Clara Barton: Professional Angel (review)

278civil war history Nothings, and, like Holt, Gienapp indicates that, while sectional issues had become dominant, the Republican party's nativist constituency contributed to its impressive showing in the 1856 presidential election. Although Gienapp diverges from Holt on several minor points, the major difference in interpretation between the two is that Gienapp avoids Holt's neorevisionist tone. Gienapp judges Stephen Douglas's introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act to have been irresponsible and criticizes the Republicans for exacerbating sectional tensions. But while Holt attributes the political crisis of the 1850s to a failure of Whig and Democratic politicians to avoid party decomposition, Gienapp sees the force of ethnocultural and sectional issues themselves precipitating the crisis. Because Gienapp delves so deeply into a course of events for which documentary sources are often ambiguous there are bound to be disagreements with some of his interpretations. This is particularly true of his account of the efforts to create a Republican national organization in late 1855 and early 1856. Individual motivation, goals, the date of a meeting hosted by Francis P. Blair, and the agenda of that meeting are open to dispute. Gienapp also fails to address the impact of modernization on the rise of the Republican party, and while he devotes a few pages to the Republicans' ideology, he generally attributes their leaders' motivation to a simple desire to gain elective office. He is correct inpointing out that most Republicans had no moral antagonism to slavery. But he probably goes too far inminimizing theimpact of abolitionism on their party. Still, these are minor points in light of the challenge this book presents to students of the history of the 1850s to dig as deeply as Gienapp has into archival and demographic sources. Stanley Harrold South Carolina State College Clara Barton: Professional Angel. By Elizabeth Brown Pryor. (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. Pp. xv, 444. $24.95.) Most Americans are familiarwith Clara Barton, the famous "angel ofthe batdefield" and founder of the American Red Cross. Sheis held up as the embodiment of courageous self-sacrifice and virtuous behavior. This one-dimensional image does not do the real Clara Barton justice. She was much more complex and interesting than the traditionalview of the American Florence Nightingale. Based on newly discovered manuscript sources, Elizabeth Brown Pryor's Clara Barton: ProfessionalAngel is an excellent biography, which succeeds in realistically portraying a muchmisunderstood person. Barton emerges here as a strong, intelligent woman who did battle on many fronts for the causes she felt were just, although her devotion was due less to altruism than to a need for adulation and acceptance. Her tireless efforts on behalf of the American Red book reviews279 Cross are deservedly legendary, yet she knew the value of good public relations and never hesitated to embellish her achievements in the organization . Pryor's Clara Barton is someone that can be respected, despite her less than admirable qualities. Born in Massachusetts in 1821, Barton eventually entered one of the few professions open to women of her day—teaching. However, she was never really happy in the classroom, challenged less by pedagogy than by establishing her control over students and instituting discipline. Her teaching took her to many communities in the east, for she was a restless person who had difficulty settling down. She eventually went to Washington, D.C, where she got a job in the patent office, courtesy of a powerful friend. When the Civil War broke out, she found her true calling. Concerned for the wounded and ill soldiers, Barton worked both behind the lines and at the scene of battle to provide aid and comfort to the men. Not only did she nurse the soldiers, but also organized efforts to bring supplies to the front lines. Her endeavors were hampered by the Washington bureaucracy, politicians, the Sanitary Commission, and the millitary. After the war, Barton went to Europe, where she became acquainted with the International Red Cross (which the United States did not officially recognize until 1900). She began to work withthe organization , assistingvictims of the Franco-Prussian War. Upon herreturn to the United States, she initiated a movement to organize the American Red Cross and to persuade her government to...