[American Red Cross]

18 autograph letters and 1 typed letter, all signed by Clara Barton ("Clara" "C.B." or "Clara Barton"), 2 with written responses by Butler, most from Washington D.C., together over 40 pages of correspondence, with ancillary newspaper clippings and photographs. Condition varies, but generally good; some dampstaining, tape and adhesive residue to extreme corners and edges, a few letters laid down on card. 

18 autograph letters and 1 typed letter, all signed by Clara Barton ("Clara" "C.B." or "Clara Barton"), 2 with written responses by Butler, most from Washington D.C., together over 40 pages of correspondence, with ancillary newspaper clippings and photographs. Condition varies, but generally good; some dampstaining, tape and adhesive residue to extreme corners and edges, a few letters laid down on card. Housed in a black binder labeled "Letters of Clara Barton."
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A SIGNIFICANT ARCHIVE OF CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION ERA CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.

Clara Barton was a pioneering nurse and humanitarian worker, who devoted her life to professional pursuits, starting as a clerk in the US Parent Office in 1855. The majority of letters contained in this archive are addressed to Benjamin Franklin Butler, a major general of the Union Army during the Civil War. They first became acquainted when Butler appointed her in charge of the hospitals at the front of the Army of the James in 1864. Barton would go on to administer aid at numerous Civil War battles, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Petersburg and Cold Harbor, earning her nicknames: "American Nightingale," and "Angel of the Battlefield." 

Within this group of correspondence, which encompasses the entirety of the Civil War, and the founding of the Missing Soldiers Office and the American Red Cross, Barton and Butler touch on numerous issues, including President Johnson's pending impeachment, Butler: "Nothing can be done this session [of Congress] ... so many are afraid of the impeachment."; the identification of fallen African American soldiers after the war, Barton: "I have considered diligently your suggestion in relation to the colored troops, and truly believe that with suitable agents this search can be made nearly as successful as that for the white soldiers ..."; her condemnation of the dismissal of a surgeon at Norfolk "after giving a speech in which he said he hoped he should live to see every negro in the south a voter"; and Barton's touching reunion with her brother Stephen, who had been imprisoned under suspicions of being a Confederate agent: "If, upon investigation you find that my brother's course of action has been such that you cannot over look it, and receive him to your confidence as a loyal man, I shall submit to your decision without a murmur ... But if, on the other hand, it prove that he can be trusted, if you can receive him back as a Citizen of the United States ... God only knows the richness and fullness of joy it will bring to my heart."  

At the conclusion of the war, while Butler began a political career that would lead him to serve as a Massachusetts congressman and governor, Barton devoted her time to running the Office of Missing Soldiers, whose mission was to find or identify soldiers killed or missing in action. In a letter dated 1 December 1865, Barton airs her grievances with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, as she struggles to maintain some autonomy within the Department of War: "If Mr. Stanton has entertained for me one particle of consideration or respect, he would in some little way have noticed the indirect appeal for protection even, which my report makes to him, or at least he would not, without a single inquiry have elevated the person whom I report to the position he has, and then propose to me indirectly subordinate to him." Notwithstanding these bureaucratic roadblocks, Barton's organization eventually ascertained the fate of more than 22,000 missing civil war soldiers, before she moved on to establish the first American outpost of the Red Cross in 1881.