A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War

Name: A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War
Price: 17.25 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Stephen B. Oates
ISBN: 9780028740126

When the Civil War broke out, Clara Barton wanted more than anything to be a Union soldier, an impossible dream for a thirty-nine-year-old woman. Determined to serve, she became a veritable soldier, a nurse, and a one-woman relief agency operating in the heart of the conflict. By the summer of 1862, with no institutional affiliation or official government appointment, she made her way to the front lines and the heat of battle. Stephen B. Oates tells the dramatic story of this woman who gave the world a new definition of courage, supplying medical relief to the wounded at some of the most famous battles of the war — including Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Battery Wagner, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg.

Under fire with only her will as a shield, she worked while ankle deep in gore, in hellish makeshift battlefield hospitals. Her contribution became the defining event in Barton's life, giving her the opportunity as a woman to reach out for a new role and to define a new profession. Nursing, regarded as a menial service before the war, became a trained, paid occupation after the conflict. Although Barton went on to become the founder and first president of the Red Cross, the accomplishment for which she is best known, A Woman of Valor draws on archival materials not used by her previous biographers to convince us that her experience on the killing fields of the Civil War was her most extraordinary achievement.