Part 26
Mrs. John A. Logan, with second shovel of dirt. Author of the Congressional measure creating May 30th a national holiday, known as Decoration Day; and sponsored in Congress by U. S. Senator John A. Logan. ]
He who plants an oak looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity.
WASHINGTON IRVING.
The American Flag The Glen Echo Service Flag The Red Cross Flag The Clara Barton Red Cross Home
Pin Oak (Quercus Palustris), 8½ feet high, 5½ inches in circumference at the base; 3½ inches in circumference, 4½ feet from the ground.
CLARA BARTON AND THE OAK
_The Memorial Address_
The tree is the longest lived of all the lives of earth. Trees are in existence whose birth antedates that of our Christian civilization. The Cedar of Lebanon of the Old World is a part of the religious sentiment of the human race. The General Sherman Sequoia of the New World had battled against the warring elements of Nature for thousands of years before existed the warring forces of the Anglo-Saxons, on this continent. If there “be tongues in trees” every historic tree might say: “What I have seen and known is identified with the human race.”
Every country has its trees, historic, sacred through association with an individual or with some great national event. Of the tree, historic, the historian writes, the poet sings, and in delineating its beauties the painter exhausts his art. He who plants an historic tree transmits history and poetry and art to posterity. The tree becomes a part of a country’s history.
England has her Parliament Oak, under whose branches King John held his parliament; her Pilgrim Oak, associated with Lord Byron, her Falstaff Tree, her Shakespeare Tree. The United States has her Penn Treaty Elm, under whose possible inspiration, for once at least, faith was kept with the North American Indian; her Charter Oak that became the guardian of the parchment that held the liberties of the Puritans; her Cambridge Elm within whose cooling shades George Washington took command of the Colonial forces in the struggle for human liberty; her Liberty Tree, whose very soil wherein it grew, said Lafayette, should be cherished forever by the American people.
At the nation’s capital there are trees historic. On Capitol Hill there is the great elm, said to have been planted by George Washington in 1794. On the grounds of the Woman’s National Foundation, near Dupont Circle, is the tree known as the Treaty Oak. Its history is of pathos, possibly in part of fiction, but whether of fact or of fiction, like the wanderings of Ulysses the tree is of never-ceasing interest. In the Botanic Gardens is the Peace Oak, said to have been planted by a Southerner who tried desperately to prevent the Civil War, and died broken-hearted over his failure. And near by this historic tree is the picturesque oak that came from an acorn picked up by the grave of Confucius, in far away Shantung.
Of all the trees of ancient and modern times the oak is the most historic. The Ancient Greeks and Romans thought that the oak was Jupiter’s own tree; the Ancient Britons, that it belonged to the God of Thunder—groves of oaks were their temples. Among the Celts the oak was an object of worship; the Yule log was invariably of oak.
We plant an oak to commemorate a career, sacred, sacred to one who loved the world—to one whom all the world loves. As in Japan a certain tree is sacred, in America every tree is sacred that is love-planted. Our act, and sentiment, is in consonance with hers whose almost last wish was that an oak sapling be planted at the shrine of her beloved horse; that it might be his monument, and with the hope that the children would love and protect it as Baba’s Tree.
“Sing low, green oak, thy summer rune, Sing valor, love, and truth.”
In no other atmosphere of her native land as here is a place so appropriate to plant this historic tree. Through this atmosphere, into yonder edifice, came the cry “Come and Help Us”;—from Cuba that cruelty, pestilence and starvation were the portions of thousands; from Galveston that still other thousands of men, women and children had become victims of disaster, on her storm-swept coast. In every instance to the cry for help was there response, and on wings of love the Angel of Mercy sped forth to minister with her own hands to suffering humanity.
It was here that she basked in the sunset rays, as they dipped gently towards the west. Yonder are the trees which she planted with her own hands; yonder the soil wherein grew her beautiful flowers; yonder humanity’s centre from which flowed her charities to almost every part of the known world; yonder the chamber from whose bed of sorrow she cried: “Let me go; let me go”; yonder the window through whose casement on Easter Morn, in 1912, her spirit flew to the Great Unknown.
