Chapter I: H. R. PRINCE GUY DE LUSIGNAN between pages (2)

Military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood,
that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The friends of humanity will deprecate war, whenever it may appear.
GEORGE WASHINGTON.

There is no need of bloodshed and war. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

* * * * *

Wars are largely the result of unbridled passions.

CLARA BARTON.

War is only splendid murder. JAMES THOMSON.

War is the mad game that the world so loves to play. SWIFT.

* * * * *

Every battleship is a menace to the peace of the world. With each new
battleship every nation carries a chip on its shoulder.

CLARA BARTON.

The Red Cross took its rise in, and derived its existence from, war.
Without war it had no existence. CLARA BARTON.

Deplore it as we may, war is the _great act_ of all history.

CLARA BARTON.

War has been the rule, if not largely the occupation, of the peoples
of the earth from their earliest history. CLARA BARTON.

Scarcely a quarter of the earth is yet civilized, and that quarter not
beyond the probabilities of war. CLARA BARTON.

General Sherman was right when, addressing an assemblage of cadets, he
told them “war was hell!” Take it as you will, it is this;—whoever has
looked active war full in the face has caught some glimpse of regions
as infernal as he may ever fear to see.

CLARA BARTON.

Only time, prolonged effort, national economics, universal progress
and the pressure of public opinion could ever hope to grapple with the
existence of war, the monster evil of the ages.

CLARA BARTON.

I have studied the massing of forces and scanned from point to point
the old battle-grounds of Marengo and Jena and Waterloo and the
Magenta and Solferino and it has seemed to me that these armies had a
fairer field and a better chance than ours, in the Civil War. CLARA
BARTON.

War may be a _great harmonizer_, but it is not a _humanizer_.

CLARA BARTON.

That which is won by the sword must be held by the sword, whether it
is worth the cost or not. CLARA BARTON.

If there be any power on earth which can right the wrongs for which a
nation goes to war, I pray it may be made manifest.

CLARA BARTON.

If there be any good wars, I will attend them.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

That noble and numerous class of patriots who are brave with other
men’s lives and lavish of other men’s money. GLADSTONE.

There never was a good war, nor a bad peace.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Don’t talk about war; we have done with war. The Peace of the world is
the question now. CLARA BARTON.

WICKEDNESS OF WAR—SETTLES NO DISPUTES

Clara Barton was a patriot, but “not a war woman.” She had no sympathy with the religion such as was Odin’s, of the ninth century, which religion assured for him who had killed in battle the greatest number the highest seat reserved in the Paradise of the Valhalla; nor with the sentiment of the King of Denmark of that day, “What is more beautiful than to see the heroes pushing on through battle, though fainting with their wounds;” nor with the sentiment of that same king’s boast, “War was my delight from my youth, and from my childhood I was pleased with a bloody spear.”

Princes were privileged to kill,
The numbers sanctified the crime.

Wolves in “packs” seek prey; so do men—in sheep’s clothing. Wolves truthful, in howls, send forth their propaganda—hunger; men untruthful, in words, send forth their propaganda—hate. If the “survival of the fittest” be nature’s law only brutes conform to nature—by using no weapons. Men kill their own “kith and kin”; brutes combine to protect their own species. The more one sees of men on war’s slaughter-fields killing their friends or strangers, for prospective profit, the more he must admire the ethics of the brute. In brute history there have been no wars. Facing human record, the record of 3,400 years, there have been 3,166 years of war, and only 234 years of peace; facing the picture of which history makes no mention and which in the wake of armies she had seen, Clara Barton says: “Faces bathed in tears and hands in blood, lees in the wind and dregs in the cup of military glory, war has cost a million times more than the world is worth, poured out the best blood and crushed the fairest forms the good God has ever created.”

Through war and its consequences, one third of “civilized man” since the world began has come to an untimely end, by violence, as did Abel at the hands of Cain.

Earth’s remotest regions
Lie half unpeopled by the feuds of Rome.

“Mankind is the greatest mystery of all mysteries,” says Clara Barton, and insists that she can never understand the history of human conduct in this world, and wonders whether or not she will in the next. In the light of war’s history and, trying to solve the “mystery of all mysteries,” she asks: “Heavenly Father! what is the matter with this beautiful earth that thou hast made? And what is man that thou art mindful of him?”

Further philosophizing on the “Wickedness of War,” in a masterful public address, she says: “There is not a geographical boundary line on the face of the earth that was not put there by the sword, and is not practically held there by this same dread power. War actually settles no disputes, it brings no real peace; it but closes an open strife;—the peace is simply buried embers. The war side of the war could never have called me to the field—_through and through_, thought and act, body and soul, _I hate it_. We can only wait and trust for the day to come when the wickedness of war shall be a thing unknown in this beautiful world.”

Again philosophizing she says: “As I reflect upon the mighty and endless changes which must grow out of war’s issues, the subject rises up before me like some far-away mountain summit, towering peak upon peak, rock upon rock, that human foot has not trod and enveloped in a hazy mist the eye has never penetrated.”

XV

In the same year, and about the same time in the year, that Clara
Barton first started for the battlefield her warm personal friend,
Julia Ward Howe, wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

THE AUTHOR.

You remember the time was Sunday, September 14th, 1862.

CLARA BARTON.

Society forbade women at the front. CLARA BARTON.

Tradition absolutely forbade a good woman to go unprotected among
rough soldiers. CLARA BARTON.

And what does woman know about war, and because she doesn’t know
anything about it she mustn’t say, or do, anything about it.

CLARA BARTON.

It has long been said, as to amount to an adage, that women don’t know
anything about war. I wish men didn’t either. They have always known a
great deal too much about it for the good of their kind. CLARA BARTON.

