Clara Barton Monument

Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, attended to the wounded during the battle.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Location:

Sharpsburg, MD

Significance:

Granite monument in honor of Clara Barton's work during the Battle of Antietam

Designation:

National Park, National Register of Historic Places

Amenities

2 listed

Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Parking - Auto

"I have been permitted to stand by your loved ones when the trial hour came..." - Clara Barton 

For some, service to their country ended with the Civil war. For Clara Barton, this was the beginning. barton, a forty year old teacher, patent clerk and patriot, was frustrated by reports of inadequate relief supplies at battlefields. She gathered needed items and transported them to the front. 

At Antietam, Miss Barton followed the sound of artillery and arrived on this part of the battlefield. She delivered bandages and lanterns to field hospitals. Clara Barton and her staff of thirty men prepared gruel (meal mixed with warm water) which they carried out to feed the wounded and dying where they fell. 

As bullets whizzed overhead and artillery boomed in the distance, Barton cradled the heads of suffering soldiers, prepared food, and brought water to the wounded men. As she knelt down to give a wounded man a drink, she felt her sleeve quiver. She noticed a bullet hole in her sleeve and discovered that the bullet killed the man for whom she was caring. She worked here for three days, providing whatever assitance she could. this is just one of the many battlefields on which Miss Barton worked. 

Following the battle, Clara Barton collapsed in exhaustion. She also became ill with typhoid fever. Returning to Washington, she soon regained her strength and later returned to other battlefields where she helped care for the wounded and dying.

After the war, Barton established the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army, an organization which located the graves of missing U.S. soldiers. She established hte American Association of the Internatonal Red Cross in 1881, adding civilian disaster reflief to its mandate of providing neutral assistance during war, and in 1904, Clara Barton established the American First Aid Association. 

The stone monument at Antietam Battlefield was dedicated on September 9, 1962 to honor Clara Barton for her heroic actions during the Battle of Antietam. The red cross of bricks at the base of the monument, the symbol of the American Red Cross which she founded after the Civil War, is made of brick from the chimney at the home in which she was born.

Dedicated: September 9, 1962
Location: Mansfield Avenue near tour stop 2.
Map Number: 3 on the Monument Map

Monument Text:
Clara Barton
During The Battle of Antietam September 17, 1862 Clara Barton brought supplies and nursing aid to the wounded on this battlefield
This act of love and mercy led to the birth of the present American National Red Cross.

This symbolic red cross has been made from a brickfrom the chimney of the home where Clara Barton was born at North Oxford, Massachusetts on Christmas Day, 1821.