Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross - Essay Example

Clara Barton was born in 1821 to a family that already had two sons and two daughters, all at least twelve years older than she (Barton, 1907: 16). This provided her both with few playmates and multiple teachers so that she learned to read, write and compute mathematics early and without apparent effort.  However, she credits the youngest of her older brothers for the life-giving lessons of how to sit a wild horse on a wild ride in the middle of a battlefield. “Sometimes, in later years, when I found myself suddenly on a strange horse in a trooper’s saddle, flying for life or liberty in front of pursuit, I blessed the baby lessons of the wild gallops among the beautiful colts” (Barton, 1907: 20). After a relatively common childhood for her period, marked by particular attention to her education thanks to the influence of brothers and sisters, Clara’s first brush with the field of nursing came as she was helping her brother, David Barton, recover from a fall that had him incapacitated for approximately 2 years (Barton, 1907: 79-88). From this experience, the young girl began moving ever closer to the nursing profession.

Following the Battle of Bull Run near the beginning of the Civil War, Barton began her work as a nurse, organizing the collection and distribution of necessary medical supplies and gaining permission to ride behind the lines and in the mobile ambulance wagons to provide medical assistance to wounded soldiers on the field. Her tireless efforts earned her the nickname of ‘Angel of the Battlefield’ and she was eventually appointed the superintendent of nurses in 1861. By 1869, though, she was taking her skills to Europe to help in the Franco-Prussian War.  It was in Switzerland that she first learned of the European organization already in existence there called the Red Cross. Although an attempt had already been made to establish a branch in the United States well before Barton went to Europe, this was her first time hearing of it and she spent the rest of her time in Europe learning more about it. When she finally returned home in 1873, she was well-armed to take up the cause. “She was not one among many good women working for this common end.  She was not a member of a committee or other organization beginning feebly … Alone she learned of the Red Cross; alone she brought tidings of it back to her own country; alone she wrote of it, talked of it, brought it to the attention of distinguished men, carried her faith in it from desk to desk in Washington, and cherished the hope of it through long years” (Barton, 1922: 3). The first official branch was established in the United States in 1881 with Barton as the first president. She served in this position from 1882 to 1904.