Our Federal Charter • 6
systematic governance and greater scal responsibility. However, in the view of a growing number of people,
some of whom had been staunch Barton supporters in the past, more radical steps needed to be taken. Led
by Mabel T. Boardman (a member of the Red Cross since 1900 and a powerful force within it for the next
44 years), a group was organized, dubbed the “remonstrants,” that openly opposed Barton. They took their
concerns to President Theodore Roosevelt and to the Congress. Barton and her remaining followers put up
a strong ght–at one point expelling remonstrants from the organization and at another declaring Barton
“president for life”–but in the end the opposition prevailed. Faced with a congressional investigation, Barton
resigned from the Red Cross on May 14, 1904. An interim committee was set up to run the organization and
to work with Congress on creating a revised Red Cross charter.
Congress issued a new charter in 1905. Its major innovation was the creation of a Central Committee as the
governing body of the Red Cross. Initially, this committee was to consist of 18 members, six of whom were
selected by the Incorporators. The U.S. president appointed the other 12 and assigned one to be committee
chairman and principal ofcer of the organization. The charter also called for the establishment of state
and territorial societies which, once their number reached six, would select six Central Committee members,
while the Incorporators and president would each select six others. The charter called for formation of an
executive committee, composed of seven Central Committee members, including the chairman, to run the
organization between meetings of the full committee. The charter required the Red Cross to submit an
annual report “of its proceedings for the preceding year, including a full, complete, and itemized report of
receipts and expenditures of whatever kind” to the Secretary of War for audit by the War Department and
subsequent submission to Congress. The new charter also stiffened the rules relative to use of the red cross
symbol by entities other than the Red Cross.
In 1892, she organized assistance for Russians suffering from famine by shipping them 500 railroad cars of
Iowa cornmeal and our. After a hurricane and tidal wave left over 5,000 dead on the Sea Islands of South
Carolina in 1893, Barton’s Red Cross labored for 10 months helping the predominantly African-American
population recover and reestablish their agricultural economy. In 1896, Barton directed relief operations on
behalf of victims of unrest in Turkey and Armenia, the sole woman and only Red Cross advocate the Turkish
government allowed to intervene. During her last relief operation, in 1900, Barton distributed over $120,000
in nancial assistance and supplies to survivors of the hurricane and tidal wave that struck Galveston, Texas,
and caused more than 6,000 deaths.
Although Henry Dunant had suggested in 1864 that Red Cross societies provide disaster relief as well
as wartime services, Barton became its strongest advocate in the years that followed. During the Third