LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Clara Barton: Civil War
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Born in Massachusetts in 1821, Clara Harlowe Barton was the youngest of six children. Barton supplemented her early education with practical experience, working as a clerk and book keeper for her oldest brother. She worked for several years as a teacher, even starting her own school in Bordentown, New Jersey in 1853. In 1854 she moved south to Washington, D.C. in search of a warmer climate. From 1854 to 1857 she was employed as a clerk in the Patent Office until her anti-slavery opinions made her too controversial. When she went home to New England she continued the charity works and philanthropy she had begun in Washington.
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Clara Barton taught school and worked as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. When she 40 years old, the outbreak of the Civil War launched her on her life's work. She began to assemble and distribute supplies to the Union soliders. Knowing that nurses were urgently needed at the battlefield, she "broke the shackles and went into the field."
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Clarissa Harlowe Barton (better known as Clara Barton) was a heroine of the War Between the States. Her nursing efforts during the conflict are well known. Less familiar today are her efforts in identify the fates of "missing soldiers." Born on Christmas Day, 1821, she grew up in a farming family in Massachusetts.
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In 1864, Clara Barton became a nurse in the Civil War. She went to Richmond and Petersburg, some of the grimmest battlefields. She helped in the North and the South. After the Civil War, she identified 13,000 unknown dead Union soldiers. She ... marked the 13,000 unknown dead soldiers' graves.
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Early in 1861 Barton returned to Washington, D.C. and, when the Civil War broke out, she was one of the first volunteers to appear at the Washington Infirmary to care for wounded soldiers. After her father’s death late in 1861, Barton left the city hospitals to go among the soldiers in the field. Her presence—and the supplies she brought with her in three army wagons—was particularly welcome at the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) where overworked surgeons were trying to make bandages out of corn husks. Barton organized able-bodied men to perform first aid, carry water, and prepare food for the wounded. Throughout the war, Barton and her supply wagons traveled with the Union army giving aid to Union casualties and Confederate prisoners. Some of the supplies, like the transportation, were provided by the army quartermaster in Washington, D.C., but most were purchased with donations solicited
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Many were wounded and without supplies, and so Clara placed advertisements in the newspaper for medicines, bandages, food and clothing donations. Initially she used her own rooms to store the abundant contributions. Soon her service expanded and she rented a warehouse to keep supplies, which she insisted upon personally delivering to the battlefields. The War Department at first objected to a female presence on the field, but her persistence won them over, and she eventually secured army carts and mules to aid in her distribution. Barton ... prepared meals for the soldiers and nursed the sick and wounded, earning the name “Angel of the Battlefield”. Only for a brief time in 1864 was she affiliated with the army in any official capacity.
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