Clara Barton’s Influences as a Prominent Nurse Leader
Sara Kibbey
Cleveland State University
Abstract
Clara Barton is a prominent nurse leader. She provided care and supplies for troops in the Civil War and had the government pass a treaty to equally protect people internationally during wartime crises. Barton’s most widely known accomplishment was forming the American Red Cross. The organization implements her ideals of providing equal care during natural disasters and wartime crises. Barton is a prime example of a nurse due to her passion for caring and willingness to become available for those in need. Never satisfied with the bare minimum, she spent her life devoted to the care and protection of those in distress.
Clara Barton’s Influences
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She commonly wrote home to families that reported their men missing. The number of letters she was writing continued to increase towards the end of the war and she realized another human need that she could fulfill. She established the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army in order to structurally uncover missing men from the troops and to inform their families. Barton was given rooms in Washington, D.C. to operate out of with her volunteers. President Abraham Lincoln wrote: “To the Friends of Missing Persons: Miss Clara Barton has kindly offered to search for the missing prisoners of war. Please address her . . . giving her the name, regiment, and company of any missing prisoner” (The American Red Cross). She went on to run this operation for four years and in total answered over 63,000 letters and identified over 22,000 missing men. Barton played another honorable role in the Civil War when she helped a team of military men identify the graves of around13,000 men who had died in the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia and established a national cemetery around them (The American Red Cross). She personally helped raise the United Sates flag over the grounds in 1865 during the official dedication. A defining aspect of Clara Barton’s life that led her to accomplish numerous acts of pure kindness was her inability to remain satisfied when she knew there was more that could be done. She continued to perform various volunteer jobs but decided to vacation to Europe in 1869 for personal time. Instead of rest, she found new, improved ways to make a difference in people’s lives. Barton was exposed to the Red Cross that was in place in Switzerland and was very interested in the work that they did. She became educated about Henry Dunant, the Red Cross founder and his mission for the
Have you ever wondered what it was like being a nurse on the battlefield? Well lots of women were nurses but only one made history.
Clara Barton was a Union nurse who assisted soldiers, usually on the front lines, unlike most nurses at many battles of the Civil War, including Antietam where she was referred to as the “angel of the battlefield”. Clara also helped found the Red Cross and helped identify dead bodies at the Andersonville prison. Clara helped by bringing supplies and tending to wounded or dying soldiers, sometimes moving them to avoid a battle to come.
When the Civil War broke out, Clara Barton organized an agency for the federal soldiers wounded distribution of relief supplies, she was a fearless nurse, delivering food and bandages. She was a hero that we need to remember even today.
Clara Barton later formed the Red Cross, an organization where nurses help save lives all over the war. Whenever disaster occurs the Red Cross will almost always be there to help. When
Clara Barton (1821-1912) was a woman who tremendously impacted the American Society during her lifetime. Barton was a working nurse born in Massachusetts who later on moved to Washington, DC. She started a relief organization during the Civil War (Ackermann). She followed the Army for three years and for diligently to located men who were M.I.A during the Civil War (Ackermann). Furthermore, Barton founded the American Red Cross in 1881 (Ackermann). Clara Barton was indeed a woman of great influence whose impacted American society beyond her lifetime.
Over 150 years ago a woman named Clara Barton repeatedly defied the odds stacked against females, reinventing herself time and time again. After a career as an educator and clerk in the US Patent Office Clara Barton began her work with the Ladies’ Aid Society delivering supplies to soldiers fighting in the Civil War. Her compassion and devotion to humankind soon transformed this supply service into a career as a Civil War Nurse. She solicited donations and used her own money to purchase supplies needed to care for the wounded. She routinely placed herself in harm’s way to deliver supplies and render aid to those in need regardless of where their loyalties lay. She took the initiative to record the names of men who and died and where they were buried, she documented the conditions of the hospitals where the wounded were being treated. She worked to educate former slaves and prepare them for their new life of freedom. After the war she helped locate missing soldiers, providing comfort to grieving families. In time she founded the American Red Cross.
