How Clara Barton Helped Revolutionize Medicine

Clara Barton is one of the most recognized heroes of the Civil War. She was born Clarissa Harlow Barton on Christmas Day, 1821, in Oxford, Massachusetts into an abolitionist family. It's reported her love of nursing started when her oldest brother experienced a serious head injury and she nursed him diligently for two years. After receiving a formal education, Barton became a teacher at the age of 15. Twelve years later, she founded and was headmaster of a free school in New Jersey where 600 students were eventually enrolled. She left the school after the school board voted to replace her as headmaster with a man. Barton then moved to Washington, D.C., and became clerk for the U.S. Patent Office, earning pay equal to her male counterparts. I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay, Barton said later. The Civil War broke out in 1861, and soon after, soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry were attacked by Southern sympathizers and the wounded flooded the streets of Washington. A makeshift hospital was created in the uncompleted Capitol Building. Though often described as shy, Barton felt an urgency to care for the injured and brought them food, clothing, and other necessities. Barton realized the greatest need for care and supplies was in the makeshift field hospitals near the front lines. In 1862, she received permission to take bandages and other supplies to a battlefield hospital after the Battle of Cedar Mountain in northern Virginia. From then on, she traveled with the Union Army. On September 17, 1862, Barton arrived at the now-infamous Antietam Cornfield during the Battle of Antietam. After dropping off her wagonload of medical supplies to grateful surgeons struggling to make bandages out of corn husk, she worked long into the night assisting the surgeons, cooking food for the soldiers, and tending the wounded, despite nearby cannon fire and bullets flying overhead. One surgeon, Dr. James Dunn, said of Barton, In my feeble estimation, General McClellan, with all his laurels, sinks into insignificance beside the true heroine of our age, the angel of the battlefield. In 1869, Barton traveled to Europe for rest and learned about the International Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland, which had established an international agreement known as the Geneva Treaty, now part of the Geneva Convention, which laid out rules for the care of the sick and wounded in wartime. President Chester Arthur finally signed the treaty in 1882, and the American Association of the Red Cross, later called the American Red Cross, was born, with Clara Barton at its helm. She also brought attention to the great need of disaster victims and streamlined many first aid emergency preparedness and emergency response procedures still used by the American Red Cross. Clara Barton died on April 12, 1912, at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland, at the age of 91. A monument in her honor stands today at Antietam National Battlefield.