Angel On The Battlefield
As I was researching The Forgotten Debutante, my last book in the Cotillion Ball Series, I learned of the National Reburial Initiative, which took place after the Civil War
Clara Barton
finished. Most Americans are unaware of the federally-funded program, which took over five years to return to each battlefield, and uncover those hastily buried and unburied Union soldiers and reinter them in military cemeteries in the Northern states. It was the largest federal program to date, and it was given a big boost by using the records compiled by Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross.
Which led me to ask the question, exactly who was Clara and how did she have such focus?
Her war work began at the start of the war, after the Battle of Bull Run. She was one of the first to volunteer at the Washington Infirmary to care for the wounded. She established an agency to obtain and then distribute supplies to wounded soldiers. In 1862, after the death of her father, she she got permission to go behind the lines and saw some of the grimmest battlefields of the war. She aided soldiers on both sides. She became known as the “Angel on the Battlefield.” Her supply wagons traveled with the Union army and gave aid to both Union casualties and Confederate prisoners.
Her records of whom she had met and tended to on the various battlefields, as well as at the hospitals, was the foundation for the massive Reburial Initiative movement. In March, 1865, President Lincoln appointed her to the job of General Correspondent, where she responded to inquiries from the friends and family of missing soldiers by locating them among prison rolls, sketchy casualty lists and parole rolls. She established the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States. She went on to become a lecturer and formed the Red Cross in 1881.
Born in Massachusetts in 1821, Clara was never content to follow convention. She began her professional life as a teacher. She was invited to teach at a private school, but recognized the need for free and public education. She established one of the first public schools in the state. She resigned her post when officials appointed a male principal over her, and moved to Washington, DC, where she became the first woman to work at the Patent Office. Always a trailblazer, she proclaimed while she may be willing to teach for nothing, if she were to be paid at all, she would never do a man’s work for less than a man’s pay. So, during her stint at the Patent Office, she received the same wages as the men.
While she continued her field work on the battlefields during the Civil War, one of her greatest achievements happened after the war ended. She helped to identify 13,000 unknown Union soldiers who died at the prison camp in Andersonville, GA. That work gave her the idea for a nationwide campaign to identify soldiers who had gone missing during the war. She published lists of names in newspapers and exchanged letters with soldiers and veterans’ families. The search lasted for years and wore her out. With the Reburial Initiative taking the lead on the project, she took a break and went to France.
The war between France and Prussia broke out while Clara was in France. Never one to sit on the sidelines, she joined the relief effort, and was introduced to a new organization–the Red Cross. The goal of this organization was to provide humane services to all victims of wartime under a flag of neutrality.
Ms. Barton returned to the United States and began her legacy–the establishment of the American Red Cross. It was a struggle to be recognized, since the government wanted to believe it would never again to involved in armed conflict. Relentless, at age 60, she finally persuaded the government to recognize the Red Cross so it could provide aid for natural disasters.
Postage Stamp honoring the Red Cross, issued in 1948.
Her home in Glen Echo, MD was headquarters of the Red Cross, and today it’s a national historic site that should not be missed. Located just outside Washington, DC, it was the first national historic site dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman. Not only was it headquarters of the Red Cross, but it was a dormitory for the staff and a warehouse for relief supplies. The National Park Service has restored eleven rooms, including the Red Cross offices, the parlors and Barton’s bedroom. Visitors to Clara Barton National Historic Site can get a sense of how Barton lived and worked. Guides lead tourists through the three levels, emphasizing Barton’s use of her unusual home. Modern visitors can come to appreciate the site in the same way visitors and workers did in Clara Barton’s lifetime.
She resigned from the Red Cross in 1904, and died in 1912 at the age of ninety-one.
http://www.nps.gov/clba/index.htm
http://www.americancivilwar.com/women/cb.html
http://www.biography.com/people/clara-barton-9200960
http://www.redcross.org/about-us/history/clara-barton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton
Wonderful story I didn’t know, though I was familiar with Clara Barton. However, it makes me realize how deep the wounds of that war go. Even as I read of the compassionate reburial efforts I thought of the dark emotions I felt–the loss–when I walked through Shiloh and saw all the grand Union monuments in the thoroughfare and crept back into the woods to see the small stones marking Confederate mass graves, still.
The real-life brother of the protagonist of my novel *Rosette* was a Union bugler (6th Michigan Cavalry) captured at the battle of Trevilian Station and imprisoned in Andersonville. Though he was there only a matter of weeks, he suffered lifelong rheumatism and chronic diarrhea, according to his pension records. I look forward (sort of!) to learning more about that prison.
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Thank you, Cindy, for visiting today. The Reburial Initiative has many layers, including the treatment the Confederate soldiers were denied. My book goes into some detail on the Initiative itself, but my research opened up parts of the story I didn’t get to include in my novel.
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Good to know! I have more history to learn. 🙂
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Another interesting story, Becky. As a genealogist I’ve visited more than my share of cemeteries and found Civil War sections to be ubiquitous all over the country. I never heard of the reburial project but it makes sense. It also explains why there is a national cemetery in a place like Dayton, Ohio which was begun with Civil War burials. My dad is buried there. One of the most poignant I ever saw were the graves of boys from Marietta, Ohio in the national cemetery in Marietta Georgia. The toll was staggering.
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Thanks, Caroline. I found the whole reburial initiative fascinating, and something no one else I spoke to knew anything about. I’ve added a note to the novel explaining that it actually did happen, and gave some background on it.
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By the way, the links from this post in my email went to a “page not found” but I could visit the site to find the post.
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What an inspiring story, Becky! Thank you for sharing this. I knew some of it, but i didn’t realize she had served abroad in the Franco-Prussian War. Her legacy is now an international one, as the Red Cross has inspired similar organizations like the Red Crescent. Clara is on my heroes list!
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Great post, Becky. I am amazed that Clara Barton was able to be so effective in the 1800s. Wonderful tribute to a wonderful lady!
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I agree, Betty. It amazes me when I read about these inspirational heroines from the 1800s, and what they had to put up with to be effective.
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All this research. I hope you can utilize it in further books. As I had family in the Civil War, these stories are of great interest to me. Makes me understand what my ancestors had to live through. Good luck on your last in the series.
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