BGuthrie Photos: Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office -- Exhibit: Standard Placards

Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office -- Exhibit: Standard Placards:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. CBMSOP_150214_005.JPG: First Aid Practitioner. Educator and Advocate Clara Barton's first experience in assisting wounded soldiers came at the very start of the Civil War, when she visited with and gave supplies to the Massachusetts troops who were being quartered in the Capitol building after being involved in the Baltimore Riot of 1861. She quickly understood that the greatest need during the war was going to be for support at the front -- at the field hospitals established on or near the battlefield. She began collecting food, clothing and supplies and distributing them to the soldiers and the surgeons. Her work began with the Battle of Cedar Mountain in 1862, continued throughout the war, and for many years thereafter. Barton's efforts at the field hospital for multi-faceted. In addition to providing supplies she also prepared food for the soldiers, noted the names of the wounded, built fires, provided support, and did whatever else was needed. She administered to the wounded when she could, assisting the surgeons by providing them with medical supplies and comforting the soldiers in their time of need. She also lobbied the politicians in Washington for improved care of the wounded. Barton rallied others to assist with the war effort, in particular by encouraging women to gather supplies for the relief of soldiers from their home states. She also stressed that supplies should be gathered before they were needed -- there would always be another battle or circumstance in which they would be required. She understood that the faster relief efforts could reach the scene of a battle, the better off the men would be, which is why she preferred to act on her own rather than as part of a larger group.
2. CBMSOP_150214_018.JPG: Humanitarian As the Civil War neared its end, Barton realized that there were many soldiers whose whereabouts were unknown. She understood the anguish that their families felt in not knowing if they were taken prisoner, badly wounded, or killed in action and buried on the battlefield. With the support of President Abraham Lincoln, she created the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army at Camp Parole in Annapolis, Maryland. This would later become known as the Missing Soldiers Office. With the help of her staff Barton compiled list of missing soldiers and had them published in newspapers and posted in public places, requesting information from anyone with knowledge of these men. Her own estimates of the scope of this work are as follows: "letters of inquiry, and those giving information received up to the end of the year 1868, amounted to 63,182. The printed circulars of advice issued in reply, 58,693. The letters written, to 41,855. The printed rolls distributed, to 99,057." A key component in the search for missing soldiers was the discovery of a register of the dead from Andersonville Prison in Georgia. This list was secretly copied by Union soldier Dorence Atwater, who as a prisoner was responsible for recording the daily burials at the camp. With Atwater's help help, many of the graves at Andersonville where identified, and Barton used this information in her work in locating missing soldiers. She was given the honor of raising the flag over the newly-created Andersonville National Cemetery on August 17, 1865.
3. CBMSOP_150214_022.JPG: Andersonville Prison cemetery, August 17, 1865, Clara Barton raising the flag. From Harper's Weekly, October 7, 1865.
