Chapter I: H. R. Prince Guy De Lusignan (4)

Lincoln advocated the admitting of “all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.” Clara Barton advocated “the admission of women of whatever race to all the rights and privileges—social, religious and political—which as an intelligent being belongs to her.” Lincoln directed the greatest political organization of his time; Clara Barton, the greatest humanitarian organization. Lincoln bore malice toward none,—charity for all; equally so Clara Barton. Lincoln is the strongest tie that binds together all classes of Americans; Clara Barton is the strongest, tenderest tie that binds together humanitarians. Lincoln was the grandest man in the Civil War, is now receiving the highest homage; Clara Barton, the grandest woman, and now the most beloved.

Lincoln was denounced a failure, inefficient as an executive and disloyal to the Union. Clara Barton was accused of “inharmony, unbusinesslike methods and too many years.” Lincoln passed without warning and could make no defense; in her own words Clara Barton says: “When it becomes necessary for _me_ to defend _myself_ before the _American people_, let me fall.”

Fleeing the scene of his crime, and referring to Lincoln, there emitted from the lying tongue of the assassin: “_Sic semper tyrannis_”; in answer from the regions of the dead to the woman with the serpent’s tongue, Clara Barton replies: “Truth is eternal; evil conspiring and their kindred are doomed to die at last—my own shall come to me.” If Lincoln dead may yet do more for America and Americans than Lincoln living, so Clara Barton dead may yet do more for America and world humanity than Clara Barton living. Abraham Lincoln and Clara Barton, humanity’s martyrs, the two immortals.

A score of “the Immortals” lost to memory in any nation and that nation might well exclaim: “I have lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal part of myself.” Efface from memory the twenty, or fewer, immortals of Carthage, of Greece, of Rome, of Italy, of France, of Germany, of England, of America, then in the centuries hence over the tomb of every such nation only could be written “Nation Unknown.” In all the world destroy a score of “the Immortals” respectively in religion, in literature, in science, in art, in the heroic,—a hundred names and their influence,—and wealth greater to the human race shall have been destroyed than if were destroyed every public structure possessed by one billion six hundred millions of people now living.

Whether real or imaginary, the heroes of Homer and Virgil are worth more to the literature of that ancient period than all the physical wealth of Greece and Rome. What legacy to a nation could be greater than to have inherited the name and influence of a Homer, a Socrates, a Michael Angelo, a Queen Victoria, a Washington, a Franklin, a Lincoln, a Florence Nightingale, a Clara Barton? In the long centuries ago, of fame it was decreed: “Fame (’tis all the dead can have) shall live.” Through the centuries, Church and State have fought for their respective heroes and heroines not unlike Peter the Hermit and his followers, in the cause of Him on whom depended their future happiness. Now, as in all the past, the chiefest of a nation’s enduring wealth are the immortal names that were not born to die.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(Picture taken in June, 1860)
The President, March 4, 1861–April 15, 1865

Miss Barton, I will help you. A. LINCOLN (in 1865).

President Lincoln was good and kind to me in whatever I tried to do
for the soldiers. CLARA BARTON.
]

As an inspiration to the millions yet to be, the name of America’s Angel of Mercy will live—live heroic in the deathless songs of peace and of war. There is Second Bull Run, and Chantilly, and Antietam, and Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, and Strasburg, and Sedan, and Paris, and Johnstown, and Santiago, and Galveston,—there on tablets of memory her heroism is inscribed, there to remain forever. Neither will the millions forget, nor cease to cherish, The American Red Cross and The American Amendment and The National First Aid,—forever theirs and their children’s, through the constructive genius of the American philanthropist. If “gratitude is the fairest of flowers that springs from the soul,” perennial must spring millions of fairest flowers over her whose services to the millions are unending, and world-wide.

At Glen Echo on the Potomac when the world-humanist received her final orders, sustained by an unfaltering trust, she exclaimed: “Let me go, let me go!” Thence, as if by imperial summons called, the spirit of Clara Barton arose triumphant and on Easter Morn winged its flight to that undiscovered bourne amid the Islands of the Blest.

In yonder Silent City,
Pointing heavenward,
Stands a granite shaft;
Above that shaft of gray,
The granite Cross of Red,

and there a shrine for the human race till the end of time.

[Sidenote: CLARA BARTON]

_Clara Barton_

Born at Oxford, Massachusetts

Christmas Day, 1821

Died at Glen Echo, Maryland

Easter Morn, 1912

President of the American Red Cross Society

from

1881 to 1904

President of the National First Aid

Association of America

from

1905 to 1912; now, The President

In Memoriam.

[Sidenote: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]

Born at Hodgensville, Kentucky

February 12, 1809

Died at Washington, D. C.

April 15, 1865

President of the United States

from

1861 to 1865

THE RED CROSS MONUMENT

Built by Stephen E. Barton, Executor of the Estate of Clara Barton in
the Cemetery at North Oxford, Massachusetts.

How peaceful and powerful is the grave. LORD BYRON.

Her memory deserves a monument. Nashville (Tenn.) _Banner_.

Her monument is the sign of the Red Cross. Sioux Falls (S. D.)
_Press_.

Clara Barton needs no monument, her fame is written on the world’s
battlefields. Albany _Press Knickerbocker_.

Congress should provide for the erection of a handsome monument to the
woman who has served the nation in war and in peace. Baltimore
_Sun_.
The Red Cross will serve as her monument and that is her work which,
we trust, will keep alive her merciful spirit through the oncoming
centuries.
Boston _Journal_.

Clara Barton needs no monument; her name will live in the hearts of
the people. Jackson (Mich.) _Patriot_.

The whole civilized world owes Clara Barton more than it can ever pay
in the form of tributes or material monuments.
Worcester (Mass.) _Telegram_.

Long after the funeral service, as we passed on the way home, pathways
were full of people coming from a distance; and next day hundreds
trod the worn by-path in the cemetery to the still-standing Red
Cross—a path that the feet of the world will tread to the end of
time.
_Clara Barton In Memoriam._
]

“Clara Barton joined the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.
So has she joined the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. P. 40, changed “she would could and recount” to “she would count and recount”. 2. P. 274, changed “responded to a Red Cross call for $ 00,000,000.” to “responded to a Red Cross call for $100,000,000.”. 3. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 4. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 5. Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and moved to the bottom of the paragraph. 6. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.