Clara Barton
Clarissa Harlowe "Clara" Barton was an American nurse who founded the American Red Cross. She was a hospital nurse in the American Civil War, a teacher, and a patent clerk. Since nursing education was not then very formalized and she did not attend nursing school, she provided self-taught nursing care. Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work and civil rights advocacy at a time before women had the right to vote. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973.
Early life
Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on December 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts, a small farming community. She was named after the titular character of Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa. Her father was Captain Stephen Barton, a member of the local militia and a selectman who influenced his daughter's patriotism and humanitarianism. He was a soldier under the command of General Anthony Wayne in his violent removal of Indigenous peoples in the northwest. He was also the leader of progressive thought in the Oxford village area. Barton's mother was Sarah Stone Barton.In 1825, when she was three years old, Barton was sent to school with her brother Stephen, where she reportedly excelled in reading and spelling. At school, she became close friends with Nancy Fitts. Barton was very timid as a child, and Fitts was her only known childhood friend.
Beginning in 1832, when Barton was ten years old, she acted as a nurse to her brother David for two years after he fell from the roof of a barn and sustained a severe head injury. In nursing her brother, she learned how to deliver prescription medications and perform the practice of bloodletting, in which blood was removed from the patient by leeches attached to the skin. David eventually made a full recovery.
Barton's parents tried to encourage her to be more outgoing by enrolling her in Colonel Stones High School, but Barton became more timid and depressed and would not eat. She was brought back home to regain her health.
Upon her return, Barton's family relocated to help the widow of Barton's cousin, who had been left to manage four children and a farm after her husband's death. Barton helped to perform maintenance and repair work on the home in which her family was to live. After the work was done, she was reportedly concerned with becoming a burden to her family. Therefore, she began to play with her male cousins, participating in their activities, such as horseback riding. When Barton injured herself, her mother decided that she should focus on developing more traditionally feminine skills and invited a female cousin to help develop Barton's femininity.
To assist Barton in overcoming her shyness, her parents persuaded her to become a schoolteacher. She studied at the Clinton Liberal Institute in Clinton, New York. She achieved her first teacher's certificate in 1839, at 17 years old. Barton led an effective redistricting campaign that allowed the children of workers to receive an education.
Early professional life
Barton became an educator in 1838 and served for 11 years in schools in and around Oxford, Massachusetts. Barton fared well as a teacher; she knew how to handle children, particularly the boys since as a child she enjoyed her boy cousins' and brothers' company. She learned how to act like them, making it easier for her to relate to and control the boys in her care. After her mother's death in 1851, the family home closed down. Barton decided to further her education by pursuing writing and languages at the Clinton Liberal Institute in New York. In this college, she developed many friendships that broadened her point of view on many issues concurring at the time. The principal of the institute recognized her tremendous abilities and admired her work. This friendship lasted for many years, eventually turning into a romance. As a writer, her terminology was pristine and easy to understand. Her writings and bodies of work could instruct the local statesmen.While teaching in Hightstown, Barton learned about the lack of public schools in Bordentown, the neighboring city. In 1852, she was contracted to open a free school in Bordentown, which was the first ever free school in New Jersey. She was successful, and after a year she had hired another woman to help teach over 600 people. Both women were making $250 a year. This accomplishment compelled the town to raise nearly $4,000 for a new school building. Once it was completed, Barton was replaced as principal by a man elected by the school board. They saw the position as head of a large institution to be unfitting for a woman. She was demoted to "female assistant" and worked in a harsh environment until she had a nervous breakdown along with other health ailments, and quit.
In 1855, she moved to Washington, D.C., and began work as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office; this was the first time a woman had received a substantial clerkship in the federal government and at a salary equal to a man's salary. For three years, she received much abuse and slander from male clerks. Subsequently, under political opposition to women working in government offices, her position was reduced to that of copyist, and in 1858, under the administration of James Buchanan, she was fired because of her "Black Republicanism". After the election of Abraham Lincoln, having lived with relatives and friends in Massachusetts for three years, she returned to the patent office in the autumn of 1860, now as temporary copyist, in the hope she could make way for more women in government service.
American Civil War
On April 19, 1861, the Baltimore Riot resulted in the first bloodshed of the American Civil War. The victims, members of the 6th Massachusetts Militia, were transported after the violence to the unfinished Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., where Barton lived at the time. Wanting to serve her country, Barton went to the railroad station when the victims arrived and nursed 40 men. Barton provided crucial, personal assistance to the men in uniform, many of whom were wounded, hungry and without supplies other than what they carried on their backs. She personally took supplies to the building to help the soldiers.Barton quickly recognized them, as she had grown up with some of them and even taught some. Barton, along with several other women, personally provided clothing, food, and supplies for the sick and wounded soldiers. She learned how to store and distribute medical supplies and offered emotional support to the soldiers by keeping their spirits high. She would read books to them, write letters to their families for them, talk to them, and support them.
It was on that day that she identified herself with army work and began her efforts towards collecting medical supplies for the Union soldiers. Prior to distributing provisions directly onto the battlefield and gaining further support, Barton used her own living quarters as a storeroom and distributed supplies with the help of a few friends in early 1862, despite opposition in the War Department and among field surgeons. Ladies' Aid Society helped in sending bandages, food, and clothing that would later be distributed during the Civil War. In August 1862, Barton finally gained permission from Quartermaster Daniel Rucker to work on the front lines. She gained support from other people who believed in her cause. These people became her patrons, her most supportive being Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts.
After the First Battle of Bull Run, Barton placed an ad in a Massachusetts newspaper for supplies; the response was a profound influx of supplies. She worked to distribute stores, clean field hospitals, apply dressings, and serve food to wounded soldiers in close proximity to several battles, including Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Barton helped both Union and Confederate soldiers. Supplies were not always readily available though. At the battle of Antietam, for example, Barton used corn-husks in place of bandages. Speaking of her commitment to being a nurse in the war after experiencing battle, Clara would say, "I shall remain here while anyone remains, and do whatever comes to my hand. 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."
In April 1863, Barton accompanied her brother David to Port Royal, South Carolina, in the Union-occupied Sea Islands after he was appointed as a quartermaster within the Union Navy. Clara Barton resided in the Sea Islands until early 1864. While in South Carolina, she became friends with prominent abolitionist and feminist Frances Dana Barker Gage, who had traveled south to educate formerly enslaved people. Barton also became acquainted with Jean Margaret Davenport, an actress from England, who was then residing on the Sea Islands with her husband, Union General Frederick W. Lander. Barton provided medical care to the Black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment following their attack on Fort Wagner. Additionally, she traveled to Morris Island to nurse Union soldiers there, accompanied by a Black woman named Betsey who worked under Barton during her time in the Sea Islands. She quarreled with General Quincy Adams Gillmore after he suddenly ordered her to evacuate her post at Morris Island. Also in the Sea Islands, she became acquainted with a Union officer, Colonel John J. Elwell. Historian Stephen B. Oates claims that Barton and Elwell had a romantic and sexual relationship.
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. Among her more harrowing experiences was an incident in which a bullet tore through the sleeve of her dress without striking her and killed a man to whom she was tending. She was known as the "Florence Nightingale of America". She was also known as the "Angel of the Battlefield" after she came to the aid of the overwhelmed surgeon on duty following the battle of Cedar Mountain in Northern Virginia in August 1862. She arrived at a field hospital at midnight with a large number of supplies to help the severely wounded soldiers. This naming came from her frequent timely assistance as she served troops at the battles of Fairfax Station, Chantilly, Harpers Ferry, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Petersburg and Cold Harbor.