She also became a lecturer and crowds of people came to hear her talk about her war experiences. Some time after returning home to the United States, she began to lobby for an American branch of this international organization. As its leader, Clara Barton oversaw assistance and relief work for the victims of such disasters as the Johnstown Flood and the Galveston Flood. Clara Barton resigned from the American Red Cross in amid an internal power struggle and claims of financial mismanagement.
While she was known to be an autocratic leader, she never took a salary for her work within the organization and sometimes used her funds to support relief efforts. After leaving the Red Cross, Clara Barton remained active, giving speeches and lectures. She also wrote a book entitled The Story of My Childhood , which was published in Barton died at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland, on April 12, We strive for accuracy and fairness.
If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. American motion-picture actress Clara Bow was a major box-office draw during the silent film era, starring in dozens of projects.
American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States. A makeshift hospital was created in the uncompleted Capitol Building. Though often described as shy, Barton felt an urgency to care for the injured and brought them food, clothing and other necessities.
As the need for care and medical provisions grew, Barton gathered provisions from her home and spearheaded a campaign to solicit additional relief items from friends and the public. More importantly, she spent hours with the homesick, suffering soldiers, nursing them back to health, writing letters and offering kind words, prayers and comfort.
With no formal training, her nursing expertise came from common sense, courage and compassion. After witnessing the sad state of battle-weary soldiers in Washington, D. In , she received permission to take bandages and other supplies to a battlefield hospital after the Battle of Cedar Mountain in Northern Virginia. From then on, she traveled with the Union Army. On September 17, , Barton arrived at the now-infamous Antietam cornfield during the Battle of Antietam.
After dropping off her wagon load of medical supplies to grateful surgeons struggling to make bandages out of corn husks, she worked long into the night assisting the surgeons, cooking food for the soldiers and tending the wounded, despite nearby cannon fire and bullets flying overhead.
One unlucky soldier was shot and killed as Barton tended him. There was no more to be done for him and I left him to his rest. I have never mended that hole in my sleeve. I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat? Barton made a profound impression on Union army surgeons at Antietam. One surgeon, Dr. She solicited more supplies and, once recovered, went back to the battlefield. Whenever possible, Barton recorded the personal information of the soldiers she cared for. As the war progressed, she was often called upon to correspond with family members of missing, wounded or dead soldiers.
After returning to Washington, D. Her job was to find missing soldiers and, if possible, inform their families of their fate. She formed the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States and — along with twelve clerks — researched the status of tens of thousands of soldiers and answered over 63, letters.
By the time Barton left her post and presented her final report to Congress in , she and her assistants had identified 22, missing soldiers, but she believed at least 40, were still unaccounted for. In , Barton traveled to Europe for rest and learned about the International Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland, which had established an international agreement known as the Geneva Treaty now part of the Geneva Convention , which laid out rules for the care of the sick and wounded in wartime.
When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in , Barton — never one to sit on the sidelines — wore a red cross made of red ribbon and helped deliver supplies to needy war-zone citizens. President Chester A. Arthur finally signed the treaty in and the American Association of the Red Cross later called the American Red Cross was born, with Barton at its helm.
New Jersey, unlike Massachusetts, had no free public schools. With the help of the local school committee, Clara decided to open her own school in Bordentown. When Schoolhouse Number One opened in the fall of , Clara was shocked to learn that she would not be principal of the school which she had founded.
Instead a man was hired, at twice her salary, to run the school.
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