I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety—with the
appalling fact that “I was only a woman” whispering in one ear; and
thundering in the other the groans of suffering men dying like
dogs—unfed and unclothed, for the life of every institution which had
protected and educated me. CLARA BARTON.

When war broke over us, with an empty treasury and its distressed
Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, personally trying in New York to borrow
money to pay our first seventy-five thousand soldiers, I offered to do
the work of any two disloyal clerks whom the office would discharge
and allow the double salary to fall back into the treasury. When no
legal way could be found to have my salary revert to the national
treasury, I resigned and went to the field.

CLARA BARTON.

I could not carry a musket nor lead the men to battle; I could only
serve my country by caring for, comforting, and sustaining the
soldiers. CLARA BARTON.

I broke the shackles and went to the field. CLARA BARTON.

Washington, D. C., June 20, 1864.

Dr. J. M. Barnes,
Acting Surgeon General, U. S. A.,

Sir: The undersigned, Senators and Representatives of Massachusetts,
desire you to extend to Miss Clara Barton of Worcester, Massachusetts,
every _facility_ in your power to visit the army at any time or place
that she may desire, for the purpose of administering to the comfort
of our sick and wounded soldiers. Also that such supplies and
assistants, as she may require, may be furnished with transportation.

We are, very respectfully,

H. L. DAWES,
ALEX. H. RICE,
D. W. GOOCH,
JOHN D. BALDWIN,
THOS. D. ELIOT,
GEO. S. BOUTWELL,
CHARLES SUMNER,
HENRY WILSON,
JNO. B. ALLEN,
OAKES AMES,
W. F. WASHBURNE.

HER WARDROBE IN A HANDKERCHIEF—THE BATTLE SCENE

On September 14, 1862, Clara Barton started from the City of Washington to the firing line, then at Harper’s Ferry. She took with her no Saratoga, no grip, no “go-to-meeting clothes.” The articles in her wardrobe on that eventful trip will never be known but it is known to a “dead certainty” that whatever “worldly goods” she did take with her were all tied up in a pocket handkerchief.

Her only escort was a “mule skinner.” He, wearing the blue, held the one _jerk line_ to the team of six mules, animals known in the west as “Desert Canaries.” The vehicle in which Clara Barton took that eventful ride was an army freight wagon covered with canvas, such wagon sometimes called the “prairie schooner.” “In the Days of Old, the Days of Gold,” as “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” the “prairie schooner” was almost the exclusive vehicle of conveyance over the deserts for freight and passengers. It was in the “prairie schooner” that the Mormons went to Utah in 1848, and the Argonauts to California, in “’49 and ’50.” It was from a “prairie schooner” that, rising from a sick bunk and looking out over that beautiful valley of Salt Lake, Brigham Young exclaimed: “This is the Place!”

After an eighty-mile ride bumping over stones and dykes and ditches, up and down the hills of Maryland, Clara Barton arrived at the battlefield. There, side by side, cold in death with upturned faces, were the brave boys of the Northern blue and the Southern gray. In closing a description of this battle scene Clara Barton says: “There in the darkness God’s angel of Wrath and Death had swept and, foe facing foe, the souls of men went out. The giant rocks, hanging above our heads, seemed to frown upon the scene, and the sighing trees which hung lovingly upon their rugged edge dropped low and wept their pitying dews upon the livid brows and ghastly wounds beneath.”

XVI

Clara Barton carried on her work in the face of the enemy, to the
sound of a cannon, and close to the firing line.

Boston (Mass.) _Transcript_.

So long as the Republic lives the name of Clara Barton will be
honored. _Roswell Record._

Clara Barton—Glorious Daughter of the Republic!

_The Buffalo News._

Clara Barton performed work for wounded soldiers often at the risk of
her life. PHEBE A. HANAFORD, AUTHOR.

Clara Barton—right into the jaws of death she went, ministering to the
wounded, soothing the dying.

CHAPLAIN COUDON (_of G. A. R._)
_National House of Representatives_.

Follow the cannon. CLARA BARTON.

The soldier has been supposed to die painlessly, gloriously, with an
immediate passport to realms of bliss eternal. CLARA BARTON.

The soldier who has fallen in battle “with his face to the foe” has
been regarded as a subject of envy, rather than pity.

CLARA BARTON.

If wounded and surviving, the honor of a soldier’s scars has been
cheaply purchased, it has been supposed, though he strolled a limping
beggar. CLARA BARTON.

Only a small portion of the thought of the generations of the past has
been devoted to the subject of devising, or affording, any means of
relief for the wretched condition resulting from the methods of
national and international strife. CLARA BARTON.

The pitiable neglect of men in war appears to have constituted one of
the large class of misfortunes for which no one is to blame, or even
accountable, assuming that wars must be. CLARA BARTON.

Go card and spin,
And leave the business of war to men. DRYDEN.

I am a U. S. soldier and therefore not supposed, you know, to be
susceptible to fear. CLARA BARTON.

THE BRAVERY OF WOMEN—CLARA BARTON’S BRAVEST ACT

When asked where occurred her bravest act, Clara Barton replied: “At Fredericksburg.” She made headquarters at the Lacy House, just north of the Rappahannock River. While there, the surgeon in charge of the wounded on the south bank of the river sent a special messenger to Miss Barton to come across with her assistants and supplies at once. As a _soldier_ and as an American patriot, she obeyed orders and followed the flag over the bridge and on to the battle field. In later years describing the women who went to the war Clara Barton sings:

The women who went to the field, you say,
The women who went to the field;—what did they go for—?
Did these women quail at the sight of a gun?
Will some soldier tell us of one he saw run?

