![]() By the end of World War I, over 20 million adults and 11 million children had joined. government and by depicting membership as a patriotic duty. It soon grew rapidly, however, in part by cultivating a close relationship with the U.S. At the time of her resignation, the organization had only a few thousand members. Under Barton, the American Red Cross devoted itself largely to disaster relief, responding to floods, forest fires, tornadoes, a yellow fever epidemic and a hurricane that killed at least 6,000 people in Galveston, Texas. The American Red Cross expanded exponentially during World War I. She would lead the organization for over two decades, finally resigning at the age of 83. Meanwhile, in May 1881, Barton founded the American Red Cross. government to ratify the convention, which it did in 1882. Upon returning home, she began lobbying the U.S. ![]() She also helped locate thousands of missing men, earning the nickname “Angel of the Battlefield.” While visiting Europe a few years after the war’s conclusion, Barton learned about the Red Cross movement and the related Geneva Convention, which regulated the treatment of wounded soldiers and was later expanded to include prisoners of war and civilians. Patent Office, Clara Barton spent the American Civil War nursing wounded troops and distributing supplies at the front. Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.Ī one-time clerk in the U.S. Nonetheless, critics of the organization remained, such as a journalist who declared during World War I that “to heal men’s wounds and send them back to the front as soon as possible is to prolong war indefinitely.” A generation later, in arguably its most controversial decision, the International Red Cross declined to publicly condemn the Holocaust despite knowing of the atrocities. “Such a society,” she told Dunant, “would take upon itself duties which ought to be performed by the government of each country and so would relieve them of responsibilities which really belong to them…and render war more easy.” Nightingale was harsher in a private letter to a colleague, calling the Red Cross’ “views most absurd-just such as would originate in a little state like Geneva, which never can see war.” She later softened her stance and even joined the British Red Cross ladies’ committee. In his book, Dunant praised British nurse Florence Nightingale for her “passionate devotion to suffering humanity” and for giving up “the pleasures of opulence in order to devote herself to doing good.” But Nightingale, who had made a name for herself in the Crimean War, did not originally think highly of the Red Cross. Not everyone believed the Red Cross was a good idea. ![]() Others were “disfigured…their limbs stiffened, their bodies blotched with ghastly spots, their hands clawing at the ground, their eyes staring wildly.” At the end of his book, Dunant suggested “permanent societies of volunteers who in time of war would give help to the wounded without regard for their nationality.” This vision for the Red Cross, championed by Gustave Moynier of the Geneva Public Welfare Society, became a reality the following year. “Some, who had gaping wounds already beginning to show infection…begged to be put out of their misery, and writhed with faces distorted in the grip of the death struggle,” Dunant wrote. ![]() Then, in 1862, he published a book titled “A Memory of Solferino,” in which he described viewing amputations without anesthetic and groaning, fly-covered men who had been left for dead. Since neither army had much of a medical corps, Dunant organized a group of volunteers to bring food and water to the wounded, to treat their injuries and to write letters to their families. But while in present-day Italy he witnessed the Battle of Solferino, in which some 40,000 troops were killed or wounded in a single day. Dunant never did gain a meeting with the emperor. In 1859 Swiss entrepreneur Jean Henri Dunant went in search of French Emperor Napoleon III, whom he hoped would help with a business venture in French-controlled Algeria. A gruesome battle sparked the idea for the Red Cross.
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