It is important that this book shall make plain, by means of all necessary emphasis, and if need be by reiteration, that the United States did not come automatically or promptly into the sisterhood of nations associated under the banner of the Red Cross. From 1864 until 1881 was a period of seventeen years. The United States was the last of the great civilized nations of the world to ratify the treaty. It is also important to make plain that the work of securing this tardy recognition of the Red Cross on the part of the United States did not devolve upon an organization in this country, or upon a group of people laboring together. If ever a great enterprise came into being as the result of the persistent, indefatigable effort of one person, that result was achieved by Clara Barton in securing the adhesion of her own country to the international agreement which included the Red Cross.

Clara Barton undertook to secure national recognition for this organization during the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes. She had already begun work in this direction as early as 1876, and it seemed that she had every requisite for success when, in 1877, President Moynier addressed an official letter to President Hayes informing him of Miss Barton’s appointment, and asking that the United States come into the agreement. But the promised success was delayed.

President Hayes received Miss Barton at the White House, and listened courteously but not enthusiastically to her story. So did the Attorney-General of the United States, the Honorable Charles Devens, to whom the President referred her, and who found no serious legal obstacle in the way of her desire. Each sent her with a note of introduction to the Secretary of State. President Hayes wrote the following little note:

But the movement encountered apathy and quiet but determined opposition, and resulted in no executive action.

In a little scratch-book I find Clara Barton’s own account of this disappointment. Her narrative goes back to Civil War days and then proceeds with her experience overseas, and her service in the Franco-Prussian War:

Nor had she any better success in her approach to members of Congress. They were either apathetic or positively hostile. They knew nothing about the Red Cross and they cared less. The United States was not going to have any more wars. If it ever should have any wars, this country would manage them in its own way. It did not care that any one in Europe should tell it how to provide for the care of sick and wounded men. As for relief to be sent from America to any countries in Europe that might be in war, the American people were fully competent to create their own agencies on this side of the water, and to distribute relief through such agencies as they might select or constitute upon the other side.

Even Miss Barton’s staunch friends in the Senate and in the House could give her very little aid or comfort. If she could enlist the interest of the President or of the Secretary of State, something might possibly be done. Otherwise, it was useless to try.

So far as is known, Clara Barton’s little eight-page pamphlet, issued in 1878, had no more effect than Dr. Bellows’s sixteen-page pamphlet in 1866. If a single newspaper had taken it up and commented favorably upon it, Clara Barton would have been practically certain to have clipped and treasured the article or editorial. There is not in her papers a single letter or newspaper clipping which indicates that any man, woman, or child in the United States responded favorably to her published letter which was quoted in the last chapter. She used her pen and her voice and her power of personal persuasion without avail. The seed of that sowing appeared to fall upon the rocks, and it took no root.

In November, 1880, James A. Garfield was elected President of the United States. Miss Barton knew him somewhat. She wrote him a letter of congratulation, to which he returned a brief but gracious reply. Soon after his inauguration she called on him at the White House and presented the following letter which nearly four years before she had brought to the attention of President Hayes:

President Garfield heard her story with genuine cordiality. He knew her and the work she had done both in this country and abroad. He assured her of his warm personal interest and referred her to the Secretary of State for a further discussion of the matter. His note was brief and to the point:

It was several days before Clara Barton succeeded in securing an appointment with Secretary Blaine; she did not want merely to present the President’s note, but to have time to tell the story of the Red Cross. Mr. Blaine agreed to see her on Monday, April 11, 1881. Her nephew, Stephen, who had come to Washington for a few days, accompanied her on this visit; and it is fully recorded in his diary. The beginning of the interview was not encouraging; for Mr. Blaine, after appointing the time, apparently forgot about it, and was occupied when they called.

The appointment had been made for 11.30 at the Department of State. Clara and Stephen waited for an hour in the Diplomatic Chamber. At the end of that time Mr. Blaine came in accompanied by Mrs. Dr. Loring, of Massachusetts. Introductions ensued, Mrs. Loring said she would “esteem it an honor to make the acquaintance of Miss Barton,” and arranged for an interchange of calls. Mr. Blaine referred to Miss Barton’s call at his residence, and “hoped it would not be the last.” Mrs. Loring then withdrew, and Mr. Blaine apologized for having kept Miss Barton waiting. She told him the nature of her visit and presented the letter of President Garfield. Mr. Blaine told her that he knew practically nothing about the Red Cross, and asked her to state briefly its object. He thought it would come more clearly under the supervision of the Secretary of War, but she explained the necessity for the treaty. The international aspect of the organization had not previously occurred to Mr. Blaine; he had supposed it would be purely an American Society operating under the War Department; and that any encouragement given by the Secretary of State would be incidental and personal; Miss Barton replied that if he could give her time she would like to tell him in detail what was involved in the relation of the United States to the Red Cross. He replied, “Miss Barton, I can give you all the time you need.”

Clara then told him the whole story from beginning to end, and Mr. Blaine listened with intent interest.