Nature that springs from the soil decays and dies; deeds that spring from the soul never die. Nature’s foliage that ornaments is destroyed by the frosts of winter; the spiritual foliage that ornaments is perennial. The American Red Cross whose bud, in 1881, opened to the sunlight in the forests of Michigan is now the sheltering tree for the world’s millions; the woman that planted the seed and nourished it with her tears, as later she planted that other tree known as THE NATIONAL FIRST AID, is now the spirit that stands sponsor for certain charities, charities the most widely known of all the charities of earth.
Neither marble nor canvas is so venerated as the tree, from out of GOD’S FIRST TEMPLES—a tree to commemorate the individual is the most venerated memorial in the world. The world will little care, or note not at all, what we say and do here and yet the spirit of these environments may become the inspiration of future ages. The mound that soon must shut out from view our mortality will be leveled and covered with earth’s foliage, only to be forgotten or marked “UNKNOWN.” But let us pray that the tree, whose sentiment is world-humanity, may take highest rank among the world’s other historic trees; that through the centuries the children of successive generations will love and protect THE CLARA BARTON OAK, NATURE’S EASTER-TRIBUTE TO IMMORTALITY.
MEMORIAL TREE PLANTING TO THE MEMORY OF CLARA BARTON
25. Summer of 1865 at Andersonville identifying the dead, and laying out the first National Cemetery, by request of the Government. Raised the first United States flag over Andersonville.
26. 1865–67 Searching for the 80,000 missing men of the army. Found 19,920 of them at an expense to herself without pay of $17,000. The Government reimbursed $15,000 of this sum.
27. The Lecture Field. Delivered 300 at $100 per lecture on the battlefields of the Civil War, 1867–8.
THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
Was on the following battlefield and relief fields during this war:—
28. Hagenau, battlefield.
29. Metz, battlefield.
30. Strasburg, battlefield (8 months) siege, and relief after siege.
31. Belfort, relief.
32. Woerth, relief.
33. Baden Hospitals.
34. Sedan, battlefields.
35. Montbelard, relief.
36. Paris, Fall of the Commune; relief.
37. Organizing and managing relief for sick and wounded soldiers and sick and destitute people in France at close of war, 1871.
RED CROSS WORK
38. With the International Red Cross Committee in Europe, Switzerland, Germany and France. 1869–71. 1872–73, ill in London.
39. Seven years’ effort to make Red Cross known to the United States and asking for the treaty; 1875–1882. Secured adhesion of the United States to the Treaty of Geneva, March 1, 1882, having organized the American National Red Cross Association the year before, and was nominated to first presidency by President Garfield, 1882; was the President for twenty-three years; 1881–1904.
40. Author of American Amendment authorizing Red Cross to administer relief in time of great National disasters, which was adopted by all treaty nations.
41. Organized First Aid Department within the Red Cross; but when she resigned in 1904 as President, it was discontinued by her successors, 1903.
42. Organized The National First Aid Association of America, independent of the Red Cross, similar in its scope and object to the St. John Ambulance Association of England. Five hundred and twenty-two classes have been organized with ten thousand students and five thousand four hundred graduates—January 1, 1922.
43. Conceived idea of a Rest Cure and School where people should be taught to keep well.
(The cost of distributing the funds and other contributions entrusted to Clara Barton, as President of the American Red Cross during her twenty-three years of administration, did not exceed two per cent. of the amounts contributed for the twenty fields of relief in this country and the four fields in foreign countries. Signed: Julian B. Hubbell, General Field Agent of the Red Cross during the twenty-three years of Clara Barton’s Presidency.)
