LXXVII

Clara Barton started the Red Cross alone.

Boston (Mass.)Transcript.

Miss Clara Barton, the American Red Cross is your society alone, and none other we will patronize.G. Moynier, President, International Red Cross Committee, Geneva, Switzerland.

The total expense connected with the acceptance of the Treaty by this Government, in addition to the personal service of more than five years, was defrayed individually by Clara Barton. Red Cross Committee (in 1903). House Document No. 552, Vol. 49, 58th Cong.

If we heed the teachings of history we shall not forget that in the life of every nation circumstances may arise when a resort to arms can alone save it from dishonor.—We must be prepared to enforce any policy which we think it wise to adopt.Chester A. Arthur, The President. (In advocacy before Congress of Clara Barton’s Red Cross Measure).

Legislation by Congress is needful to accomplish the humane end that your society has in view. It gives me, however, great pleasure, Miss Barton, to state that I shall be happy to give any (Red Cross) measure which you may propose careful attention and consideration.James G. Blaine, Secretary of State (in 1881).

The first official advocate of the Red Cross measure, and fearless friend from its presentation in 1877, was Omar D. Conger, now Senator from Michigan, then a member of the House.

Clara Barton(Sept. 6, 1882).

JAMES A. GARFIELDThe President, March 4, 1881–September 19, 1881.Executive Mansion.Will the Secretary of State please hear Miss Barton on the subject herein referred to?J. A. Garfield.The first tribute to Clara Barton in her Red Cross measure, March 30, 1881.Clara Barton, friend and counselor of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, of Garfield, of Hayes, Harrison, Cleveland and McKinley. Organized the American Red Cross and was appointed for life by Garfield. While the republic lives and womanhood is honored, her place is sure among the millions she has blest and whose name and fame they will cherish and revere.Kate Brownlee Sherwood,in a letter to the Toledo (Ohio)Times.

CHESTER A. ARTHURThe President, September 19, 1881–March 4, 1885.The President in whose administration the American Red Cross was approved by the U. S. Government, also the first President of the Board of Consultation, American Red Cross Society.Washington, March 3, 1882.Whereas(certain facts of Red Cross history here detailed)....Now, therefore, the President of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, do hereby declare that the United States 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.By the President,Chester A. Arthur.Frederick T. Frelinghuysen,Secretary of State.

In 1877 Monsieur Moynier, President of the International Red Cross Committee, decided to make a further effort to obtain the adherence to the Treaty by our Government. For this purpose a special letter was sent to Miss Barton to deliver to President Hayes.Mabel T. Boardman—In “Under the Red Cross at Home and Abroad.”

In 1869 Clara Barton went to Geneva, Switzerland. She was visited there by the President and members of the International Committee for Relief and of the Wounded in War, who came to learn why the United States had refused to sign the Treaty of Geneva.—Years of devoted missionary work by Miss Barton with preoccupied officials and a heedless, short-sighted public at length bore fruit.Mary R. Parkman—Author of “Heroines of Service.”

Miss Barton, 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 (Red Cross) 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 isolation in international movements for extending and universalizing mercy towards the victims in war.Dr. H. W. Bellows(Nov. 21, 1881).

Later—Miss Barton, I advise you to give it up as hopeless.

Dr. H. W. Bellows(Ex-Chairman U. S. Sanitary Commission).

Dr. H. W. Bellows

(Ex-Chairman U. S. Sanitary Commission).

Miss Clara Barton, I thank you in the name of all of us (myself and colleagues of the International Committee).—Thanks to a perseverance and zeal which has surmounted every obstacle. Wishing to testify to you its gratitude for the services you have already rendered to the Red Cross (in securing the adherence of the United States to the Treaty), the Committee decided to offer to you one of the medals which a German engraver caused to be struck off in honor of the Red Cross. Please to regard it only as a simple memorial, and as a proof of the esteem and gratitude we feel for you.G. Moynier, President Red Cross International Committee.

Note.—The silver medal referred to is beautifully engraved with the coat of arms of the nations within the Treaty compact,—the medal being a model both of skillful design and exquisite workmanship.

Department of State,Washington, D. C.February 16, 1883.

Department of State,

Washington, D. C.

February 16, 1883.

