Called the “Angel of the Battlefields”, Clara Barton has become one of the most well known and respected figures of the American Civil War and the nursing profession. Clara Barton made her place in history by becoming an unwavering monument to the improvement of women’s role in society and the importance of medical professions. From her contributions during the Civil War, possibly millions of lives have been saved inside and outside the military.
Clara was born December 25, 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts to Captain Stephen, a respected war veteran, farmer, and politician, and Sarah Stone Barton, a caring mother who taught her how to manage a home and the importance of cleanliness. Being the youngest of the five Barton children, her older siblings took charge of Clara’s education, in areas such as arithmetic, geography and spelling. When she actually started a formal education Clara took classes in philosophy, chemistry and Latin.
Despite her love for nursing and medical care, Clara became a teacher at the age of 17, and taught at a local schoolhouse for almost twelve years. When she was 29 Clara entered the Liberal Institute in Clinton, New York, a school for advanced studies for teachers. Alongside her school work, Clara also studied furthered into writing and started taking private French lessons.
After one year in Clinton Clara took a teaching position in New Jersey and this later led to the opening of a public school in Bordentown, which grew to an attendance of over six hundred students. Controversy between her and the education board about Clara becoming the head of the school effectively ended Clara career in teaching for a while. After leaving the school and New Jersey, Clara moved to Washington D.C. to work as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office.
Private Schools Public Education School
Private Schools The first position of chapter three is supportive of private schools. This position feels that private schools prevent the public schools from having a total monopoly over education by offering the community an alternative choice. This choice also produces competition with public schools for student enrollment. This position views public schools as something a student must accept ...
At the end of the Civil War in 1865, Clara received permission from President Abraham Lincoln to start a letter-writing campaign to find the soldiers that had been listed as missing in action and inform the families of the soldiers as to their whereabouts and conditions. She also met other famous reformists and rights advocates, including Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony. Clara went on numerous lecture tours, continued her work in the Office of Correspondence and became an active suffragist, but eventually her busy life caught up to her and her doctors recommended a period in rest in Europe. By 1869, after working herself to physical breakdown and exhaustion, she left for Europe and stayed there for the next 4 years.
Upon her return to the United States, Clara almost immediately began to work for the formation of an American branch of the Red Cross, but a large percentage of the public believed the idea of this support group was unneeded since a national outbreak of violence as catastrophic the American Civil War was extremely unlikely, but the Red Cross’s goal was to provide assistance to the victims of any sort of national crisis on any scale, whether it is war, natural disaster, etc. After living in New York, near a spa, to further improve her health Clara moved to Washington D.C. to continually push her cause. The results of her struggle include the formation of American Red Cross in Danville, New York in 1881, with Clara as the first president and the United States signing the Geneva Agreement in 1882. After another several years Clara wrote the American amendment to the Red Cross constitution to insure relief for victims of crisis in times of peace and war.
Clara remained president until 1904; during her presidency the American Red Cross provided assistance to victims of the 1893 Sea Islands Hurricane, the Spanish-American War, and Clara personally assisted in the humanitarian crisis in the Ottoman Empire during the aftermath of the Hamidian Massacres in Istanbul, and her final operation was the Galveston Hurricane in September 1900 which established numerous orphanages as shelters for the over 6000 children survivors. In 1904 Clara resigned as president, caused by her advancing age and criticism over her management of Red Cross personnel and funds, and lived a peaceful life until she died at the age of 91 on April 12, 1912.
The Essay on Clara Barton Cross Red Wounded
... efforts. At the age of sixty, Clara Barton was named the first president of the American Red Cross. After helping many countries and ... communities with disasters, Clara resigned the presidency at ... wounded. It was one of the Civil Wars bloodiest and most horrifying battles. Clara Barton helped all of the wounded ...