RED CROSS FIELDS
44. Michigan Forest Fire, 1881, expended $80,000.00
45. Mississippi River Floods, 1882, expended 8,000.00
46. Mississippi Cyclone, 1883, expended 1,000.00
47. Mississippi River Floods, 1883, expended 18,000.00
48. Balkan War; relief, 1883, expended 500.00
49. Ohio and Miss. River Floods, 1884, expended 175,000.00
50. Texas Famine, 1885, expended 100,000.00
51. Charleston Earthquake, 1886, expended 85,500.00
52. Mt. Vernon Illinois Cyclone, 1886, expended 85,000.00
53. Florida Yellow Fever, 1888, expended 15,000.00
54. Johnstown Flood, 1889, expended 250,000.00
55. Russian Famine, 1892, expended 125,000.00
56. Pomeroy, Iowa, Cyclone, 1893, expended 2,700.00
57. S. C. Islands Hurricane and Tidal Waves, 1893, 65,000.00 expended
58. Armenian Massacres, Turkey, Asia Minor, 1896, 116,325.00 expended
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 59. Cuban Reconcentrado relief, Spring of 1898, expended 1,300,000.00 60. Spanish-American War at San Juan, battlefield, 1898 61. Cuban Orphan Asylums, Summer and Fall of 1898 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 62. Galveston Storm, 1900, expended 130,000.00 63. Typhoid Fever Epidemic, Butler, Pa., 1904 ————————————— Total $2,557,025.00
64. Superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Criminal Women. One year; appointed by General Butler, then governor of Massachusetts, 1884. _Represented United States Government at International Red Cross Conferences, as follows_:—
65. At Geneva, Switzerland, in 1884.
66. At Carlsruhe, Germany, in 1887.
67. At Rome, Italy, in 1890.
68. At Vienna, Austria, in 1897.
69. At St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1902.
70. Author of books.
71. Author of lectures.
72. Author of poems.
CI
The press is the representative of the people.
GEN. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY.
The newspaper is the immediate recorder and interpreter of life.
HENRY IRVING.
Three Thousand newspapers voiced the public opinion of the nation; thousands no doubt escaped us.
EDITOR—_Clara Barton In Memoriam_ (1912).
The press shapes the fortunes of the world and makes and unmakes with a breath. CLARA BARTON.
The American press has been to me, to my assistants, and our work, a band of faithful brotherhood. CLARA BARTON.
Human progress had evolved a “Press” whose lever moved the world. CLARA BARTON.
Among the dark hours that came to us in the hopeless waste of work and war on every side, the strong sustaining power has been the _Press_ of the United States. CLARA BARTON.
I thank the press of my country for its unwavering and genuine kindness for all the years it has dealt with my name.
CLARA BARTON.
Through all of good report or ill; contradictory, perplexing, incomprehensible, the one thing that has not only sustained but astonished me has been the loyalty of the American press.
CLARA BARTON.
THE PRESS AND THE INDIVIDUAL
THE PRESS
Clara Barton is to America what Florence Nightingale is to us. The American Civil War created her, and determined the whole course of her life. There is that which war, and nothing less, can do with a woman. It can make her, right away, what we may without irreverence call superwoman; and, having done that, it can set her to hard administrative work, to reform and organize great matters of national welfare; and it can keep her at that high level to the end of her days. Only, it must have her all to itself; she must give up everything that she was doing.
It was a wonderful life. She was inspired to save lives. Providence, very wisely, chose her for its purposes, not because she was an intellectual woman but because she was a pure flame of sympathy. Not peace, but war, made her what she was.
London (Eng.) Times, January 27, 1916.