My dear Miss Barton:

It affords me great pleasure to transmit a parcel containing a book presented to you by Her Majesty, the Empress of Germany, as a token of her high appreciation of the success of your efforts for the formation of an Association of the Red Cross in America.—Congratulating you upon the compliment which the Empress has paid to you by her action in sending you this gift I am, my dear Madam,

Very truly yours,Sevellon A. Brown,Chief Clerk.

Very truly yours,

Sevellon A. Brown,

Chief Clerk.

On the night that came to Europe the news of the accession of the U. S. Government to the Treaty of Geneva (news sent by cable) there were lit bonfires in the streets of Switzerland, France, Germany and Spain.The Author.

If I live to return to my country (from Switzerland) I will try to make my people understand the Red Cross and that Treaty.

Clara Barton.

Weak and weary from the war-soaked fields of Europe, I brought the germs of the thrice-rejected Red Cross of Geneva, and with personal solicitations from the international Committee sought its adoption.Clara Barton.

I stood with this unknown (Red Cross) immigrant from the little Republic of Switzerland, outside the doors of the Government, for five years before I could secure for him citizenship papers and recognition as a desirable resident of the United States.

Clara Barton.

Perhaps no act of this age or country has reflected more merit abroad upon those especially active in it than this simple and beneficent Red Cross measure.Clara Barton.

Transitions are neither rapid nor easy. Dark days, if not dark ages, have shadowed them all.Clara Barton.

The Red Cross is one of the thresholds to the Temple of Peace.

Clara Barton, President, Red Cross.

Respect for the rights of others is peace.

Benito Juarez, President, Republic of Mexico.

The history of a country ismainlythe history of wars.

Clara Barton.

Men have worshipped at Valkyria’s shrine and followed her siren lead until war has cost a million times more than the whole world is worth; poured out the best blood and crushed the finest forms that God has ever created.Clara Barton.

There is in the Red Cross no entangling alliances that any but a barbarian at war can feel any restraint.Clara Barton.

There is not a peace society on the face of the earth today, nor can there be one, so potent, so effectual against war as the Red Cross of Geneva.Clara Barton.

There can be no estimate of the misery assuaged, and the deaths prevented, by the unselfish zeal and devotion of the Red Cross.

Clara Barton.

Your children and your children’s children will need the Red Cross, when your hands are powerless to do that which is within your grasp.Clara Barton.

She had served in Europe with a brassard on her arm; she had served in the camp, on the march, in the hospital, in the smoke of battle; she had bound up the wounds, soothed in a foreign tongue the dying; and there had learned her first Red Cross lessons. She had visited the Solferino battle ground where Dunantcaught the humane inspiration for relieving distress of victims in war. She had breathed the spirit of great minds in the Red Cross world movement. She was armedcap-a-piefor a humane warfare. She made a vow, “If I live——;”—the vow of woman is a decree, unrecorded.

Since 1864 the Red Cross measure had been before the American people. Dr. Henry W. Bellows, of more than national fame as a diplomat and humanitarian, through a period of ten years had failed of a respectful consideration. For nearly two decades man had failed—signally failed; what could woman do?

The vow of woman! that’s all between failure and success. The woman with the vow lived to return to America. She “pestered” her friends with her visionary scheme; she haunted the offices of Senators and Representatives; she pled her cause before the Secretary of State and the President. With her logic and eloquence she combated “it’s an entangling alliance with foreign powers;” “it would encourage war;” “it’s a war policy in the interest of war-makers;” “it’s un-American;” “it would demoralize army discipline;” “the military doesn’t want it, Congress doesn’t want it, the people don’t want it;” “Secretary of State Seward years ago gave the ultimatum: ‘The Government wishes to act as a free agent with option in the premises and in its own good time;’” “Dr. Bellows has given it up;” “it’s no use, Miss Barton, to discuss this question, it has been before the American people for many years and it’s a dead issue, forever settled.”

Alone her task was wrought,Alone the battle fought.

Alone her task was wrought,

Alone the battle fought.

She took the rostrum, travelling from place to place throughout the country; she appealed to the people in the name of God and humanity. She was denounced as “that war woman;” “that woman who is trying to put something over on the people;” “something behind it, or she wouldn’t be spending her own money;” “wonder what she’s going to get out of it, anyway?”

