THE LIFE OF
CLARA BARTON
When in 1869 Clara Barton went to Europe in quest of health, she had never so much as heard of the Red Cross. That organization had been in existence in Europe for more than five years, but the number of people in America who knew anything about it was exceedingly small. The United States was not then a member of the international organization which recognized the Red Cross, nor did it become a member for many years thereafter. This was not because the United States Government did not know about it, but because this country had no purpose or desire to join in an organization established in Europe for purposes in which it was generally believed this country had no occasion to participate.
It is necessary to be explicit on this subject. The meeting which gave the Red Cross to the world took place at Geneva, Switzerland, on February 29, 1863. At the call of a committee, which already had behind it the formal endorsement of eleven national governments, the international organization was formed in Geneva on August 22, 1864. At this meeting the cross of red upon a white ground was adopted as the insignia of the convention. Twenty-two governments promptly gave their adherence to this convention. The United States was not among them, although it had been formally invited to be present.
The Red Cross did not lack for an advocate in America in that early day. The Reverend Henry W. Bellows, D.D., chairman of the Sanitary Commission of the United States, earnestly desired that America should have been among the original nations adhering to the treaty; but his pleadings were met with indifference and with pronounced opposition. Mr. George P. Fogg, United States Minister to Switzerland, and Mr. Charles S. P. Bowles, European Agent of the Sanitary Commission, were informally present at the Geneva Convention. The Secretary of State authorized Mr. Fogg “to attend the meeting in an informal manner, for the purpose of giving or receiving such suggestions as you may think likely to promote the humane ends which have prompted it.” He added that Mr. Fogg was not to attend if any emissary of the Confederate Government was allowed to be there.
It is interesting and gratifying to know that Mr. Bowles was able to report to the convention concerning the important work done in America by the Sanitary Commission. But neither Mr. Fogg nor Mr. Bowles could give any assurance that the United States would do anything toward the formal endorsement of the Red Cross, or become a member of the convention.
Dr. Bellows exhausted all his efforts to secure some recognition of the movement in America, and finally gave it up in despair. From February 9, 1863, when the movement began in Geneva, until May 20, 1881, when James G. Blaine wrote to Clara Barton that President Garfield would recommend to Congress the adoption of the international treaty, was a period of eighteen years, during which time the United States of America turned a deaf ear to every entreaty to participate in the work of the Red Cross. That the United States even at that late date came to be a participant in the results of the Geneva Convention was due to the untiring faith, devotion, and perseverance of Clara Barton.
She was not one among many good women working for this common end. She was not a member of a committee or other organization beginning feebly, but gradually gaining strength until the object was accomplished. Alone she learned of the Red Cross; alone she brought tidings of it back to her own country; alone she wrote of it, talked of it, brought it to the attention of distinguished men, carried her faith in it from desk to desk in Washington, and cherished the hope of it through long years, until just before the assassination of President Garfield, she received from him, through his Secretary of State, the assurance that the United States would accept the treaty which thirty-one national governments had previously adopted.
In September, 1869, Clara Barton went abroad in quest of health. For several months following the loss of her voice on the platform she had been fighting nervous prostration in America, and had found that she must turn her back on everything that suggested work. Acting under medical advice, she sailed in September, and, after a short sojourn in Scotland with no more than a look at London and Paris, she came to Geneva in Switzerland, bearing letters of introduction from the Swiss Minister in Washington, the Honorable John Hitz, to the American Consul and the American Ambassador. It was there Clara Barton learned of the Red Cross.
