He had been inspired, said Dunant, by the Italian peasant women who murmured “tutti fratelli” (all are brothers) while treating the hated Austrians. Near the end of the book was a brief paragraph, destined to have dramatic impact on the humanitarian efforts of the world: “Would it not be possible,” wrote Dunant, “in time of peace and quiet, to form relief societies for the purpose of having care given to the wounded in wartime of zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified volunteers?”

The simple question may have been overlooked by readers caught up in the battle scenes ofUn Souvenir de Solferino. But it caught the imagination of one influential man: Gustav Moynier, a citizen of Geneva who headed the charitable “Committee for the Public Benefit.” Moynier introduced a practical direction to Dunant’s dreams. He contacted Dunant, and together they established a committee, headed by Moynier, and including the commanding general of the Swiss Army, Guillaume Dufour. Two distinguished doctors, Louis Appia and Theodore Maunoir, completed the “Committee of Five.” This committee immediately began plans for an international convention to discuss the treatment of the wounded in wartime.

In February 1863, 16 nations met in Geneva to discuss “the relief of wounded armies in the field.” Dunant’s proposals were debated and an informal list of agreements was drawn up. This agreement established the national volunteer agencies for relief in war. Then, in August 1864 a second conference was held which produced the international pact, known as the Treaty of Geneva. The treaty rendered “neutral and immune from injury in war the sick and wounded and all who cared for them.” To distinguish the neutral medical personnel, supplies and sick, an international badge was needed. Out of respect for Dunant and the country which had been host of the conventions, the design adopted was that of the reversed Swiss flag. Those working under the Treaty of Geneva would thereafter be recognized by the emblem of a red cross on a white flag. The United States signed this treaty on March 16, 1882.

Jean-Henri Dunant’s generous dream had been fulfilled, but he obtained no glory or recognition for many years. Dunant had neglected his business interests while promoting the Geneva conventions. By 1867 he was bankrupt and spent most of his remaining life a pauper.

However, Dunant did live to receive, jointly with Frederic Passy, the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. It was a fitting tribute to the man who, in the words of Gustav Moynier, “opened the eyes of the blind, moved the hearts of the indifferent, and virtually effected in the intellectual and moral realm the reformation to which [he] aspired.”

In 1864, 11 European nations agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Geneva, which established the Red Cross. This painting, by Charles Edouard Armand-Demaresq, shows the ceremony of signing the treaty.

Barton did not confine her activity to Strasbourg. After eight months work, she left her sewing establishment in the hands of local officials and journeyed to Paris where she distributed clothing, money, and comfort to citizens. From Paris she went to Lyons and surveyed the surrounding countryside for a relief headquarters, finally settling in Belfort. This small border town had heroically withstood Prussian fire for more than eight months. The people were “very poor and their ignorance ... something deplorable,” noted Antoinette Margot. Many of the citizens had never seen paper money—so Barton used only coins—and less than one in 15 could write his name. Her activities were still loosely tied to the Red Cross, but in most cases she used her own judgment to come to terms with the destitution she found. Money was given according to need, solace indiscriminately. Desperate mobs often stormed the home of “Monsieur l’Administrateur” in which she was staying; assistant Margot was “amused ... to see Miss Bartonprotecting her policemen” and pacifying the crowds with her dignified bearing and calm admonition to “wait a little and be quiet.” Barton tried to help the anxious families of prisoners who had lost their means of support and provided some relief for the French leaving German-occupied Alsace. Margot later remarked that she wished “that her own people could see their country-woman at work among European poor as not one European has done.”

When the hostilities between France and Prussia ended, and with it the need for Barton’s help, her health again declined. Despite the decorations of several governments, she was despondent. Her eyes gave out, her nerves collapsed. She had over-taxed herself in nerve-shattering situations, and she suffered, in part, because she had never really learned to care for herself. Troubled throughout her life by insomnia, she often worked on four or five hours sleep. A sometimes vegetarian, she took no pains to correctly nourish herself; dinner was too often a large red apple or nothing at all. It is understandable, in the light of this negligence and spiritual decline, that she suffered a relapse into her old nervous disorders.

German soldiers rout French troops at Bazeilles, France, during the Franco-Prussian War.