Imagine going to the hospital needing blood and there was none available. Clara Barton made the transfusion of blood possible with the inventing of the American Red Cross. Barton has influenced many nurses in today’s hospitals to push themselves to the limits and make others people’s lives easier. The American Red Cross made unimaginable hospital visits possible.
In 1821, she was named first directress of the orphanage, and served in that position for 27 years. Throughout her life, Eliza advocated against slavery. In her nineties, she moved to Washington D.C. to help Dolley Madison raise funds for the Washington Monument. For the fifty years after Alexander’s death, Eliza spent most of her time preserving his legacy. She collected and protected his documents, and pushed past anyone who tried to dismiss or ignore his accomplishments.
Barton began running the office of Missing Soldiers in Washington D.C. The purpose of the office was to locate or identify soldiers killed or Missing in action. Barton worked tirelessly with her assistants writing 41,885 replies to inquiries and locating more than 22,000 men. (Clara Barton and Andersonville) Barton would go on to spend the summer of 1865 finding, identifying, and properly burying 13,000 individuals who died in Andersonville prison camp, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia. She continued these tasks over the next several years, burying 20,000 more Union soldiers and marking their graves. (Clara Barton and
“Clara Barton” Clara Barton was quoted in this source saying, “The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me” (LaFantasie 5). This quote from Clara Barton shows her compassion towards helping people. These words from Barton show her outstanding determination to never hold back on the needs of others. At an early age, Clara Barton began helping people and continued to devote her life to helping others, therefore leaving a lasting legacy, especially by creating the American Red Cross. Clara Barton’s early life reflected on her love and sympathy for helping others.
Do you ever think a teacher could be a nurse in a war, and start something to help thousands of people? Well that's what Clara did and she was very successful. She was a nurse for most of the Civil War and sometime after. After the Civil War Clara was caring to look for soldiers who gone missing to reunite with their families. One trip to Europe inspired Clara to start what we know as today the American Red Cross.
“Barton's letters and diaries from this time suggest that she and Colonel Elwell had a passionate relationship, but she was always discrete enough not to say so outright. She and the colonel may have shared a strong intimacy, but it was always shadowed by the knowledge that he would one day return to his wife and children. Colonel Elwell's letters to Barton suggest that he returned her affections in full. This was, quite possibly, the happiest time in Barton's life” (Crompton “Offering Comfort”). Clara Barton was in love with a man that was a married guy. Some people think that she went to war just to be with him. That may have been a little factor but not one hundred percent. Clara Barton saved hundreds and nursed hundreds back to health. Clara Barton, though in love, helped people. She may have loved a guy that was married but she did not do anything about it. She had the love for many people and not just one man. Clara Barton established The Red Cross. Clara Barton’s experience in war had led her to develop the Red Cross. Even if she had went to help in war for love. She made a great program out of her war experiences. Clara Barton may have made a few mistakes but, nobody’s
At a time when all teachers were only male, she started teaching at schools.She then started working as a clerk in a patent office in Washington, D.C. and is also considered to be the first woman who could get a government job. She was a very caring woman and liked to help out everyone around her, and her view on the world was to save as many people as possible. She risked her life to bring supplies and support soldiers during civil war. By showing her ability to care, she cared and nurtured for soldiers who needed her help. She continued caring for wounded soldiers and troops, and as a result, she found the American Red Cross in 1881, and served as its president for 23 years. Barton had an understanding of people in need and this is what made her to care and serve the sick through her life. By getting Red Cross in the battlefields along with soldiers side by side, she opened a new path to volunteer services. In order to help the families of missing soldiers, she opened Missing Men of United States Army and identified about 22000 missing men through tracing service of Red
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Florence Nightingale, a well-educated nurse, was recruited along with 38 other nurses for service in a hospital called Scutari during the Crimean War in 1854 . It was Nightingale's approaches to nursing that produced amazing results. Florence Nightingale was responsible for crucial changes in hospital protocol, a new view on the capabilities and potential of women, and the creation of a model of standards that all future nurses could aspire towards.