Clara Barton and the Geneva Convention

Clara Barton is well known as the “angel of the battlefield,” who tended to wounded soldiers during the Civil War, but she also played an important role in the United States’ entry into an international treaty.

Following the Geneva Conference of 1863, the first treaty of the Geneva Convention was ratified by 12 nations in 1864. The treaty declared medical personnel neutral and the parties agreed that sick and wounded soldiers would be cared for regardless of their nationality. The treaty also established the symbol of the red cross on a white background as a sign used by medical personnel to indicate their neutrality when aiding the wounded in war zones. The United States was not a party to the Geneva Convention in 1864. When the treaty was first ratified, the United States was still in the midst of the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865.

Throughout the Civil War, Clara Barton provided nursing and relief services in support of the Union army. After the Civil War, she worked to locate missing soldiers and toured the Northeast and Midwestern United States, delivering speeches and lectures about the Civil War. In the late 1860s, Barton traveled to Europe, where she met representatives of the International Red Cross. When she returned to the United States, after providing nursing assistance in the Franco-Prussian War, Barton founded the American Association of the Red Cross in 1881. As the president of the organization, she was a strong advocate for the United States’ ratification of the treaty of the Geneva Convention.

Barton met with three presidents to advocate for ratification of the Geneva Convention. President Rutherford P. Hayes expressed concern about entering into an alliance with European nations and President James Garfield indicated support for ratification but was assassinated before he could endorse the treaty. Finally, on March 3,1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the treaty, and the Geneva Convention was ratified by the Senate on March 16, 1882.

Today, several landmarks in and around Washington, D.C. memorialize Clara Barton.  In D.C., there is a parkway named in her honor and the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum commemorates her work, particularly during the period when she used the building housing the museum to help locate missing Civil War soldiers. Barton’s home from 1897 to 1912 in Glen Echo, Maryland is now the Clara Barton National Historic Site, which is operated by the National Parks Service and open for tours.

To learn more about Clara Barton’s life and work, see the Library of Congress’s Clara Barton Papers Collection.

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