Clara Barton: "The Angel On the Battlefield"

Clara Barton, a woman who could be considered to be one of the most respected women in history. She saved the lives of many wounded soldiers in multiple wars and would later go on to found the American Red Cross. A woman who became known as the angel on the battlefield and who would leave her legacy for future generations. Clara Barton was born on December 25th, 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts to her mother Sarah Stone Barton and her father Stephen Barton. She grew up on a Massachusetts farm with her parents and her four older siblings. As a child, her father would tell her stories of times from the past wars which he fought in. This could have contributed to her bravery she would show later in life. When she was only 11 years old, her brother David became so ill that even the doctors had given up on him. However, Clara began to nurse her brother back to health and after two years he was finally better. This was the first time Clara had ever acted as a nurse but it wouldn't be the last. She had a talent that would later save lives and change history. At the age of 15, Clara taught at a school started by her parents in hopes to make Clara less of a hesitant woman. She then would go on teaching in local schools for a few years and eventually started a school in North Oxford where she would take up the position of superintendent. While serving as superintendent, Clara studied at the Liberal Institute in New York and then took a job teaching in Bordentown, New Jersey. She successfully convinced the community to make the school free which was very uncommon in New Jersey at the time. After the rise of six to six hundred students, it was determined that the school should be run by a woman and not a man. The school still stands today. After 18 years, Clara would retire her career as a teacher and move into the next chapter of her life. In 1855, Clara Barton began working as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office located in Washington. She was being paid the salary of a man there. That was until strong opposition rose and she was made a copyist until she was later fired in 1856. In 1861, she again would become a copyist in hopes to grant more women jobs in government. When the Civil War began in 1861, Clara Barton was one of the first to volunteer in Washington during the First Battle of the Bull Run. After the death of her father, Clara would stop working in city hospitals and instead move to work with soldiers on the field. Her first encounter in a field environment hospital was at the Battle of Fredericksburg. After she delivered her supplies, she noticed the lack of clean bandages and fresh water and the untrained ambulances. Clara wrote in her journal about her experiences from the Battle of Fredericksburg. During the Battle of Antietam, surgeons were in dire need of supplies. In fact, they were lacking so much needed materials that they had resorted to using corn husks to dress wounds. But Clara Barton was on her way. Even though her wagons were at the back of a 10-mile mass, she still found a way to get through. Instead of moving during the day, her drivers and her would move at midnight, quietly passing the train, and they successfully made the 10-mile trek before daybreak. On the night of September 16th, they arrived at the Valley of Antietam. After making the walk through the corn, Clara and her men found the house, and inside there were injured men on tables with surgeons by their sides. According to Clara Barton's Battle of Antietam excerpt from Clara Barton and the International Red Cross Association, a man shouted, the Lord has remembered us as Clara walked in. She brought everything that the surgeons were out of. She also fed lines and lines of hungry soldiers. She described this night in her Antietam excerpt as a miserable night. There was a sense of impending doom. We knew, everyone knew, that great armies of 80,000 men were lying there face to face, only waiting for dawn to begin the battle. It gave a terrible sense of oppression. That night, Clara assisted a surgeon in helping a wounded soldier when all his assistants had fled. She helped save the man's life. Not only did she help soldiers, she helped surgeons. When it was so dark, not even a keen eye could see, she brought Chinese lanterns for light, according to her Antietam excerpt. She also risked her life for one day. She was working on a soldier, and a bullet flew past her shoulder, nipping the clothing off her shirt and killing the man she was working on. In 1865, Clara had established an office with the approval of Abraham Lincoln to find lost soldiers. Clara Barton located over 22,000 lost soldiers. She helped, she risked, she located, she saved. She knew she couldn't be a soldier due to her gender, but she still found a way to stand at the front of the war line. She was always there on the battlefield to help, earning the name the Angel on the Battlefield. In 1869, Clara Barton traveled across the sea to Europe because of her health. While in Europe, she learned about the Geneva Convention for the first time ever. The Geneva Convention had been established in 1866, but the United States had not yet signed the treaty. The Geneva Convention establishes the Red Cross, which was also new to her. Clara would later then become involved in the International Red Cross Association, and she delivered sanitary supplies to various destinations. In fact, the Grand Duchess even gave Clara Barton her first ever Red Cross pin. However, in 1873, Clara had to return to the United States sick with rheumatic fever. When she recovered, Clara began to work in hopes of achieving a ratification of the Geneva Convention and establishing a U.S. Red Cross affiliate. With the help of both President Garfield and then President Arthur, the Geneva Convention ratification for the United States was approved in the Senate in 1882. The American Red Cross had finally been formally established, and Miss Clara Barton became the first ever president of this organization. She would then go on to direct the American Red Cross for 23 years. Both the American Red Cross and the International Red Cross would later not provide relief in just wartime, but in the times of natural and epidemic disasters, Clara Barton would administer aid to many war and disaster scenes, some of which being the Johnston Flood, the Michigan Thumb Fire, and the Great Charleston Earthquake. On April 12, 1912, at the age of 90 years old, Clara Barton passed away. However, when she went, her work would never be forgotten. Today, she has multiple books depicting her experiences published, including The Red Cross and Peace and War, and Red Cross, a history of this remarkable international movement and the interest at humanity. Her legacy lives in every Red Cross building across America, across the world. Clara Barton was a woman who risked her lives for others, a woman who stood up for women's rights, a woman who saw the face of death but still survived, a woman who founded an organization that would go on to save generations after generations, and finally, she was a woman who took a stand in history. This is the legacy of Clara Barton.