America’s Greatest Lady
October 16th, 2015
Author: Tom Tiede
The U.S. Treasury Department’s decision to print the likeness of a woman on banknotes has provoked wide if gentle controversy. The proposal, that of replacing the upstanding Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill was met with fuss by those of us who thought it would be better to displace the downstanding Andrew Jackson on the $20. Then when the abolitionist Harriet Tubman won an Internet straw pole of likely candidates, even some black feminists argued that doing so would stamp her on the symbol of capitalism that fostered Negro slavery.
Alas, the government says it will still get rid of Alex, not Andy.
Treasury will put a feminine touch on its $10 bill beginning in 2020.
And Tubman remains a possible for the tenner. She was a munificent escaped slave who first devoted and risked her life in the defense of human rights, and later put the same effort into women’s suffrage. Still, Negro children could be bought $10 in her time, and the dollar’s deprived use in the millions financed Negro abuse in the nation for 80 years.* Printing her face on money would be a slap – as it would, perhaps, for any black of the antebellum period.
So, who then? The list of great American women, like Tubman, is not long. Prejudice and circumstance denied a female role in traditional leadership for centuries. More recently, 313 women have served in Congress, 32 have been Cabinet secretaries (three as Secretary of State), yet even when they are added to a longer list of business doyens none of them approach the status of a $10 portrait. Eleanor Roosevelt is a sentimental pick, though not even she was a singularity.
That leaves a few ladies who simply rose to great occasions.
Clara Barton was one; she rose so high she’ll remain there forever.
Barton was a Civil War nurse, a humanitarian legend at a moment when society paid little attention to women, and the founder of the American Red Cross. She battled sexism and snickers, she overcame insult and insensitivity, yet, in retrospect, she is likely responsible for the saving or helping of more American lives than any other human being. Most of the men featured on U.S. financial notes (Washington, Lincoln, Grant and Jackson) are there in memory of the bloodshed they endured; Barton too was a combat trooper, but her legacy is magnanimity.
The legacy also includes grit. Many women of her day believed in the same things she did, but almost all were forced by cultural circumstance to do little but believe. Barton stuck with it over the 90 years of her life. Once, as a teacher, she opened the first free school in New Jersey. It quickly grew from six to 600 students, and encouraged the building of a larger building. When it came to selecting a principal, though, Barton was passed over in favor of a man. She left, but she did not give up; she went from there to become the iconic “Angel of the Civil War.”
Barton was born into a middle class family in Massachusetts. She was said to be extremely shy as a child, also easily depressed, and it affected her health. Her parents had her examined by a phrenologist, who practiced the period quack-science of studying bumps on the head; he said she could be cured of her timidity by becoming a teacher. Before she would do that, however, she showed a faculty for nursing; her brother was seriously injured in a fall, she stayed with him after his doctors gave up hope, and, with tender care, helped the boy recover.
Eventually, Barton became a well-traveled teacher, working in Canada as well as in U.S. schools, which became her introduction to male-domination in the professions. Over time, she changed course, after refusing any longer to “do a man’s work for less than a man’s pay.” She signed on as a clerk in the U.S. patent office, at the same remuneration as the gentlemen there; she was bounced about by rules that still favored men, however, and she annoyed those who did not want women in government jobs; she retaliated by lobbying for more women in civil affairs.
In 1854, as political tensions increased between the North and South, a trainload of U.S. soldiers was attacked by southern sympathizers in Baltimore. When the injured were brought for treatment to Washington, Barton crossed town from the patent office to organize a makeshift hospital, entirely on her own volition. There, she called on friends she’d made in teaching, and in the women’s rights movement, gathering donations of food, medicines, and clothing. It was a strategy she would employ over and over when the Civil War broke out less than a decade later.
Barton’s entry in the war effort was, in part, in deference to her father. He died in the first year of the combat, having instructed her in the duties of helping suffering soldiers. Once again, she had to overcome the head-shaking of chauvinist tradition, but armed with supplies collected by women’s groups, she got permission to go to the battles themselves. Thereafter she was in some of the bloodiest moments of the war (Second Bull Run, Antietam) distributing provisions, serving food, fixing wounds; at one point a bullet went through her sleeve and killed her patient.
