Clara Barton: A Brief Overview Of The American Red Cross

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Overview of the American Red Cross: Clara Barton, born in 1821, had been a schoolteacher, a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, and had earned the nickname "Angel of the Battlefield" during the Civil War before she founded the American Red Cross in 1881. Barton's experiences of collecting and distributing supplies to soldiers during the Civil War, as well as working as a nurse on battlefields, made her a champion for the rights of wounded soldiers. After the Civil War, Barton aggressively lobbied for the establishment of an American version of the International Red Cross (which had been founded in Switzerland in 1863) and for the United States to sign the Geneva Convention. She succeeded with both -- the American Red Cross was founded in 1881
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