Clara Barton. It Is Through

¶ … Clara Barton. It is through reviewing her life, and understanding her leadership skills, that nurses can better discover how to become leaders themselves.

Early Personal History and Career

Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born December 25th, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts and is an excellent example of how anyone can be a leader (Bowers, 2000). She was the daughter of Stephen Barton, a farmer and local politician, and Sarah Stone.

Her childhood nickname "Clara" stuck and, as such, she would be known to the world as Clara Barton. For generations, Barton's family had lived in the New England region, but despite her family's renown and position in the community, Barton's childhood was not a happy one. Plagued with her parent's troubled marriage, her sister's insanity and early death, and her brother's questionable business dealings, Barton's homelife early on was anything but stable (Pryor, 2006).

A shy young woman, her parents encouraged Barton to go into teaching. Her immediate sense of authority and scholastic rigor, far beyond her young age, helped her to excel at this profession. For ten years, Barton worked to revitalize the schools in her area. She championed a redistricting campaign that would allow worker's children to receive an education, demonstrating her commitment to social reform. An early feminist in the making, Barton also demanded equal wages to those received by her male colleagues (Pryor, 2006).

In 1850, Barton left Massachusetts to attend the Clinton Liberal Institute, in Clinton, New York. Upon completing her studies she resumed teaching, while visiting friends in Highstown, New Jersey. She moved to Bordentown, and it would be there that she was charged with introducing a system of free public schools, similar to those in Massachusetts. Although successful, it was deemed inappropriate for a woman to run the administration of the system. Barton left Bordentown and suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns (Pryor, 2006).

Barton moved to Washington, D.C. And obtained a job as a copyist in the Paten Office. Once again, she excelled as her chosen profession. One of only a small number of women working for the government, at the time, Barton demanded and received a salary equal to that of her male colleagues. Years of animosity and official harassment would end in 1857, with the change in administration. Barton, and the few other female clerks employed at the time, were dismissed; however, by 1860 and the re-election of the Republicans, Barton was rehired ("Clara Barton's," 2000).

Clara Barton and the Civil War

When the Civil War erupted, Barton was in Washington. As she had proven many times in her life, prior to this point, Barton was not one to sit idly by. She was determined to actively assist the Union. In the beginning, Barton gathered and distributed supplies for the Massachusetts troops that were stationed in Washington. However, by the second year of the war, the tales of hardship and misery on the frontlines, led her to request permission to go to the battlefield. Thanks to the support of prominent Republicans, Barton was given permission to go to the front, from a reluctant War Department (Pryor, 2006).

Barton's first battlefield experiences at Culpepper and Fairfax Station, Virginia shocked her. She personally took charge of the medical and supply gap for the next three years. "With skirt pinned up around her waist and a face blue from gunpowder, she served gruel, extracted bullets, and held the hands of the dying" (Pryor, 2006).

Barton assisted at surgery, having to improvise with dressing wounds with green corn leaves, when bandages ran out. The chief surgeon wrote of Barton, "In my feeble estimation, General McClellan, with all his laurels sinks into insignificance beside the true heroine of the age, the angel of the battlefield" (as cited Pryor, 2006). This angel, this heroine, would risk her life to save the lives of men she had never met.

It was in Fredericksburg that Barton would nearly make that exchange, as she nearly died while crossing the river to tend the wounded. but, the near fatal incidence did not deter her. In 1863, during the siege of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, Barton ran a supply line and nursed soldiers suffering malaria. From June 1864 to January 1865, Barton returned to heat of battle, during the Wilderness Campaign, and served as the supervisor of nurses for the Army of the James. When the war was finally over, Barton continued to serve her country. She opened an office to search for missing men. She also marked graves and established a national cemetery at the site of Andersonville Prison (Pryor, 2006).

Barton Goes to Europe

Barton did none of this for fame, fortune or glory. She pursued her work alone and was never officially compensated for the years of service. Barton refused to compromise her efforts or her strong personality by aligning herself with Dorothea Dix's Department of Female Nurses or the Sanitary Commission. Although there were many brave fieldworkers, Barton's work came to be popularly recognized due to the dramatic lectures she gave between the years of 1866 and 1868. No one would have guessed that Barton hated public speaking, as she mesmerized audiences across the country. Her lectures centered on her efforts during the war. Barton was able to command fees for her talks that would make her financially independent for the rest of her life. However, another nervous breakdown forced Barton to discontinue her lecture tour and travel to Europe to recuperate (Pryor, 2006).