Had she but known it, a Red Cross Society had actually been formed in the United States in 1866, but had died without securing national recognition or attracting public attention. Of that organization we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. It was called “The American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields.” Information concerning it is preserved in a letter of the Reverend Henry W. Bellows, D.D., President, to Monsieur J. Henri Dunant, Secrétaire du “Comité International de Secours aux Militaires Blessés.” The few people who knew of this organization in 1866 had very nearly forgotten about it by 1869, and its great-hearted organizer, Dr. Bellows, had become completely discouraged with respect to any recognition of the movement in America. How Clara Barton came into touch with this organization as it existed abroad she told in a lecture which she prepared and delivered in a number of places on her return from Europe at the close of the Franco-Prussian War. As during this period her health was so poor that her diary was kept with great irregularity, this lecture gives us our best account of her journey and succeeding events:
Most of you, I presume, know of me only as connected with our own war, and probably little of that, and, unless I give a word of explanation, it will remain a mystery to you how I ever came near a war in another country, and, in military parlance, we must connect the two by a “pontoon bridge,” and get ourselves across on it.
Our war closed in the spring of ’65. Almost four years longer I worked among the débris, gathering up the wrecks, and sometimes, during the lecture season, telling a few simple war-stories to the people over the country, in their halls and churches.
One early winter evening in ’68 I stood on the platform of one of the finest new opera houses in the East, filled to repletion, it seemed to me, with the most charming audience I had ever beheld,—plumed and jeweled ladies, stalwart youths, reverend white-haired men. Gradually, and to my horror, I felt my voice giving out, leaving me; the next moment I opened my mouth, but no sound followed. Again, and again, and again I attempted it, with no result. It was finished! Nervous prostration had declared itself. I went to my home in Washington, lay helpless all winter. Finally, by my physicians I was ordered to Europe, and in early September, ’69, I was able to go.
I came in time to Geneva, when, while we were waiting, anticipating and settling ourselves, one day there was announced a visit from a body of Geneva gentlemen, having some business with me.
They introduced themselves as the officers of a society known as the International Convention of Geneva,—more familiarly, the Red Cross,—having for its object the amelioration of the sufferings of war, the succor and nursing of the wounded and sick in battle, the relief of prisoners, the guarding against famine and pestilence, and whatever may befall a people, under the scourge of war.
And this, in its international character, extends not alone to its own, but to all nations within the compact.
This society had been formed in 1865, at the instance of Dr. Louis Appia,—there present,—a noted surgeon in the Italian wars of Napoleon III, who had at that date called a convention composed of delegates from the civilized nations of the whole world, formed their laws for international neutral action in all wars extending to all peoples, framed their treaty and presented it for signature, through the delegates present, to the nations which they respectively represented. In less than two years this compact had been signed and entered into by twenty-five distinct governments comprising all the civilized and some semi-civilized nations of the globe.
With your kind permission, I will depart for a few moments from my narrative and speak of the nature of the international compact, which may not be familiar to you.
This treaty, consisting of ten articles, and making material changes in the articles of war governing the medical and hospital departments of all armies, provided among other things for entire neutrality concerning all hospitals for the care of sick and wounded men; that they should not be subject to capture; that not only the sick and wounded themselves, but the persons in attendance upon them, as surgeons, hospital stewards, and nurses should be held neutral, and free from capture; that surgeons, chaplains, and nurses, in attendance upon the wounded of a battle-field at the time of its surrender, should be regarded as non-combatants, not subject to capture, and left unmolested to care for the wounded so long as any remained upon the field, and, when no longer needed for this, be safely escorted to their own lines, and given up; that soldiers too badly wounded to be capable of again bearing arms should not be carried away as prisoners, but offered to their own army if in retreat it could take them. They must be placed in hospitals and cared for, side by side with the wounded of the enemy; that all convoys of wounded or evacuations of posts should be protected by absolute neutrality; that all supplies designed for the use of the sick or wounded should be held as neutral and entirely exempt from capture by either belligerent army; that it should be the duty of both generals in command to apprise the inhabitants, in the vicinity of a battle about to take place, of the fact that any house which should take in and entertain the wounded of either side would be placed under military protection, and remain so as long as any wounded remained therein, and that they would be also exempt from the quartering of troops and ordinary contributions of war, thus literally converting every house in the vicinity of a battle into a furnished hospital and making nurses of its inmates.
