True-Blue Patriot & Humanitarian!

In my previous post of Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Eighth Installment) on Antoinette Brown Blackwell, I promised that my next pioneering woman would be one well known to the world, but maybe not for some of her pioneering deeds. Let me now present to you:

Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton (1821–1912)

We all know Clara for her roles as a nurse during the American Civil War and, years afterward, as the founder and first president of the American Association of the Red Cross.

But…did you know?

In 1838, Clara started her professional career as an educator, successfully teaching for twelve years at schools in Canada and West Georgia. She loved this vocation and was good at it!

In 1852, after Clara finished higher education in writing and languages at Clinton Liberal Institute (New York), she was contracted to open the first free public school (funded by the government or charitable organizations versus tuition) in the state of New Jersey at Bordentown. So, you could say she was amongst the first women to act as a principal in the United States. Unfortunately, when this school needed a larger building to support a growing student population, it demoted her to “female assistant” to the newly hired headmaster because it claimed a man could better handle both the administrative and teaching expectations. Certainly, Clara had this experience in mind when she said:

“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.”

So, in 1854, Clara headed off to Washington, D.C., where she became the first woman in the United States to attain a high-level position (considered white collar today) within the federal government as a clerk at an annual salary of $1,400.00 per year (approximately $42,000.00 in 2021’s currency) and equal to a male clerk’s pay. Her title: Confidential Clerk to the Commissioner of Patents.

NOTE: At the outset of the Civil War in 1861, the Patent Office turned into a hospital; thus began Clara’s career in nursing when she leapt to the aid of the wounded Union soldiers. But, first, she bestowed upon herself another duty before she would turn to caring for the wounded on the battlefields and in the field hospitals. Her horror at the bedraggled, malnourished, and medically deprived state of the wounded soldiers being evacuated to Washington, D.C., from nearby battlefields, incited her to do something about it.

In July 1862, after having organized a warehouse full of food, clean clothing, equipment, medicine, and other supplies for soldiers, she demanded and secured a pass from a Union-army official to be accompanied by enough soldiers to help her transport her wagonloads to the battlefront. Her operation just might have been the predecessor to the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC): A civilian branch of the Union army created in 1861 by federal legislation to support the sick and wounded soldiers. For a quick lesson about the USSC, including pictures of its widespread reach across the North and operations at home (pictured below), on the battlefields, and in winter encampments, go to my previous blog post Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Seventh Installment) about Doctors Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and Lydia Folger Fowler. Or learn more in-depth here about the United States Sanitary Commission.

Once Clara arrived at the battlefront, she stuck around. Oftentimes, she found herself racing through bullets whizzing all around her to reach the wounded. A few times she was nearly killed, once peering down upon a bullet hole in her skirt. NOTE: This incident is raised in Sweet Glory (Book 1 of Glory: A Civil War Series) when my primary character/Jana Brady in her role as Johnnie Brodie of the real Tenth New York Volunteer Cavalry Regiment nurses the wounded alongside Clara after the battle at Fredericksburg, Virginia (December 13, 1862). If within her grasp, Clara would relieve Confederate soldiers as she saw no disparity in any wounded man needing help. That’s how she came to be endearingly called the:

“Angel of the Battlefield!”

In March 1865, as the American Civil War was winding down, Clara secured permission from President Abraham Lincoln to establish an operation to find soldiers who were killed in action or died as prisoners of war on behalf of their grieving families and friends. She set up her office in a room next to her boarding house in Washington, D.C., (pictured below) and gave herself the title of “General Correspondent for the Friends of Missing Prisoners.”

Over the next three years, Clara identified 22,000 missing Union soldiers, and, of the 13,000 Union men who had died from inhumane conditions at Andersonville Prison in Georgia, she identified nearly 12,500 of them and placed markers over their graves. However, before she closed up shop in 1868, a depletion of her own inheritance and savings besides the paltry $15,000.00 grant allocated from Congress to keep up with the demands of supplies for her efforts, forced her, from 1866-1868, to overcome her shyness and travel across the country raising money for her cause; she appealed to citizens of the United States to give back to the soldiers who had unselfishly sacrificed their lives courageously fighting to keep the Union together and reunite their spirits with their families and friends. This is when she met Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frederick Douglass with whom, in her later years, she worked tirelessly for woman’s suffrage, civil rights for freedmen, and equal rights for all.

Clara’s experiences during the Civil War and through the Missing Soldiers Office prepared her for her future endeavor as the founder and first president, in May 1881, of the American Association of the Red Cross. What brought her to this accomplishment, though? A much-needed vacation in Europe to cure her mental and physical exhaustion. Upon her arrival in Geneva, Switzerland, she discovered the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). And what do you think she did? Of course, she rolled up her sleeves and toiled alongside this organization in their aid of wounded soldiers and civilians devastated during and by the Franco-Prussian War (July 1870–May 1871).

In 1877, after Clara had been back in the United States for four years, she began lobbying the federal government to sign the Treaty of Geneva and recognize the ICRC in order for an American branch of the Red Cross to be started. NOTE: Rather than turn this section into a lengthy dissertation, here is a well-written article explaining the “Association of the Treaty of Geneva/Geneva Conventions to the International Committee of the Red Cross.” The Civil War was long over, and there was no more assistance needed on battlefields and in field hospitals; so, Clara envisioned the new goal of an American Red Cross as providing relief to people and property devastated by famine or natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, forest fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. The picture below depicts a granite monument dedicated to Clara Barton on September 9, 1962 at the Antietam National Battlefield.

What in Clara’s background made her a “True-Blue Patriot & Humanitarian?”

Clara’s mother abhorred slavery and believed in women’s equal rights; her father was fiercely patriotic, having served as a captain of his local militia in North Oxford, Massachusetts, in fighting Indians with the United States Army post-Revolutionary War, and as a politician in the Massachusetts legislature. He also instilled social responsibility into his children through his example of giving to the poor, and, at the outbreak of the Civil War, he expressed to Clara her duty to help the wounded soldiers. Clara’s desire to comply is evidenced through this quote by her:

“The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.”

Starting at the young age of eleven, Clara got gratification from treating and returning health to family members, her first case being one of her older brothers, whom she nursed for two years after he suffered severe head trauma from a fall off a barn roof.

Up until Clara learned proper feminine social skills from a female cousin, she preferred to join her two older brothers and male cousins every day in their outdoor play, including riding horses bareback. This tomboyish behavior for a girl, combined with her extreme shyness, incited her parents to consult with Professor Lorenzo Niles Fowler, renowned phrenologist (scientist who believed a person’s character could be assessed by the size, shape, and contours of their skull). SPECIAL NOTE: Professor Fowler’s wife was Dr. Lydia Folger Fowler, discussed in one of my previous posts Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Seventh Installment). Anyway, he concluded that Clara would never be assertive unless she was forced to be and that she had a brain for teaching.

And the rest, shall we say, is history!

I’ll end on this note with the hopes that you have enjoyed my post and that I have whet your appetite to learn more about Clara Barton at the following places:

Video (super creative & entertaining) on my complimentary “Civil War Women” website: https://www.civilwarwomen.co/articles.

Online: American Battlefield Trust, Biography of Clara Barton.

Book: Clara-Barton: Civil War Nurse (American Historical Biographies) by Nancy Whitelaw.

Speaking of Clara Barton. . .

. . .Stay Tuned for the Next Installment of Pioneering Women of Civil War America, Which Promises to Feature Another “Mover & Shaker” of Civil War Times!