4. CBMSOP_150214_026.JPG: "Parole Camp, Annapolis, Maryland 1864"
5. CBMSOP_150214_034.JPG: Nurse Clara Barton did not have any formal training in nursing. She, like many women in the nineteenth century, acquired her nursing skills by nursing a member of her own family. In Barton's case it was her older brother, David, who was seriously injured in a fall during a barn raising. Clara was only eleven years old, but she took the lead and caring for him for two years until he is fully recovered. These skills would serve her well when the Civil War broke out. While the majority of Barton's work during the Civil War entailed providing medical supplies and food to the hospitals on the battlefields, she did assist the surgeons on many occasions. She removed the bullet from a wounded man's face after the Battle of Antietam, served under enemy fire at Fredericksburg, and nursed many wounded soldiers after the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. In 1864 she assisted with the nurses for the Army of the James at the request of General Benjamin Butler. Her duties included organizing and moving the tent hospitals, and assisting with the wounded sent north from the battles around Richmond. Barton understood the necessity of providing nursing care and emotional support as well as supplies after natural disasters, and ensured that the Red Cross was able to care for the health and well-being of victims as well as helping with food, clothing and shelter. Providing medical supplies and assisting with the evacuation of the wounded would become core services provided by the Red Cross. "I learned to take all directions for his medicines from his physician (who had eminent counsel) and to administer them like a genuine nurse. My little hands became schooled to the handling of the great, loathsome, crawling leeches which were at first so many snakes to me, and no fingers could so painlessly draft the angry blisters, and thus it came about, that I was the accepted and acknowledged nurse of a man almost too ill to recover." -- Clara Barton, The Story of My Childhood, 1907 "I hear from no one and indeed I scarce write at all, and no one would wonder if they could look in upon my family and know besides that we had moved this week - yes, moved the family of fifteen hundred men, and had to keep our house-keeping up all the time, and no one to be ready at hand and ask us to take tea the first night either." -- Clara Barton, letter to Fannie Vassall, September 3, 1864 "My sleepy emotions awoke me and a dear, blessed woman was bathing my temples and fanning my fevered face. Clara Barton was there, an angel of mercy doing all in mortal power to assuage the miseries of the unfortunate soldiers." -- Colonel John J Elwell, after the attack on Fort Wagner, July 11, 1863. From William Eleazer Barton, the Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross, Vol. 1, 1922
6. CBMSOP_150214_044.JPG: Educator Education played a prominent role in Barton's life, and her first calling was to be a teacher. After completing her own education, she taught school in her hometown of North Oxford, Massachusetts, for 11 years. In 1852, while in Bordentown, New Jersey, she saw the need for a free school for the poor children of the town. The local school board was skeptical of her ability to teach what they considered to be incorrigible students, but she succeeded. Too well, perhaps, because after two years the school grew so much that she was supplanted from her position and replaced with a white principal with a male principal. Barton understood that public support for the Red Cross would be difficult unless she educated people on the subject, so she spent a good deal of time traveling the country and lecturing about humanitarian relief efforts in times of peace and war. Many of her speeches for based on her experiences in the Civil War, but they often went beyond this narrative to enlighten the citizens about what they themselves could do to advance the principles of humanitarianism. Teaching first aid became one of Barton passions later in life. In 1905, a year after resigning as president of the American Red Cross, she formed the National First Aid Association of America. This new society was designed to teach the public how to assist in times of personal injury and localized emergencies, venues that did not apply to the work done by the Red Cross at the time. This mission was later added to the scope of the American Red Cross.
7. CBMSOP_150214_051.JPG: Clara Barton's School, Bordentown, New Jersey, 1936. Annual First Aid contest, Valley View Park, 1907. "The Barton First-Aid Textbook" by HH Hartung, MD, 1906.
8. CBMSOP_150214_054.JPG: Author and Public Speaker Numerous times during her life Barton took to the lecture circuit, spreading the word about her Civil War experiences and reaching out to the public for support of her humanitarian goals. She spent hours writing out the lecture notes, hoping to overcome her fear of public speaking. She spoke at lecture halls large and small, focusing her socks on her Civil War activities, the International Red Cross, first aid training, and other humanitarian issues. As the standard-bearer for the International Red Cross in America, Barton spent years lobbying Congress and the President to ratify the Geneva conventions, which dealt with the treatment of wounded soldiers, prisoners, and civilians during times of war. She also advocated that the United States charter the Red Cross. She finally saw both of these goals attained by 1882. In 1898, Barton wrote the book The Red Cross In Peace and War, which detailed the relief work done by the organization up to that time. In 1904 she published A Story of the Red Cross: Glimpses of Fieldwork. She also wrote another small book, The Story of My Childhood, in 1907. It was intended to be the first of a series of autobiographical works, but no others were ever completed. Late in life she noted: "Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it." Barton kept a diary for many years, and those diaries, together with her lecture notes, letters and reports, comprised of wealth of information about her work, and also reflect her personality.