Senator John Sherman was then a tower of strength in this country. She approached him on the subject. He was against it; said that he did not see any use of going to this trouble; that making such preparation for war would have a tendency to agitate the public, and bring on war. Oh, no, Miss Barton, I can’t support such foreign organization as is your proposed Red Cross. Besides, we will never have another war in this country. Having given his final answer and subsided, the ever-ready-with-answer Miss Barton remarked that it seemed to her years ago, back in 1858, a certain Senator Sherman had made such a statement in the Senate. Caught in a trap set by himself, yet graciously smiling, the Senator replied, “Yes, I believe we did have a little brush after that.” A second “brush” occurred, in 1898. Senator Sherman, then Secretary of State, had occasion in connection with Red Cross work to issue to the head of the Navy the following order: “I have the honor to commend Miss Barton to the kind attention of your department.”

One of the ablest arguments ever presented on any national issue was presented in an address in November, 1881, by Clara Barton on the Red Cross issue “To the President, Congress and the People of the United States.” In that masterful address among other things she said: “Yes, war is a great wrong and sin and,because it is, I would provide not only for but against it. But here comes the speculative theorist! Isn’t it encouraging a bad principle? Wouldn’t it be better to do away with all war? Wouldn’t peace societies be better? Oh, yes, my friend, as much better as the millennium would be better than this, but the millennium is not here. Hard facts are here; war is here; war is the outgrowth, indicator and relic of barbarism. Civilization alone will do away with it, and scarcely a quarter of the earth is yet civilized, and that quarter not beyond the possibilities of war. It is a long step yet to permanent peace.... Friends, was it accident, or was it Providence, which made it one of the last acts of James A. Garfield, while in health, to pledge himself to urge upon the representatives of his in Congress assembled this great national step for the relief and care of wounded men? Living or dying, it was his act and wish, and no member of that honored, considerate, and humane body but will feel himself in some manner holden to see it carried out.”

Among the first who became champions in her cause for the Red Cross were Senators Conger of Michigan, William Windom of Minnesota, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and who was the first to investigate, and take the matter up, as a member of President Garfield’s Cabinet. Senator E. G. Lapham, of New York, “who spared neither time nor thought, patience nor labor, in his legal investigations of the whole matter;” Senators Morgan of Alabama, Edmonds of Vermont, Hawley of Connecticut, Anthony of Rhode Island, Hoar of Massachusetts, “all accorded to it their willing interest and aid.” And also she had the support of the eminent Secretary of State James G. Blaine, Presidents Garfield and Arthur, as well as many other statesmen of whose services on this measure there has been left no official record.

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS(in 1898)Resolved: That this conference declares that in obtaining the accessionthe United States of America to the Convention of Geneva, Miss ClaraBarton has well merited the gratitude of the world.—International Conferenceof the Red Cross, Geneva, Switzerland, 1884.

Early Red Cross history reads like a tale of romance from some long ago past century, the leading woman character inspirited by a power superhuman. Was Clara Barton the Founder of the American Red Cross? Of the millions of Americans who would esteem such honor, no one else so much as lays claim to it. In appreciation, Monsieur Moynier, President of the International Red Cross Committee, in an address delivered in Europe on September 2, 1882, on “The Foundation of the American Society of the Red Cross” in part said: “Its whole history is associated with a name already known to you—that of Miss Barton. Without the energy and perseverance of this remarkable woman we should probably not for a long time have had the pleasure of seeing the Red Cross revived in the United States. We will not repeat here what we have said elsewhere of the claims of Miss Barton to your gratitude;—we know that on the first of March she gained a complete victory.”

Commenting on her struggles, and expressing her natural desire for the Red Cross, Clara Barton says: “A time will come when I shall lay down my work. Out of the many years I have given to it has grown one great, natural desire, a desire to leave my little immigrant of twenty-seven years ago a great National Institution, in the hands of the people, supported by the people, for their mutual help and strength in the face of disaster; and I would have those who take it up andfollow in our footsteps freed from the severity of toil, the anguish of perplexity, uncertainty, misunderstanding, and often privations, which have been ours in the past.”

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