Clara Barton

Clara Barton Click to enlarge

• Born: 25 December 1821
• Birthplace: North Oxford, Massachusetts
• Died: 12 April 1912 (natural causes)
• Best Known As: Founder of the American Red Cross

Civil War nurse Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. Barton was a teacher and a U.S. Patent Office clerk before devoting herself to nursing in the American Civil War (1861-65). She earned the nickname "the angel of the battlefield" and in 1864 was named superintendent of all Union nurses. In the 1870s, officials of the International Red Cross invited her to help form a branch of the service in the U.S.; she agreed, and led the American Red Cross for its first 26 years.

Raised in a quiet New England family, Clara Barton taught, founded a public school in New Jersey, and in 1854 became a copyist in the U.S. Patent Office. In 1861, the Civil War catapulted her to national prominence. During the first two years, Barton functioned as a one‐woman relief agency. Relying on the assistance of a few sympathetic politicians and friends, and shunning official channels of the U.S. Sanitary Commission and Dorothea Dix's nursing corps, Barton brought supplies and relief to thousands of suffering Union soldiers on fields in the Eastern theater. Her timely arrivals from Fredericksburg to Antietam earned her the nickname “Angel of the Battlefield.” In June 1864, she agreed to serve as head nurse in the Army of the James.

As the Civil War, especially early on, afforded few official roles for women, Barton could carve out an independent niche and use her status to bypass the formidable military bureaucracy. Throughout, she sought to bring humanity and personal dignity to the war; to counteract the brutal and dehumanizing affects of modern, large‐scale carnage. Although her relief activities abated somewhat later in the war, she began in February 1865 the herculean effort of identifying missing men. Much of her attention focused on the unknown dead of Andersonville Prison, securing the identification of nearly 11,000 in that infamous pen.

When the Civil War ended, Barton continued her mission of humanizing the horrors of military suffering. She worked tirelessly for U.S. ratification of the Geneva Conventions of 1864 (conferring neutrality on wounded and hospital personnel in war), and in 1881, organized the American Association of the Red Cross. In 1898, she personally led Red Cross relief efforts in Cuba during the Spanish‐American War.

Bibliography

• RevWilliam E. Barton., Life of Clara Barton, 2 vols., 1922.
• Stephen Oates, A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War, 1994

Barton, Clara (1821-1912) Civil War nurse, relief worker, and founder of the American Red Cross, born Clarissa Harlowe Barton in North Oxford, Massachusetts. Barton tended wounded Union soldiers and ran medical supply lines at Antietam, Fredericksburg (both 1862), the Wilderness campaign (1864), and other battles. Barton publicized the work of the International Red Cross, lobbied tirelessly for Senate ratification of the Geneva Conventions (signed in 1882), and was the American National Red Cross's first president (1882-1904).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The American humanitarian Clara Barton (1821-1912) was the founder of the American Red Cross. Her work made her a symbol of humanitarianism.

Clara Barton was born on Dec. 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Mass. She was the youngest child of Stephen Barton, a farmer and state legislator who had served in the Revolution under Gen. Anthony Wayne; she later recalled that his tales made war early familiar to her.

Well-spoken and well-read, at the age of 15 Clara Barton began teaching at nearby schools. In 1850 she went to teach at Bordentown, N.J., where state tradition required paid schooling and thus served few children. Barton offered to teach without salary if payment were waived. She later took pride in having established the first free school in New Jersey and having raised enrollment in Bordentown from 6 to 600. When town officials decided to appoint a male administrator over her, she resigned. At this time she suffered her first crisis of nervous illness, associated in part with uncertainty about her future.

In 1853 she obtained an appointment as copyist in the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., becoming the first woman in America to hold such a government post. She continued this work till April 1861, when the Civil War began and she determined to serve the Federal troops.

Civil War Activities

Although the U.S. Sanitary Commission was formed in June 1861 to aid soldiers, Barton had little association with it. (Casual reports later misnamed her as one of its founders.) Her own enterprise involved appeals for provisions to be carried into the war zones; she collected and stored them in Washington for personal distribution. In 1862 the U.S. surgeon general permitted her to travel to the front, and she implemented this order with directives from generals John Pope and James S. Wadsworth, who welcomed her work. Barton was present with Federal forces during the siege of Charleston, S.C., and also at engagements in the Wilderness and at Fredericksburg, Va., and elsewhere.

