Clara Barton Second Draft - Essay Example

Clara Barton Clara Barton, who was born in 1821, is most famous for being the nurse who founded the American Red Cross. Barton, a nurse from Oxford, Massachusetts, was the daughter of Stephen Barton, a farmer and former soldier and Sarah Barton, a homemaker. Francis (2007: p.6) suggests that it might have been Stephen’s war stories which inspired Barton to help soldiers later in life. Although a capable student, Barton left school when her brother David fell from a roof and had to be nursed back to health.

It was this role as carer that Barton learned many of the nursing skills she would use on the battle field. Barton became involved with dealing with wounded soldiers behind the lines during the American Civil War, firstly distributing supplies and later searching for the fallen of the Union army. In 1864, thanks to her tireless efforts on the battlefield, Barton was promoted to superintendent of nurses. Her role in assisting casualties was of extreme importance, as Tooker underlines. He underlines that ‘volunteers, such as Barton, provided an invaluable service early in the war until larger charitable organizations, such as the U.S. Sanitary Commission, were able to assist the Union Army on providing basic necessities, sanitation and medical support for the troops’.

(Tooker, 2007 p.220) After the war ended, as a result of her work and her determination to see the official list of the dead (copied in secret by a soldier – Dorence Atwater – and known as the ‘Atwater list’) published, she became known as the Angel of the Battle field. To recover from her exertions during the war, Barton travelled to Switzerland in 1869 for a peaceful break in Europe. However, when the Franco-Prussian war broke out in 1870, Barton once again took to the battlefield to help the injured, working with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Egglestone (2003: p.172) describes Barton’s activities in this period; ‘she followed German troops into Strasbourg after [a] 30-day siege and remained there for six months whilst setting up relief programs for the sick and wounded’. Upon returning to the US in 1973, Barton was determined to establish a similar organisation in her own country. However it took seven long years for her to persuade the American establishment that such an organisation was needed. Many Americans believed that their country would never again face a war as bloody as the Civil War, but Barton managed to gain recognition for the organisation by arguing that it could be useful not just in war time, but also in responding to natural disasters.

The first Red Cross branch was therefore established in 1881 in Dansville, New York. A national headquarters was created in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the following year, with Barton as the President. She would remain the President of the American Red Cross until her resignation in 1904. However, the Red Cross was still a fledgling institution and it would only gain recognition and credibility thanks to Barton’s tireless efforts of organisation. As Burton (1995: 100) emphasises ‘The American Red Cross was bone of her bone, spirit of her spirit’.

In its civilian aid work, the Red Cross was involved in the humanitarian crisis of 1877 which saw Florida gripped by an epidemic of Yellow Fever. They were also involved in providing aid to victims of the Johnston flood in 1889. Clara Barton died in 1912, but the tradition of assisting victim of disasters which she helped to establish continues to this day.BibliographyBurton, David Henry (1995) Clara Barton: In the Servive of Humanity. New York: Greenwood Publishing GroupEgglestone, Larry G., (2003) Women in the Civil War.

New York: McfarlandFrancis, Dorothy Brenner (2007) Clara Barton: Founder of the Red Cross. New York: Millbrook PressTooker, John (2007) ‘Antietam: Aspects of Medicine, Nursing and the American Civil War’ Journal of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, Vol. 118 pp. 215 - 223