Clara Barton
Clara Barton
Clarissa "Clara" Harlowe Bartonwas a pioneering nurse who founded the American Red Cross. She was a hospital nurse in the American Civil War, a teacher, and patent clerk. Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work at a time when relatively few women worked outside the home. She had a relationship with John J. Elwell, but never married...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth25 December 1821
CityOxford, MA
CountryUnited States of America
The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.
Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do.
Everybody's business is nobody's business, and nobody's business is my business.
I founded the American Red Cross.
Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it. I have lived my life, well and ill, always less well than I wanted it to be but it is, as it is, and as it has been; so small a thing, to have had so much about it!
I went to the Senate, accomplished nothing as usual.
My business is staunching blood, and feeding fainting men.
I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat?
Oh northern mothers wives and sisters, all unconscious of the hour, would to Heaven that I could bear for you the concentrated woe which is so soon to follow, would that Christ would teach my soul a prayer that would plead to the Father for grace sufficient for you, God pity and strengthen you every one.
I was only one woman alone, and had no power to move to action full-fed, sleek- coated, ease-loving, pleasure-seeking, well-paid,and well-placed countrymen in this war- trampled, dead, old land, each one afraid that he should be called upon to do something.
My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel--not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.
People should not say that this or that is not worth learning, giving as their reason that it will not be put to use. They can no more know what information they will need in the future than they will know the weather two hundred years from today.
What could I do but go with them Civil War soldiers, or work for them and my country? The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.
Let me go, let me go.