In referring to the _incident_, in her experience at Fredericksburg, she said: “As I walked across this bridge with the marching troops, the bullets and shells were hissing and exploding in the river on either side of me, the long autumn march down the mountain passes—Falmouth and old Fredericksburg with its pontoon bridge,—sharp-shooters—deserted camps—its rocky brow of frowning forts—the one day bombardment, and the charge!” There, unperturbed, among the men was Clara Barton, there in the broad glacis, the one vast Aceldama, where—

In the lost battle,
Borne down by the flying,
Were mingled war’s rattle
With the groans of the dying.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

My dear Clara Barton, you have done some wonderful things in the
world.—SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Pioneer Suffrage Leader.

Susan B. Anthony was the first woman to lay her hand beside mine in
the promotion of the Red Cross Society.—CLARA BARTON.
]

REPRESENTATIVE SUFFRAGE LEADERS

CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT

One of the great women of the world. Broad of vision, exalted of soul
and absolutely free from selfishness that binds, Miss Barton was a
rare human being.—CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President National American
Woman Suffrage Association, 1900–1904; 1913——; Ex-President
International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
]

© _Harris & Ewing_

DR. ANNA HOWARD SHAW

Every woman who loves her country will revere the name of Clara
Barton.—DR. ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President National American Woman
Suffrage Association, 1904–Dec., 1915.
]

XVII

Clara Barton—soldiers of every battlefield since the Civil War have
almost deified her. Mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts of the
conflict have ever since held her name in the highest reverence.

Hartford (Conn.) _Post_.

The ears of the sick are strangely acute. CLARA BARTON.

A light heart lives long. SHAKESPEARE.

The burden becomes light that is cheerfully made. OVID.

A cheerful spirit is one of the most valuable gifts ever bestowed upon
humanity by a kind Creator. AUGHEY.

Whatever comes, keep up cheerful and happy and hope for the best.
CLARA BARTON.

YES, AND GOT EUCHRED

During the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, while the Federals lay again in Fredericksburg, Clara Barton one evening went to the hotel which from ground to garret was filled with wounded men. Five hundred of these were lying upon the bare floors. They had no food to eat, nor was there any food to give them. Clara Barton was struck with their fine soldierly figures and features, remarkable even in their terrible extremity, and stopping near one she asked: “Where are you from?” “Michigan,” he said. On to another—“Michigan,” and so on “Michigan”—“Michigan”—“Michigan.” Up one flight of stairs, then another, still “Michigan.” At length in her surprise, she said somewhat humorously and without reflection, “Did Michigan take up this hand and play it alone?” “Yes,” answered a poor fellow lying on the floor nearby, seriously wounded but one who evidently understood the game better than she did, “Yes, and got euchred.”

XVIII

With a strong, brilliant, cultivated mind was united a gentle, tender,
loving heart, and nothing was too great, nothing too small to enlist
Miss Barton’s earnest thought and tender sympathy.

HARRIETTE L. REED,
_Past National Secy. Woman’s Relief Corps_.

Men are what their mothers make them.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

All I have, and am, I owe to my mother. A. LINCOLN.

All that I am my mother made me. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

Work and words are for the individual soldier—what he does, sees,
feels or thinks in the dread hours of leaden rain and iron hail.

CLARA BARTON.

I remember my mother’s prayers, and they have always followed me. They
have clung to me all my life. A. LINCOLN.

Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him. TENNYSON.

As the years sped on and the hands were stilled, there shone the gleam
of the far sighted mother’s watchfulness that neither toil could
obscure nor time relax. CLARA BARTON.

His sweetest dreams were still of that dear voice that soothed his
infancy. SOUTHEY.

TO DREAM OF HOME AND MOTHER

At Decatur, Alabama, in a well-remembered scene of the Civil War many were the songs by southern chivalry started, but none finished. All efforts to sing one evening having been boisterously tabooed, there arose in the air a voice carrying the sentiment that thrills the camp, the field, the hospital. In gloom for today with foreshadowing for tomorrow, around a score of camp fires thousands of voices following the leader there broke forth pathetic, in full chorus, “Who will care for Mother now?”

While General Butler was digging Dutch Gap in 1863, a hospital boat was plying daily between Fortress Monroe and Point of Rocks. In the Civil War, among the wounded brought in from the battlefield to Point of Rocks was a lad about sixteen or seventeen years of age. One of his arms, and a leg, had been amputated.

Away from home! Crippled for life! Homesick, and no “tear for pity.” Hope gone! No, not all hope. He still has his Mother—“She floats upon the river of his thoughts.”

A Mother is a Mother still
The holiest thing alive.

“Mother, come to me—thine own son slowly dying far away.” “No, you _can’t_ come. May I come to you, my dearest Mother?”

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O Mother, my heart calls for you!

© _Harris & Ewing_

WARREN G. HARDING

The President, also President American Red Cross Society, March 4,
1921–.

From a letter by the Secretary to President Harding: “The President
entertains the highest sentiment regarding the splendid service of
Miss Barton and her contribution to the development of practical
modern humanitarianism.”
]

His soldier chum heard his pleadings and interceded: “Miss Barton, can’t we _possibly_ find room for this boy on the boat going down to Fortress Monroe tonight? I think he has grit enough to live.” Miss Barton, turning to the boy said: “My dear boy, you _shall_ go, though they have sent word they can take no more.” The boy was taken down a long steep hill on a stretcher, tenderly placed in a nice comfortable cot way up on the hurricane deck, to dream of home and Mother.

XIX

The test of civilization is the estimate of woman.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

A woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself so, even
amidst an army of soldiers. CERVANTES.

Clara: Go, if it is your duty to go. I know soldiers, and they will
respect you and your errand. STEPHEN BARTON (_Her Father, an old
soldier_).

To a gentleman every woman is a lady, in right of her sex.

GEORGE ELIOT.

