Clara Barton. War lecture. ca. 1866

Twenty years before founding the American Red Cross, for which she became famous worldwide, Clara Barton (1821-1912) came to the aid of Union soldiers fighting in the American Civil War. At first, War Department regulations and nineteenth-century female stereotypes limited her involvement, but before the war's end, she “broke the shackles and went to the field,” nursing hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and elsewhere.

Although by no means the only woman to engage in such work, Barton became one of the most famous because of the postwar lectures she delivered to raise money for her efforts to identify dead and missing soldiers, especially those who perished at Andersonville prison. This page from one of her lectures helps to illustrate the courage and strength of character it took for a woman of her day to become superintendent of Union nurses and later to found the American Red Cross.

LC-MS-11973-12 Manuscript Division-public domain image.

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