9. CBMSOP_150214_068.JPG: Founder of the American Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in 1864 after the horrors of the battle of Solferino 1859) came to light. The Treaty of Geneva was signed by twelve nations and outline the humanitarian treatment of the wounded, prisoners of war, and non-combatants during the war. It also provided to the neutrality of both relief workers and the wounded themselves. Barton found it almost incomprehensible that the United States refused to sign the treaty. She lobbied Congress, promoted the Red Cross ideals to the public, and push for its ratification until 1882, when the Senate and President Arthur ratified the Geneva Convention. Barton had founded the first local chapter of the American Red Cross in Dansville, New York, in 1881, and served as the President of the American Red Cross until 1904, eight years before her death. She was single-minded in her devotion to the organization, and continued to expand the influence of the Red Cross throughout her tenure. She knew that to be effective the relief efforts had to be rapid, since the need was immediate, and not tied to political influences. In 1891 a building was erected in Glen Echo, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC which serves first as a place to store relief supplies and later as the headquarters of the American Red Cross. Eventually it also served as housing for Barton and her staff and her staff. Over time, Barton's unwillingness to delegate authority to others and the growing alienation felt by the local chapters led to her resignation as president of the Red Cross in 1904.
10. CBMSOP_150214_075.JPG: International Relief Organizer While in Europe after the Civil War, Barton observed the relief operations of the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian war, which broke out in 1870. She learned about their methods of organization, transportation, and storage, and she herself assisted by distributing relief supplies and clothing, and helping to set up hospitals for displaced civilians. Her experiences laid the foundation for her later efforts to establish the Red Cross in the United States, and of her conviction that it should assist in times of peace as well as in war. On a global scale, the Barton-led the American Red Cross responded to the crisis of the famine in Russia in 1892, the Armenian massacre in Turkey in 1896, and the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898. The Geneva Conventions guaranteed that the relief workers were considered neutral and could not be prevented from doing their work. This tenant is central to the foundation of international humanitarian law. Barton encouraged the scope of the International Red Cross to be expanded from primarily a war-related humanitarian effort to encompass natural disasters as well. In the United States, the Red Cross assisted with relief efforts in all parts of the country, including after the Mississippi river floods of 1882 and 1884, the Charleston, South Carolina, earthquake in 1886, the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood of 1889, the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia hurricane of 1893, and the Galveston, Texas, hurricane of 1900. Relief efforts included food, shelter and clothing, as well as medical care and support.
11. CBMSOP_150214_084.JPG: Champion of International Humanitarian Law Barton's life and work paralleled the development of international humanitarian law and its spread throughout the world. She was an important pioneer in its development. During the Civil War, in the spring of 1862, the Union and Confederate armies reached an agreement on the Winchester Accord. This accord regarded doctors as noncombatants, and established that they could not be held as prisoners of war but would be released in due time and allowed to return to their respective armies. Barton, who worked closely with many of these doctors, surely saw the value of this accord, especially since it allowed the surgeons to remain with the wounded without the concern of being captured. This practice led directly to the soldiers receiving better care than they would have otherwise. After the Civil War, while in Geneva, Switzerland on the advice of her doctor, Barton was introduced to the Treaty of Geneva due to her fame from the Civil War. She saw the need to press the United States into falling in line with the European countries in guaranteeing humanitarian rights in times of war. This treaty went beyond protecting the doctors and included additional protections for the wounded themselves and for the civilian non-combatants who cared for them. Her lobbying led to the US ratification of the treaty. In later years she led important efforts to implement humanitarian law and international relief work. Between her birth in 1821 and her death in 1912, Barton experience firsthand -- and led important efforts to ensure -- the rise of international humanitarian law, and the idea that there should be standards of decency even during wars. The groundwork established by Barton and her contemporaries still reverberates today with countries seeking to lessen the horrors of war and natural disasters to the greatest extent possible.
12. CBMSOP_150214_090.JPG: Frag of Truce after the Battle of Antietam in order to collect the wounded. Sketch by Alfred Waud, September 1862.