THE INDIVIDUAL
Among the countless thousands, in her lifetime, that Miss Barton numbered as her friends, the following have been culled; and Miss Barton had not only letters thanking her for her work from the following but also enjoyed their personal friendship:
_Presidents of the United States_
Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Arthur Grover Cleveland Benjamin Harrison William McKinley
_Vice-Presidents of the United States_
John C. Breckinridge Hannibal Hamlin Schuyler Colfax Henry Wilson William A. Wheeler Garret A. Hobart
_Secretaries of the Interior_
Zachariah Chandler Henry M. Teller John W. Noble
_Secretaries of the Navy_
Benjamin F. Tracey Hillary A. Herbert John D. Long
_Secretaries of the Treasury_
Salmon P. Chase George B. Boutwell William Windom Charles J. Folger
_Secretaries of State_
William H. Seward Elihu B. Washburn Hamilton Fish William M. Evarts James G. Blaine T. F. Frelinghuysen Thomas F. Bayard John W. Foster Walter Q. Gresham Richard Olney John Sherman William B. Day John Hay
_Secretaries of War_
Edwin M. Stanton John M. Schofield William T. Sherman Robert T. Lincoln William C. Endicott Redfield Proctor Daniel S. Lamont Russell A. Alger
_Secretaries of Agriculture_
Norman J. Coleman Jeremiah M. Rusk J. Sterling Morton James Wilson
_Postmasters General_
James N. Tyner John Wanamaker Wilson S. Bissell William L. Wilson
_Chief Justices U. S. Supreme Court_
Salmon P. Chase Morrison R. Waite Stanley Matthews
_The Army_
Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt Maj. Gen. John R. Brooke Gen. Daniel E. Sickels Brig. Gen. James F. Wade Brig. Gen. M. I. Luddington Brig. Gen. Adolphus W. Greely Brig. Gen. John M. Wilson Brig. Gen. Jos. C. Breckinridge Brig. Gen. W. A. Hammond Brig. Gen. H. D. Rucker Lieut. Gen. John M. Schofield
_General Officers U. S. Volunteers_
Maj. Gen. William R. Shafter Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee Brig. Gen. William Ludlow Brig. Gen. Fred D. Grant
_The Navy_
Rear Admiral Winfield S. Schley Rear Admiral William F. Sampson
_Sovereigns of Europe_
Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden Abdul-Hamid, Sultan of Turkey William I., Emperor of Germany Empress of Germany Nathalie, Queen of Servia Czar of Russia Grand Duchess of Baden
_Miscellaneous_
Surg. Gen. Joseph K. Barnes, U.S.A. Gen. Phil H. Sheridan Gen. R. D. Mussey Hon. George B. Loring Hon. E. G. Lapham Surg. Gen. George H. Crum, U.S.A. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler Sumner I. Kimball, General Superintendent U. S. Life Saving Corps Walter Weymann, Surgeon General, Marine Hospital Service
CII
Time rolls rapidly—and the events we meet to revive are already history. CLARA BARTON.
Clara Barton—before the growing strength and power of her sweet spirit, the armies of the world shall some day halt and ground arms. Madison (Wis.) _Journal_.
Worcester has even a tenderer affection than all humanity for Clara Barton, the “Angel of the Battlefield.” She was in her Oxford birth a Worcester County Contributor to the world’s upward move. Worcester (Mass.) _Post_.
Her career as a nurse in the battlefields of the Civil War ranks high among the achievements of women in human history. In the roll of the centuries no other name will stand higher nor shine brighter than that of the modest, the loving, the loyal, the world-wide patriot. Worcester (Mass.) _Gazette_.
MILLIONS WILL REGARD THE SIMPLICITY OF THE END. Worcester (Mass.) _Telegram_.
She lives whom we call dead. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
To die is to begin to live. RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Death borders on our birth and our cradle stands in the grave.
BISHOP HALL—_Epistles_.
Death but entombs the body; life, the soul;—death is the crown of life. YOUNG’S _Night Thoughts_.
How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their Country’s wishes blest! WILLIAM COLLINS.
Nor shall your story be forgot, While Fame her record keeps, Or Honor points the hallowed spot Where Valor proudly sleeps. THEODORE O’HARA.
Resolutions have been adopted by the army nurses to provide for perpetual decoration of Miss Barton’s resting place with the flag she loved, and served under from 1861 to 1865, that its folds may wave, summer and winter, in loving remembrance of the glorious work for humanity accomplished during her long life. Boston (Mass.) _Transcript_. April 17th, 1912.
THE CLARA BARTON CENTENARY
THE SIMPLICITY OF THE END
Memorial address delivered at the Annual Reunion of the Twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment,—held at Worcester, Mass., August 23, 1921
By COMRADE CHARLES SUMNER YOUNG (Honorary Member of the Regiment)
Comrades of the Twenty-first Massachusetts:
This year is the centenary of the birth of a Daughter of the Regiment. Three score years today that regiment left Worcester for fields of frightful carnage. Regiment and daughter shared in scenes tragic that the Union might live.