He inquired why President Hayes had not pushed the matter to a successful conclusion, and she told him of Mr. Seward’s objections which went back to his father’s secretaryship in Civil War days, and based upon the Monroe Doctrine.

Mr. Blaine replied that “the Monroe Doctrine was not made to ward off humanity.” He told her that “the grounds for Mr. Seward’s objection would not stand in the way of the present Administration.” He assured her that he was “in full sympathy with her proposal,” and promised her that he “would coöperate fully with her in carrying the matter successfully through.” As for the official letter from M. Moynier, he assured her that he would be prepared to reply to that letter approvingly now on the sole basis of her statement of the case; but he said that he wanted to do more than this.

She replied that she knew it would be necessary for the Senate to approve. He told her, “if it needed the action of the Senate, that could be had.” The confidence with which he spoke was most reassuring. He asked her to leave her little pamphlet with him for a few days that he might become a little more familiar with the history of the movement. It was all new to him; but it was obviously a thing in which the United States should have its part with other nations; he could promise her that it would be done, and done promptly.

Mr. Blaine suggested that it would be well for Miss Barton to talk over the matter of the Red Cross with the Secretary of War. On the following day she went by appointment to see Secretary Robert T. Lincoln. Again Stephen accompanied her and made a record of it.

Miss Barton first expressed to Mr. Lincoln her appreciation of the kindness of his father. Stephen wrote, “He was much affected and very grateful.”

The adhesion of the United States to the treaty was a matter for the State Department; but Robert Lincoln was greatly interested, and assured Miss Barton of his support in the operation of the Red Cross in case the Administration agreed to it.

In the next few days she made calls on other members of the Cabinet. Nowhere did she encounter opposition or apathy. The interest of President Garfield and Secretary Blaine appeared to be contagious. All official Washington seemed suddenly to have wakened to the importance of the Red Cross. She called upon several Senators and was introduced by Senator Conger, who told them of Clara Barton’s work in Michigan. With this introduction and a knowledge of the President’s approval, they met her with prompt and unreserved approval of her plans. Most of them had never heard of the Red Cross, but, when she told them how many other nations had approved it, and that the President and Secretary of State were ready to approve the treaty, they gave her on the spot their heartiest endorsement. She thought she understood Secretary Blaine’s complete confidence that the Senate would ratify the treaty as a matter of course.

More than a month elapsed before anything else occurred. Nothing unfavorable developed. On the other hand, neither the President nor Mr. Blaine took any immediate steps. The Conkling difficulty had arisen and both Garfield and Blaine had many other things to think about. Clara Barton began to wonder whether she could induce the Senate to remind the Secretary of State of his interest in the matter.

On May 17, 1881, the Honorable Omar D. Conger, of Michigan, submitted to the United States Senate the following resolution:

It took a little time for the Department of State to gather the documents necessary to answer the request of the Senate. But Secretary Blaine did not wait for this formality. He remembered that there was an earnest little woman awaiting some definite answer from him, and he sent her the following letter:

It would be interesting to know just how Clara Barton received the news. Unfortunately, her diary affords us no information. She must have gone forth from the office of the Secretary of State with wings upon her feet. There still would be months before Congress could act, but she sent the glad news at once to President Moynier and received from him an official reply which she transmitted to the Secretary of State.

There lies before me as I write a little pad of paper, about three by five inches in size, of which more than half the sheets have been used and torn off, and of the remainder all but the top six leaves are blank. Those six pages are filled with writing in pencil, and the writing is that of Clara Barton. It is just such a pad as she habitually kept by her hard and narrow cot, with a candle and a pencil at hand, so that when she woke in the night she might sit up and write the thoughts that came to her. She seldom retired before eleven o’clock, and was habitually up as early as five, but if she had waking hours between, and she often had them, she wrote down what was in her mind, put out the candle, and finished what was for her a good night’s rest by sunrise or before.

“In almost any part of the world except the United States,” the tablet begins, “the words Red Cross, and the emblem for which they stand, would be as familiar as are to us the words Internal Revenue or National Board of Health.”

Was there ever such a time? Most of us have forgotten whether there is a National Board of Health, but “the words Red Cross, and the emblem for which they stand,” have become as familiar as the Stars and Stripes.

Yet there was a time when all other countries knew of it, but in the United States we knew of Internal Revenue and of the National Board of Health, but not of the Red Cross!

The little tablet is not dated, but I have no difficulty in supplying the date. These six pages were penciled on a night between June 9 and July 1, 1881. They appear to have been intended as the basis of an article for the Associated Press, endeavoring to call a little more attention to the fact that on May 21 of that year the American Red Cross had actually been organized and that on June 9 it had elected officers. The Associated Press had sent out a paragraph announcing the organization, May 21, and this was to tell that “A subsequent meeting has been held, and the following officers elected: President, Miss Clara Barton; secretary, George Kennan,” and so on. She might have told, but did not, that her own name as president was presented by President Garfield himself.

She had to explain what the Red Cross was for, although “During the last three or four years the public eye has been growing familiar with the term,” through constant efforts to secure for it such recognition in America as it long had had abroad.

