Clara Barton
The President of the American Red Cross Society
War at best brings with it terrible suffering, hardship and sickness, wounds and death. Gratitude is due those who labor to alleviate such sufferings. Among these, women have ever been foremost. During the Crimean War in Europe, Florence Nightingale and other noble Englishwomen went to the Crimea to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers.
In our War between the States a few years later, similar services were rendered by many self-sacrificing women, both North and South. Two great organizations, the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission, were formed in the North to collect supplies and forward them to the needy and suffering soldiers. Mary Livermore, who was at the head of the Sanitary Commission, wrote an interesting account of its work.
While these were busy at home, other women were at work in the hospitals and on the battle-fields, caring for sick and wounded soldiers. One of these nurses was Dorothea Dix. During the war, she was a superintendent of hospital nurses; after the war, she devoted herself to improving the conditions of prison life.
Another hospital nurse was Clara Barton, afterwards so prominently identified with the Red Cross movement. She was born in Massachusetts in 1830. In young womanhood she taught several years, then she secured a clerkship in Washington. At the beginning of the War between the States, she resigned her position to work in army-hospitals, where she was called “an angel of mercy.”
After the war, broken down in health, she went abroad. In Europe she became interested in the work of the Red Cross societies, which were doing a noble work and had already secured the co-operation of twenty-two nations. These organizations were due to the efforts of a Swiss gentleman who in 1859 visited the field of Solferino where, in a battle between the Austrians and the French, thousands of soldiers were killed and thousands were wounded. The medical aid at hand was pitifully inadequate; the sight of the sufferings of the wounded soldiers led this Swiss to plan the formation of societies for the relief of wounded soldiers. Such a society was formed at Geneva in 1864, and a badge, a red cross on a white ground, was adopted which was to be worn by those in its service.
By the efforts of Miss Barton, in 1881 the United States co-operated in this work. A Red Cross society was formed of which Miss Barton became president. In 1896 its members helped in the relief of the Armenians; they did noble work in the Spanish-American War in 1898, and in the Boer War the next year.
The work of the Red Cross society is not limited to the relief of the victims of war. In times of calamity and disaster, it takes speedy relief to those stricken by flood, famine, or pestilence. During the floods of 1884, Miss Barton in a relief-boat traveled thousands of miles up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, distributing food, clothing, and supplies. The Johnstown flood of 1889 left four thousand people dead and twenty thousand homeless. The Red Cross Society hastened to the relief of the sufferers. For five months its agents worked amid scenes of want and distress, distributing over two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of food, clothes, furniture, and other supplies. They did similar work at the great flood of Galveston in 1900, and are always ready to extend a helping hand where it is needed.