Angels of the Battlefield
By: Alexa Everhart
Facts on Angels of the Battlefield and Clara Barton
- Clara Barton started her life as a teacher at the age of fifteen. She later helped establish a school in New Jersey. When the Civil War started and after she saw the sixth Massachusetts regiment come through Washington she made a relief program to help the soldiers. This is where she decided to help soldiers in the Civil War.
- Clara Barton first started by distributing and collecting supplies for the Union Army. Later she served as an independent nurse and saw her first combat in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1862. After she cared for soldiers at Antietam, she was nicknamed "the angel of the battlefield.
- About two thousand women volunteered as nurses in military hospitals in the Civil War, as the nation struggled and needed people to help in the Civil War.
- Louisa May Alcott, Jane Stuart Woolsey, and Katherine Prescott Wormeley were some women who volunteered as nurses and experienced the bloody side of the war first hand with amputated limbs, mutilated bodies, disease, and death.
- Some of the nurses that entered to aid the soldiers were Roman Catholic Sisters who came from Europe with nursing skills and training. About 600 Roman Catholic Sisters came. They established 28 hospitals and served for both the Union and the Confederacy.
- At first the Union and the Confederacy were a little bit hesitant to use female nurses. Many also saw it as inappropriate for women to be involved with physical contact with the men that nursing required them to do, but there was a need for nurses, so President Abraham Lincoln requested them.
- About 9,000 women nursed for the Union Army and about 1,000 women nursed for the Confederacy.
Clara Barton
This is a picture of Clara Barton. She is best known for founding the Red Cross and taking care of the wounded soldiers in the Civil War. Her efforts were to bring better medical care.
Founder of the Red Cross
In 1869, Clara Barton went to Geneva, Switzerland to meet officials to organize the International Red Cross to provide medical needs on the battlefield for the soldiers.
Nurses Caring for the Wounded Soldiers
This is a painting painted by William Ludwell Sheppard of a hospital in 1861. This hospital brought wounded soldiers in from the South and many women volunteered at the hospital to give aid to the soldiers.
Nurse First Aid Kit to Treat Soldiers
This image shows the kits provide to each nurse to treat the wounded soldiers. Many doctors in this period of time didn't have much medical knowledge to treat soldiers. Many of the medicine and treatments were more harmful, than beneficial, in some cases.
Nurses and Officers in Virginia
This is an image that shows the environment that the nurses lived in around the soldiers. The conditions were terrible with a lot of death and disease surrounding them.
The house where Clara Barton was born.
This is the house where Clara Barton was born. She was born on December 25, 1821, in Oxford, Massachusetts. She was a teacher before she got into the medical field, at the age of fifteen.
Ward of Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C.
This hospital in Washington D.C. took care of wounded soldiers and were staffed by Catholic Sister nurses from 1862 to 1865.
Catholic Nun who is aiding wounded soldiers.
This is a photograph of women nurses who aided wounded soldiers on the battlefield in some of the most gruesome conditions.
Hospital in Washington D.C.
This is one of the hospitals that wounded soldiers went to after the first battle of Bull Run. About sixty-five thousand soldiers entered this city hospital for medical care.