At a time when women weren't allowed to serve as Army surgeons, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker forged her own path to the front lines to become the only female recipeint of the Medal of Honor.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker | Richardson-Bates Museum, Oswego, NY
Born to abolitionist parents in Oswego, New York, in 1832, Mary Edwards Walker graduated from Syracuse Medical College as a medical doctor in 1855. Rejected by the Army as a surgeon because of her gender, Walker volunteered at the makeshift military hospital in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington and organized the Women’s Relief Organization to help family members visiting convalescing soldiers.
The barriers finally fell in 1863 and Walker became the U.S. Army’s first female surgeon, serving as a civilian “Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon” with the 52nd Ohio Infantry in the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
Fiercely independent, she began crossing the lines to treat civilians and was arrested by the Confederates as a Union spy. Walker spent four months imprisoned at Richmond’s notorious Castle Thunder before she and other doctors were exchanged for Confederate doctors. After her release, Walker served as medical director of the Louisville Women’s Prison Hospital and was in charge of an orphan asylum in Clarksville, Tennessee.
“Many a man today has for it the perfect and good use of limbs who would not have had but for my advice.”
In 1865, she sought a retroactive commission in the Army as a way to recognize her service. That was impossible under the existing law, but President Andrew Johnson awarded her the Medal of Honor as an “honorable recognition of her services and suffering.”
Dr. Mary E. Walker, photographed for A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life (1893)
In 1917, after a review, 911 Medals of Honor were rescinded, including Walker’s on the grounds that she had been a civilian at the time of her actions. But Mary Walker refused to return it and continued to wear it proudly until her death in 1919. In 1977, after lobbying efforts by her descendants, President Jimmy Carter restored Walker’s Medal of Honor. A Liberty ship was named for her during World War II and the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in her honor in 1982. Several clinics are named for her, as well as a U.S. Army Reserve Center. A statue in her honor stands in front of the Town Hall in Oswego, where she is interred.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, around 1911.
“Whereas it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of medicine, ‘has rendered valuable service to the Government, and her efforts have been earnest and untiring in a variety of ways,’ and that she was assigned to duty and served as an assistant surgeon in charge of female prisoners at Louisville, Ky., upon the recommendation of Maj. Gens. Sherman and Thomas, and faithfully served as contract surgeon in the service of the United States, and has devoted herself with much patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soldiers, both in the field and hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war four months in a Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon; and Whereas by reason of her not being a commissioned officer in the military service, a brevet or honorary rank cannot, under existing laws, be conferred upon her; and Whereas in the opinion of the President an honorable recognition of her services and sufferings should be made; It is ordered, That a testimonial thereof shall be hereby made and given to the said Dr. Mary E. Walker, and that the usual medal of honor for meritorious services be given her. Given under my hand in the city of Washington, D.C., this 11th day of November, A.D. 1865. ”
~ Andrew Johnson
DR. Mary Edwards Walker's Medal of Honor Citation