Clara Barton’s Pass to the First U.S. Exhibition or Exposition in Which the American Red Cross Exhibited

Included is correspondence from the Director General of the Exposition to Barton, promising to pay the expenses of the French Red Cross for its return home

In 1883, just a year after the American Red Cross was chartered by Congress and approved by President Arthur, there was relief work needed in New Orleans due to a cyclone. A Red Cross chapter was put in place in that city, and Clara Barton made sure funds were available to handle the necessities of the inhabitants. The Red Cross quickly became popular there.

The following year, a World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition was scheduled to be held in New Orleans from December 16, 1884 to January 2, 1885. At this time nearly one third of all cotton produced in the United States was handled in New Orleans. Congress helped provide financing, and also constructed a large U.S. Government & State Exhibits Hall on the site. Foreign displays were contributed by many nations in the Western Hemisphere, as well Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Thailand, China, and Turkey. The exhibit of France was a notable display of her educational work as well as decorative arts.

Barton saw an opportunity to promote the American Red Cross and its work and wanted it to have an exhibit, and the Red Cross board approved. She also took an interest in having foreign Red Cross societies take part. She was officially informed in August 1884 that the American Red Cross was having space allocated in the exhibition hall, and that the organizers were extending an invitation to the Red Cross of France as she wished. The French accepted and displayed.

This group from Clara Barton’s personal papers includes her own pass to the Exposition, signed by its President, Edmund Richardson, who held the largest amount of acreage under cotton in the United States and, with one exception, the largest in the world; and its Director General, Major Edward A. Burke, the Louisiana State Treasurer and editor of the New Orleans Times-Democrat newspaper. With it comes a letter to Barton from Burke on Exposition letterhead, dated January 6, 1885, indicating that with the Exposition over: “In response to your communication touching the Red Cross, I beg to assure you that the Exposition Management will pay transportation on the Red Cross exhibit of France.” The envelop is included.

A search of the Clara Barton papers in the Library of Congress fails to turn up any exhibition in which the American Red Cross participated previous to this. We thus come to the conclusion that this was almost certainly the first U.S. exhibition or exposition in which the American Red Cross exhibited. Having Barton’s pass to the Exposition is nothing less than extraordinary.