Man pays deference to woman instinctively, involuntarily.

GAIL HAMILTON.

I gaze upon the men through blinding tears of admiration and respect,
and sing in my heart “It is well to be a soldier.”

CLARA BARTON.

TRIBUTE OF LOVE AND DEVOTION

“I was young and strong and loved to walk,” says Clara Barton. “I had four great wagons loaded with supplies for sick and wounded soldiers coming in the rear, so I decided I would not get my feet wet, but wait for my wagons and cross in one of them. The soldiers splashed right through in solid ranks, the water being only about a foot deep. Suddenly the captain of a company in the middle of the stream called out to his men ‘Company, Fours, Left, March! Halt! Right, Dress! Front! Now, Boys, There stands Clara Barton. I want you to kneel down in the water on your right knees, and let Miss Barton walk across on your left knees.’ This order the soldiers instantly obeyed, and I stepped from knee to knee, the soldiers reaching up and holding my hands, and passed dry shod to the other shore.” As Miss Barton related this incident the tears streamed down her cheeks, and she said, “This was the most beautiful tribute of love and devotion ever offered me in my life.”

XX

All the elements of desolation have traced such lines upon that face
as no mortal artist ever drew, and filled it with emotions that no
music could incite. Oh, the power of the expression of the face of
Clara Barton! CONGRESSMAN PORTER H. DALE.

Welcome ever smiles
And farewell goes out sighing.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

Her smile which cheered—like the breaking day.

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

A smile is a thankful hymn. GERALD MASSEY.

A smile—the effusion of fine intellect, of true courage.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

A tender smile, our sorrow’s only balm. YOUNG.

Smile and the world smiles with you. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

A smile that turns the sunny side o’ the heart
On all the world. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Duke of Marlborough—his fascinating smile and winning tongue, equally
with his word, swayed the destinies of Empires.

WILLIAM MATTHEWS.

Smiles are the language of love. HARE.

Smiles more sweet than flowers. SHAKESPEARE.

Smiles are better teachers than mightiest words.

GEORGE MCDONALD.

Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wire.

THEODORE WINTHROP.

Smiles, not allowed to beasts, from reason move. DRYDEN.

Sweet intercourse of looks and smiles, for smiles from reason flow.

MILTON.

There is no society where smiles are not welcomed.

WILLIAM MATTHEWS.

A beautiful smile is to the female countenance what the sunbeam is to
the landscape. LAVATER.

Her smiles were like the glowing sunshine. BULLARD.

If He has a place and work for me, and I think He has, I believe I am
ready. A. LINCOLN.

Clara Barton’s energy and humanity, with a “God bless you.”

Boston (Mass.) _Journal_.

A noble and attractive everyday bearing comes of goodness, of
sincerity, of refinement. WILLIAM MATTHEWS.

I have no higher ambition than to work obscurely, and singly, where I
can see the greatest necessity. CLARA BARTON.

CHEERING WORDS—ALWAYS READY—WEARS A SMILE

No being other than the human knows how to wear a smile. A smile is as significant as are words—the smile oft proclaims the mind. Wearing apparel is the gift of man; the smile, the gift of nature. Wearing apparel wears out; the smile that is genuine never wears off. Of a woman it is said her face is her fortune. It also may be said, to rob the world of woman’s smile would leave the human race poor indeed. Of Clara Barton an author has said, “her heart made music and her face radiated sunshine.” Of Clara Barton a soldier said, “No discordant word ever escaped her lips; in camp or on the field she always wore a smile.” Her smile and her cheering words won the heart of the private soldier, the heart of royalty—won the heart of the world.

A woman without effort may receive a “windfall,” in wealth; but success is achieved through personal qualities, by effort. Said a writer: “The life of Clara Barton should be familiarized to every child. Her history and work should be as well known to the young of the nation as those of the great Presidents. Her history should be taught in the public schools for the enlightenment of all pupils, boys and girls, that they may realize how great a task for humanity was undertaken and accomplished, by a weak woman.”

It was at Fredericksburg. The rising sun was casting its rays aslant the eastern sky. The boys had just come off picket-duty. Their fingers were stiff with cold; their clothes, wet and frozen. Five or six of the comrades went to the rear; there they discharged their rifles. Then they went to a brick house one quarter mile distant—where they found Clara Barton. In anticipation of their proposed call, Clara Barton was ready. She had not forgotten, when a little girl, how she suffered from the cold, fell unconscious in a pew at Church and was taken home with frozen feet. She had for them a “blazing-hot” fire, and also had prepared for them plenty of hot ginger tea. In the gloom of war’s woes all must wear “sorrow’s crown of sorrows;” but, seeing them approaching the house, she met them at the door with a smile—with greetings as kindly as if they had been her long-ago friends, of happier days.

At a recent annual reunion of _her_ regiment Comrade Vincent, in tears while relating the incident, said “THAT’S CLARA BARTON. I will never forget that smile and that welcome.” In speeding her parting guests, at the door she said: “God bless you, my boys! If I can do anything for you at any time, call on me—it is never too late nor too early. I want you to know you will always find me ready.”

XXI

From the days of earliest cravings for “fairy stories” there have been
recounted to young people the wonders wrought by that noble woman of
New England. Oakland (Cal.) _Tribune_.

Clara Barton’s work in Cuba, in 1898, added still greater luster to
her glory. Holyoke (Mass.) _Telegram_.

We have heard soldiers, who faced death green-eyed, tell with
quivering voice of Clara Barton’s services before the Battle of
Santiago when, perched on a gun-carriage, she gave directions to the
doctors and nurses. Lexington (Ky.) _Herald_.

Miss Barton, when your country was in trouble (1776) Spain was the
friend of America; now Spain is in trouble, America is her enemy.
GENERAL BLANCO (_In a Salon, Santiago de Cuba_, 1898.)

