Clara Barton -
"The Angel of the Battlefield"

by Rosemary McQueen

Not far from where the Trenton, NJ Metro Chapter, Sigma Nu Rho, meets is the Clara Barton Schoolhouse where she taught until illness forced her to resign from her post in early 1854 at the age of 33.

Most of us know that Clara Barton was the founder of the American Red Cross, but my story is about her being a nurse at a few of the same Civil War Battlefields that one of my own great grandfathers fought on.

My 19 year old great grandfather was a Private in the 38th Regiment of New York Infantry Volunteers and they were in the following actions; Fairfax Courthouse, 1st Manassas or Bull Run, Munson’s Hill, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Jourdan’s Ford, Glendale, Malvern Hill, Centreville, Groveton, 2nd Manassas, Chantilly, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. Of these, Clara Barton was, at Fairfax Courthouse, 2nd Manassas, Chantilly and Fredericksburg.

When the Civil War broke out, there were no nursing schools and the nurses had to learn on their own. Nursing had always been done by women behind the lines, administered by the U.S. Sanitary Commission. This organization consisted of thousands of volunteers who made bandages, clothing, gathered supplies and staffed military hospitals with nurses. Female nurses were not sent to the front, but Clara Barton changed that.

The 2nd Battle of Manassas was fought on Sunday, August 31, 1862 at Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia.

Clara Barton was sitting in a boxcar of an army train bound for the battlefront. Earlier she had come to the rescue of Brigade Surgeon James I. Dunn, who was out of medical supplies, when she arrived alone on a mule drawn wagon full of medical supplies. He was the first to call her "The Angel of the Battlefield".

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