In order to carry into effect these great changes, it would be needful to have some one distinctive sign, a badge by which all these neutral peoples and stores could be designated. There must be but one hospital flag among all nations within the treaty, and this same sign must mark all persons and things belonging to it. The convention studied diligently for this sign; at length it got so far as to decide that a cross would be acceptable to nearly all peoples. They next said, “We represent here the great war-making monarchy of the world.”
This little Republic of Switzerland, so small that one of us could crush her between our thumb and finger, has had the courage to invite us here to consider our cruelties and call upon us for some better system of kindness and humanity than we have heretofore practiced. For this brave lesson she deserves something of us. We cannot take her flag; she has fought a thousand years for that, and will not give it up; but if she permits, we will reverse its colors—a white cross upon a red ground—and make a red cross on a white ground the one distinctive sign of humanity in war, the world over. The consent was given and this committee of gentlemen who had called the convention, with Monsieur Gustave Moynier as its president, was reëlected by all the nations as the international medium and head of war relief throughout the civilized world. To anticipate a little, I would say here that our adhesion to this treaty in 1882 has changed our articles of war; our military hospital flag. We have no longer the old faded yellow flag, but a bright red cross at every post, and the same sign to be worn by all military surgeons and attendants, if the orders of the War Department have as yet reached them, for we are to-day, you will be glad to know, not only in full accord with this International Treaty of Geneva, but are considered one of the strongest pledged nations within it.
There were at this time thirty-one nations in this great compact, comprising all the civilized and even some of the semi-civilized nations of the globe, all with one great and incomprehensible exception, the United States of America.
It had been three times presented to our Government; once at its formation during our war and twice since, without success, and without any reason, which, to the members of the convention, seemed sufficient or intelligent.
And it was to ask of me the real nature of the grounds of this declination that the interview had been sought.
If there were something objectionable in their articles, they might be modified to meet our laws, or even our prejudices—that some clue might be gained, which they could understand. They had thought of everything. If it had originated in a monarchical government, they could see some justifiable caution, but a sister Republic older than our own—and yet all monarchies had signed it. In their perplexity they had come to me for a solution of the problem. What could I say? What could each or any of you have said, if confronted with this question?
Simply that you did not know anything about it, and you were sure the American people did not know anything about it, or ever had heard of it. That the Government, or rather some officer of the Government, to whom the matter had been assigned, had decided upon and declined it individually, and it had never been considered in the national councils, nor in any way made known to the people.
I knew it must be so: that it had simply gone by default with no real objection; that our Government was too rushing to attend to details outside of political influence.
I could only answer these gentlemen that I feared the matter was not sufficiently understood, being in a foreign language, and I hoped it could be better presented at some future time. I need not say that this committee of seven members and myself became friends.
I read their Articles of Convention, their published bulletins and all reports, and, as we progress, we shall see if, in the dark days that followed, I found reason to respect the cause and appreciate the work of the Geneva Convention.
On Miss Barton’s arrival in Switzerland she made her home with the Golay family, father and mother of Jules Golay whom she had befriended in America, and who extended to her every possible courtesy while she was in their home and in their country.
Switzerland is beautiful in summer and early autumn, but in winter it is no improvement on New England. The beginning of cold weather found Miss Barton in discomfort. She celebrated Thanksgiving, and soon afterward left Switzerland for a milder climate.
She had a cordial invitation to spend the winter in London, but declined the opportunity. London fogs are inhospitable even to Londoners, and, to any one in Clara Barton’s condition of health, they are most depressing. She determined instead to go to the Island of Corsica.
Corsica did not agree with Clara Barton. The mild weather was favorable, but she found that she needed as much quinine there as she had required in the South. In the spring she returned to Switzerland, where her home was at the United States Consulate with Mr. and Mrs. Upton, and where she resided from March until the 26th of May. Then she went to Berne for the sake of some baths which had been highly recommended to her. While there, an event occurred which caused her to forget that she was an invalid in search of health.