Miss Barton, you will need no directions from me, but if any one
troubles you let me know. ADMIRAL SAMPSON.

God will not call me home until my work is done.

CLARA BARTON.

There was an Overruling Providence when the “State of Texas” was
loaded for Cuba. CLARA BARTON.

I have with me a cargo of 1400 tons, under the flag of the Red Cross,
the one international emblem of humanity known to civilization. CLARA
BARTON.

A man said to me “The Red Cross has been a fairy godmother to us.”
CLARA BARTON.

Wherever men fight and tear each other to pieces, wherever the glare
and sound of war are heard, there the Red Cross aims to plant the
white banner that bears the blessed sign of relief.

CLARA BARTON.

The Red Cross has come to quicken into fresh new growth the best
things in life. CLARA BARTON.

Our Red Cross century tree blossomed in the smoke, and valor, and
wails of the Spanish-American War. CLARA BARTON.

The highest and best in the land stood under the cooling shade of the
Red Cross, and breathed its atmosphere of peace, love and help. CLARA
BARTON.

The Red Cross recognizes no features other than the relief of the
victims and the mitigation of the horrors of war. CLARA BARTON.

The Red Cross is founded in the soundest and noblest principles, in
the deep needs of human nature and in the enduring instincts of
mankind. CLARA BARTON.

Men do not go to war to save life; they might save life by keeping the
peace, and staying at home. CLARA BARTON.

Men go to war solely with the intent to inflict so much pain, loss and
disaster on the enemy that he will yield to their terms.

CLARA BARTON.

It is a wise statesmanship which suggests that in time of peace we
must prepare for war. It is no less a wise benevolence that makes
preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure
to accompany war. CLARA BARTON..

In no other country, as in ours, have the people so often risen from a
state of unreadiness and accomplished such wonderful results—at _such
a sacrifice_. CLARA BARTON.

As friends of humanity, while there is still a possibility of war or a
calamity, it behooves us to prepare. CLARA BARTON.

The memories of pitiful Cuba would not leave us.

CLARA BARTON.

To those who could not understand, Heaven came; to those who could,
“Cuba Libre.” CLARA BARTON.

Not with the booming of cannon; not with the shouts of victory, but
with the singing of Christian hymns and the outstretched hand of
help,—never before in the history of warfare was there triumphant
entry such as this. WM. E. BARTON, D.D.

Oh, the horrible, useless, tragic waste which no Peace Congress has
yet been able to avert! O treacherous fate! That made the great woman
of peace wait to see men of blood go before her to kill, to wound, to
devastate. ALICE HUBBARD.

Could it be possible that the commander would hold back his flagship
and himself, and send forward, and _first_, a cargo of food on a plain
ship, under direction of a woman? Did our commands, military or naval,
hold men great enough of soul for such action? It must be true, for
the spires of Santiago rise before us. How sadly the recollection of
that pleasant memorable day has since recurred to me! CLARA BARTON.

HORRIBLE DEED—LEADS AMERICAN NAVY—ANGEL OF MERCY

“Go to the starving Cubans!” She went. She had been entertained by Captain Sigsbee and his officers on the Maine the evening before the explosion. “Remember the Maine!” became the war cry.

War was declared. The Government wired: “Take no chances; get out of Cuba.” She returned to Florida to await events. The blockade of Cuban ports followed; the war was on. Let Clara Barton draw a picture of the war scene:

“War has occurred four times in the United States in 120 years. Four times men have armed and marched; and its women waited and wept. But we cannot always hold our great Ship of State out of the storms and breakers. She must meet and battle with them. Her timbers must creak in the gale. The waves must dash over her decks; she must lie in the trough of the sea. But the Stars and Stripes are above her. She is freighted with the hopes of the world. God holds the helm; and she is coming into port.”

WILLIAM T. SAMPSON

Miss Barton, you need no advice, only the opportunity. If any trouble
happens you, let me know. REAR-ADMIRAL WILLIAM T. SAMPSON, of New
York. Commander-in-Chief, U. S. Atlantic Naval Forces,
Spanish-American War.
]

REPRESENTATIVES RESPECTIVELY OF THREE WARS

© _Harris & Ewing_

ISAAC B. SHERWOOD

Clara Barton is the greatest woman of either the nineteenth or
twentieth century.—ISAAC B. SHERWOOD, of Ohio, Brigadier-General,
Civil War; U. S. Congress, 1869–1875; 1907–1921.
]

JOSEPH TAGGART

Clara Barton gave expression to the sympathy and tenderness of all the
hearts of all the women in the world.—JOSEPH TAGGART, of Kansas. U.
S. Congress, 1912–1918; Captain, World War.
]

Bullets had done their ghastly work; disease had run riot amidst filth and squalor. Starvation had stalked ruthlessly over the island. “May I return to the starving,” asked Clara Barton, “with my relief ship of supplies now in waiting?”

“Not so,” replied Admiral Sampson, “I go first; I am here to keep supplies out of Cuba.”

“I know, Admiral, my place is not to precede you. When you make an opening I will go in. You will go in to do the horrible deed. I will follow you and, out of the human wreckage, restore what I can.”

Cervera’s fleet was at the bottom of the sea, or wrecked on the shores. Spanish Cuba doomed, the enemy had raised the white flag, capitulated; soldiers, sailors, civilians, women and children, the human wreckage. Fateful days! Enough crime and misery rampant to satisfy the God of War and the imps of regions infernal.

Fair land of Cuba! on thy shores are seen
Life’s far extremes of noble and of mean;
The world of sense and matchless beauty dressed,
And nameless horrors hid within thy breast.

