When the Sixth Massachusetts arrived in Washington, DC, in 1861, the soldiers had lost many of their belongings in a skirmish along the way. Clara Barton began her Civil War service by responding to this situation: she decided to work to provide supplies for the troops, advertising widely and successfully after the battle at Bull Run. She talked the Surgeon-General into letting her personally distribute supplies to wounded and sick soldiers, and she personally cared for some who needed nursing services. By the next year, she had gained the support of generals John Pope and James Wadsworth, and she had traveled with supplies to several battle sites, again also nursing the wounded. She was granted permission to become superintendent of nurses.
Through the Civil War, Clara Barton worked without any official supervision and without being part of any organization, including the Army or the Sanitary Commission, though she worked closely with both. She worked mostly in Virginia and Maryland, and occasionally at battles in other states. Her contribution was primarily not as a nurse, though she did nursing as needed when she was present at a hospital or battlefield. She was primarily an organizer of supply delivery, arriving at battlefields and hospitals with wagons of sanitary supplies. She also worked to identify the dead and wounded, so that families could know what happened to their loved ones. Though a supporter of the Union, in serving wounded soldiers, she served both sides in providing neutral relief. She became known as the "Angel of the Battlefield."
When the Civil War ended, Clara Barton went to Georgia to identify the Union soldiers in unmarked graves who had died at the Confederate prison camp, Andersonville. She helped to establish a national cemetery there. She returned to work out of a Washington, DC, office, to identify more of the missing. As head of a mising person's office, established with the support of President Lincoln, she was the first woman bureau head in the United States government. Her 1869 report documented the fate of about 20,000 missing soldiers, about one-tenth the total number of missing or unidentified.
Clara Barton lectured widely about her war experience, and, without getting enmeshed in the organization of the women's rights organizations, also spoke for the campaign for woman suffrage (winning the vote for women).
