two years, and it was one of the first experiences that gave her confidence in her self and a possible direction for her desire to do good (Whitelaw, 1997, p. 17).
In 1854 she became a clerk in the Patent Office, Washington, D.C., but resigned at the start of the American Civil War (1861-1865) to work as a volunteer, distributing supplies to wounded soldiers. After the war she supervised a systematic search for missing soldier and eventually received a Congressional appropriation to run what was known as the Missing Soldiers Office and became the first woman to head a government bureau. Barton tracked down information on nearly 22,000 soldiers before the office was closed in 1868.
Her impartiality during the Civil War can be seen as a clear precedent to her work with the Red Cross, which has always maintained as one of its central tenets the importance of treating anyone in need, regardless of which flag they were fighting under. During the Civil War, she treated both Confederate and Union soldiers equally and made no distinction between black and white soldiers. Her goal was always and only to provide help for those who needed it, without making distinctions over whether that need had been generated in a way that she considered to be appropriate. Her courage and determination to do so can perhaps best be heard in her own words on the subject. Early in the Civil War, for example, she wrote to her father:
We are ready to bind the wounds or to bear them of our own, if necessary. I shall remain here while anyone remains, and do whatever comes to my hand. I may be compelled to face danger. But never to fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them (Fishwick, 1966, p. 102).
Barton was certainly not the first to recognize that a war does not end at the signing of the instruments of surrender, but she was one of the first in American history to help provide the institutions necessary to m...