Editing Clara Barton (section)

==Early professional life==

Barton became an educator in 1838 and served for 11 years in schools in and around Oxford, Massachusetts. Barton fared well as a teacher; she knew how to handle children, particularly the boys since as a child she enjoyed her boy cousins' and brothers' company. She learned how to act like them, making it easier for her to relate to and control the boys in her care.<ref name="Pryor, Elizabeth Brown 1987"/> After her mother's death in 1851, the family home closed down. Barton decided to further her education by pursuing writing and languages at the Clinton Liberal Institute in New York. In this college, she developed many friendships that broadened her point of view on many issues concurring at the time. The principal of the institute recognized her tremendous abilities and admired her work. This friendship lasted for many years, eventually turning into a romance.<ref name=Humanitarian/> As a writer, her terminology was pristine and easy to understand. Her writings and bodies of work could instruct the local statesmen.<ref name=Humanitarian/>

While teaching in Hightstown, Barton learned about the lack of public schools in Bordentown, the neighboring city.<ref name=Humanitarian/> In 1852, she was contracted to open a [[free education|free school]] in Bordentown, which was the first ever free school in New Jersey.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Handbook of American Women's History|volume= 696|last1=Howard|first1=Angela|last2=M. Kavenik|first2=Frances|publisher=Garland|year=1990|location=NY|pages=61–62}}</ref> She was successful, and after a year she had hired another woman to help teach over 600 people. Both women were making $250 a year. This accomplishment compelled the town to raise nearly $4,000 for a new school building. Once it was completed, Barton was replaced as principal by a man elected by the school board. They saw the position as head of a large institution to be unfitting for a woman. She was demoted to "female assistant" and worked in a harsh environment until she had a nervous breakdown along with other health ailments, and quit.<ref name="Spiegel, Allen D">{{cite journal|author=Spiegel, Allen D|title=The Role of Gender, Phrenology, Discrimination and Nervous Prostration in Clara Barton's Career|journal=Journal of Community Health|volume= 20|issue=6 |year=1995|pages=501–526|pmid=8568024 |doi=10.1007/BF02277066|s2cid=189875392}}</ref>

In 1855, she moved to Washington, D.C., and began work as a clerk in the [[United States Patent and Trademark Office|U.S. Patent Office]];<ref name="uua">[http://uudb.org/articles/clarabarton.html "Clara Barton"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180504112812/http://uudb.org/articles/clarabarton.html |date=May 4, 2018 }}, ''Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography''</ref> this was the first time a woman had received a substantial clerkship in the federal government and at a salary equal to a man's salary. For three years, she received much abuse and slander from male clerks.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Great American Women of the 19th Century: A Biographical Encyclopedia|isbn=9781591022114|last1=Willard|first1=Frances E. |last2=Livermore|first2=Mary A. |publisher=Humanity Books|year=2005|location=Amherst, NY|pages=81–82}}</ref> Subsequently, under political opposition to women working in government offices, her position was reduced to that of copyist, and in 1858, under the administration of [[James Buchanan]], she was fired because of her "Black Republicanism".<ref name=":2" /> After the election of [[Abraham Lincoln]], having lived with relatives and friends in Massachusetts for three years, she returned to the patent office in the autumn of 1860, now as temporary copyist, in the hope she could make way for more women in government service.