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Audio Recording |
Student: I have done my GT research project on, I've done a Sudden Impact one, and I chose to do my project on Clara Barton. I chose Clara Barton because she was a woman of the 19th century, and she, by living in the 19th century and during the Civil War, she impacted Americans in ways that no other woman could do. And for the remainder of my presentation I will be assuming the role of Clara Barton.
Hi, I'm Clara Barton, and I was born on Christmas day of 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts. I was the youngest of five children and because of this I never felt very needed. I never felt important in my household.
Until I was 11 I felt this way, but as an 11 year old my older brother David took a fall and I became his nurse. I nursed him back to health using leeches, a medical technique of the time, to heal him. I was his nurse for two years, and during that two years I learned the value of nursing and I learned what it really meant to help someone out.
As a young woman I had several different jobs. I was a teacher because they said that was all I would be able to do. Um, I also moved to Washington, D.C., and I was one of the first women to hold a government position as a clerk in the county office, and I was in Washington D.C. when the Civil War rolled around. And I decided that it was my duty to help those men out there; but I didn't want to be the one just sending them supplies, I wanted to be out on the battlefield giving them the supplies.
During the Civil War when I was on the battlefield, I was faced with the harsh realities of war, including death and illness and the overall loneliness of the soldiers. Towards the end of the war, President Abraham Lincoln gave me the task of finding and identifying missing soldiers and prisoners of war. And through that whole task I found about 14,000 men.
After I finished this task I was depressed, and I decided that I wanted to take a trip to Europe to visit some family members. When I got to Europe, they were in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War, and I decided I could help there because I just felt a need in my heart that I needed to help these people. Here I was introduced to the International Red Cross and I, as well as other volunteers, wore an armband like this. It was the opposite of the Swiss Flag, white with the red emblem, and the same emblem would be adopted by the American organization later that would symbolize the presence of help and aid.
After I came back to the States, I decided that the Red Cross was what America really needed. We needed an organization that would always be there for people, and that would always be there to help them. So I created a pamphlet explaining the International Red Cross. And with the Red Cross, a treaty (the Treaty of Geneva) had to be signed. It was an international treaty, and Congress was having a problem with international treaties at this time, so to convince them I created a pamphlet explaining everything in detail and this helped officially establish the American Red Cross. So on May 21st, 1881, the American Association of the Red Cross was founded. Overall I left the American Red Cross and my new ideas, I presented the new ideas of ... and I showed Americans my aid, willingness, and compassion.
(clapping)
Woman: Of all of the things you were involved with, which one do you think you had the greatest impact on?
Student: I believe nursing, and as a broad topic I nursed not only in America but also in Europe, and I think nursing in general is pretty much how I got started the American Red Cross, and from nursing everything kind of fell into place.
Woman: You mentioned some criticisms that made you get out of the Red Cross ... could you expand on that, what criticisms were there?
Student: Well, towards when I was getting older. I was pretty old when I was nursing in the Civil War; I was 40 years old and that's pretty old at the time. So when I was 60 years old and I was running an organization, people are going to talk, and people are going to say, "she's too old to be doing this, she's not able to continue doing her job." I also faced criticisms that I was stealing from the organization and fraud.
Woman: Were any of those charges proven or disproven?
Student: I did go to court, but one of the main witnesses to testify did not show up, so the charge went away.
Woman: Who accused you?
Student: It was, well, there was a group within my actual organization, and they didn't really like me much, and it was basically that whole group.
Woman: What what was the most significant thing you learned about from Clara Barton? That may have impressed you or....
Student: Really, I, it made me realize that everyone has a heart. Like she had a humungous heart. She never really cared much about herself, she always wanted to be helping people, and she wanted to be helping other people, not just herself.