Twenty years before founding the American Red Cross, Clara Barton came to the aid of soldiers fighting in the Civil War. At the war’s outbreak, Barton worked as a U.S. Patent Office clerk and collected provisions and medical supplies for the Union army. Restless with her limited role and undeterred by War Department regulations and prevailing stereotypes, Barton became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield” as she distributed supplies and tended to the wounded and dying. During the course of the war, Barton kept notes that documented the appalling carnage and medical conditions of the wounded transported to Fredericksburg.