I went to the Senate accomplished nothing as usual. –Clara Barton in her diary, Monday, January 30, 1865 With the Shutdown still bogging down Congress with little hope in sight, I am amused today reading an earlier diary entry from Miss Barton which echoes, I believe today’s sentiments regarding our Government in Washington… […]

Last year, a college approached me about coming to speak this past spring about Clara Barton’s experience at the Battle of Gettysburg.  I felt bad in having to inform the caller that Miss Barton was not at the battle.  She had gone to South Carolina, where her brother David received orders for […]

Clara Barton nominated Mrs. Mott for the American Women’s Hall of Fame in 1910.  Mrs. Mott also hailed from Massachusetts, born in 1793 and lived to be 87 years old.  A Quaker, she attended Nine Partners Quaker Boarding School in a community now called Millbrook, New York.  After graduation she remained at the school as a […]

In 1910, the New York World asked Barton to nominate her top eight American women for a Woman’s Hall of Fame.  She chose the following:   Abigail Adams   Lucretia Mott   Lucy Stone Blackwell   Harriet Beecher Stowe   Frances Dana Gage   Maria Mitchell   Dorothea Dix   Mary A. Bickerdyke  […]

To give my readers and idea about Clara Barton’s life in Washington during the war, I will transcribe a letter to her cousin Annie from Port Royal, Virginia, May 28th 1863 thanking her for a box sent while she was in Fredericksburg after the battle assisting the medical department. My Dear Annie: I remember, […]

My apologies for the tardiness of this week’s post.  A recent discussion with my friend Mike Hoffman regarding Barton’s principles of humanitarian service distracted me!  I will write about that later.  Now, where were we….oh yes, physical descriptions of Clara Barton, Angel of the Battlefield. As in my last post, William Barton figures heavily with […]

Clara Barton has had many biographies written to remember her life, but in my opinion, the best is Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross, by Barton’s Cousin Rev. William E. Barton, an accomplished author.  Rev. Barton wrote this biography, using a great deal of material quoted of Miss Barton’s, after her […]

Conducting research on Miss Barton revealed she had the best of friends in the highest of places.  I have already covered arguably her top patron, VP Henry Wilson.  Wilson was not her first friend in Washington.  While Barton used her Congressman, Colonel Alexander DeWitt, to introduce her to Washington society, Charles Mason […]

One would think Clara Barton was a staunch liberal in her day.  Fremont was her man in politics, she admitted wholeheartedly believing in the policies of the Republican Party, all before Lincoln won election in 1860. Certainly, her views about helping others seem to cement her on what we would consider the left politically.  She […]