Profiles in Audacity by Alan Axelrod

Author:Alan Axelrod
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781402772566
Publisher: Sterling
Published: 2009-10-23T04:00:00+00:00

FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE SHE REMAINED TRUE to her credo—to act. Barton’s work with the bureau consumed several years. In 1869, mentally and physically exhausted, she went to Europe to rest, but while she was there, war broke out between France and Germany. Not surprisingly, Barton began distributing relief supplies to the victims of combat. This woman whose independence had made it difficult for her to work with large organizations now became associated with the new International Red Cross, which had been founded by Swiss humanitarians. Back in the United States, she campaigned to secure the U.S. government’s endorsement of the Geneva Convention, which the Red Cross had formulated to promote the humane treatment of soldiers wounded or captured in war. In 1881, Barton organized the American Association of the Red Cross, which became the American Red Cross; like other national Red Cross organizations, it was an independent affiliate of the International Red Cross. Under her leadership—which lasted until 1904—she composed and engineered passage of the “American Amendment” to the constitution of the International Red Cross, which expanded the brief of the institution from relief in war to relief in other times of major emergency, including floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, epidemics, and famines. Never content to remain merely an administrator, she took to the field at age seventy-six during the 1898 Spanish-American War in Cuba.

Ultimately, the self-reliant Barton was deemed unable or unwilling to delegate responsibility as an executive; this, along with her age and political infighting, led to her forced resignation as president of the American Red Cross in 1904, when she was eighty-two. Although deeply hurt, she remained active in the cause of organized relief work until virtually the day of her death, April 12, 1912, having transformed humanitarianism from a philosophy to a vocation practiced on a scale both intimate and universal.

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