©2024 Sarah Becker

According to the National Park Service [NPS] “many women during Clara Barton’s era [1821-1912] attempted to advocate for an increase in women’s rights. While Clara was definitely a supporter of these efforts, she didn’t stop there. Barton led by example, forcing her way onto the battlefield and into the political sphere of influence.”

Congress did not pass the 1923 woman’s Equal Rights Amendment until 1972. Thirty of the required 38 states ratified the ERA within its first year of struggle. “The U.S. Supreme Court greatly aided the cause when in 1973 it ruled that states could not, among other things, outlaw voluntary abortions before the sixth month of pregnancy,” historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., wrote.

In 1974 the NPS responded—by raising Barton’s profile. Her landmark Glen Echo, Maryland property became the first National Historic Site “dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman.” Clara was, the National Park Service said “a dedicated Civil War nurse, an active women’s rights suffragette, and the founder and first president of the American Red Cross.”

Barton championed women’s rights: “the woman’s right to her own property, her own children, to her own home, her just individual claim before the law, her freedom of action [and] her personal liberty.”

Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton began life in rural Massachusetts, the youngest of farmer Stephen and Sarah Barton’s five children. Clara, mostly home schooled, established a New Jersey elementary school in 1852: then quit the teaching profession when a male principal displaced her.  She moved to the District of Columbia in 1854—in search of opportunity.

Barton’s next job: Clara was “the first woman appointed to an independent clerkship by government at Washington.” And “the first woman employed by the federal government [the U.S. Patent Office] to earn the same rate of pay as the men.”

President Franklin Pierce’s Secretary of the Interior Robert McClelland [D-MI] did not approve of working women. He demoted her: from a $1400 per annum recording clerk to a copyist who earned 10 cents for every 100 pages copied.

Barton became known as the Union army’s “Angel of the Battlefield” at age 41; “the lady in charge” of the hospitals of the Federal Army of the James two years later. Clara understood the need not only for medical nursing, but also delivery of the supplies directly to the battlefields.

The train and wagon deliveries began August 9, 1862, with the Battle of Cedar Mountain: a skirmish six miles south of Culpeper, Virginia.  The Battle occurred two weeks before the Second Manassas campaign.

“When our armies fought on Cedar Mountain, I broke the shackles and went to the field,” Nurse Barton explained. “Five days and nights with three hours sleep—a narrow escape from capture—and some days of getting the wounded into hospitals at Washington, brought Saturday, August 30 [the Confederate counter-attack]. And if you chance to feel, that the positions I occupied were rough and unseemly for a woman—I can only reply that they were rough and unseemly for men.”

“The Civil War was the defining event in Clara’s life,” historian Stephen B. Oates concluded, “shaping who she was and what she became. It gave her the opportunity as a woman to reach out and seize control of her destiny.”

Her field service included not only the Battle of Cedar Mountain, but also Fairfax Station, Chantilly, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Morris Island, Wagner, Wilderness, and the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond. Barton journeyed to Alexandria’s Camp Convalescent in October 1862.

In March 1865, by the authority of President Abraham Lincoln, Barton opened the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army. The District of Columbia Office was located at 437 7^th Street. She kindly responded to more than 63,000 grief-stricken families; successfully marked 13,000 Union graves. All in all she determined the fate of over 22,000 fighting men.

“Clara Barton led by example,” the National Park Service repeated. “In the classroom, on the battlefield, and in the boardroom she opened Americans eyes. Her perseverance in this male-dominated era not only led to the establishment of one of the most important, most influential institutions in American history, but she also demonstrated that women can succeed, overcome society’s inequalities.”

The Army’s Missing Men’s Office closed in 1869. Clara then deployed to Europe: to help the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War [1870-1871]. Barton’s first autobiography was published in 1876, as a “sketch” for a women’s Cyclopedia compiled by fellow suffragist Susan B. Anthony.

March is not only National Women’s History Month it is also Red Cross Month. Clara Barton—the woman who gave us the first aid kit; pioneered emergency preparedness and natural disaster relief [the Mississippi and Ohio River floods; Charleston, South Carolina’s earthquake, central Texas’ drought and Mount Vernon, Illinois’ tornado]—is probably best remembered for her role in the 1881 formation of the American Association of the Red Cross.

America acceded to the “Convention for the Amelioration of the Wounded in Time of War,” better known as the Geneva Convention the following year. From Clara Barton’s poem, The Women Who Went to the Field:

“The women who went to the field, you say/The women who went to the field; and pray/What did they go for?/Just to be in the way!…They saw in high purpose a duty to do,/And the armor of right broke the barriers through./Uninvited, unaided, unsanctioned oft times,/With pass, or without it, they pressed through the lines;/And this was the ‘running’ the men saw them do…The nurses, consolers, and saviors of men.”

In 1898, Clara Barton President of the renamed American National Red Cross returned to the battlefield. The Spanish American War was ongoing and she and ANRC Secretary, Alexandrian Lucy Mariah Graves [1871-1946] traveled to Cuba to treat the wounded. They consulted with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, shared medical supplies with his wounded Rough Riders, all the while promoting the American National Red Cross.

Barton later declined the role of honorary president of The National Society of the Spanish War. The society did not accept Black soldiers as members.

“I have a complete disregard of precedent and a faith in the possibility of something better,” Nurse Barton often retorted. “It irritates me to be told how things have always been done.”

“Nurses are a critical part of healthcare and make up the largest section of the health profession,” the National Library of Medicine confirmed. “And, yes, staffing shortages exist.” According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “more than 275,000 additional nurses will be needed by 2032.” That is in addition to the AAMC’s projected U.S. physician shortage.

Eighty-seven percent of today’s registered nurses [RNs] are female [Nurse Salary Research Report, 2022]. Women, who on average make $14,000 less than their male counter parts. That said Clara Barton volunteered her services during the Civil War.

Barton’s bottom line: the 19^th Amendment, the woman’s right to vote was not ratified until 1920, eight years after her death. The woman’s Equal Pay Act did not pass Congress until 1963. Ten years later sex-segregated, “help wanted” advertising was banned [U.S. Supreme Court, Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, June 21, 1973].

As for woman’s rights generally, the National Archives now calls the 1972 woman’s Equal Rights Amendment “America’s Most Popular Never-Ratified Amendment.”

About the Author: Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007.