Clara Barton arrived at the Cornfield around noon, having prodded the teamster driving her wagon full of medical supplies to ride through the night to get closer to the front lines. The regular army ambulances were far in the rear, so she immediately turned over her wagonload to army surgeons frantically trying to bind wounds with cornhusks. She moved in and among the men, comforting them as she could, going fro one to the next.

At one point, she noted, "a ball had passed between my body and the right arm which supported him [wounded soldier], cutting through the sleeve and passing through his chest from shoulder to shoulder. There was no more to be done for him and I left him to his rest. I have never mended that hole in my sleeve. I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat."

No Formal Training

Barton did not have any formal medical training beyond tending to her ill brother for two years prior to the war. In 1861 she was working in the patent office in Washington DC and soon organized a relief program for soldiers. After First Bull Run, she advertised in a hometown publication for donations and began an independent organization to distribute the goods sent. Her efforts were so successful, US Surgeon General William Hammond granted her a general pass with army ambulances.

She served as a superintendent of nurses, later worked to identify 13,000 dead Union soldiers at the prisoner-of-war camp Andersonville, and continued her efforts after the war to locate missing soldiers. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, she started up another relief agency that would eventually become the Red Cross, in which she served as president until 1904. She died in 1912 in her house at Glen Echo, MD (now a national historic site).

Back to the Cornfield

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