dana west
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Message #113399 posted by dana west (Info) March 18, 2008 05:47:00 ET
The Mysterious Stranger Who Saved Clara Barton's Life
By Brad Steiger
3-11-8
Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was a 40-year-old
former school teacher when the Civil War broke out in 1861. As she
witnessed dreadful and bloody carnage, she saw a need for a system to
distribute medical supplies and food to troops on the front lines.
For her untiring efforts, she deservedly earned the titl e of "The
Angel of the Battlefield." Later, according to some accounts, she may
have met her own guardian angel.
After the war she worked tirelessly to establish an office that would
help locate and identify prisoners, missing soldiers, and t he dead
who lay lost in unmarked graves throughout the North and the South.
Her doctors sent her abroad to Europe to rest and rejuvenate her
state of exhaustion and ill health, and she arrived shortly before
the outbreak of the Franco-Prussia n War in 1870. She immediately
began work with relief units of the International Committee of the
Red Cross.
Forced into temporary retirement by ill health, she used her supposed
convalescence to begin lobbying the U.S. Senate to ratify the G eneva
Convention and to establish an American Red Cross. In 1882 the Senate
managed to put aside its fear of foreign entanglements, and the
Geneva Convention was ratified, the American Red Cross was formed,
and Clara Barton was named its first president.
It was in April 1884 that 63-year-old Clara Barton, who had always
professed to be a deist, rather than a conventionally religious
person, may have met her guardian angel aboard the riverboat Mattie
Bell on the Mississippi River.
A terrible spring flood had swept away corn and cotton fields, as
well as homes and human lives, and Clara and a group of Red Cross
workers were on a mission of mercy to bring food and medical supplies
to the starving and the injured.
Bef ore they set out, the captain of the Mattie Bell had warned her
that it would be no pleasure cruise. They were going to encounter
floating trees, dead animals, and other debris--probably including
human bodies.
But the most dangerous threat t o their mission, he emphasized, would
be submerged rocks and crevasses, waterfalls. The flood had allowed
the river to escape its former banks and to break through in new
directions, and that meant that those crevasses might now be in
places w here they had never been before. A crevasse was a riverboat
captain's worst nightmare.
Just as the Mattie Bell was about to push away from the dock, a Red
Cross worker rushed up to Clara Barton with the report that a
stranger had just stepped on board and was requesting permission to
sail with them. The worker told her that the stranger seemed rather
vague about his reasons for wanting to accompany them and that there
was something unusual about him.
Clara, always practical and d irect, expressed her opinion that she
saw no reason for a stranger, "unusual" or otherwise, to accompany
them. "Tell him that permission is denied," she told the Red Cross
worker.
But the Mattie Bell was pulling away from the dock, and the st ranger
was already on board. The captain had given the order to sail, and
the assembled crowd of well-wishers was giving them a rousing
sendoff, complete with a chorus of cheers and a band playing "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic." The strange r was forgotten.
The captain had been right about the unpleasant sights that they
would encounter. No member of the crew or the Red Cross workers could
remain unmoved by the river currents carrying bobbing, swollen-
corpses of men, women, and children, as well as the carcasses of
horses, cattle, cats, dogs, and other livestock and poultry. The
Mississippi River had become a charnel house that moved inexorably
toward New Orleans with its debris of death.
From time to time the captain would call out to Clara Barton, "Hear
that roar? Just on the other side of that broken levee is a crevasse.
Pray to God that we don't come on one of those hellholes
unexpectedly."
It was nearly sundown when Clara recalled that they had a stranger in
their midst. A worker pointed out the man standing alone at the
stern, leaning on a railing, looking at the sunset.
He seemed to be an ordinary fellow, Clara remarked to her assistant.
And he did not appear to be bothering anyone. Nevertheless, she
ordered, he would be put ashore at the next dock.
She had just made her decision about the stranger when the captain
approached her with another matter that required her immediate
response.
"Miss Barton, I'm asking your permission to continue for a little
while longer. There's a headland just a few miles farther on that
would be an excellent spot to drop anchor for the night."