13. CBMSOP_150214_099.JPG: Pioneering American Woman For many reasons, Clara Barton is considered a pioneering American woman by both their contemporaries and many modern people worldwide. She was hired as a clerk at the Patent Office in 1854, at the same rate of pay as the men. While her position was subject to the vagaries of politics, and she was subject to harassment from her male co-workers, she persevered and worked at the Patent Office, off and on, until 1865. Barton was an early lobbyist, tirelessly pushing influential politicians to adopt the Treaty of Geneva and established the American Red Cross. She pursued this cause throughout the 1870s until she was finally successful in 1882. She was one of three delegates from the United States sent to the Third International Red Cross Conference in Geneva in 1884 -- and the only female delegate present. What is known as the "American Amendment," which broadens the scope of the work of the Red Cross to include natural disasters, was passed at the conference, mainly due to Barton's work in America and her advocacy of the amendment. The rights of women were important to Barton -- "the right of her own property, her own children, her own home, or just individual claim before the law, to her freedom of action, to her personal liberty." She supported her friend Susan B Anthony, Frances D Gage, and other suffragettes in their cause to win the right to vote for American women. She also supported dress reform and eagerly embraced technological improvements throughout her lifetime.
14. CBMSOP_151031_002.JPG: From Fragments to Finishes: Recreating Clara Barton's Wallpaper Although no images of Clara Barton's Seventh Street rooms have been found, photographs of early Red Cross disaster relief sites show how she enriched her personal quarters with patterned textiles to create a refuge from her stressful work. Even these short-term living spaces were made cozy with a multiplicity of carpets, coverlets, desk drapes, and patriotic curtains bearing Stars and Stripes. Textiles and wallpaper fragments found in her Seventh Street rooms show a fondness for naturalistic colors and patterns of leaves and flowers. They also illustrate the variety of wallpaper designs made possible by the technology of her time. Advances in metal cylinder printing in the introduction of steam-powered machines with efficient systems for feeding color two cylinders in the 1840s produced a wide array of finely detailed wallpaper patterns common in the housing of all classes by the mid-nineteenth century. Patterns such as the blue hexagon design in Miss Barton's front hallway or the green floral in the rear hallway used skillful shading to create the illusion of carved stone relief. The foliage pattern replicated from Room 10 typifies a popular approach of arranging leaves or flowers in series to create naturalistic stripes. Geometric patterns such as the maroon and cream design in Room 12 modified a diamond grid, or "diaper," pattern with contours and centered decorative motifs. The economical wood grain pattern at the end of Miss Barton's hallway suggests that the space may have served as a closet before the door to her small parlor was installed to create a private passageway Conservators at EverGreene Architectural Arts digitally restored each pattern from 150-year-old wallpaper fragments or rolls found in the third-floor rooms and attic, adjusting for discoloration and designing infill segments to fill gaps. EverGreene also created silkscreen stencils to apply metallic ink in wreath pattern for the ceiling of Room 9. Master paper hanger Jim Yates and his team then installed the replica wallpapers as they would have been installed during Clara Barton's time, with seams lapped. Fragments of Civil War era wallpaper exposed during General Services Administration (GSA) investigations were preserved beneath protective acrylic for visitors to view alongside the wallpapers replicated from these fragments.