Cuba! Thou still shalt rise, as pure, as bright
As thy free air—as full of living light;—

The American navy, with flags flying, in triumph was ready to enter the Bay of Santiago. The Red Cross Flag floats from the flagstaff of the State of Texas. The Admiral gives the order that the “Red Cross Ship” is to lead; that now “flag-ship” moving majestically, is commanded by a woman—that woman “The Angel of the Battlefield.” Moving over the smooth waters of the Bay that Angel with her cospirits thrilled the ear with the patriot’s song “My Country ’Tis of Thee;” and there too the little band of crusaders, while nearing the holy wreckage they would rescue, touched the human heart with the grandest of all hymns of gratitude, “Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow.”

As on the Island of Corsica nearly three decades before, again there goes in spirit to Heaven the prayer of Clara Barton: “And I pray, Oh! how earnestly, once more to battle with error; to help sever the shackles of the oppressed of every name and kind; to hold firm the right and to set right the wrong; to raise up the weak against the power of the mighty; to make our country what it should, and must, be—true and just as well as great and strong. Once more to comfort the afflicted; to give rest and shelter to the weary, water to the thirsty, bread to the hungry; to stay the tide and bind the wounds that bleed, or to take the farewell message and point the glazing eye to hope and heaven.”

There is a woman, it’s the Red Cross!
My God, boys, it’s Clara Barton! now we’ll
Get something to eat. (_Starving children._)

“Majestic in simplicity” and of more heraldic splendor than that of the army and navy, with their thousands of heroes, stands the little woman overlooking the scene of woe’s misery. There on the peaceful waters are the destroyers that had done the “horrible deed;” there on the bridge of the Peace-Ship, leading all others, stands the “Angel of Peace,” who will restore what she can; and before the eyes of all lay the “Gem of the Ocean,” strewn with life’s woes—a scene of pathetic grandeur unequaled in the annals of history.

Miss Barton: Admiral Sampson, I wish to express to you my sincere
appreciation of your exceeding courtesy in permitting my ship to
precede the battleships into Santiago.

Admiral Schley (in a side remark): Don’t give the Admiral too much
credit, Miss Barton; he was not quite sure how clear of torpedoes the
channel might be. Remember that was a _trial trip_.

XXII

Clara Barton dressed the wounded of both armies indiscriminately—a
practice which first annoyed and sometimes angered the Union
officers—from whose headquarters she worked. IDA TARBELL.

Be generous and noble. CLARA BARTON.

War is in its very nature cruel—the very embodiment of cruelty in its
effects—not necessarily in the hearts of the combatants.

CLARA BARTON.

As the daughter of a Mason my Father bade me to seek and comfort the
afflicted everywhere, and as a Christian he charged me to honor God
and love mankind. CLARA BARTON.

Baron Thomas B. Macaulay thought it not a mitigation but an
aggravation of the evil that men of tender culture and humane
feelings, with no ill will, should stand up and kill each other.

CLARA BARTON.

It is comforting, in our reflections upon the past, to know that the
idea of humanity to an enemy in distress is not entirely modern; for
Xenophon in Cyropaedia, about 400 B.C. represents Cyrus the Great as
ordering his surgeons to attend the wounded prisoners.

CLARA BARTON.

A wounded Confederate that Clara Barton had been serving whispered to
her, “Lady, you have been kind to me—every street and lane in the city
is covered with cannon. When your entire army has reached the other
side of the Rappahannock, they’ll find Fredericksburg only a slaughter
pen. Not a regiment will escape. Do not go over or you will go to
certain death.”

PERCY H. EPLER.

AT GALVESTON FLOOD

Major McDowell, ex-Union soldier, wounded—assistant to Clara Barton:
Comrade, here is some clothing for you.

Ex-Confederate: But, Major (hesitating), I am an ex-Confederate
soldier....

Major McDowell: God bless you, poor suffering soul; what difference
does that make—here, will this fit you?

Love and tears for the Blue
Tears and love for the Gray.
FRANCES MILES FINCH.

CONFEDERATES AND FEDERALS ALIKE TREATED

Quite a number of wounded Confederate officers were brought to us. They shared alike with our own men. They were amazed, said C. M. Welles, at the kindness of northerners, particularly at a Massachusetts lady (Clara Barton) devoting herself to them as freely as to her own neighbors. One of them, a captain from Georgia, needed shirt, coat, stockings and something to eat. After being supplied, he said to me, while tears were streaming down his face, “Sir, I find that I have mistaken you; and, if I live to return, I will never fight against such a people any more.”

An Angel of Mercy,—her touch they will miss,
That was felt by the Boys of the Blue and the Gray;
But her name is still fragrant with Service, and this
Will inspire their sons in the Cause of Today.

At Fredericksburg a shell shattered the door of the room in which Miss Barton was attending to wounded men. True to her mission, she did not flinch but continued her duties as usual. She found a group of Confederates with their garments frozen fast in the mud. As the wounded were helpless, Miss Barton got an axe and chopped them loose. She then built a fire in a negro cabin and, while the wounded were warming themselves she dressed their wounds, fed them gruel and otherwise cared for them as if they were her “Brothers in Arms.”

A KNOT OF BLUE AND GRAY

Upon my bosom lies
A knot of blue and gray;
You ask me why; tears fill my eyes
As low to you I say:

I had two brothers once,
Warm hearted, bold and gay;
They left my side—one wore the blue
The other wore the gray.

One rode with Stonewall and his men,
And joined his fate with Lee;
The other followed Sherman’s march
Triumphant to the sea.

Both fought for what they deemed the right,
And died with his sword in hand;
One sleeps amid Virginia hills,
And one in Georgia’s sand.

The same sun shines upon their graves,
My love unchanged must stay;
And so upon my bosom lies,
The knot of blue and gray.