Barton's mission was not primarily that of a nurse. She became increasingly adept at obtaining and passing out provisions, though her courage and humanity made her a vital presence everywhere. In 1864 she made her most influential connection, joining Gen. Benjamin F. Butler with the Army of the James. She later visited the notorious prison camp at Andersonville, Ga., to identify and mark Union graves.

In 1865 she conceived the project of locating missing soldiers and obtained a note of endorsement from President Lincoln. She set up the Bureau of Records in Washington and traced perhaps 20, 000 names. She also lectured on her experiences until her voice failed in 1868.

Franco-Prussian War

Barton's health continued to trouble her; in 1869 she went to Geneva, Switzerland, for rest and a change. There, officials of the International Red Cross, organized in 1864, urged her to seek United States agreement to the Geneva Convention recognizing the work of the Red Cross; the powerful U.S. Sanitary Commission had been unable to obtain it. But before Barton could turn to the task, the Franco-Prussian War began.

She offered her services to the Grand Duchess of Baden in administering military hospitals. Her most original idea (developed further in later situations) was to put needy Strasbourg women to work sewing garments for pay. Later, with the French defeated and Paris held by the Commune, she entered the starving city to distribute food and clothing. She served elsewhere in France - in Lyons again instituting her work system. She was awarded the Iron Cross of Merit by the German emperor, William I, in 1873; this was one of many such honors.

American Red Cross

Clara Barton settled in Danville, N.Y., where for several years she was a semi-invalid. In 1877 she wrote a founder of the International Red Cross, offering to lead an American branch of the organization. Thus, at 56 she began a new career.

In 1881 Barton incorporated the American Red Cross, with herself as president. A year later her extraordinary efforts brought about United States ratification of the Geneva Convention. She herself attended conferences of the International Red Cross as the American representative. She was, however, far from bureaucratic in interests. Although wholly individualistic and unlike reformers who worked on programs for social change, she did a great social service as activist and propagandist.

In 1883 Barton served as superintendent of the Women's Reformatory Prison, Sherborn, Mass., thus deviating from a career marked by single-minded commitment to her major cause. As a Red Cross worker, she went to Michigan, which had been ravaged by fires in 1882, and to Charleston, S.C., which had suffered an earthquake. In 1884 she traveled the Ohio River, supplying flood victims. Five years later she went to Johnstown, Pa., to help it recover from a disastrous flood. In 1891 Barton traveled to Russia, which was enduring famine, and in 1896 to Turkey, following the Armenian massacres. Barton was in her late 70s when the Cuban insurrection required relief measures. She prepared to sail in aid of Cubans, but the outbreak of the Spanish-American War turned her ship into a welfare station for Americans as well. As late as 1900 she visited Galveston, Tex., personally to supervise relief for victims of a tidal wave. In 1900 Congress reincorporated the Red Cross, demanding an accounting of funds. By 1904 public pressures and dissension within the Red Cross itself had become too much for Barton, and on June 16 she resigned from the organization. (She even entertained unrealistic thoughts of beginning another one.) A figure of international renown, she retired instead to Glen Echo, Md., where she died on April 12, 1912.

Further Reading

Clara Barton was the subject of innumerable sketches and books, many merely eulogistic and even fanciful. She herself wrote The Story of My Childhood (1907), as well as enlightening accounts of her work, such as The Red Cross in Peace and War (1899). Most useful for general purposes is Ishbel Ross, Angel of the Battlefield: The Life of Clara Barton (1956). William E. Barton, Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross (2 vols., 1922), is adulatory but reproduces revealing letters. Percy H. Epler, The Life of Clara Barton (1915), details her life as it appeared to her contemporaries.

For more information on Clara Barton, visit Britannica.com.

(1821-1912), founder of the American Red Cross. Barton was born in Massachusetts and worked briefly as a schoolteacher. She became a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office in 1854, but lost the job when the Democrats won the presidency in 1856.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Barton saw the need for an efficient organization to distribute food and medical supplies to the troops. The network, Barton believed, had to be disentangled from the bureaucracy of the War Department and the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Her work of soliciting and distributing supplies and nursing the wounded was grueling and endless. She once complained to a friend, "I cannot tell you how many times I have moved with my whole family [the Army] of a thousand or fifteen hundred and with a half hour's notice in the night." Her efforts, however, were much appreciated at battle sites, especially Antietam and Fredericksburg. At war's end she set up an office to sort out the difficult business of locating and identifying prisoners, missing men, and the dead buried in unmarked graves. But the strain of her work took its toll, and she was ordered to Europe by her doctor for a rest cure in 1869.