It was harrowing, to be sure. She wrote: “It’s said that women don’t know much about war. I wish men didn’t either.” At Fredricksburg, a Massachusetts man had both arms blown away; she nursed him, sent him home safely, and saw to it that someone would care for him the rest of his life. At Cedar Mountain, in Virginia, she arrived with a wagon load of hope during a fight where 3,000 men were killed or wounded. While battles raged from Maryland to North Carolina, Barton had her people “follow the cannon fire” often arriving before the surgeons.
Her habit of listening to and learning from the men she treated led eventually to a post-war follow-up of the mayhem results. Tens of thousands had died without official recording, so Barton set up a “friends of the missing persons” group that was blessed by Abe Lincoln. She and her’s responded to more 63,000 letters from families, and identified more than 22,000 otherwise misplaced soldiers. During that effort she went to an infamous POW camp at Andersonville, Ga., where 13,000 of 45,000 men had died; she helped turn the evil place into a national cemetery.
Following the war, Barton traveled and lectured, then went to Europe for a rest. There, at a stop in Geneva, she visited the International Red Cross (established in 1863 in 12 European states), and was asked to start a chapter in America. Her first attempts were blocked in the name of avoiding “entangling alliances,” but Congress came round and passed enabling laws in 1882. Barton ran the organization from her home in Washington, responding to those victimized by everything from forest fires (Michigan) to floods (Jamestown, Pa.) to hurricanes (the Carolinas).
It’s not known how many soldiers Barton saved or helped during the Civil War (she also was a nurse in a European conflict). But her Red Cross has become the single-most secular do-good affiliation in the U.S. It is reported to provide assistance in 70,000 disasters every year, during which it it touches 100 million people. The nice work of all the Washingtons, Lincolns, Grants and Jacksons together do not in any way compare. Thus the search for America’s $10 lady ends here. Except for all good moms, Clara Barton is the greatest woman in the nation’s history.
--------------------
* Congress authorized the first “dollar” in 1786; slavery ended in 1865.
October 16th, 2015
Author: Tom Tiede
The U.S. Treasury Department’s decision to print the likeness of a woman on banknotes has provoked wide if gentle controversy. The proposal, that of replacing the upstanding Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill was met with fuss by those of us who thought it would be better to displace the downstanding Andrew Jackson on the $20. Then when the abolitionist Harriet Tubman won an Internet straw pole of likely candidates, even some black feminists argued that doing so would stamp her on the symbol of capitalism that fostered Negro slavery.
Alas, the government says it will still get rid of Alex, not Andy.
Treasury will put a feminine touch on its $10 bill beginning in 2020.
And Tubman remains a possible for the tenner. She was a munificent escaped slave who first devoted and risked her life in the defense of human rights, and later put the same effort into women’s suffrage. Still, Negro children could be bought $10 in her time, and the dollar’s deprived use in the millions financed Negro abuse in the nation for 80 years.* Printing her face on money would be a slap – as it would, perhaps, for any black of the antebellum period.
So, who then? The list of great American women, like Tubman, is not long. Prejudice and circumstance denied a female role in traditional leadership for centuries. More recently, 313 women have served in Congress, 32 have been Cabinet secretaries (three as Secretary of State), yet even when they are added to a longer list of business doyens none of them approach the status of a $10 portrait. Eleanor Roosevelt is a sentimental pick, though not even she was a singularity.
That leaves a few ladies who simply rose to great occasions.
Clara Barton was one; she rose so high she’ll remain there forever.
Barton was a Civil War nurse, a humanitarian legend at a moment when society paid little attention to women, and the founder of the American Red Cross. She battled sexism and snickers, she overcame insult and insensitivity, yet, in retrospect, she is likely responsible for the saving or helping of more American lives than any other human being. Most of the men featured on U.S. financial notes (Washington, Lincoln, Grant and Jackson) are there in memory of the bloodshed they endured; Barton too was a combat trooper, but her legacy is magnanimity.