XXIII

Clara Barton deserves first place in the living memory of the world
today, and of generations to come.

Jacksonville (Florida) _Times-Union_.

She bore herself with a poise that lost for her no friends.

Utica (N. Y.) _Observer_.

She had a faculty for seeing what needed to be done, and how to do it.
_New York Examiner._

She accomplished what crowned heads failed in.

_Unity_, Chicago.

Things came to me as if ordered by a world-controlling power.

CLARA BARTON.

Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.

ATHENÆUS.

O God! that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap.

HOOD.

The greatest attribute of Heaven is mercy;
And ’tis the crown of justice, and the glory,
Where it may kill with right and save with pity.
J. FLETCHER.

Tact is born with some people.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THAYER.

Tact is not a single faculty, but a combination of faculties.

W. M. THAYER.

What men call “shrewdness” and “Common Sense” usually signify no more
than tact. W. M. THAYER.

THE ENEMY, STARVING—TACT—THE WHITE OX

To know is power, but the power may be latent. Tact is skill, ever alert. Tact knows what to do, when and how to do it. Queen Elizabeth had tact, unerring. Her long reign was a series of tactful events. Tact was the basis of the supremacy of the Elizabethan Age.

Clara Barton had tact, unerring. Tact gave her position among rulers of nations, and likewise won for her the esteem of the lowly. Tact attracted to her unpaid Red Cross assistants, who cheerfully shared her privations. Through tact she retained her friends, made new friends, and to an extent unprecedented.

Clara Barton was with the Army of the Blue, but nearby was a hospital in which were the wounded Gray, starving. The surgeons from within were begging for food. The Federal Quartermaster had refused supplies, giving as a valid excuse that he was a bonded officer and responsible for the property under his charge.

A “bunch” of cattle were seen passing. Clara Barton said to the officer: “I know you are bonded, but I am neither bonded nor responsible.” The officer taking the “cue” was soon out of sight. Clara Barton then gave orders to her men, at the same time pointing to the large unsuspecting white ox that had strayed from the “bunch.” The men appreciated the _delicate situation_; the ox somehow _strayed_ over to the enemy, and later received a hearty reception among the starving wounded inside the hospital.

MATHEW C. BUTLER

My dear Miss Barton:—

I do not see how those poor people in South Carolina will ever be able
to thank you enough for your noble work of relief. Certainly you
have been to them a “ministering angel.” I shall never cease to be
grateful for your self-sacrificing, heroic work.—MATHEW C. BUTLER,
of South Carolina, Major-General Civil War, Major-General
Spanish-American War, U. S. Senator 1877–1895.

General Butler, that busy, hard-worked Senator, prompt and kind. CLARA
BARTON.
]

REPRESENTATIVE OF TWO WARS

JOSEPH WHEELER

I think it due Miss Barton that the government should give to her the
highest possible recognition, and thanks.—JOSEPH WHEELER, of
Alabama, Major-General Civil War; Major-General Spanish-American
War; U. S. Congress, 1881, 1882; 1885–1893; 1895–1900.
]

HARRISON GRAY OTIS

Clara Barton is one of the blessed ones of the earth, and her name
will remain green in the heart of America.—HARRISON GRAY OTIS, of
California; Brigadier-General, Civil War; Major-General (Brevet),
Spanish-American War; America’s Great Journalist.
]

XXIV

One’s blood runs cold and then mounts high in reading of the amazing
feats of strength and courage of heart shown by this little lone
woman. _The Outlook._

Clara Barton—her personal service and self-sacrifice are beyond
praise. _Philadelphia Public Record._

The sum of all human agony finds its equivalent on the battlefield.
CLARA BARTON.

We cannot desert our poor charge of humanity, but must stay and suffer
with them if need be. CLARA BARTON.

And if you chance to feel that the positions I occupied were rough and
unseemly for a _woman_—I can only reply that they were rough and
unseemly for _men_. CLARA BARTON.

The sooner the world learns the better that the halo of glory which
surrounds a field of battle and its tortured, thirsting, starving,
pain-racked victims exists only in the imagination.

CLARA BARTON.

When dying President Garfield murmured: “The great heart of the nation
will not let a soldier die,” I prayed God to hasten the time when
every wounded soldier would be sustained by that sweet assurance.
CLARA BARTON.

My business is staunching blood, and feeding fainting men.

CLARA BARTON.

I am so sorry for the _necessity_, so glad for the _opportunity_, of
ministering with my own hand and strength to the dying wants of the
patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine.

CLARA BARTON.

I sometimes discuss the application of a compress, or a wisp of hay
under a broken limb, but not the bearing of a political movement.
CLARA BARTON.

I make gruel, not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers,
not political addresses. CLARA BARTON.

You must never so much as think whether you like it or not, whether it
is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need,
and how to meet it. CLARA BARTON.

If it has been granted to me to be ever so little service to those
about me, in need of my help, He alone who granted me the privilege
knows how grateful I am for it. CLARA BARTON.

BULLETHOLE—AMPUTATED LIMBS LIKE CORDWOOD—GOD GIVES STRENGTH

The valley of Antietam lies in Maryland. In September, 1862, on the night of the 16th, the Federals were on one ridge of the valley; the Confederates, on the opposite ridge. Somber night was hushed to stillness. Within the fog that arose from the valley and the smoke of the campfires there gleamed the stacked bayonets and the properly placed cannon which portend the fateful tomorrow. On the tomorrow Antietam was to be the harvest field, death and suffering the harvest.