While abroad Barton came into contact with the International Committee of the Red Cross. She participated in relief efforts during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871, but was forced into temporary retirement by ill health in 1872. After recovering, she campaigned to establish an American branch of the Red Cross, despite government resistance arising from fears of foreign entanglements. The U.S. Senate, after years of lobbying, finally ratified the Geneva Convention in 1882, forming the American Association of the Red Cross. Barton became its president. Her subsequent domestic program was impressive. The Red Cross provided relief at the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood in 1889 and after hurricanes in the Sea Islands off the southeastern coast in 1893. The organization also marshaled support for international campaigns, sending supplies to Russia during a famine in 1892 and to Armenia in 1896.

Barton, at the age of seventy-seven, distinguished herself again, this time in Cuba during the Spanish-American conflict. But her presence on the battlefield called her methods into question and widened a rift between the national Red Cross and its local chapters. Barton was unwilling to delegate responsibility and her inability to do so was a drawback sustained within the ranks of the Red Cross. Her inflexibility forced her to resign in 1904 from the organization she had founded and built. Barton nevertheless remained active and involved in relief work until her death at the age of ninety-one. Her energy and commitment to humanitarian causes over a forty-year period has made her a household name, a symbol of charitable self-sacrifice.

Bibliography:

Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (1987).

Author:

Catherine Clinton

A reformer and nurse of the nineteenth century, who founded the American Red Cross in the 1880s. She had organized nursing care for Union soldiers during the Civil War.

Quotes:

"I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them."

Clara Barton
Born	Clarissa Harlowe Barton December 25, 1821(1821-12-25) Oxford, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	April 12, 1912 (aged 90) Glen Echo, Maryland, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Teacher, Nurse, Humanitarian, Founder and first president of the American Red Cross
Spouse(s)	none

Clarissa Harlowe "Clara" Barton (December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912) was a pioneer American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian. She has been described as having a "strong and independent spirit" and is best remembered for organizing the American Red Cross.

Contents 1 Youth, education, and family nursing 2 American Civil War 3 American Red Cross 4 Religious beliefs 5 Clara Barton Birthplace Museum 6 Clara Barton National Historic Site 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Published Work 10 References and additional reading 11 External links

Youth, education, and family nursing

Clara Barton's birthplace, N. Oxford Mass.

Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in Oxford, Massachusetts, to Stephen and Sarah Barton. She was the youngest of five children. Clara's father was a farmer and horse breeder, while her mother Sarah managed the household. The two later helped found the first Universalist Church in Oxford.

When Clara was eleven, her brother David became her first patient after he fell from a rafter in their unfinished barn. Clara stayed by his side for two years and learned to administer all his medicines, including the "great, loathsome crawling leeches".

As she continued to develop an interest in nursing, Clara may have drawn inspiration from stories of her great-aunt, Martha Ballard, who served the town of Hallowell (later Augusta), Maine, as a midwife for over three decades. Ballard helped deliver nearly one thousand infants between 1777 and 1812, and in many cases administered medical care in much the same way as a formally trained doctor of her era.^[1]

On his death bed, Clara's father gave her advice that she would later recall:

"As a patriot, he had me serve my country with all I had, even with my life if need be; as the daughter of an accepted Mason, he had me seek and comfort the afflicted everywhere, and as a Christian he charged me to honor God and love mankind."

American Civil War

Clara Barton circa 1866.

In April 1862, after the First Battle of Bull Run, Barton established an agency to obtain and distribute supplies to wounded soldiers. She was given a pass by General William Hammond to ride in army ambulances to provide comfort to the soldiers and nurse them back to health and lobbied the U.S. Army bureaucracy, at first without success, to bring her own medical supplies to the battlefields. Finally, in July 1862, she obtained permission to travel behind the lines, eventually reaching some of the grimmest battlefields of the war and serving during the Siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia. In 1864 she was appointed by Union General Benjamin Butler as the "lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front of the Army of the James.