“Nation after nation has recognized its benign mission,” the narrative runs on, “until twenty-seven countries have welcomed, received, and incorporated its humane principle into laws which govern their rules of warfare. In twenty-seven lands, wherever the national emblem is thrown to the breeze in token of war, there floats beside it this beautiful emblem of mercy, pity, justice, charity, and neutral care for the wounded, comfort for the dying, and burial for the dead. To us alone it is a stranger. For seventeen years it has knocked at our door, but our great, noisy family failed to hear.”

That was her first great triumph!

So she obtained her official recognition, and then on the very next day held her meeting for organization, and that fall secured her incorporation, and the next year the treaty, and so on, and so on, one step leading to another; and when she had gotten the consent of the White House, she undertook to educate the great American Republic, and let them know what the Red Cross stood for. She hoped the time would come when the name and symbol would be as well known in America as the words Internal Revenue or National Board of Health.

She had no publicity organization, nor press committee; but one night she sat up in bed, lighted her candle, took her little pad and pencil, and began to write:

“In almost any part of the world except the United States of America the words Red Cross, and the emblem for which it stands, would be as familiar—” and so on.

She did not finish the article in this form, though I find what use she made of it later in that year, in a pamphlet entitled “A Sketch of the History of the Red Cross.” That document was reissued with added material in 1883, after the adoption of the international treaty. The two lie before me, the completed pamphlet, with the endorsement of Secretary Blaine, and the nomination, by President Garfield himself, of Clara Barton to be president of the American Red Cross Association, and the three-cent pencil tablet on which Clara Barton began, on one night very soon after June 9, 1881, to teach the great American people what the words Red Cross and its emblem were intended to represent. She was not much given to weeping, but her tears would have wet through the little pad of paper many times before she accomplished what she undertook. But she succeeded. She lived to see the name and emblem of the Red Cross as familiar in her own country as in any of the twenty-seven that had previously adopted it. And that was what she hoped and prayed to do.

It will be noted that all these documents from the President and the Secretary of State, on the one hand, and from President Moynier and Dr. Appia on the other, are addressed to Clara Barton. So far as is now known there was no other person in America to whom they might have been properly addressed. From the time when she returned from the Franco-Prussian War until the President and the Congress of the United States had officially approved the Red Cross, and the Senate had agreed to the Treaty of Geneva, there was, so far as is known, precisely one Red Cross in the United States, and that was the one which Clara Barton had brought back from the red fields of France.

Not only so, but so far as is now known, in all those years no other voice than hers, after Dr. Bellows gave up hope, was raised on behalf of it. No one else had a vision of its possible relation to the future life of the United States. One little woman, barely recovered from her nervous prostration, trudged wearily from desk to desk in Washington, and with voice and pen pleaded in season and out of season until the American Red Cross became a fact.

Yes, the American Red Cross was now a fact. The President had consented; the Secretary of State had become an enthusiastic protagonist of the treaty; the Secretary of War heartily favored it; and the entire Senate appeared a unit in its favor. The preliminary resolution had passed the Senate without a single dissenting voice. There were certain formalities which needed to be completed before the treaty could actually be signed and ratified, but that was not worth worrying about. President Garfield and Secretary Blaine encouraged Miss Barton to go straight ahead and complete her organization.

She asked President Garfield to become the president of the American Red Cross, but he declined. She told him that in other countries kings and chief magistrates were its presidents; but President Garfield thought he knew a person to whom that honor belonged in America. When the American Red Cross was actually organized, Clara Barton was made its president on nomination of James A. Garfield, President of the United States.

On the very next day after receipt of Secretary Blaine’s letter, Clara Barton held a meeting and organized a National Society of the Red Cross. The society was duly and promptly incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia.

At a subsequent meeting, held on the 9th of June, 1881, the following officers were elected:

Miss Clara Barton, President.
Judge William Lawrence, First Vice-President.
Dr. Alexander Y. P. Garnett, Vice-President of the District of Columbia.
A. S. Solomons, Treasurer.
George Kennan, Secretary.

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Judge William Lawrence, Chairman.
Dr. George B. Loring.
Gen. S. D. Sturgis.
Mrs. S. A. Martha Canfield.
Mr. Walter P. Phillips.
Miss Clara Barton.
Mr. Walker Blaine.
Col. Richard J. Hinton.
Mrs. F. B. Taylor.
Mr. Wm. F. Sliney.
Mr. John R. Van Wormer.
Gen. R. D. Mussey, Consulting Counsel of the Association.
Miss Clara Barton, Corresponding Secretary.

Nothing could have seemed more auspicious than the outlook of the American Red Cross on the day of its organization. It had the support of the President, his Cabinet, and the Senate, and its birth was hailed with satisfaction by all civilized nations. The signing and approval of the treaty appeared a trivial formality.

Just when everything was proceeding finely, President Garfield was shot by a fanatic on July 2, 1881. He lingered through the summer, and on September 19th he died.

The Red Cross Treaty had not been signed.