In the early morning were heard the bugle notes which call to battle. The fight to death was on—possibly the fight that would unmake a nation, or make a new nation. A little lone woman had flanked the cannon at midnight and, in the early sunlight, stood beside the artillery. Terrifying the sharp crack of the musketry, deafening the boom of the cannon. The earth quaked; the sun, obscured. Over her head were shells bursting or, passing, buried themselves in the hills beyond. Her tongue was dried by the sulphurous powder smoke; her lips parched to bleeding. Such the scene of the conflict in which Clara Barton said she had the most terrible experiences of her life.

The men were falling, bleeding to death. Within that organized system for death there was no system to save life,—no surgical instrument, no bandage, no lint, no rag, no string. Clara Barton hastens to her supply wagon, and with all things needful rushes into the line of fire. There on the battlefield, with a pocket knife, she extracted a ball from the face of a wounded soldier. There, while lifting a canteen of water to quench the thirst of a soldier-lad, a minnie ball from the gun of the enemy passed harmlessly through her clothing and fatally into the body of the soldier she was trying to save.

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young a soldier lay, Torn with shot and pierced with lance, bleeding slow his life away! With a stifled cry of horror, straight she turned away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked upon her dead. But she heard the youth’s low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again. Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother’s? Did she watch beside her child? All his broken words with meaning her woman’s heart supplied: With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother!” murmured he and died.

There through the day, in that awful carnage of blood, fearless Clara Barton worked to save human lives. Did she shrink from danger? She said “_I am an American Soldier_ and am not supposed to be susceptible to fear.”

But the most gruesome of her experiences was after nightfall. Through the night in a barn near by, she assisted the surgeons. The surgeons had no bandages, she supplied them; they had no light, she supplied the lanterns and candles until the operating tables were in a blaze of light. They had no food; she supplied the gruel made from Indian corn meal, cooked in great brass kettles. The surgeons were without adequate assistance; she assisted at the amputating tables. “Through the long starlit night,” she said, “we wrought and hoped and prayed.” When the morning came the amputated limbs made a pile so high that you had to look up to see the top, a pile of human limbs like a cord of wood.

Not only gruesome was that “cord of wood” but pathetic. In that pile the limbs were from mere boys,—innocent victims of the greed of men;—not a leg, not an arm in that pile was from “War’s Profiteers.” And with the morning came complete exhaustion. When she returned from her uncanny labors her arms were crimson with blood; her skirts, blood-soaked; her shoes, blood-sopping. In all human history did woman have such experience as had Clara Barton through that two days of human carnage—carnage on one of America’s most famous battlefields in the most infamous fratricidal war in history? Frail Clara Barton! “The most timid person on earth!” The same Clara Barton who fainted at the killing of an ox? Can it be? Let hers be the explanation: “I was always afraid of everything except when someone was to be rescued from danger or pain. Human endurance has its limits;—God gives strength and the thing that seems impossible is done.”

XXV

An Overruling Providence seemed to interpose its hand between Clara
Barton and the perils of war and epidemic alike, for a high and
splendid purpose. Pawtucket (R. I.) _Times_.

If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can help
their running away with him? A. LINCOLN.

Cowards die many times before their deaths
The valiant never taste of death but once.
SHAKESPEARE.

For others Clara Barton will be perfectly fearless.

DR. L. N. FOWLER (Phrenologist.)

I have no fear of the battlefield; I have large stores but no way to
reach the troops. CLARA BARTON.

FEARLESS OF BULLETS AND KICKING MULES

General Shafter used to say that he did not think Clara Barton knew the meaning of the word fear. Sharp words passed between the General and Miss Barton because she would not obey his orders to keep away from the “firing line,” out of the way of the fighting men and of the bullets. On one occasion he even threatened to order her out of Cuba, if she continually disobeyed his orders in this respect.

Sergeant Henry White, of the 21st Massachusetts Regiment, said that he had seen Clara Barton in positions of danger where an old veteran would hardly dare venture. He had seen her passing among the wounded lying around on the ground, the battle raging in front of them. As she did so, she supplied the boys in turn with coffee, milk, and other food. Just to please the “boys” she accepted the Sergeant’s pistol which she carried several weeks.

Not only was she oblivious to the danger of the bullets on the battlefield but even more reckless as to her personal safety in the camp. She would go around among the army wagons, close to the heels of kicking mules, where any moment there might be a “stampede,” endangering her life. In a “stampede” of mules, she would be as helpless as in a shower of grape and cannister from the guns of the enemy.

XXVI

And when at morning and evening repast, with folded hands and grateful
heart, you bless God for the bounties He has placed before you, let
your thoughts wander a little to find if there is not another than
yourself. CLARA BARTON.

Paradise is open to all kind hearts. BERANGER.

Kind words are the music of the world. F. W. FABER.

Happiness must be unselfish; only in the happiness of all can one find
happiness. TOLSTOI.

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks
Shall win my love. SHAKESPEARE.

I have always refused a tent unless the army had tents also, and I
have never eaten a mouthful of my own soft bread or fresh meat, until
the sick of the army were abundantly supplied with both.

CLARA BARTON.

Clara Barton is the noblest, bravest, and most unselfish woman God
Almighty ever made. JUDGE JOSEPH SHELDON.

HIS COMFORT, NOT HERS; HIS LIFE, NOT HERS

In the winter of 1863–64 Clara Barton lived for a time in an old plantation house on Chapin’s farm, in Virginia. Chapin’s farm was not far from the field hospital. In the hospital were the sick and wounded; her services there were greatly needed. An ambulance was sent as a detail to bring her to the hospital. The soldier-messenger arrived at the house, and called for her. It was in the midst of a snow storm, the thermometer indicator hovering around zero. “Wait a minute,” she said; “tie your horses and come in. Have you had any dinner?” “No marm,” he replied. The soldier sat down to a dinner of cold meat, hot biscuit, cake and cocoa,—a refreshing change from “hardtack” and “salt hash,” the daily rations of the soldier.