Volume II Part 2 (1/2)
Clara Barton was the youngest child of Capt. Stephen Barton, of Oxford, Ma.s.s., a non-commissioned officer under ”Mad Anthony Wayne.”
Captain Barton, who was a prosperous farmer and leader in public affairs, gave his children the best opportunities he could secure for their improvement. Clara's early education was princ.i.p.ally at home under direction of her brothers and sisters. At sixteen, she commenced teaching, and followed the occupation for several years, during which time she a.s.sisted her oldest brother, Capt. Stephen Barton, Jr., a man of fine scholars.h.i.+p and business capacity, in equitably arranging and increasing the salaries of the large village schools of her native place, at the same time having clerical oversight of her brother's counting-house. Subsequently, she finished her school education by a very thorough course of study at Clinton, N. Y. Miss Barton's remarkable executive ability was manifested in the fact that she popularized the Public School System in New Jersey, by opening the first free school in Bordentown, commencing with six pupils, in an old tumble-down building, and at the close of the year, leaving six hundred in the fine edifice at present occupied.
At the close of her work in Bordentown, she went to Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., to recuperate and indulge herself in congenial literary pursuits.
There she was, without solicitation, appointed by Hon. Charles Mason, Commissioner of Patents, to the first independent clerks.h.i.+p held by a woman under our Government. Her thoroughness and faithfulness fitted her eminently for this position of trust, which she retained until after the election of President Buchanan, when, being suspected of Republican sentiments, and Judge Mason having resigned, she was deposed, and a large part of her salary withheld. She returned to Ma.s.sachusetts and spent three years in the study of art, belles-lettres, and languages. Shortly after the election of Abraham Lincoln, she was recalled to the Patent Office by the same administration which had removed her. She returned, as she had left, without question, and taking up her line of duty, awaited developments.
When the civil war commenced, she refused to draw her salary from a treasury already overtaxed, resigned her clerks.h.i.+p and devoted herself to the a.s.sistance of suffering soldiers. Her work commencing before the organization of Commissions, was continued outside and altogether independent of them, but always with most cordial sympathy. Miss Barton never engaged in hospital service. Her chosen labors were on the battle-field from the beginning, until the wounded and dead were attended to. Her supplies were her own, and were carried by Government transportation. Nearly four years she endured the exposures and rigors of soldier life, in action, always side by side with the field surgeons, and this on the hardest fought fields; such battles as Cedar Mountain, second Bull Run, Chantilly, Antietam, Falmouth, and old Fredericksburg, siege of Charleston, on Morris Island, at Wagner, Wilderness and Spotsylvania, The Mine, Deep Bottom, through sieges of Petersburg and Richmond, with Butler and Grant; through summer without shade, and winter without shelter, often weak, but never so far disabled as to retire from the field; always under fire in severe battles; her clothing pierced with bullets and torn by shot, exposed at all times, but never wounded.
Firm in her integrity to the Union, never swerving from her belief in the justice of the cause for which the North was fighting, on the battle-field she knew no North, no South; she made her work one of humanity alone, bestowing her charities and her care indiscriminately upon the Blue and the Gray, with an impartiality and Spartan firmness that astonished the foe and perplexed the friend, often falling under suspicion, or censure of Union officers unacquainted with her motives and character for her tender care and firm protection of the wounded captured in battle. Their home-thrusts were met with the same calm courage as were the bullets of the enemy, and many a Confederate soldier lives to bless her for care and life, while no Union man will ever again doubt her loyalty. All unconsciously to herself she was carrying out to the letter in practice the grand and beautiful principles of the Red Cross of Geneva (of which she had never heard), for the entire _neutrality_ of war relief among the nations of the earth, that great international step toward a world-wide recognized humanity, of which she has since become the national advocate and leader in this country.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Clara Barton. ”Very Sincerely Yours Clara Barton.”]
At the close of the war she met exchanged prisoners at Annapolis.
Accompanied by Dorrence At.w.a.ter, she conducted an expedition, sent at her request by the United States Government to identify and mark the graves of the 13,000 soldiers who perished at Andersonville. From Savannah to that point, as theirs were the first trains which had pa.s.sed since the destruction of the railroads by Sherman, they were obliged to repair the bridges and the embankments, straighten bent rails, and in some places make new roads. The work was completed in August, 1865, and her report of the expedition was issued in the winter of 1866.
The anxiety felt by the whole country for the fate of those whom the exchange of prisoners and the disbanding of troops failed to reveal, stimulated her to devise the plan of relief, which, sanctioned by President Lincoln, resulted in the ”search for missing men,” which (except the printing) was carried on entirely at her own expense, to the extent of several thousand dollars, employing from ten to fifteen clerks. In the winter of '66, when she was on the point, for want of further means to carry out her plan, of turning the search over to the Government, Congress voted $15,000 for reimbursing moneys expended, and carrying on the work. The search was continued until 1869, and then a full report made and accepted by Congress. During the winter of 1867-8 Miss Barton was called on to lecture before many lyceums regarding the incidents of the war.
In 1869, her health failing, she went to Switzerland to rest and recover, where she was at the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war, and immediately tendered her services there, as here, on the battle-field, under the auspices of the Red Cross of Geneva. Her Royal Highness the Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Baden, daughter of the Emperor of Germany, invited Miss Barton to aid her in the establishment of her n.o.ble Badise hospitals, a work which consumed several months. On the fall of Strasburg she entered the city with the German army, organized labor for women, conducting the enterprise herself, employing remuneratively a great number, and clothing over thirty thousand. She entered Metz with hospital supplies the day of its fall, and Paris the day after the fall of the Commune. Here she remained two months, distributing money and clothing which she carried, and afterward met the poor in every besieged city in France, extending succor to them.
