Clara Barton: The Life and Legacy of the Civil War Nurse Who Founded the American Red Cross

Clara Barton, was a true heroine of the age. “One of the most efficient and earnest of the volunteer laborers in the Hospitals and on the battlefields of the War, one of those noble women whose heroic devotion has added a new glory to American womanhood, Miss Clara Barton, a name which hereafter is to hold a place beside those of Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix.” Barton's monikers defined her reputation for the rest of her life. “Antietam is where soldiers and generals in the Union army truly began to notice Clara Barton and her competent, professional brand of nursing…She distributed her articles to the different hospitals, worked all night making soup, all the next day and night…ministering to the wounded and the dying…supplying them with delicacies of every kind, and administering to their wants, all of which she does out of her own private fortune." When Barton arrived in Switzerland, she met Dr. Louis Appia, a military surgeon who, along with Barton and four others, established the Committee of Five, later known as the International Committee of the Red Cross. Clara Barton was seen as the natural leader for an American relief effort. “She saw an opportunity to expand the American Red Cross mission into largely uncharted territory: providing aid during a natural catastrophe” and “shrewdly expanded the Red Cross mission to include victims of natural disasters.” Regarding her time in Johnstown, Clara Barton described its inhabitants as "a people as patient and brave as people are made, as noble and grateful as falls to the lot of human nature to be. Enterprising, industrious and hopeful, the new Johnstown, phoenix-like, rose from its ruins more beautiful than the old...God bless her and God bless all who helped save her!" May the same be said of the contemporary inhabitants of California and the Red Cross relief workers during the devastation of the wildfires.