"But perhaps the most resilient worker of them all, and certainly the one who stirred up was a stiff-spined little spinster in a plain black dress and muddy boots who had brought the newly organized American Red Cross in from Washington. Miss Clara
Barton and her delegation of fifty doctors and nurses had arrived on the B&O early Wednesday morning."
- David McCullough
The American Red Cross was founded on today's date, May 21 in 1881.Clara Barton was named president of the society, which held its first official meeting at her I Street apartment in Washington, DC, on this date with the help of Adolphus Solomons a prominent member of the American Jewish community in social welfare matters. Clara Barton was well captured in Mr. McCullough's description of her stirring up notice as she arrived with her Red Cross volunteers and marched right into the thick of disaster. It certainly fits everything ever written about this amazing woman Whether there were casualties from war or from natural disaster she always walked to the heart of the problem and took hands-action to fix it. And usually in a field which was considered men's work.
Clara Barton's Early Life - What Lead Her to Nursing?
Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on December 25, 1821, to Captain Stephen Barton, a local militia leader and Sarah Stone Barton one of five children in the family. She attended school at age three getting good marks in adding and spelling although socially she was quite timid. At age 10, when her brother David fell from the roof a barn and sustained serious head injury she took upon herself the job of nursing him back to health when most of the doctors had given up on him. She obviously had an ability to learn and the compassion to help those who were suffering. She taught in New Jersey and eventually had a job as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office.
The Civil War Breaks Out.
In the spring of 1861, the bloodshed from the war started arriving in Washington D.C. where Clara worked at the time. She wanted to serve, so she went to the train station and saw all of the suffering.
She began nursing the wounded men. She provided vital personal help to these men who were hungry and suffering from battle wounds, and who had very few supplies. So she began taking supplies to them at the unfinished Capitol building where they had been taken. Barton and some of the other women there provided food, decent clothing and began dressing their wounds. Through this experience, Barton learned the business of storing and distributing medical supplies. She also
offered emotional support to the men, reading to them, and writing letters home for them. From this point onward in her life she devoted herself to providing help and supplies to wounded soldiers. She even stored many of the supplies at her own home. In 1862 she was given permission by Quartermaster Daniel Rucker to work at the frontline of battle.
"The Angel of the Battlefield"
"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." - Clara Barton
"We have captured one fort - Gregg - and one charnel house - Wagner - and we have built one cemetery, Morris Island. The thousand little sand-hills that in the pale moonlight are a thousand headstones, and the restless ocean waves that roll and breakup on the whitened beach sing an eternal requiem to the toll-worn gallant dead who sleep beside."
Clara Barton and the International Red Cross
After the grim carnage of the Civil War. Barton helped in identifying
the many missing soldiers left from combat and also in the hellish Confederate P.O.W. camp at Andersonville, Georgia. President Lincoln gave her the title "General Correspondent for the Friends of Paroled Prisoners" and her job was to answer the many inquiries from loved ones of the many soldiers marked "M.I.A.". She was thus required to scour the casualty lists, Prison roles, and parole
roles kept at Annapolis Maryland. In order to accomplish this Hurculean labor Clara produced the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States and published Rolls of Missing Men, and had these rolls produced across the country. It was also at her behest that the many anonymous graves at Andersonville be identified and marked. in 1869, she went to Geneva, Switzerland as a member of the International Red Cross. She began searching for wealthy benefactors to contribute to an American chapter of the Red Cross.
During 1870, the Franco-Prussian War (July, 1870 - May, 1871)broke out with the French getting their clocks cleaned by Bismarck's armies, and their Emperor, Louis Napoleon captured at Sedan. During the course of this mess, the Prussians laid siege to Paris for @ five months.
Here again Clara was on the scene helping to prepare military hospitals, and was in charge of getting supplies to the embattled people of Paris. For her efforts she was rewarded the Prussian Iron Cross. Back in the United States, Clara started working on a project to acquire recognition of the International Committee of the Red Cross by the U.S. government. President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878 demurred with the thought that the country was unlikely to face a calamitous occurrence such as the Civil War again. She tried again with President Chester Arthur and succeeded with the idea that the Red Cross could be called in to deal with natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and forest fires. So Clara Barton was named President of the American Red Cross on this date in 1881.
The American Red Cross Expands
The Red Cross expanded it's meaning and activities with the outbreak of the Spanish American War (April - August, 1898), not only treating American wounded, but also treating refugees and prisoners of the Cuban side of that conflict. Throughout the 1880's wherever there were victims in need following tornadoes or floods along the Ohio River, the Red Cross usually with Barton herself was there with supplies of food, or medical items and general medical care for any who needed it. In
Miss Barton was forced out as President of the American Red Cross in 1904 when criticism was voiced over issues of mixing personal and professional resources. At age 83, Clara had what has been described an egocentric management style which didn't fit well with the organization of charitable organization such as the Re Cross had grown into. She moved to her home at Glen Echo, Maryland wherein she died of pneumonia on April 12, 1912 at the age of 90. She left us a quote from some time in her life which could be said to be her reaction to the all-male power structure with which she had done battle all of her life:
"I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past."
Of the good she had done with her life it is impossible to say enough. When and where she saw suffering she moved immediately to assuage that suffering, settling only for whatever worked and
appeared to have little time for the traditional toes she stepped on. And there are literally millions of lives that were better off for her work, her determination and dedication.
Sources =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-red-cross-founded
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/clara-barton?gclid=CjwKCAjwqpP2BRBTEiwAfpiD-6ugVzPqHrFv7V-gYIOTbg6CbaBSs0H7OQXFyXwoc5G2VMiaP_ODaBoC4ncQAvD_BwE
"The Johnstown Flood" by David McCullough, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1968
