Powerful Leadership Through Service
Leadership and Legacy of Clarissa Harlowe Barton Karen Li
Junior Division
Historical Paper
Paper Length: 2,480 words
The Civil War was the bloodiest war in American History, killing a total of 260,000 Confederates and 360,000 Federal soldiers (Oates 309). However, those who died as a result of disease doubled the amount of total casualties. The lack of medical advancement and the shortage of clean food, water, and sanitation, made these soldiers vulnerable to many diseases such as diarrhea and dysentery, typhoid, and malaria. The surgeons did not know that pathogens existed, so they went from one patient to another with unwashed hands, reusing amputation instruments and supplies (Oates 61). Most of the amputation patients did not survive the fearful fight with infections such as gangrene.
In the midst of the terrible casualties of the Civil War, the most brutal war inflicted upon a newly founded democracy, one appeared as the Angel of the Battlefield, Clarissa Harlowe Barton. Barton served fervently at the gates of hell, where she discovered the secret ingredient of preserving lives: the urgent care that the wounded…show more content… Garfield in 1880. Garfield was very much interested in the Red Cross, and his Secretary of State, James Blaine, viewed it as a way to strengthen relations between nations (Pryor 203-205). Barton, seeing the approval of the government, decided to establish the ARC of twenty-two members before the Geneva Convention was even ratified. The assassination of President Garfield delayed the U.S. from ratifying the Geneva Convention. In late September of 1881, when wilderness fires swept across Michigan, the ARC provided necessities for victims, hoping to gain publicity. Despite Barton's success in Michigan, the new president, Chester A. Arthur, did not seem to respond to her works, having very few ties with Barton and her
