Historical Perspectives: Clara Barton
This month marks a full year of free thinking for the New Free Thinkers. Accordingly, we will be publishing a set of “Historical Perspectives” examining the lives of young men and women in history. Their stories show how God uses everyday people to accomplish amazing things. We hope they will inspire you as you celebrate with us!
Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in Oxford, Massachusetts. She was the youngest of five children. When Clara was eleven, her brother David became her first patient after he fell from the roof of the family barn. Clara stayed by his side for two years and learned to administer all his medicine, including leeches. She continued to develop an interest in nursing, drawing inspiration from stories of her great aunt, Martha Ballard, who served as a doctor and midwife in Maine for over thirty years.
When Clara was sixteen, she started teaching school. She taught in her home town for ten years, at which point she was offered a position at a private school in New Jersey. After learning more about the educational opportunities in the area, she moved to New Jersey to set up one of the first free public schools in the state amidst strong opposition. In 1854, she moved to Washington DC, where she became the very first woman to work at the Patent Office. When the first Civil War troops came into the city in 1861, she realized an immediate need for personal assistance for the soldiers, some of whom were wounded, many hungry, some without any bedding or clothing except what they had on their back. She began by taking supplies to the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry who had been attacked in nearby Baltimore and were housed in an unfinished building. She fought to provide “her boys”, some of whom were her former students, with clothing, food, and supplies to the sick and wounded without being affiliated with any agency or group. She read to them, she wrote letters for them, listened to them, and she prayed for them. She quickly realized that those with the greatest needs were on the battlefields. She plagued leaders of the government and army until she was given passes to volunteer on the battlefield. Following the battle of Cedar Mountain in 1862, she appeared at the field hospital at midnight with a wagon-load of supplies. The surgeon on duty later wrote, “I thought that if heaven itself ever sent out an angel, she must be one.” From that point on, she was known as the “Angel of the Battlefield”.
Clara Barton Homestead
She was never content to be with the medical units hours or even days away from a fight. At Antietam, she ordered the supply wagons to travel all night, pulling ahead of the military medical units. During the battle, she and her associates rushed about bringing hope to the field. She later wrote, “I always tried . . . to succor the wounded until medical aid and supplies could come up – I could run the risk; it made no difference to anyone if I were shot or taken prisoner.” Her interest in “her boys” gave her a wealth of information about the men and the regiments they belonged to. At the end of the war she wrote thousands of letters to families who were desperate for information regarding the men who were missing or killed. Together with her assistants, they answered over 63,000 letters and identified over 22,000 missing men. This led to the implementation of the Red Cross tracing services, one of the organization’s most valued services today. Her work identified 13,000 graves of the Union men who died at the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia, and she proposed memorializing 400 unidentifiable graves, which has come to be the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Finally seeking some well-deserved rest with a trip to Europe in 1869, she was introduced to the Red Cross Movement in Switzerland, which called for international agreements to protect the sick and wounded during wartime without respect to nationality, now known as the Geneva Convention. In 1870 she went to volunteer in the warzones of the Franco-Prussian War. To protect herself, she wore the newly accepted symbol of the Red Cross, the reverse of the Swiss national flag, which bears a white cross on a red field. After returning to the United States, she worked tirelessly to influence the United States government to sign the Geneva Convention. She took the treaty to three successive presidents until it was signed by Chester Arthur in 1882.
Clara Barton’s achievements with the Red Cross and on her own are too abundant to list. In addition to leading the Red Cross, she maintained interests in other fields, such as education, prison reform, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and religion. She was said to suffer from bouts of severe depression throughout her life, only recovering when a crisis required her attention. When her father was on his deathbed, he gave Clara advice she would often recollect. She said, “As a patriot, he had me serve my country with all I had, even with my life if need be, as the daughter of an accepted Mason, he had me seek and comfort the afflicted everywhere, and as a Christian he charged me to honor God and love mankind.” The many men and women whose lives were saved or memorialized by the work of Clara Barton testifies how one person doing the will of God can turn the world upside down.
It is interesting that a dilemma became her launching pad and another time when she needed rest introduced her to the Red Cross. I wonder how many problems in our lives are God’s way of trying to take us somewhere?