Y.M.L.A. Miss Clara Barton. This Celebrated Woman Will Deliver Her Famous Lecture, Work and Incidents of Army Life, Before the Young Mens' Literary Association at Morrison... [caption title]

[Morrison, WI, 1867. Broadside, 26.75 x 20.25 inches, printed on thin paper. Old folds, some creasing, edges occasionally a bit frayed with a few small nicks or tears, a couple of minor losses along folds. Overall very good condition. A striking and seemingly unique surviving broadside advertising a January 26, 1867 lecture by Clara Barton entitled "War & Incidents of Army Life," part of a popular post-Civil War lecture series she delivered across the United States. Barton spent two years touring and recounting her battlefield experiences, which helped popularize her and fund her subsequent efforts to locate missing soldiers. The present lecture was delivered to the Young Men's Literary Association of Morrison, Wisconsin at the local Concert Hall. In addition to the bold title containing the relevant information on the lecture, and the information on obtaining tickets at the bottom, much of the lower portion of the broadside prints several laudatory "Recommendations" from various entities in Indiana and other locations in Wisconsin, including a January 7, 1867 review from The Milwaukee Sentinel. Noted temperance lecturer John B. Gough also praises Barton's lecture, stating that "I never heard anything more touching, more thrilling, in my life."

Typographically, the broadside is interesting for employing several sizes of fonts, likely wooden type, especially near the bottom of the Recommendations section, where the printers needed to reduce the size of the font to fit in the entirety of a quote from The Daily Wisconsin, as well as a line in the smallest font from the Concert Hall promoter, noting that the foregoing group of recommendations is "enough" and praising Barton for her "noble character, which she has won by her efforts to ameliorate the sufferings of our sick and disabled soldiers."

Clara Barton (1821-1912) was a noted educator and humanitarian who helped distribute needed supplies to the Union Army during the Civil War and later founded the American Red Cross. Barton garnered nationwide recognition for her efforts during the war, and quickly became known as the "Angel of the Battlefield." After the war, Barton's lecture tour brought her in contact with other notables of the day, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and also Frederick Douglass, who involved her in the suffrage and civil rights movements, respectively. In the Fall of 1866, Barton began to lecture on her Civil War experiences in lyceum halls, churches, town halls, and schools. Though she never felt comfortable in front of an audience, wherever she spoke Barton was well received. Her contemporary biographer Percy Epler wrote that "a tear-stained multitude thronged everywhere to hear her," as she had made it her mission to show not "the glories of conquering armies but the mischief and misery they strew in their tracks; and how, while they march on...some one must follow closely in their steps, crouching to the earth, faces bathed in tears and hands in blood. This is the side which history never shows."

From 1866 through 1868, Barton delivered over 200 lectures throughout the northeast and midwest regarding her Civil War experiences. She shared platforms with other prominent figures including the aforementioned Douglass, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, and Mark Twain. She often earned $75 to $100 per lecture. Original broadsides advertising her lectures, especially of this size, are exceedingly rare, to say the least. We could locate just a single result in auction records, of a much smaller example, and OCLC reports just one institutional holding of any Barton lecture broadside (again, much smaller), for an 1867 event in New Haven, located at the Library of Congress.