The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003 Page: 527
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"God Help Them All and So Must We"
She sent her report to the president of the United States four days after
arriving back home. With its six million acres and a state government free
of debt, she told Cleveland, her main reason for going "was my ... inabil-
ity to solve the mystery of why Texas was not equal to the care of its own
poor and meeting of its own calamities." She named the warring factions
as the "original lords of the soil," railroad agents, and farmers. Then, she
sided with the press, "the mistake was made of their coming out of the
State to solicit aid" and "the mistake of overstatement was made." The
press attacks served to "literally kill all help from both without and with-
in," and the generous offer of free freight by the railroads was "most un-
fortunately abused ... and used by dealers to send goods ... free to cus-
tomers." She told of the $1oo,ooo state appropriation and the good
fortune of some rain which had saved part of the wheat. She said the press
"... was still pointing its horns at John Brown." She had enlisted the Dal-
las and Galveston papers for a seed fund effort, commenting the
"arrangement was not difficult for us to make. ... I am home," she end-
ed, "with scarcely strength to leave my bed, but I trust we have heard the
last of Texas drouth.59
Upon leaving Albany, Miss Barton had packed "a heterogeneous mass
of conflicting matter" into her trunk--bones, horns, stones, and cactus,
but Frank Conrad, an Albany merchant, added other mementos. Catch-
ing up on correspondence, she wrote him of her delight and surprise in
the buffalo and wolf furs which "found their place at once [on furni-
ture] ... almost within reach of my hand as I sit at my desk. . . . Neither
the Dr. nor I ... understand how your townspeople managed to so steal
our hearts, and make us feel . .. we always had known you [and] always
must know you." Barton continued referring to Texas and wrote a
banker friend in Indiana that "the state is doing its best . . . and it will
find all it can do to get seed to plant those vacant fields in time ... if not,
God help them all, and so must we." To a colleague with the Charity Or-
ganization Society in New York, she wrote, "The wants were real . . . no
pretense there . . . little houses bare to a handful of charity given meal
with a little turbid water for mixing . .. and if the need becomes greater
. I shall tell the people of other states . . . I think you will all be
ready."60
Mornmg News, Feb. 2, 12, 1887, New York Herald, Feb. 8, 19 (quotations can also be found here),
1887.
'9 Barton, The Red Cross: In Peace and War, 139 (1st quotation), 140 (2nd-5th quotations),
140-141 (6th quotation), 141 (7th-8th quotations), 142 (9th quotation).
"0 Clara Barton to Charles Kellogg, Mar. 2, 1887 (4th quotation), Clara Barton Letters (copy in
Library of Congress); Clara Barton to Frank Conrad, Mar. 6, 1887 (1st and 2nd quotations), Ibid.
(copy in Library of Congress); Clara Barton to John H. Cutter, Mar. 7, 1887 (3rd quotation), ibid.
(copy in Library of Congress).2003
527
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003, periodical, 2003; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101223/m1/605/: accessed March 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.