15. CBMSOP_151031_010.JPG: Miss Barton's room, Beaufort SC, Red Cross Headquarters, 1892-1894
16. CBMSOP_151031_017.JPG: The building at 437 - 441 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC Clara Barton first moved into this building in June of 1861. She sublet her room from Edward Shaw, a friend and fellow government copyist, who rented the entire third floor from the landlord, Susan Ireland. Between 1853, when the building was erected, in 1865, the third floor consisted of six rooms. In 1865 an addition was added to the rear, which increase the capacity of the boardinghouse and allowed for a shared dining room, kitchen and indoor pretty. The present-day layout of the third floor has the three rooms at the very front of the building (Room 7, Room 9 and Room 11) as one large space with the original dividing walls removed. A partition blocks off a small section of the north end of Room 11, which was likely Barton's private area. This large room was the location of the Missing Soldiers Office, the three rooms across the hall (Room 8, Room 10 and Room 12) retain their original sizes, but Room 10 has been recently modified to allow a secondary access to the rear addition. A light well was incorporated between the original building and the 1865 addition to allow light into the interior rooms. Presently, there is a modern walkway across the light well connecting the original and 1865 sections. Two of the rooms in the addition have been recently modified. The north room is the location of a modern stairway. The original kitchen and the indoor privy area have been removed in order to install an elevator. However, the original pass-through cabinet between the kitchen and dining room has been retained. "For eight years, beginning with the outbreak of the Civil War, she had lived in rooms on the third floor of the business block. The two flights of stairs and the unpretentiousness of the surroundings had not kept her friends away." -- William Eleazer Barton, in the Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross, Vol. 1, 1922. "... and next I was to leave everything else and fit up my little parlor with its cabinet of relics and my business... I must see people if I would get their interest and I must have a suitable place to see them in and where they wouldn't enter into the spirit of my enterprise." -- Clara Barton diary, December 22, 1865
17. CBMSOP_151031_023.JPG: Living in Washington in the 1860s On 7th Street in central Washington you could buy a watch, eat a meal and find a place to live. On the street level, businesses flourished, while on the upper floors, rooms were rented out to government employees who worked in nearby offices. A boarding house, unlike today's hotels, was simply sleeping rooms and residents shared public spaces -- privies (often behind the commercial spaces in the alleys), parlors and sometimes dining rooms adjoining kitchens where meals (or board) or provided for residents. Long before today's apartment buildings, boarding houses were often the choice for single people, temporary residents, and poor families who could not afford their own houses. Many boarding houses are run by women; a respectable role if one had been widowed or orphaned. Most lived alongside the borders, but some more absentee landlords. From 1850 to 1860 the population of the District of Columbia more than doubled, raising the cost of housing and supporting the need for boarding houses across the city. The Civil War brought to the city more government workers, military support staff, relief workers, freedmen and relatives in search of missing soldiers. The Surratt boarding house on H Street, NW, between 1890 and 1910. The Petersen boarding house on 10th Street, NW, circa 1900, which is famous as the house for President Abraham Lincoln died after being shot at nearby Ford's Theatre. The recreated front parlor of the Peterson house, which shows the typical common area of an upscale boarding house in 1865.
18. CBMSOP_151031_029.JPG: Nurse Clara Barton did not have any formal training in nursing. She, like many women in the nineteenth century, acquired her nursing skills by nursing a member of her own family. In Barton's case it was her older brother, David, who was seriously injured in a fall during a barn raising. Clara was only eleven years old, but she took the lead and caring for him for two years until he is fully recovered. These skills would serve her well when the Civil War broke out. While the majority of Barton's work during the Civil War entailed providing medical supplies and food to the hospitals on the battlefields, she did assist the surgeons on many occasions. She removed the bullet from a wounded man's face after the Battle of Antietam, served under enemy fire at Fredericksburg, and nursed many wounded soldiers after the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. In 1864 she assisted with the nurses for the Army of the James at the request of General Benjamin Butler. Her duties included organizing and moving the tent hospitals, and