The legacy also includes grit. Many women of her day believed in the same things she did, but almost all were forced by cultural circumstance to do little but believe. Barton stuck with it over the 90 years of her life. Once, as a teacher, she opened the first free school in New Jersey. It quickly grew from six to 600 students, and encouraged the building of a larger building. When it came to selecting a principal, though, Barton was passed over in favor of a man. She left, but she did not give up; she went from there to become the iconic “Angel of the Civil War.”
Barton was born into a middle class family in Massachusetts. She was said to be extremely shy as a child, also easily depressed, and it affected her health. Her parents had her examined by a phrenologist, who practiced the period quack-science of studying bumps on the head; he said she could be cured of her timidity by becoming a teacher. Before she would do that, however, she showed a faculty for nursing; her brother was seriously injured in a fall, she stayed with him after his doctors gave up hope, and, with tender care, helped the boy recover.
Eventually, Barton became a well-traveled teacher, working in Canada as well as in U.S. schools, which became her introduction to male-domination in the professions. Over time, she changed course, after refusing any longer to “do a man’s work for less than a man’s pay.” She signed on as a clerk in the U.S. patent office, at the same remuneration as the gentlemen there; she was bounced about by rules that still favored men, however, and she annoyed those who did not want women in government jobs; she retaliated by lobbying for more women in civil affairs.
In 1854, as political tensions increased between the North and South, a trainload of U.S. soldiers was attacked by southern sympathizers in Baltimore. When the injured were brought for treatment to Washington, Barton crossed town from the patent office to organize a makeshift hospital, entirely on her own volition. There, she called on friends she’d made in teaching, and in the women’s rights movement, gathering donations of food, medicines, and clothing. It was a strategy she would employ over and over when the Civil War broke out less than a decade later.
Barton’s entry in the war effort was, in part, in deference to her father. He died in the first year of the combat, having instructed her in the duties of helping suffering soldiers. Once again, she had to overcome the head-shaking of chauvinist tradition, but armed with supplies collected by women’s groups, she got permission to go to the battles themselves. Thereafter she was in some of the bloodiest moments of the war (Second Bull Run, Antietam) distributing provisions, serving food, fixing wounds; at one point a bullet went through her sleeve and killed her patient.
It was harrowing, to be sure. She wrote: “It’s said that women don’t know much about war. I wish men didn’t either.” At Fredricksburg, a Massachusetts man had both arms blown away; she nursed him, sent him home safely, and saw to it that someone would care for him the rest of his life. At Cedar Mountain, in Virginia, she arrived with a wagon load of hope during a fight where 3,000 men were killed or wounded. While battles raged from Maryland to North Carolina, Barton had her people “follow the cannon fire” often arriving before the surgeons.
Her habit of listening to and learning from the men she treated led eventually to a post-war follow-up of the mayhem results. Tens of thousands had died without official recording, so Barton set up a “friends of the missing persons” group that was blessed by Abe Lincoln. She and her’s responded to more 63,000 letters from families, and identified more than 22,000 otherwise misplaced soldiers. During that effort she went to an infamous POW camp at Andersonville, Ga., where 13,000 of 45,000 men had died; she helped turn the evil place into a national cemetery.
Following the war, Barton traveled and lectured, then went to Europe for a rest. There, at a stop in Geneva, she visited the International Red Cross (established in 1863 in 12 European states), and was asked to start a chapter in America. Her first attempts were blocked in the name of avoiding “entangling alliances,” but Congress came round and passed enabling laws in 1882. Barton ran the organization from her home in Washington, responding to those victimized by everything from forest fires (Michigan) to floods (Jamestown, Pa.) to hurricanes (the Carolinas).
It’s not known how many soldiers Barton saved or helped during the Civil War (she also was a nurse in a European conflict). But her Red Cross has become the single-most secular do-good affiliation in the U.S. It is reported to provide assistance in 70,000 disasters every year, during which it it touches 100 million people. The nice work of all the Washingtons, Lincolns, Grants and Jacksons together do not in any way compare. Thus the search for America’s $10 lady ends here. Except for all good moms, Clara Barton is the greatest woman in the nation’s history.
--------------------
* Congress authorized the first “dollar” in 1786; slavery ended in 1865.