There were many heroes of the Civil War, not just the soldiers that fought in battle. The most remembered heroes are the people who worked behind the scenes. One of the most important was Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. Clara Barton is the most honored woman in history for being a pioneer and an outstanding humanitarian. She put her life on the line to save our soldiers. The Civil War took place from April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865. This war consisted of the United States alone, it was a country divided. The war was fought between Southern United States, Northeastern United States, and Western United States. (O'Neil, p. 23) This war went down as the largest armed conflict on American soil. (www.civilwarhome.com) Clara Barton did her part by working in the fields to help the soldiers. (O'Neil, p. 25) Originally, Clara Barton was born Clarissa Harlowe Barton, in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She was born on December 25, 1821. She was the youngest of seven children. (Steele, p. 55) She once said, “I do not have brothers and sisters, I have six playmates and they all look after me.” (Steele, p. 55) Barton was not a very social person. Throughout her life, she had identity problems. (www.redcross.org) The identity crisis got worse when she became interested in academics and other things that were considered to be “masculine”. (www.redcross.org) At the age of seventeen, she opened her own school and became a schoolteacher. For this she was judged, because at the time teaching was considered to be a man’s job. (www.redcross.org) She became known around other schools by her ability to fix problem children. (www.Ikwdpl.org) Her way of handling children was different from others; she enforced discipline through kindness and persuasion. Even though, physical force was the actual standard. (www.Ikwdpl.org) Clara Barton loved teaching, but she knew that her true calling was to help people. (www.redcross.org) Her understanding of the needs of people in distress and the ways in which she could provide help to them guided her throughout her life. (www.nahc.org) She had always wanted to improve the health standards of the military. (www25.uua.org) Clara prodded leaders in the government and army until she was given passes to help on the battlefields. (www25.uua.org) She became one of the first women to gain employment in the federal government. (www25.uua.org) However she remained unaffiliated with both the army and other soldiers’ relief organizations. It wasn’t until the soldiers came to her that she realized the battlefields were where she was meant to be. 1861 was when the first federal troops poured into Washington D.C. (www.civilwarhome.com) Clara was working as a recording clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. She bought supplies to the young men of the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry. (www.civilwarhome.com) They had been attacked in Baltimore, Maryland and were housed in the unfinished Capitol Building. She knew where she was needed most was not behind the lines in Washington, but on the battlefields where the suffering was greatest. (www.redcross.org) Most of Clara’s early work consisted of working as a nurse on the battlefields. She opened paths to the new field of volunteer service. (Steele) She would call some of the men “her boys” because she had either grown up with them or taught them in school. (www.redcross.org) She risked her life at the age of forty to bring supplies and clothing to soldiers in the field during the Civil War. (www.civilwarhome.com) Besides supplies she offered personal support to the men in hopes of keeping their spirits up. (www.civilwarhome.com)She was eventually named Superintendent of the Union Nurses. (www.nahc.org) While battle raged on, she and her associates dashed about bringing relief and hope to the field. (www.Ikwdpl.org) In the face of danger she wrote, “I always tried…to succor the wounded until medical aid and supplies could come up –I could run the risk; it made no difference to anyone if I were shot or taken prisoner.” (www.redcross.org) A surgeon on duty overwhelmed by the human disaster surrounding him later wrote, “I thought that night if heaven ever sent out an angel, she must be one –her assistance was so timely.” (www.redcross.org) From then on she became known as the “Angel of the Battlefields.” Her intense devotion to the aim of serving others resulted in enough achievements to fill several lifetimes. (www.redcross.org) Barton’s interest shown in her “soldier boys” gave her a wealth of information about the men and the regiments to which they belonged. (Steele) At the end of the war she wrote to families who inquired about men who had been reported missing. (Steele) Abraham Lincoln wrote, “To the Friends of Missing Persons: Miss Clara Barton has kindly offered to search for the missing prisoners of war. Please address her… giving her the name, regiment, and company of any missing prisoner.” (Steele) Clara Barton established the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army. (www.redcross.org) Barton and assistants received and answered over sixty-three thousand letters and identified over twenty-two thousand missing men. (www.redcross.org) The climax of her help with the Civil War was when she proposed a national cemetery be created around the graves of the Union men who died in the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia and the graves be marked where names were known. (www.civilwarhome.com) Dorence Atwater secretly tabulated a list of the dead during his own imprisonment at Andersonville. (www.nahc.org) He helped Barton and a team of thirty military men identify the graves of nearly thirteen thousand men. (www.nahc.org) She proposed that four hundred unidentifiable graves be memorialized. (www.civilwarhome.com) After she helped raise the flag over Andersonville grounds at their dedication in 1865, she wrote, “I ought to be satisfied. I believe that I am.” (www25.uua.org) Be doing all these things, Barton anticipated the implementation of Red Cross tracing services. (www.redcross.org) Clara Barton hated being away from war. In 1869, she found a still wilder field of service in Europe. (www.nahc.org) She was introduced to the Red Cross by some friends in Geneva, Switzerland. (www.nahc.org) She read “A Memory of Solferino,” written by Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross Movement. (www.nahc.org) Dunant called for international agreements to protect the sick and wounded during wartime without respect to nationality and for the formation of societies to give aid voluntarily on a neutral basis. (www.nahc.org) The first treaty embodying Dunant’s ideas was negotiated in 1864. It was ratified by twelve European nations. (www25.uua.org) The treaty never really had an “official” name. It was variously called the Geneva Treaty, the Red Cross Treaty, and the Geneva Convention. (www.nahc.org) Later Clara Barton would fight hard and successfully for the ratification of this treaty by the United States. (www25.uua.org) In 1877 Barton took the Treaty to President Rutherford B. Hayes. He looked at the treaty as a possible “entangling alliance” and rejected it. (www.Ikwdpl.org) His successor, James Garfield, was supportive of the treaty, but died before he could ever ratify it. (www.Ikwdpl.org) In 1881, at the age of sixty she founded the American Red Cross. (www.redcross.org) Finally in 1882, President Chester Arthur signed the treaty and a few days later Senate ratified it. (www25.uua.org) The American Red Cross has since then helped with many disasters. (www.redcross.org) Clara Barton led the American Red Cross for sixty-three years, until her death on April 12, 1912, in Glen Echo, Maryland. (www.Ikwdpl.org) Clara Barton will forever be remembered as the “Angel of the Battlefields.”