Known as:   The Angel of the Battlefield     Category:   Union Nurse     Born:   1821       Died:   1912

Overview:

Volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War. Later founded the American Red Cross.

Biography:

Clara Barton knew nothing about nursing when the war started. She was working as a copy clerk at the Patent Office when casualties of the Baltimore mob attack on the 6th Massachusetts were brought into Washington. She volunteered to help, and spent the rest of her life helping others. She never affiliated with the other wartime relief organizations or nursing agencies, but her own work was recognized. She drove herself onto the battlefield of Antietam, following Sumner’s II Corps with medical supplies. She actually operated on a man, working a bullet out of his face. Lincoln recognized her work by the end of the war, getting her to run a bureau that investigate the “missing”. She was acceptable to the Confederates, who allowed her through to Andersonville, where she compiled what list she could of those who had died there. After the war she joined the International Red Cross and in 1881 founded the American branch, which she ran until 1904. In 1870-71 she went abroad and worked with the Red Cross on the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian war.

Principal Battles:	Manassas II (1862 ) Gettysburg (1863 )

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