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln placed Barton in charge of the search for the missing men of the Union Army. Around this time, a young soldier named Dorence Atwater came to her door. He had copied the list of the dead without being discovered by the Andersonville officials, and taken it with him through the lines when he was released from the prison. Having been afraid that the names of the dead would never get to the families, it was his intention to publish the list. He did accomplish this. His list of nearly 13,000 men was considered invaluable. When the war ended, Barton and Atwater were sent to Andersonville with 42 headboard carvers, and Barton gave credit to young Dorence for what came to be known as “The Atwater List” in her report of the venture. Dorence also has a report at the beginning of this list, still available through Andersonville National Historic Site in Georgia. Because of the work they did, they became known as the "Angels of Andersonville," according to a biography of Barton. She was also known as "The Angel of the Battlefield".^[2] Her work in Andersonville is displayed in the book, Numbering All the Bones, by Ann Rinaldi. This experience launched her on a nationwide campaign to identify all soldiers missing during the Civil War. She published lists of names in newspapers and exchanged letters with soldiers’ families.

American Red Cross

Barton then achieved widespread recognition by delivering lectures around the country about her war experiences. She met Susan B. Anthony and began a long association with the suffrage movement. She also became acquainted with Frederick Douglass and became an activist for black civil rights, or an abolitionist.

The years of toil during the Civil War and her dedicated work searching for missing soldiers debilitated Barton's health. In 1868, her doctors recommended a restful trip to Europe. In 1870, while she was overseas, she became involved with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its humanitarian work during the Franco-Prussian War. Created in 1864, the ICRC had been chartered to provide humane services to all victims of war under a flag of neutrality.

When Clara Barton returned to the United States, she inaugurated a movement to gain recognition for the International Committee of the Red Cross by the United States government. When she began work on this project in 1873, most Americans thought the U.S. would never again face a calamity like the Civil War, but Barton finally succeeded during the administration of President James Garfield, using the argument that the new American Red Cross could respond to crises other than war. As Barton expanded the original concept of the Red Cross to include assisting in any great national disaster, this service brought the United States the "Good Samaritan of Nations" label.

Barton naturally became President of the American branch of the society, which was founded on May 21, 1881 in Dansville, N.Y.^[3]

Barton at first dedicated the American Red Cross to performing disaster relief, such as after the 1893 Sea Islands Hurricane. This changed with the advent of the Spanish-American War during which it aided refugees and prisoners of war. In 1896, responding to the humanitarian crisis in the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the Hamidian Massacres, Barton sailed to Istanbul and after long negotiations with Abdul Hamid II, opened the first American International Red Cross headquarters in the heart of Beijing,China. Barton herself traveled along with five other Red Cross expeditions to the Armenian provinces in the spring of 1896. Barton also worked in hospitals in Cuba in 1898 at the age of seventy-seven.^[4] Barton's last field operation as President of the American Red Cross was the relief effort for the victims of the Galveston hurricane of September 1900. The operation established an orphanage for children of the 6,000 dead, helped to acquire lumber for rebuilding houses, and teamed with the New York World newspaper to accept contributions for the relief effort. As criticism arose of her management of the American Red Cross, plus her advancing age, Barton resigned as president in 1904, at the age of 83.

Religious beliefs

While various authorities have called Barton a “Deist-Unitarian" or freethinker or deist; in a 1905 letter to Mrs. Norman Thrasher, she called herself an "Universalist”^[5] The term was used then to describe those believing the Universalist Church doctrine, which was also the Church her parents belonged to.

Clara Barton Birthplace Museum

Clara Barton Homestead
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location:	3 mi. W of Oxford on Clara Barton Rd.
Nearest city:	Oxford, Massachusetts
Governing body:	Barton Center for Diabetes Education
Added to NRHP:	September 9, 1977
NRHP Reference#:	77000202

Clara Barton Birthplace Museum^[6] in North Oxford, Massachusetts is operated as part of the Barton Center for Diabetes Education,^[7] a humanitarian project established in her honor to educate and support children with diabetes and their families.

Clara Barton National Historic Site

 

In 1975, Clara Barton National Historic Site was established as a unit of the National Park Service at Barton's Glen Echo, Maryland home, where she spent the last 15 years of her life. One of the first National Historic Sites dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman, it preserves the early history of the American Red Cross, since the home also served as an early headquarters of the organization.

