Clara Barton
Clara Barton
Carte-de-visite album
Tintype, ca. 1862
Prints & Photographs Division
(LC-USZC4-6307)
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Twenty years before founding the American Red Cross,
Clara Barton came to the aid of soldiers fighting in the Civil
War. At the war's outbreak, Barton worked as a U.S. Patent Office
clerk and collected provisions and medical supplies for the Union
Army. Restless with her limited role and undeterred by War Department
regulations and prevailing stereotypes, Barton became known as
the "Angel of the Battlefield" as she distributed supplies and
tended to the wounded and dying. Barton kept these notes during
the course of the war, which documented the appalling carnage
and medical conditions of the wounded transported to Fredericksburg
from the Wilderness campaign.
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