Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of AmericaYoung, Charles Sumner
History
Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America
Young, Charles Sumner
Barton, Clara, 1821-1912
On February 20, 1903, as elsewhere stated, the “remonstrants” certified
in writing (certification of record) as to the “integrity, good name and
fame of Clara Barton.” At the investigation held in the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Room on April 12, 1904, _in re_ the terrifying
twenty-four page “remonstrance” before the Proctor Red Cross Committee,
General John M. Wilson, himself a “remonstrant” and representing the
“remonstrants” on that occasion, among other things said “We do not
charge that anybody has been guilty of malfeasance,” in Red Cross
affairs.
Referring to this very occasion, Major-General W. R. Shafter, Commander
of the American Army in the Spanish-American War, in 1904 while the case
was pending, said: “If the charges made against Clara Barton were true,
no gentleman could afford to be mixed up in the affair, but not one word
uttered against her _is_ true.” Clara Barton, in 1911, referring to that
now historic event, said: “The harvest is not what the reapers expected,
and I suspect if it were all to be done over again in the light of their
newly-gained experience, it would not be done.”
To the credit of man’s respect for historic truth in official decisions,
and his innate American chivalry, since the exoneration in 1904 there is
not, at least of record, by any man an adverse criticism of the Red
Cross Founder. _The perversion of the truth of history, however, by
woman is as injurious to the public weal as such perversion by man, and
through no ingenuous excuse of chivalry for a live woman, and against a
dead woman, should untruth have countenance._ The investigation, for
want of evidence, was _summarily dismissed_, on motion of the Committee
itself. It thus became a mere farcical episode in American history.
The written certification of the Founder’s “integrity,” by the
“remonstrants” in 1903; the oral disclaimer by the “remonstrants” of
_any_ Red Cross malfeasance in office officially proclaimed at the
investigation in 1904, followed by a unanimous decision adverse to the
“remonstrants,” the incident then should have been closed. The
“accusation,” however, of even worse import than that originally in the
_indictment_, by the “remonstrants” of 1903 and of 1904, again comes to
the attention of the public in a semi-official way, from the same “lone
woman accuser,” and is still a living factor in Red Cross policy,—still
coming—still going—never ending—
All slander
Must still be strangled in its birth; as time
Will soon conspire to make it strong enough
To overcome truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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