Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/237

 BARTON.

BARTOX.

even with those who differed from him in opinion. His published works are: " History of the West Churcli and its Ministers "' (1858) ; " Church and Congregation" (1858); "Word of the Spirit to the Church" (1860); "The Unspotted Life" (1864); " Discourses on the Christian Spirit and Life""; " Discourses on the Christian Body and Form " ; " Pictures of Europe "' ; " Radical Prob- lems " (1872); "The Rising Faith" (1874); "Principles and Portraits" (1880); "Spiritual Specifics" (1884); occasional essays and poems and innumerable sermons and discourses. In 1888 he resigned his pastoi'ate. He died in Bos- ton, Mass.. Dec. 10. 1900.

BARTON, Clarissa Harlowe (Clara Barton), philanthropist, was born at North Oxford. Mass.. Dec. 25, 1821; daughter of Captain Stevens and Dolly (Stone) Barton. Her father fought under " Mad Anthony Wayne " against the Indians in the West, and her mother was a daughter of Cap- tain Stone of Oxford. After her academic edu- cation acquired at Clinton, N. Y., she became a teacher. At her own risk Miss Barton founded the first free school in New Jersey, which she opened with six pupils at Bordentown, and by the end of the first year her pupils had increased from six to six hundred, and she had erected a new schoolhouse, costing four thousand dollars. FaiHng health compelled a relinquislunent of her school, and in 1854 she became a clerk in the U. S. patent office, which position she held until the breaking out of the civil war, when she devoted herself to caring for wounded soldiers on the battle field and in camp and hospital. Per- sonal solicitation brought to her supplies in abundance, and when the ai'my moved in 1863, she took the field, and in her quiet, self-contained way, among hospitals and camps prosecuted her work. Military trains, and hospital and camp appointments were at her service. She was pres- ent at the battles of Cedar Mountain, second Bull Run, Antietam and Fredericksburg, was eight months at the siege of Charleston, was in the hospital on Morris Island, at Fort Wagner, and afterwards in front of Petersburg and in the Wilderness, and in hospitals about Richmond. Her labors were not over when the war ended. Under the authority and at the request of Presi- dent Lincoln she undertook the task of searching for the 80,000 men marked "missing" on the muster rolls of the army. She went to Ander- sonville to aid in supervising the identification of the dead and the erection of tablets over their graves. She saw gravestones placed over the bodies of 12,920 men, and tablets marked with the word " unknown "" over four lumdred. She devoted four years to this work and to telling to hundreds of thousands of interested listeners the story of her army life and work, and then, with

health broken by overwork, she in 1869 visited Europe for rest and recuperation. While in Swit- zerland in 1869 she learned of the society of the Red Cross, estabUshed under a treat}' signed by every power of Europe, making its members non- combatant and neutral, and licensing them to care for the wounded of whatever creed or national- it}% whether friend or enemy. She jjromptly joined this society, and under its emblem did much volunteer hospital work during her five years abroad. In recognition of her services in the Franco-Prussian war she was decorated with the golden cross of Baden and the Iron cross of Germany. After the capitulation of Strasbourg she entered that city with the German army and assisted materially in relieving the destitu- tion of the thousands of starving and homeless people; materials were foimd for thousands of garments, and women who were hungry and suf- fering from lack of clothing were set to work to make them and were paid for their labor. During the daj's of the commune she labored to assist the need}^ by the distribution of food and cloth- ing. She returned to America in 1873 and secured from Congress a ratification of the European treaty, which established the society of the Red Cross in the United States in 1881. The same year President Garfield appointed Miss Barton president of the American association of the Red Cross, under the treaty of Geneva. Fore- seeing an era of peace for this country, she jdi-o- j)osed the famous "American amendment," which allowed the Red Cross society to work when fire, flood, famine, pestilence, or any other disaster sufficient to call for jiublic relief, should occur. Hitherto the society had had but one ob- ject, the relief of the wounded in time of war, but her amendment, which also granted protection to Red Cross agents, was agreed to by the confer- ence at Berne, was signed March 16, 1882, and gave the American branch a much broader field of usefulness. Miss Barton personally directed the relief work of the Red Cross at the scene of the Michigan forest fires and of the Mississippi and Ohio floods in 1882 and 1883; and again in 1884, of the Louisiana and Mt. Vernon cyclones ; of the Cliarleston earthquake, and of the Texas drought. At the Johnstown, Pa., flood she was on the ground on the first train, and with a force of fifty men and women she remained there for five months, administering relief to the destitute. Her work on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, after the terrible ravages of the cyclone and tidal wave, was one of the most difficult and extensive of her many relief operations. The " American amendment "" has not been adopted by any other country, though into foreign lands the blessed- ness of its ministrations has been convincingly demonstrated. In the famine in Russia in