assisting with the wounded sent north from the battles around Richmond. Barton understood the necessity of providing nursing care and emotional support as well as supplies after natural disasters, and ensured that the Red Cross was able to care for the health and well-being of victims as well as helping with food, clothing and shelter. Providing medical supplies and assisting with the evacuation of the wounded would become core services provided by the Red Cross. "I learned to take all directions for his medicines from his physician (who had eminent counsel) and to administer them like a genuine nurse. My little hands became schooled to the handling of the great, loathsome, crawling leeches which were at first so many snakes to me, and no fingers could so painlessly draft the angry blisters, and thus it came about, that I was the accepted and acknowledged nurse of a man almost too ill to recover." -- Clara Barton, The Story of My Childhood, 1907 "I hear from no one and indeed I scarce write at all, and no one would wonder if they could look in upon my family and know besides that we had moved this week - yes, moved the family of fifteen hundred men, and had to keep our house-keeping up all the time, and no one to be ready at hand and ask us to take tea the first night either." -- Clara Barton, letter to Fannie Vassall, September 3, 1864 "My sleepy emotions awoke me and a dear, blessed woman was bathing my temples and fanning my fevered face. Clara Barton was there, an angel of mercy doing all in mortal power to assuage the miseries of the unfortunate soldiers." -- Colonel John J Elwell, after the attack on Fort Wagner, July 11, 1863. From William Eleazer Barton, the Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross, Vol. 1, 1922
19. CBMSOP_151031_044.JPG: Educator Education played a prominent role in Barton's life, and her first calling was to be a teacher. After completing her own education, she taught school in her hometown of North Oxford, Massachusetts, for 11 years. In 1852, while in Bordentown, New Jersey, she saw the need for a free school for the poor children of the town. The local school board was skeptical of her ability to teach what they considered to be incorrigible students, but she succeeded. Too well, perhaps, because after two years the school grew so much that she was supplanted from her position and replaced with a white principal with a male principal. Barton understood that public support for the Red Cross would be difficult unless she educated people on the subject, so she spent a good deal of time traveling the country and lecturing about humanitarian relief efforts in times of peace and war. Many of her speeches for based on her experiences in the Civil War, but they often went beyond this narrative to enlighten the citizens about what they themselves could do to advance the principles of humanitarianism. Teaching first aid became one of Barton passions later in life. In 1905, a year after resigning as president of the American Red Cross, she formed the National First Aid Association of America. This new society was designed to teach the public how to assist in times of personal injury and localized emergencies, venues that did not apply to the work done by the Red Cross at the time. This mission was later added to the scope of the American Red Cross.
20. CBMSOP_151031_047.JPG: Clara Barton, circa 1870
21. CBMSOP_151031_064.JPG: Clara Barton's School, Bordertown, New Jersey, 1936
22. CBMSOP_151031_070.JPG: Humanitarian As the Civil War neared its end, Barton realized that there were many soldiers whose whereabouts were unknown. She understood the anguish that their families felt in not knowing if they were taken prisoner, badly wounded, or killed in action and buried on the battlefield. With the support of President Abraham Lincoln, she created the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army at Camp Parole in Annapolis, Maryland. This would later become known as the Missing Soldiers Office. With the help of her staff Barton compiled list of missing soldiers and had them published in newspapers and posted in public places, requesting information from anyone with knowledge of these men. Her own estimates of the scope of this work are as follows: "letters of inquiry, and those giving information received up to the end of the year 1868, amounted to 63,182. The printed circulars of advice issued in reply, 58,693. The letters written, to 41,855. The printed rolls distributed, to 99,057." A key component in the search for missing soldiers was the discovery of a register of the dead from Andersonville Prison in Georgia. This list was secretly copied by Union soldier Dorence Atwater, who as a prisoner was responsible for recording the daily burials at the camp. With Atwater's help help, many of the graves at Andersonville where identified, and Barton used this information in her work in locating missing soldiers. She was given the honor of raising the flag over the newly-created Andersonville National Cemetery on August 17, 1865.