The National Park Service has restored eleven rooms, including the Red Cross offices, the parlors and Barton's bedroom. Visitors to Clara Barton National Historic Site can gain a sense of how Barton lived and worked. Guides lead tourists through the three levels, emphasizing Barton's use of her unusual home. Modern visitors can come to appreciate the site in the same way visitors did in Clara Barton's lifetime.^[8]

See also

Nursing portal

Places named for Clara Barton

• Barton County, Kansas
• Clara Barton School in Bordentown, New Jersey
• Clara Barton Drive in Fairfax Station, Virginia
• Barton Hall, Iowa State University
• Clara Barton Primary school in Oxford, MA
• Clara Barton subdivision of Edison, NJ
• Clara Barton Parkway in Maryland
• Clara Barton Rest Area in New Jersey
• Clara Barton District, a regional association of Unitarian Universalist Association member congregations
• Clara Barton Elementary School in Corona, California
• Clara Barton Elementary School in Alton, Illinois
• Clara Barton Elementary School in Anaheim, California
• Clara Barton Elementary School in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania
• Clara Barton Open School in Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Clara Barton School in Fargo, North Dakota
• Clara Barton Street in Dansville, NY
• Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York
• Clara Barton Community Center, Cabin John, MD
• Clara Barton First Aid Squad, Edison NJ
• Barton, a crater on Venus
• Barton's Crossing, Pittsfield, Ma

Notes

Clara Barton - etching by John Sartain

1. ^ Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife's Tale: the Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. 1990.
2. ^ Safranski, Debby Burnett, "Angel of Andersonville, Prince of Tahiti: The Extraordinary Life of Dorence Atwater," Alling-Porterfield Publishing House, 2008
3. ^ Marks, Mary Jo. "History". American Red Cross Clara Barton #1. http://www.redcrossclara.com/History.html. Retrieved 2009-01-11. 
4. ^ Oates, Stephen B. (1994). A Woman of Valor. Macmillan. p. 382. ISBN 0-02-923405-0. 
5. ^ "Positive Atheism website". http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml8886.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-25. 
6. ^ "Welcome". Clara Barton Birthplace Museum. http://www.clarabartonbirthplace.org/. Retrieved 2007-05-25. 
7. ^ "Barton Center website". Barton Center for Diabetes Education. http://www.bartoncenter.org/. Retrieved 2007-05-25. 
8. ^ "Clara Barton NHS - The House". National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov/archive/clba/house.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-25. 

Published Work

• Barton, Clara H. The Red Cross-In Peace and War Washington, D.C.: American Historical Press, (1898)
• Barton, Clara H. Story of the Red Cross-Glimpses of Field Work New York: D. Appleton and Company, (1904)

References and additional reading

• Barton, William E. The Life of Clara Barton Founder of the American Red Cross New York: AMS Press, (1969)
• Hutchinson, John F. Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., (1996)
• Joyce, James Avery. Red Cross International and the Strategy of Peace New York: Oceana Publications, Inc., (1959)
• Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Clara Barton: Professional Angel Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, (1987)
• Ross, Ishbel. Angel of the Battlefield: The Life of Clara Barton New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, (1956)
• Deady, Kathleen,W. "Clara Barton" Mankato:Capstone Press, (2003)
• Numbering All the Bones by Ann Rinaldi features Clara Barton and Andersonville Prison, a Civil War prison with terrible conditions.
• Safranski, Debby Burnett, "Angel of Andersonville, Prince of Tahiti: The Extraordinary Life of Dorence Atwater," Alling-Porterfield Publishing House, 2008

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Clara Barton

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Barton, Clara.

• Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. Women Working, 1870-1930. Clara Barton (1821-1912). A full-text searchable online database with complete access to publications written by Clara Barton.
• Clara Barton National Historic Site
• Clara Barton Birthplace Museum
• The Barton Center For Diabetes Education, Inc.
• Clara Barton's House: Home of the American Red Cross, a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
• Clara Barton's life in the Finger Lakes, NY
• Women in History
• Clara Barton Passport Application - 1869 (Original document image)
• Clara Barton, A Register of Her Papers in the Library of Congress

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