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Chapter Fourteen
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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Of course the American Red Cross suffered while Clara Barton was managing the prisoners at Sherborn. She had been concerned about this when she reluctantly agreed to take the position, and the problems of the emerging organization continued to nag at her throughout 1883. Yetshe could not bring herself to give up its leadership, even temporarily. Soon after her arrival at the reformatory she decided she would not "neglect it, but simply . . . add this charge to it, and conduct the two."1 Barton obtained permission from the prison committee and Governor Butler to hire John Hitz or someone else to help her with the Red Cross work, but, for undisclosed reasons, this was not done. The burden was eased only once, when faithful Julian Hubbell came to Sherborn for a few weeks to help with correspondence.2 What Red Cross work Barton could do was hastily completed in the small hours of the morning, and this, understandably, wasinadequate.3 Those addressing the national headquarters were likely to receive a note from Hubbell explaining that Miss Barton wasoccupied at Sherborn and would reply upon her return. Communities interested in forming local Red Cross societies were puzzled to find their requests for membership unanswered. One group of eminent citizens and physicians in Philadelphia came to believe that the American Red Cross was completely defunct and wrote directly to Gustave Moynier in an attempt to revive the work. This naturally alarmed and embarrassed Barton, who hastened to reassure both the doctors in Philadelphia and the International Committee in Geneva that the American Red Cross still existed. It was with relief that she contemplated a return to Washington and the Red Cross in January 1884-4 Clara had scarcely begun to pick up the confused bits of undone business when a disaster occurred that would prove both a challenge and a boon to the American Red Cross. In early February 1884, the Ohio River again flooded. Barton was 232 fourteenn quickly informed of the situation and wasequallyquick to respond. On February9 she left for Pittsburgh to personally survey the damage, stopping only to visit with precious Aunt Fanny, now near death.5 Though Pittsburgh had suffered much less damage than other cities on the river, Barton was shocked at what she saw, and immediately sent out an appeal for donations. Once the checks, barrels of clothing, and gifts of food began to arrive, she left for Cincinnati in hopes of finding the worst of the destruction and to determine the most urgent need. Barton had become accustomed to exaggerated reports, so she wassurprised at the truly terrible conditions along the Ohio. The river was rising half an inch every hour, and towns like Lawrenceburg, Indiana, were entirely swept away, replaced by swirling masses of debris. Cincinnati lay under seventy-one feet of water. Chicken houses and railroad ties floated by, mingled grotesquely with dead pigs, rumpled clothing, and the everyday treasures of private life. There had been few deaths, but property damage was extensive. Barton had had no intention of staying on the scene—she wanted too badly to handle the pressing business of the Red Cross—but found herself "surprised and captured." Sensing that this was a challenge equal to those of the old war days, she lost herself in the business of saving lives. It would be more than three months before she would return to the national headquarters.6 Congress appropriated $500,000 in relief funds for the area, money earmarked for the recovery of missing persons and for distribution of emergency rations.The American Red Cross had no desire to compete with the federal government; indeed it could not have done so. Instead it sought to supplement the government's work. It was still midwinter, and warm clothing, fuel, bedding, and feed for the animals were desperately needed. All were items that the army boats, plying the rivers, neglected to carry. Barton also found that the government transports concentrated on the larger towns, or those with easy access, and that many a stranded farmer or out-of-the-way village was neglected. "My agents are looking the ground over very carefully . . . ," she wrote on February22, "seeking among the smaller towns, the little people, who are likely to be over-looked, what their necessities may be."7 She initially set up warehouses in Cincinnati, but when a tornado struck the lower Ohio a few weeks later, she hastily moved her headquarters to Evansville, Indiana, where there was more immediate need. After...