She was one of the first female nurses to seek out the Federal wounded on the battlefields, appearing with a wagonload of bandages, medicines and food. A surgeon who saw her at the front, stirring a huge kettle of soup, called her an "independant Sanitary Commission of one".
"The Civil War, Tenting Tonight", Time - Life books, page 94
One of several positive institutions that came out of the Civil War was the American branch of the Red Cross, and this is most directly attributable to Clara Barton.
Born in rural Massachusetts, she had been a school teacher and then was working as a clerk in the U. S. Patent Office when the war began. She volunteered to help to care for the wounded soldiers and soon recognized the need not only for medical nursing but also for supplies and support for morale.
Going to Union camps and even to battlefields, Barton became known among the troops as "the angel of the battlefields". By 1864 she was officially appointed "Lady in Charge" of the hospitals of the Federal Army of the James.
Lincoln asked her to lead the search for the many missing Union men, and in 1865 she went to Andersonville, the Confederate prison in Georgia, to identify and mark the graves of the thousands of Union dead.
When the war ended, Barton turned to lecturing on her experiences, and finding herself in Europe during the Franco - German war of 1870, she worked at the front with the International Red Cross. Growing out of an organization started in 1863, the Red Cross impressed Clara as the instrument to achieve her goals, and on returning to the US, she worked to establish the American National Red Cross. It was 1881 before she obtained formal recognition from the President and she was to serve as its head until 1904. During these years she was influential in extending the organization's activities beyond the casualties of wars to those suffering in floods, famines, fires and other disasters.
"The Civil War Almanac", World Almanac Publications, page 313
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