23. CBMSOP_151031_079.JPG: Clara Barton, circa 1866
24. CBMSOP_151031_093.JPG: Founder of the American Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in 1864 after the horrors of the battle of Solferino 1859) came to light. The Treaty of Geneva was signed by twelve nations and outline the humanitarian treatment of the wounded, prisoners of war, and non-combatants during the war. It also provided to the neutrality of both relief workers and the wounded themselves. Barton found it almost incomprehensible that the United States refused to sign the treaty. She lobbied Congress, promoted the Red Cross ideals to the public, and push for its ratification until 1882, when the Senate and President Arthur ratified the Geneva Convention. Barton had founded the first local chapter of the American Red Cross in Dansville, New York, in 1881, and served as the President of the American Red Cross until 1904, eight years before her death. She was single-minded in her devotion to the organization, and continued to expand the influence of the Red Cross throughout her tenure. She knew that to be effective the relief efforts had to be rapid, since the need was immediate, and not tied to political influences. In 1891 a building was erected in Glen Echo, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC which serves first as a place to store relief supplies and later as the headquarters of the American Red Cross. Eventually it also served as housing for Barton and her staff and her staff. Over time, Barton's unwillingness to delegate authority to others and the growing alienation felt by the local chapters led to her resignation as president of the Red Cross in 1904.
25. CBMSOP_151031_107.JPG: First Aid Practitioner. Educator and Advocate Clara Barton's first experience in assisting wounded soldiers came at the very start of the Civil War, when she visited with and gave supplies to the Massachusetts troops who were being quartered in the Capitol building after being involved in the Baltimore Riot of 1861. She quickly understood that the greatest need during the war was going to be for support at the front -- at the field hospitals established on or near the battlefield. She began collecting food, clothing and supplies and distributing them to the soldiers and the surgeons. Her work began with the Battle of Cedar Mountain in 1862, continued throughout the war, and for many years thereafter. Barton's efforts at the field hospital for multi-faceted. In addition to providing supplies she also prepared food for the soldiers, noted the names of the wounded, built fires, provided support, and did whatever else was needed. She administered to the wounded when she could, assisting the surgeons by providing them with medical supplies and comforting the soldiers in their time of need. She also lobbied the politicians in Washington for improved care of the wounded.
26. CBMSOP_151031_112.JPG: Barton rallied others to assist with the war effort, in particular by encouraging women to gather supplies for the relief of soldiers from their home states. She also stressed that supplies should be gathered before they were needed -- there would always be another battle or circumstance in which they would be required. She understood that the faster relief efforts could reach the scene of a battle, the better off the men would be, which is why she preferred to act on her own rather than as part of a larger group.
27. CBMSOP_151031_116.JPG: Clara Barton, wartime photography by Matthew Brady
28. CBMSOP_151031_119.JPG: International Relief Organizer While in Europe after the Civil War, Barton observed the relief operations of the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian war, which broke out in 1870. She learned about their methods of organization, transportation, and storage, and she herself assisted by distributing relief supplies and clothing, and helping to set up hospitals for displaced civilians. Her experiences laid the foundation for her later efforts to establish the Red Cross in the United States, and of her conviction that it should assist in times of peace as well as in war. On a global scale, the Barton-led the American Red Cross responded to the crisis of the famine in Russia in 1892, the Armenian massacre in Turkey in 1896, and the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898. The Geneva Conventions guaranteed that the relief workers were considered neutral and could not be prevented from doing their work. This tenant is central to the foundation of international humanitarian law. Barton encouraged the scope of the International Red Cross to be expanded from primarily a war-related humanitarian effort to encompass natural disasters as well. In the United States, the Red Cross assisted with relief efforts in all parts of the country, including after the Mississippi river floods of 1882 and 1884, the Charleston, South Carolina, earthquake in 1886, the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood of 1889, the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia hurricane of 1893, and the Galveston, Texas, hurricane of 1900. Relief efforts included food, shelter and clothing, as well as medical care and support.
