Tis eminence that makes envy rise; As fairest fruit attract the flies.
Successful with her new organization, the Red Cross a few years later (in 1910) formed in its society a department to carry on relief as then carried on in Miss Barton’s new organization, the department being of like name—The First Aid Division. In her new field of humane service, Clara Barton expended from her personal funds about $5,000, besides five years of hard work, before she achieved success.
She was herself again; she was on the “firing line”; she had the support of her former Red Cross field forces,—not one had deserted her. She didn’t flee her “enemies” to Mexico, but to the “Hub”;—where, and in which vicinity, she had enjoyed social amenities with the Julia Ward Howes, the Wendell Phillips’, the George Bancrofts, the John B. Goughs, the Louisa M. Alcotts, the Lucy Larcoms, the Mary Baker Eddys, the Henry Wilsons, the Charles Sumners, the George F. Hoars. Either among such then living or their friends, she had lost none of her prestige because she had been attacked in the “Den of Character-Assassins.”
Be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow, Thou shalt not escape calumny.
On her “First Aid” Advisory Board were Lieutenant-General Nelson A. Miles and ex-Governor John L. Bates, of Massachusetts; Dr. Eugene Underhill, of Pennsylvania; Dr. Charles R. Dickson, of Canada; Dr. Joseph Gardner, of Indiana. Associated with her in various other capacities, also, were persons of national fame and widely-known humanitarianism. She was unanimously elected and re-elected, while she lived, the Active President of the organization—the organization known as the National First Aid Association of America: now she is the President _In Memoriam_.
In the House Records of 1903 and 1904 there is found the following: “They (Remonstrants) suggest that Miss Barton is a party to loose and improper arrangements for securing the needed accountability for supervision of disbursements for money furnished in demand of exigency of the Red Cross by the charitable public.” In 1916, a letter signed by a leading Red Cross official was mailed to the members of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. In that letter, among many other “charges,” was the following: “I think I have given sufficient evidence to show why the dishonest appropriation of relief funds for the personal use of Miss Barton makes the officials of the Red Cross strongly opposed to having the memorial of such a woman placed in a building that stands in remembrance of the noblest, finest, and most self-sacrificing womanhood of America.”