Description:

Clara Barton (1821-1912) Clara Barton writes a long letter criticizing President William McKinley who would fall victim to an assassin a few months later

Clara Barton, one of the most honored woman in American history, and whose life's work included initiating programs with Lincoln, lecturing at suffrage events with Susan B. Anthony, and who ultimately founded The American Red Cross, pens a humorous letter to her Secretary, June 1901, regarding President McKinley, as follows: "My dear dear perplexed Secretary... How out of patience and annoyed [you are] that that slow old President either do or say something..."

Near fine 4 page autograph letter 5" x 6.25", signed on light card stock by "Clara Barton". Expected folds.

Her jovial letter to her Secretary regarding President McKinley shows Barton's determined and motivated character "My dear dear perplexed Secretary...How out of patience and annoyed [you are] that that slow old President either do or say something! Ah well my dear child-just smother your passion, lots of things have to be met, and borne with in this Checkered life"

At the time of the Explosion of the U. S. S. Maine - "I am with the wounded," Clara Barton telegraphed President William McKinley following the disaster. The blast killed 266 crew members. Two days earlier, she had dined aboard the ship with Captain Charles Sigsbee.

Clara Barton was first known as the "Angel of the Battlefield." Clara Barton was appointed by Union General Benjamin Butler as the "lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front of the Army of the James. Among her more harrowing experiences was an incident in which a bullet tore through the sleeve of her dress without striking her and killed a man to whom she was tending, thus creating her title. Shortly after the Civil War, Miss Barton contacted President Lincoln to be given permission to assist and locate missing men from the war. Lincoln granted her request and Barton initiated the program "The Search for the Missing Men" with her and her assistants writing 41,855 replies to inquiries and helped to locate more than twenty-two thousand missing men. Barton climaxed her Civil War activity when she participated in establishing a national cemetery around the graves of the Union men who died in the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia. With the help of Dorence Atwater, who had secretly tabulated a list of the dead during his own imprisonment in Andersonville, and a team of 30 military men, Barton identified the graves of nearly 13,000 men.

From 1865-1868, Barton achieved widespread recognition by delivering lectures around the country about her war experiences. It was during this time she met Susan B. Anthony and began a long association with the woman's suffrage movement. Barton spoke at many suffrage conventions, including the first ever to be held in Washington, D.C. in 1869

At age 60, in 1881, after her long and intense devotion to helping others throughout her career, and with enough personal achievements to fill several ordinary lifetimes, Clara Barton then went on to became the founder of The American Red Cross and actively led it for the next 23 years.

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