Clara was puzzled by the man's request. The sun had nearly set. It
was the Captai n himself who sought to impress her with the many
dangers inherent in this voyage. Wouldn't they be taking great risk
by continuing after dark?
The captain seemed to stiffen at her query. She was, nominally in
command, so he must obey her ord ers. However, he reminded her that he
had been chosen for the voyage because of his great familiarity with
the river. He was certain that he could make the headland before it
became completely dark.
Clara reluctantly agreed to allow the capta in to continue on toward
the headland where he wished to anchor for the night.
But then almost as if the demonic force of the flood had conspired to
entrap the Mattie Bell, a thick fog seemed to appear from nowhere.
Within moments the last ra ys of sunset had been swallowed up by the
rolling clouds of fog, and the riverboat slowed to a crawl--far from
the headland sought by the captain.
Clara Barton gripped the cold railing of the ship and began to pray
for God's help in seeing th em through to safety.
A deep masculine voice startled her from her prayer. It was the
stranger's voice, and although she could not clearly see his face in
the darkness, she could hear plainly the urgency in his voice:
"Within moments the stea mboat will be in a crevasse, and it is a
deadly one. The captain and engineer will not listen to me. You must
command them to pull backward at once. If they do not, the ship will
be lost--and all on board will perish!"
Clara Barton did not he sitate for even one second to argue the
validity of the stranger's grim warning. There was something about
his manner that precluded debate. She was immediately on her way to
alert the captain of the danger.
Later she thanked God that the startled captain had not felt his
authority threatened by a female. He had implemented her orders at
once.
The crew and the Red Cross workers felt the Mattie Bell shudder to a
stop. The rushing current of the crevasse could now be heard plainly
by everyone.
To a person they all realized that their lives now depended on the
little steamboat's reversed engines' being powerful enough to fight
against the current that sought to pull them to their deaths.
To his credit, the captain d isplayed remarkable skill at the wheel as
he managed to direct the Mattie Bell, groaning and creaking, engines
shrieking, backward to an area where he felt secure in dropping
anchor for the night.
At dawn's first light the men and women who h ad set out on a mission
of mercy beheld with absolute horror the fate that a merciful God had
spared them.
Immediately before them stretched a crevasse almost five hundred feet
wide over which a torrent of rushing water dropped fifteen feet i nto
the river below.
How had the stranger known of the existence of the broad and deadly
crevasse?
Surely it had only recently been caused by the violent action of the
floodwaters. The captain had not known of its ominous presence.
Without the stranger's warning they all would almost certainly have
been killed by plunging into the crevasse.
Clara Barton wished to commend the stranger for his action, which had
saved the entire crew and the group of Red Cross workers.
"He's gone, Miss Barton," one of her staff told her. "He's nowhere on
board the ship."
Clara frowned her bewilderment. That was impossible. He must be on
board. Where else could he be? They were in the middle of a river
made hazardous by floodwat ers.
The staff worker reminded Clara that the Mattie Bell was not a very
large vessel. It did not take long to search out all of the places
where a man might be sitting, standing, or resting.
The Red Cross worker who had first confronted the stranger when he
had requested passage on the Mattie Bell reminded her that he had
immediately noticed something different about him.
"1 think he was an angel," the man said frankly, without
embarrassment. "1 think he came aboard solely for the purpose of
seeing to it that our mission of mercy would not be terminated by a
cruel, watery death."
Clara Barton nodded in silent agreement. The Red Cross worker's
explanation was good enough for her--and it seemed to satisfy the
othe rs on board the Mattie Bell as well.
Until her death in 1912 at the age of ninety-one, Clara remained
unable to offer any "natural explanation" of who the stranger aboard
the riverboat had been. If those with a skeptical or rational set of
mi nd wished to devise other theories of how the man had known of the
existence of the crevasse and how he had subsequently managed his
complete disappearance from the Mattie Bell, she would not argue the
case with them.
But she herself never wavered in her conviction that the unseen world
had made itself manifest in order to protect the Red Cross workers on
their humanitarian mission to the needy flood victims.
___________________________________________
Strange as it may seem,Clara Barton used to post here...?
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