Even with the organization established, Barton’s trials were not over. The assassination of President Garfield in the summer of 1881 deterred the process of ratification by several months. She also was concerned about the many rival organizations that were mushrooming around her. The “Red Star,” “Red Crescent,” and “White Cross” all appeared. One group, the “Blue Anchor,” posed a threat to the treaty ratification, for several senators’ wives belonged to it and were openly hostile to her. The rival charities irritated her, and she let herself indulge in self-pity and undue alarm. “There is in all the world, not one person who will come and work beside me to establish the justice of a good cause,” she wrote. “It is only natural that I should long to be out of the human surroundings which care so little for me.” Barton need not have worried so much. The new President, Chester A. Arthur, was an advocate of the Red Cross, and when she called upon the Secretary of State early in 1882 he showed her the treaty, already printed, awaiting only the recommendations of the Senate and official signatures. As she read it, Barton began to weep, for, as a cousin remarked, “her life and hope were bound up in it.” On March 16, 1882, she received a note from Senator Elbridge Lapham informing her of “the ratification by the Senate of the Geneva Convention; of the full assent of the United States to the same.” “_Laus Deo_,” concluded the note, but to Barton it was almost anticlimactic. “I had waited so long,” she wrote in her journal, “and was so weak and broken, I could not even feel glad.” Clara Barton’s success in securing ratification of the Treaty of Geneva is perhaps her most outstanding achievement. Primarily through her writing, speeches, and dedication the public and U.S. officials came to know of the Red Cross. For six years she persisted in lobbying Congress; the treaty ultimately passed without a dissenting vote. And, although she “could not believe that someone would not rise up” to help her, no one ever did. The American National Red Cross remains a monument to Barton’s singular perseverance and her powers of persuasion. Barton and the Red Cross in Action Clara Barton was 60 years old when the Treaty of Geneva was ratified by the Senate. She at first considered her work completed. But the immediate demands made on the young American Red Cross changed her mind; she felt it would be foolish to put the Red Cross into other hands.