It was while in Switzerland that Barton would learn about the recently formed International Red Cross, as well as the Geneva Convention that charged nations with the upholding of basic principles of humane treatment of prisoners, the wounded, and civilians during times of war. Barton worked under the support of the International Red Cross, when war broke out between France and Prussia, in 1870. She ministered to refugees, distraught civilians, and wounded men. but, it was her organization of a work center in Strasbourg, for the city's impoverish women, that would be her most notable work, during that time. Another nervous breakdown would confine Barton to Europe for several years, and it wouldn't be until 1873 that she would return to America, convinced that the United States should become a part of the Geneva Convention (Pryor, 2006).

Barton and the Ratification of the Geneva Convention

Upon returning to America, Barton's poor health continued to plague her. She moved to Dansville, New York, in 1876, to follow a cure at a local sanatorium. It was her ill health that would impede her early efforts to educate American leaders about the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention and the benefits it could have for the country. Not one to back down due to adversity, Barton would spend almost all of the next decade, lobbying virtually alone, for the acceptance of the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention, against a government that felt that any agreement with a foreign nation meant compromising America's sovereignty. but, it would be Barton's persistence and her agility at operating within the confines of the American political system that would ultimately lead to her success. On March 16, 1882, the Senate ratified the Geneva Convention (Pryor, 2006).

Barton and the Early American Red Cross

Barton served as the President of the American Red Cross for the next twenty-two years. She never married, but instead was completely devoted to the organization.

She not only established the managerial framework for the body but adapted the principles of the Geneva Convention to American needs. Sensing that peacetime emergencies would be more compelling than war service, she began to use her society to aid in relief of natural disasters (Pryor, 2006).

Early American Red Cross efforts went to the assistance of those in need following the Mississippi floods of 1882 and 1884, as well as relief efforts for those who were affected during an earthquake in Illinois in 1886. The yellow fever epidemic in Florida in 1888 saw Red Cross nurses being used for the first time. However, one of the most notable early peacetime efforts, for the American Red Cross, was at the Johnstown Pennsylvania flood in 1889. The young organization provided temporary shelter, food and clothing during the first critical weeks following the disaster, and gained much needed publicity for their work. Four years later, similar aid was given to tornado victims in Iowa as well as coastal South Carolinians whose homes were destroyed by a hurricane that year (Pryor, 2006).

In 1884, the International Red Cross paid tribute to Barton's commitment to humanitarian relief and vision for the good the Red Cross could do. The International Red Cross passed an "American Amendment" to the Geneva Convention that year. This amendment sanctioned Red Cross activities in peacetime disasters, such as the floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes Barton's Red Cross had been serving (Pryor, 2006).

Not surprisingly, Barton saw the charge of her Red Cross as extending beyond the American borders. She pioneered American assistance in foreign crises. The Red Cross sent emergency food to Russia, during the famine of 1892. and, Barton personally oversaw relief to civilians that had been devastated by the religious wars in Turkey and Armenia in 1896 (Pryor, 2006). It was during this time that nearly 200,000 Armenians had been killed, alone (Barnett, 2004).

What little time Barton could spare from her Red Cross efforts went towards her larger interest in social reform. "In 1883 she reluctantly served as the superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women in Sherborn, a sobering experience that reinforced the politicization of her innate feminism" (Pryor, 2006). She worked hard to raise the economic and political status of women, attending rallies for the promotion of woman suffrage and developing friendships with Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone, as well as other leaders (O'Connor, 1995). Barton traveled to four states, alone, in 1888, on behalf of women's rights and was a featured speaker at the First International Woman's Suffrage Conference in Washington, D.C. Not only were women a cause of Barton's, but also disenfranchised blacks, and as such, she delivered an inspiring speech on the subject in 1868.

It was during the Spanish-American War of 1898 that the American Red Cross would undertake its first wartime efforts. The organization had tried to give relief to Cubans being held in concentration camps prior to the actual erumpent of hostilities, but were not successful. Once war broke out, the Red Cross began fieldwork on the frontlines and in the hospitals, as well as convalescent centers and prison camps. At the age of sevnty-six, Barton had personally gone to Cuba to coordinate the Red Cross activities there, and she personally directed all other work. However, it quickly became clear that the work was far beyond that of the small group of workers that had been the heart of the American Red Cross. It was this increased demand that would push the Red Cross into "a more professional mold and gained increasing interest from Congress and the White House" (Pryor, 2006).

Barton's Successful Leadership

Experience may be the best teacher (Bowers, 2000); however there are qualitative qualities a person must hone to become an effective leader. Clara Barton was a leader of society (Basbanes, 2001). There were several factors that were inherent to Barton's successful leadership. Although she is most noted for her work during the Civil War and her subsequent heading of the American Red Cross, her leadership qualities were present early on, back in the classrooms she commanded in Massachusetts. Barton was hardly much older than some of her students when she began teaching, yet she had a commanding presence, one that demanded that she was in charge. This presence was supported by the wide base of knowledge she had acquired during her scholastic endeavors, giving her confidence beyond her years.