She is a representative of the ”International Red Cross of Geneva,”
and President of the American National a.s.sociation of the Red Cross, honorary and only woman member of ”Comite de Strasbourgeois”; was decorated with the ”Gold Cross of Remembrance” by the Grand Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Baden, and with the ”Iron Cross of Merit” by the Emperor and Empress of Germany.
Miss Barton may be said to have given her whole life to humanitarian affairs, largely national in character. The positions she has occupied, whether remunerative or not--and she has filled but few paid positions--have been pioneer ones, in which her efforts and success have been to raise the standard of woman's work and its recognition and remuneration. Her time, her property, and her influence have been held sacred to benevolence of that character that will a.s.sist in true progress. Nevertheless, she is one of the most retiring of women, never voluntarily coming before the world except at the call of manifest duty, and shrinking with peculiar sensitiveness from anything verging on notoriety.
Her summers are pa.s.sed at her pleasant country residence at Dansville, New York, where she has regained in a most gratifying degree her shattered health and war-worn strength, and her winters in Was.h.i.+ngton in the interests and charge of the great International movement which she represents in America.
JOSEPHINE SOPHIE GRIFFING.
_The National Freedman's Relief a.s.sociation._
BY CATHARINE A. F. STEBBINS.
Josephine Sophie White was born at Hebron, Conn., December, 1816, and was educated in her native State. She grew to young womanhood in the pure and religious atmosphere of the New England hills, and developed a strength of const.i.tution and character which was the basis of her truly beneficent life-work. Refined, sympathetic, and conscientious, with the golden rule for her text, her career was ever marked with deeds of kindness and charity to the oppressed of every cla.s.s. Taking an active part in both the ”Anti-slavery” and ”Woman's Rights”
struggles, she early learned the very alphabet of liberty. With her the perception of its blessings and its glory was also a rich inheritance, and the vigilance and courage to conquer and secure it for others was not less a n.o.ble legacy. The love of liberty flowed down to her through two streams of life. On the mother's side she was descended from Peter Waldo[25], after whom the Waldenses were named; and on the father's, from Peregrine White, who was born in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1620, the first child of Pilgrim parents. It is not strange she was by temperament and const.i.tution a reformer, and a protestant against all despotisms, whether of mind, body, or estate.
In the agitation for human rights of one cla.s.s after another, in their historical order, she enlisted with the Abolitionists, with the Woman Suffragists, with the Loyal League and sanitary workers, and after the war, in relief of the Freedmen. Her interest in her own s.e.x began early, and continued to the last.
At the age of twenty-two she married, and about the year 1842 removed with her family to Ohio, where her home soon became the refuge of the fugitive slave, and the resting-place of his defenders. In 1849 she began, with her husband, Chas. S. S. Griffing, her public labors in connection with the ”American” and the ”Western Anti-Slavery Societies,” speaking at first to small audiences in school-houses, and when prejudice and bitterness gave way, to conventions, and ma.s.s-meetings; opposition and curiosity yielding finally to sympathy and aid. But for years the meetings were often broken up by mobs. The effort to uproot slavery was p.r.o.nounced either absurd, treasonable, or irreligious; that it would incite insurrection of the slaves; or if successful, bring great responsibility upon the Abolitionists, and disaster to the whole country.
In 1861, Mrs. Griffing, prompted by the same loyal spirit that moved all the women of the nation, turned from the ordinary occupations of life to see what she could do to mitigate the miseries of the war. She united at once with ”The National Woman's Loyal League,” lecturing and organizing societies in the West for the soldiers and freedmen, to whom large quant.i.ties of clothing and other supplies were sent, and circulating pet.i.tions to Congress for the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves as a war measure.
While thus engaged, her thoughts naturally turned to the large number of Southern slaves coming with the army into Was.h.i.+ngton, whose future she foresaw would be beset with distress and want during the long period of change from chattelism to the settled habits of freedom.
They were coming by the hundreds and thousands in 1863, with a vague idea of being cared for by ”the Governor,” but the Government had as yet made no provision, separate from that for the soldiers, when Mrs.
Griffing went to Was.h.i.+ngton and began her labors for them, which were continued until her death.
She at once counseled with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton as to the best methods for immediate relief; proposed plans which they approved, and received from them every aid possible in their execution. Her first step was to open three ration-houses, where she fed at least a thousand of the old and most dest.i.tute of the freed people daily. She visited hundreds in the alleys and old stables, in attics and cellars, and in almost every place where shelter could be found, and became acquainted personally with their necessities, and the best means of supplying them. There were 30,000 in the capital at this time, and it would be difficult to give an idea to one not there, of the time and labor it cost to hunt out the old barracks and get them transformed into shelters for these outcasts. Upon the personal order of the Secretary of War, she was allowed army blankets and wood, which she distributed herself, going with the army wagons to see that those suffering most were first supplied. This ”temporary relief” was necessarily continued for some time, during which Mrs. Griffing was made the General Agent of ”The National Freedman's Relief a.s.sociation of the District of Columbia.” She opened a correspondence with the Aid societies of the Northern and New England States, which resulted in her receiving supplies of clothing and provisions, which were most acceptable. These were carefully dispensed by herself and two daughters, who were her a.s.sistants. Mrs. Griffing opened three industrial schools, where the women were taught to sew;[26] a price was set on their labors, and they were paid in ready-made garments.
The Secretary aided in the purchase of suitable cloth, and with that sent from the North, such outfits were supplied as could be afforded.