Humanitarian
and relief organizer Clara Barton was overwhelmingly voted Person of the Year
at this past weekend’s symposium at the Library of Virginia in Richmond.
The audience
made its selection at the final such program during the Civil War
sesquicentennial.
Biographer
Elizabeth Brown Pryor made the case for Barton, saying she set about creating a
system for identifying killed and missing soldiers, the results must evident at
Andersonville. Barton campaigned for black suffrage, better treatment of
prisoners and devised the first aid kit, Pryor said.
Barton earned
the title “Angel of the Battlefield” because of her efforts to assist wounded
Union soldiers during the Civil War. She later became the founder and first
president of the American Red Cross.
Other
nominees were Jefferson Davis, the Freedmen, Robert E. Lee and Abraham
Lincoln.
The Museum of
the Confederacy and the American Civil War Museum are co-sponsors of the event.
Past Person of the Year selections are Abraham Lincoln (1861), Robert E. Lee
(1862), and Ulysses S. Grant (1863) and William T. Sherman (1864).
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