Clara Barton: Dedicated Life to Helping the Injured and Unfortunate

• “Angel of the Battlefield”
• Created and ran the Office of Missing Soldiers
• Founded the American Red Cross

Early Life

Clara Barton (1821-1912) was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children in a middle-class family.  When she was eleven, one of her brothers was seriously injured in an accident. It fell to Clara to see to his needs during a two-year recovery.  

During this time, she gained nursing experience. This prepared her for the role she created for herself during the Civil War.

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Started as a Teacher

Like so many women of her era, the only job open to her after she finished school was teaching, She taught for about a dozen years.  Her last connection to education involved starting a school in West Millbury, New Jersey. When a man was hired over her to run the school she started, she left for Washington, D.C. 

She was hired to be a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, an unusual position for a woman of that day.

When the Civil War began, Washington, D.C. was the center of many troop movements. Neither the North or the South were prepared for war. As soldiers came in, Barton was moved by their plight. Some were already injured, but many were just starting out. There were no uniforms and not enough food.

Barton left her job at the patent office and began to collect items of clothing as well as medical supplies. As the war got underway, she ventured onto battlefields to deliver supplies, and she soon began nursing the wounded. 

She became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield.” In 1864, she was promoted to be superintendent of the Union nurses.

Before Soldiers Wore Dog Tags

Clara Barton was widely known for her nursing work, but she was less well known for all that she did to identify the missing, the wounded, and the dead.

Because no one was prepared for war, there was no method for keeping track of the whereabouts of soldiers. If a soldier was wounded, or killed, men in his regiment might take time to write to his family about what happened. Often there was no time.

When fighting cooled down and medical people could get to the battlefield, they were left to check the wounded and dead to see if there was a letter or some sort of identifying information in a person’s wallet. If they were lucky and something was found, letters home were written. But often, there was little that could be done. The soldier simply had to be buried close to where they fell. 

The situation came to Clara Barton’s attention when a former prisoner at Andersonville (a wretched Confederate prison in Georgia) met with her. He showed her a list of Union soldiers who died while imprisoned there. 

Barton was alarmed and went with the gentleman to visit what remained of Andersonville. She saw that someone took great care to list the many Union soldiers who died there –13,000 of them.  As she stepped in to help, she began writing letters but also arranged for the dead to be listed in newspapers in the North. That way families would answers to that terrible cry:  “What happened?”

Many Sought Barton’s Help

As word of Barton’s efforts spread, thousands of people wrote to her pleading for help in finding their loved ones. Barton compiled lists and circulated them to post offices throughout the country. It was another helpful step to unravel the fate of many of the missing. 

It was not easy work. Some had moved elsewhere and married; some had died on the battlefield; others had been injured. Still others purposely chose not to go home. They wanted to start a new life.

Office in Washington, D.C.

Eventually Barton received funding for an office in D.C. (437 Seventh Street NW) from which to run her missing soldiers command center. The office was prominently located, very near to the Capitol and the White House.  (It is now a museum run by the National Park Service: Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum.)

Recently, the building was slated for renovation. A construction worker found a box of documents related to Clara Barton’s operation. The box contained house slippers and other personal effects that indicated that Barton may have lived there for a time. There was also a sign that read “Missing Soldiers Office 3^rd Story Room 9 Miss Clara Barton.”

Founding the Red Cross

Clara Barton was one of those people who couldn’t take time off. But her work wore her down. Finally a doctor told her that for the sake of her health, she needed to go to Europe and rest.

For Barton, this simply opened new opportunities. She became familiar with the International Red Cross, and started learning how they operated.

When she returned to the United States in the early 1870s, she began work on establishing an American Red Cross. Initially, Americans were not interested. They felt something like the Civil War would not happen again. Barton pushed her cause, noting that the Red Cross that she foresaw would help out with any type of disaster.  

She persevered, and in 1881, the American Red Cross held its first official meeting. Barton was elected president, a position she held for 22 years.   Among the early disasters in which the Red Cross became involved were the Johnstown flood (1889) and the Galveston, Texas, hurricane of 1900. The Red Cross soon proved its worth, just as it does today.

Women’s Rights and Honors

Barton was dedicated to fighting for and furthering the rights of women; she worked closely with Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and others. 

Clara Barton herself was the most decorated American woman. She received the Iron Cross (a German medal for bravery), the Cross of Imperial Russia, and the International Red Cross Medal. 

Her final act was founding the National First Aid Society in 1904.

In the late 1890s she bought a home in Glen Echo, Maryland where she lived for the last 15 years of her life.  When she died in 1912 at the age of 91, the Detroit Free Press wrote: “She was perhaps the most perfect incarnation of mercy the modern world has known.”

Words to Remember

On December 8,1865, Clara Barton wrote of her experience and willingness to be in the war: “God in His goodness gave me speed to my feet and strength to my arms through the hours of that fearful night, that I might nourish the fainting, slake the thirst of the dying, and strive to staunch the life stream as it ebbed away.”

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To read about another woman who worked in medicine during the Civil War, read about the first female surgeon, Dr. Mary Walker.

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