29. CBMSOP_151031_133.JPG: Author and Public Speaker Numerous times during her life Barton took to the lecture circuit, spreading the word about her Civil War experiences and reaching out to the public for support of her humanitarian goals. She spent hours writing out the lecture notes, hoping to overcome her fear of public speaking. She spoke at lecture halls large and small, focusing her socks on her Civil War activities, the International Red Cross, first aid training, and other humanitarian issues. As the standard-bearer for the International Red Cross in America, Barton spent years lobbying Congress and the President to ratify the Geneva conventions, which dealt with the treatment of wounded soldiers, prisoners, and civilians during times of war. She also advocated that the United States charter the Red Cross. She finally saw both of these goals attained by 1882. In 1898, Barton wrote the book The Red Cross In Peace and War, which detailed the relief work done by the organization up to that time. In 1904 she published A Story of the Red Cross: Glimpses of Fieldwork. She also wrote another small book, The Story of My Childhood, in 1907. It was intended to be the first of a series of autobiographical works, but no others were ever completed. Late in life she noted: "Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it." Barton kept a diary for many years, and those diaries, together with her lecture notes, letters and reports, comprised of wealth of information about her work, and also reflect her personality.
30. CBMSOP_151031_146.JPG: Pioneering American Woman For many reasons, Clara Barton is considered a pioneering American woman by both their contemporaries and many modern people worldwide. She was hired as a clerk at the Patent Office in 1854, at the same rate of pay as the men. While her position was subject to the vagaries of politics, and she was subject to harassment from her male co-workers, she persevered and worked at the Patent Office, off and on, until 1865. Barton was an early lobbyist, tirelessly pushing influential politicians to adopt the Treaty of Geneva and established the American Red Cross. She pursued this cause throughout the 1870s until she was finally successful in 1882. She was one of three delegates from the United States sent to the Third International Red Cross Conference in Geneva in 1884 -- and the only female delegate present. What is known as the "American Amendment," which broadens the scope of the work of the Red Cross to include natural disasters, was passed at the conference, mainly due to Barton's work in America and her advocacy of the amendment. The rights of women were important to Barton -- "the right of her own property, her own children, her own home, or just individual claim before the law, to her freedom of action, to her personal liberty." She supported her friend Susan B Anthony, Frances D Gage, and other suffragettes in their cause to win the right to vote for American women. She also supported dress reform and eagerly embraced technological improvements throughout her lifetime.
31. CBMSOP_151031_158.JPG: Champion of International Humanitarian Law Barton's life and work paralleled the development of international humanitarian law and its spread throughout the world. She was an important pioneer in its development. During the Civil War, in the spring of 1862, the Union and Confederate armies reached an agreement on the Winchester Accord. This accord regarded doctors as noncombatants, and established that they could not be held as prisoners of war but would be released in due time and allowed to return to their respective armies. Barton, who worked closely with many of these doctors, surely saw the value of this accord, especially since it allowed the surgeons to remain with the wounded without the concern of being captured. This practice led directly to the soldiers receiving better care than they would have otherwise. After the Civil War, while in Geneva, Switzerland on the advice of her doctor, Barton was introduced to the Treaty of Geneva due to her fame from the Civil War. She saw the need to press the United States into falling in line with the European countries in guaranteeing humanitarian rights in times of war. This treaty went beyond protecting the doctors and included additional protections for the wounded themselves and for the civilian non-combatants who cared for them. Her lobbying led to the US ratification of the treaty. In later years she led important efforts to implement humanitarian law and international relief work. Between her birth in 1821 and her death in 1912, Barton experience firsthand -- and led important efforts to ensure -- the rise of international humanitarian law, and the idea that there should be standards of decency even during wars. The groundwork established by Barton and her contemporaries still reverberates today with countries seeking to lessen the horrors of war and natural disasters to the greatest extent possible.
32. CBMSOP_151031_169.JPG: Clara Barton, 1911
33. CBMSOP_151031_178.JPG: Where is Clara Barton Today?
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2015 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. I retired from the US Census Bureau in god-forsaken Suitland, Maryland on my 58th birthday in May. Yee ha! Trips this year: a quick trip to Florida. two Civil War Trust conferences (Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA), and my 10th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles). Ego Strokes: Carolyn Cerbin used a Kevin Costner photo in her USA Today article. Miss DC pictures were used a few times in the Washington Post. Number of photos taken this year: just over 550,000.
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