For a time Barton stayed in Germany. She then traveled with friends throughout Italy, a tour highlighted by a visit to Mt. Vesuvius. In May 1872, she visited the Riviera and traveled via Paris to London. Though somewhat improved, she was still weak, and her restlessness increased daily. She stayed in London for more than a year, made many friends, enjoyed horse shows and Madame Tussaud’s, and took part in a congress on prison reform. But all the time she pondered her fate, bemoaned the sacrifice of her time, and let small incidents unduly rankle. For a while she considered writing for newspapers, but she felt too listless. Visits from a niece, from the grand duchess of Baden, who had become her devoted friend, and from Antoinette Margot could not rouse her. Finally, on September 30, 1873, she sailed on theParthiafor the United States, still worried and uncertain about her future. “Have ye place, each beloved one, a place in your prayer,” she plaintively asked in a poem written aboard theParthia, “Have ye work, my brave countrymen, work for me there?”

Barton hoped to recover her spirits in America. Unfortunately, only a few months after her return, she received word that her sister, Sally, was critically ill. She hurried from Washington, D.C., to Oxford, Massachusetts, only to find that Sally’s death had preceded her arrival by hours. This blow was devastating; she collapsed utterly. A year later, still shaky and depressed, she faced the death of Henry Wilson, her political ally and close friend.

Barton was in serious need of a restful atmosphere. Through a young woman in Worcester she learned of a sanitarium at Dansville, New York, where the patients were treated with a popular “water cure.” There she found “congenial society, wholesome and simple food, and an atmosphere that believed health to be possible.” Her health did indeed improve at Dansville. She eventually bought a house there, and made the small town her home for the next ten years. She participated in plays, attended and gave lectures, went on outings with other patients, and enjoyed her position as the town’s most celebrated citizen. And, after one of her lectures, she met one of the most influential people in her life: Julian Hubbell, a young chemistry teacher at Dansville Seminary. They became friends, and when she told him of the Treaty of Geneva and how she hoped for its adoption in the United States, Hubbell asked what he could do to help. “Get a degree in medicine,” she advised, and Hubbell complied. He left his teaching position and entered the University of Michigan medical school in 1878.

Julian Hubbell remained uncompromisingly loyal to Barton. When the American Red Cross was established, he became its chief field agent. As such he participated in more actual relief work than she did. His skillful organization and quiet control were directly responsible for much of the success of the early Red Cross. Upon her resignation, he too gave up his career.

During the Civil War Henry Bellows (1814-82) founded and served as president of the United States Sanitary Commission. He had graduated from Harvard University at the age of 18 and five years later from Harvard Divinity School. He worked first in Louisiana and Alabama, but his career began in earnest when he became pastor of New York City’s Unitarian Church of All Souls. Throughout his life, he was known as an inspirer of people.

In the late 1870s, Barton began to be active again in political affairs. Her long interest in women’s rights was re-kindled, especially by Harriet Austin, a doctor at the sanitarium. For a time, Barton adopted the mode of Austin’s dress reform—loose, corsetless garments, which included baggy trousers. It pleased her to “shed flannels” and dress “just as free and easy as a gentleman, with lots of pockets, and perambulate around to suit herself.” In 1876 she advocated a series of dress reform meetings and helped Susan B. Anthony compile biographies of noted women. In 1878, she participated in suffrage conventions in Washington, D.C., and Rochester, New York.

As Barton’s health improved she also renewed her interest in establishing the Red Cross in the United States. She knew that her first step was to obtain the official sanction of the International Red Cross Committee and spent much of 1877 and 1878 corresponding with Dr. Louis Appia about a plan for promoting the Red Cross. Always jealous of her position as sole representative of the cause, Barton was not above discrediting both Charles Bowles and Henry Bellows, early advocates of the Red Cross in America. Bowles is “utterly unreliable ... and ... never worthy of confidence,” Barton wrote to Appia, and Bellows “wears [his title of representative] as an easy honor, and it never occurs to him that he is retarding the progress of the world.” Neither allegation was true. But Barton gained the official blessing of the international committee, and as their representative began her crusade for ratification of the Treaty of Geneva.

Her first concern was to educate the public, for she had found that“the knowledge of [the] society and its great objects in this country ... is almost unknown, and the Red Cross in America is a mystery.” In 1878, she published a small pamphlet entitled “What the Red Cross Is.” She realized that the American public did not expect to be engaged in another war and emphasized peacetime uses of the Red Cross. Red Cross action against natural disasters had actually been proposed by Henri Dunant in the third edition ofUn Souvenir de Solferino, but in her pamphlet she gave it priority. “To afford ready succor and assistance in time of national or widespread calamities, 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.”

Back to Index Next