From Kathryn Troutman: I live five miles from the home of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross, in Glen Echo, MD. The building also served as a headquarters for her organization for decades. I walk there a couple times a week. As I looked recently at some of the historical markers and interpretations, I was thinking about Women’s History Month and our new series of writing great leaders’ accomplishments. So here are Clara Barton’s amazing Top Ten Accomplishments. Clara’s accomplishments are wonderful to remember. I am so thankful that she founded the American Red Cross!
Clara Barton’s Top Ten Accomplishments
- In 1852, she opened the first-ever free school in New Jersey, located in Bordertown. The effort succeeded, and Clara was able to hire a second teacher a year later. Together they taught over 600 students.
- In 1855, she was hired as a clerk in the US Patent Office in Washington, DC. Clara became the first woman to receive a substantial clerkship in the Federal government, and received the same salary as a man’s.
- Beginning in 1861, she bravely provided nursing care and supplies to soldiers involved in the Civil War – activities that ultimately defined her life and earned her the nickname, Angel of the Battlefield.
- Clara Barton included emotional support for traumatically injured Civil War soldiers. Today that is the standard of care. It wasn’t then.
- Although Clara Barton supported the Union during the Civil War, she also believed in human rights. She provided medical care to injured Confederate soldiers as well as Union forces, as early as the horrific 1861 battle at Bull Run – the first full-scale combat encounter of the War. It wasn’t until 1864 that the first Geneva Convention was published, specifying in Article 6, that “Wounded or sick combatants, to whatever nation they may belong, shall be … cared for.”
- In 1864, in Virginia, Union General Benjamin Butler appointed Clara as the “lady in charge” of the hospitals at the front for his Army of the James.
- 1865 – With permission from President Lincoln, she opened the Office of Missing Soldiers, helping to locate more than 20,000 soldiers.
- After the Civil War, she was an early advocate for civil rights. She met Susan B. Anthony and supported the woman’s suffrage movement. She also connected with abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass.
- On May 21, 1881, Clara founded the American Red Cross, and by 1882, the US ratified the first Geneva Convention – laws that have evolved, and to this day protect the war-wounded and civilians in conflict zones. This later resulted in a US congressional charter, officially recognizing Red Cross services.
- Clara Barton served as Red Cross President for 23 years, retiring in 1904. After a lifetime of service, Clara died at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland, on April 12, 1912.