Woman blazed a trail through the Civil War
The door opened and the elderly woman glared at the two men on
the porch.
”
We’ve come for the medal,
”
one said.
”
You’ll get it over my dead body.
”
The men sighed, and the first said,
”
All right, but you have no right to wear it.
”
The door slammed shut.
Woman blazed a trail through the Civil War
The door opened and the elderly woman glared at the two men on the porch.
“We’ve come for the medal,” one said.
“You’ll get it over my dead body.”
The men sighed, and the first said, “All right, but you have no right to wear it.”
The door slammed shut.
Mary Edwards Walker was inured to male disapproval. From the time of her birth in Oswego, New York in 1832, her parents taught her and her four older sisters, then later her younger brother, that people should be judged by character rather than gender.
As an adult she taught school to earn enough money to enroll at Syracuse Medical College. A member of the Class of 1855, she was among the first American women to earn a medical degree.
Walker married fellow student Albert Miller but retained her maiden name, more than a century before that became common. The couple opened a joint practice in Rome, New York.
When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, she immediately volunteered for service in the Union army. Women were not allowed to be doctors so she served as a civilian nurse at the First Battle of Bull Run, then as an unpaid surgeon at Fredericksburg.
Shortly after the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, she was contracted as acting assistant surgeon, the first woman doctor in U.S. military history.
Walker was captured in April 1864, and sent to a Confederate military prison in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged. She also served during the Battle of Atlanta.
After the war, Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and George Thomas recommended her for the Medal of Honor and President Andrew Johnson signed the document.
Walker divorced her husband, took to the lecture circuit for women’s rights, health care and temperance, and wrote a number of books on the subjects.
Because she dressed exclusively in men’s clothing, she was frequently arrested for “impersonating a man.” She represented herself in those trials and harangued the judge about her four years of devoted service to the Union. Very often the beleaguered judge gave a tongue lashing to the arresting officer.
After review in 1917, Congress recalled more than 900 Medals of Honor because they had not been awarded to military personnel for extreme courage under fire. But Walker refused to surrender hers and wore it for the rest of her life. She was wearing it when she died in February 1919, the year before the 19th Amendment was ratified and gave women the right to vote.
In the 1970s a female relative became intrigued with Mary Walker’s story. She researched old files, then built a case that made its way to President Jimmy Carter. He restored Walker’s medal in 1977.
Nearly 90 years after her death, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker stands as a woman far ahead of her time – the first female military doctor, a champion of women’s rights, and the only woman to hold the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor.