At the close of the war the war-service of the regiment ended, but not the public service of the daughter. Continuous thereafter she served the human race. She served in disaster;—in fire and flood and famine and
cyclone and earthquake and yellow-fever and massacre. She served in two succeeding wars. She served in the camp, in the hospital, and on the firing-line. She was on the firing-line in the Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War, in the Spanish-American War;—she was on the “firing-line” for half a century in the War of Human Woes.
It was fifty years after his passing that the American people fully appreciated the heart and public services of Abraham Lincoln. Long before half a century shall have lapsed into history world-recognized will be the world-services of the Daughter of the Regiment. An oft recital of her deeds is the best tribute that mortal man can pay to her. But there are now of record tributes to her by powerful influences; tributes by eleven American presidents, including ex-President Wilson and President Harding; tributes to her by nine foreign rulers, by eleven foreign nations, by several American States, and Cities, and by more than fifteen hundred thousand American citizens. At the laying of the corner stone of the Red Cross Building, in March, 1915, at Washington, D. C., Acting Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge of her said: “Hers is an immortal American destiny, the greatest an American woman has yet produced.” General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, in November, 1919, said, “The accomplishments of the Red Cross during the past four years constitute an historical monument to the memory of this noble woman.”
Autocracy cannot take precedence over heart; wealth cannot compensate the loss of the spirit of love; wrong cannot win permanent victory over right; official mandate cannot dim the glory of record achievements. The highest achievement is the highest ideal, realized. In a nation the highest ideal, realized, is not wealth, not the palace of wealth; it is the individual. Eliminate the individual and there would be no history. The history of the individual is the history of a nation. In Greece the highest realized ideal is Homer; in Italy, Dante; in England, Shakespeare; in American philanthropy it is the Founder of the American Red Cross, of the National First Aid, and author of the American Amendment.
As in the early sixties the Daughter of the Regiment lit the fires of hope on the field and in the hospital of the Southland, in later years through her “American Amendment” her service-system in alleviating human suffering has become the system of forty civilized nations, comprising four-fifths of the human race. Certain of fulfillment the prophecy of our illustrious statesman, the late George F. Hoar of this city, who said that countless millions and uncounted generations will profit through the Founder of our American systems of philanthropy.
The achievements of the Daughter of the Regiment are the heritage of the nation. But the fame of the daughter is indissolubly linked with that of the regiment; the fame of the regiment, with that of the daughter.
Regiment and daughter were comrades in adversity, comrades when bullets whizzed and death stalked. That comradeship was the most beautiful of the humanities in the Civil War. Said a gallant son of the Twenty-first Massachusetts: “We dearly loved her, and I do not think there was a man in the regiment who would not have been willing to die for her.” Said the Daughter of the Regiment: “If my life could have purchased the lives of the patriot martyrs who fell for their country and mine, how cheerfully and quickly would the exchange have been made.” That sentiment reciprocal—willing to serve at the risk of life—is a sentiment chivalric, unsurpassed by the belted and spurred knights of the sword in Feudal Days.
The guns cease firing,—the battleground, a ghastly scene. Human ghouls are lurking, preying upon the helpless. The “lone woman” is in their midst, going in and coming out of houses where lay the dead and dying, walking through the streets and alley ways, on her mission. A knight-errant in his saddle, with hat in hand graciously bowing, gallops up to her, admonishing that she is in great danger and offering her the City’s protection. Pointing to the thousands of boys wearing the blue, she answered: “No, Marshal, I think not; I am the best protected woman in the United States.”
In the autumn of her life when war scenes were a misty memory, on a public occasion, she again comments: “In all the world none is so dear to me as the Old Guard who toiled by my side years ago.” As she is not here to speak for herself, kindly permit me to echo her sentiments in the very words the late daughter expressed to you at a former annual reunion: