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Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Dr. Mary Walker, The Only Woman Recipient of the Nations Highest Military Honor, and Slightly Ahead of Her Time
Only Woman Medal of Honor Holder Ahead of Her Time
By Rudi Williams
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON Whenever Ann Walker's brattish attitude emerged, her grandmother would often say, "You're just like your great-aunt Mary."
"When I was a teen-ager, I started to wonder, who is this great- aunt Mary?" said Walker, 74. "I sort of hungered for information about her, but I couldn't find much. Nobody, including my grandmother, seemed to care about her. She always said, 'Your aunt was always dressing like a man.'"
Her curiosity surged when one of her father's friends, a history professor, told her about her distant relative, actually her great-great-aunt, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker of the Civil War Union Army. He told her Mary Walker was the first American woman to be a military doctor, a prisoner of war and a Medal of Honor recipient. She was also a Union spy and a crusader against tobacco and alcohol.
"He told me she was always imitating men, and if she had dressed like a lady, she would have had a larger role in history," said Walker, a resident of Washington's Georgetown Aged Women's Home. A retired free-lance journalist, Walker said she's working on a book, "Woman of Honor," to tell the story of her aunt's Civil War exploits and her controversial life thereafter.
Through the family friend and research, Ann Walker learned her aunt was born on Nov. 26, 1832, in Oswego County, N.Y., and graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855. She married fellow medical student Albert Miller, but declined to take his name. The couple set up a medical practice in Rome, N.Y., but the public wasn't ready to accept a woman physician. The practice and the marriage foundered.
When the Civil War started, the Union Army wouldn't hire women doctors, so Walker volunteered as a nurse in Washington's Patent Office Hospital and treated wounded soldiers at the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia. In 1862, she received an Army contract appointing her as an assistant surgeon with the 52nd Ohio
Infantry.
The first woman doctor to serve with the Army Medical Corps, Walker cared for sick and wounded troops in Tennessee at Chickamauga and in Georgia during the Battle of Atlanta.
Confederate troops captured her on April 10, 1864, and held her until the sides exchanged prisoners of war on Aug. 12, 1864. Walker worked the final months of the war at a women's prison in Louisville, Ky., and later at an orphans' asylum in Tennessee.
The Army nominated Walker for the Medal of Honor for her wartime service. President Andrew Johnson signed the citation on Nov. 11, 1865, and she received the award on Jan. 24, 1866. Her citation cites her wartime service, but not specifically valor in combat.
Walker's citation reads in part that she "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. She has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war for four months in a Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon."
The War Department, starting in 1916, reviewed all previous Medal of Honor awards with the intent of undoing decades of abuse. At the time, for instance, the medal could be freely copied and sold and legally worn by anyone. Past awards would be rescinded and future ones would be rejected if supporting
evidence didn't clearly, convincingly show combat valor above and beyond the call of duty.
Mary Walker and nearly 1,000 past recipients found their medals revoked in the reform. Wearing the medal if unearned became a crime. The Army demanded Walker and the others return their
medals. She refused and wore hers until her death at age 87 in 1919.
In the late 1960s, Ann Walker launched an intensive lobbying campaign to restore her aunt's medal. A Nov. 25, 1974, letter from the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee read, in part, "It's clear your great-grandaunt was not only courageous during the term she served as a contract doctor in the Union Army, but also as an outspoken proponent of feminine rights. Both as a doctor and feminist, she was much ahead of her time and, as is usual, she was not regarded kindly by many of her contemporaries. Today she appears prophetic."
President Jimmy Carter restored Mary Walker's Medal of Honor on June 11, 1977. Today, it's on display in the Pentagon's women's corridor.
Walker said her relative was controversial on the battlefield and in civilian life. During the war, she wore trousers under her skirt, a man's uniform jacket and two pistols. As an early women's rights advocate, particularly for dress reform, she was arrested many times after the war for wearing men's clothes,
including wing collar, bow tie and top hat.
The Women in Military Service to America Memorial at Arlington (Va.) National Cemetery features the story of Dr. Mary E. Walker along with a photograph of her and her walking cane. Curator Judy Bellafaire called Walker "quite a character," and one whose ideas made her seem eccentric in her own day and age.
"But judging her from today's perspective, much of what she spoke and wrote about, that people made fun of at the time, is probably true today," Bellafaire said. Walker, she said, wrote volumes about the evils of tobacco and alcohol and women's clothes and authored two books: "Unmasked" and "Hit," a fictionalized autobiography.
"My most favorite of her sayings is, 'Let the generations know that women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom,'" Ann Walker said. "She was strong. I wish I'd known her. It would have been fun."
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker's Bible
 The U.S. Postal Service honored Civil War Dr. Mary E. Walker, the only woman awarded the Medal of Honor, with a 20-cent first-class postage stamp in 1982.
 A photograph and the walking cane of Dr. Mary E. Walker, the only woman awarded the Medal of Honor, is featured in "Serving with the Military: 18th and 19th centuries," an exhibit at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington (Va.) National Cemetery. Rudi Williams
 The Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington (Va.) National Cemetery features the story of Dr. Mary E. Walker, the only woman awarded the Medal of Honor, along with a picture of her decked out in men's clothing and her walking cane. Rudi Williams
 Ann Walker, 74, the great grandniece of Civil War Dr. Mary E. Walker, the nations only women Medal of Honor recipient, poses by Dr. Walkers photograph and walking cane on display at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at the entrance to Arlington (Va.) National Cemetery. Rudi Williams
Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Dr. Mary Walker, The Only Woman Recipient of the Nations Highest Military Honor, Slightly Ahead of Her Time
First woman to earn the Medal of Honor
by Bea Sheftel
Dr. Mary Walker won the Medal of Honor for her work during the Civil War. It was awarded to her President Andrew Johnson for her service as a surgeon.
Dr. Mary Walker was a surgeon in the Civil War. She saved many lives and was rewarded for her service by the Medal of Honor. Even so, she was held up to ridicule by men because her choice of attire was masculine. She often gave talks to large crowds. Many of the men came to ridicule her for wearing masculine attire. However, once she spoke in a modest and decorous manner, they settled down and listened to her words.
She was a women's liberationist a century before the movement took hold. She spent her life working on emancipation for herself and other women from what she called, "The bondage of all that is oppressive." In other words, Victorian society and men. She said the clothing women wore dangerous to the health because it was constricting. She called for dress reform and the right to vote. Women suffered from the tight corsets they wore. Some suffered broken ribs and had shortness of breath. Yet women wanted to keep up with the fashions from Paris. The Northern women used hoops under their skirts as the Southern women did. The Southern went further and had skirts so wide they had to tilt their dresses to walk through the halls of their plantations. The wide hoop skirts were especially dangerous when women followed the troops and cooked over open fires. There were many near disasters when a woman's skirt went up in flames. After too many incidents like that women removed their hoops when cooking in the camps. Mary Walker taught school at 16. She left teaching for a career in medicine. In 1855, she emerged from the Syracuse Medical College with a medical degree. She was the only woman in her class. She was married briefly to another physician, Albert Miller, but their practice and marriage didn't last. When the Civil War broke out she went to Washington, D.C. to seek a commission as an army surgeon. They gave her a tough time and sent her to duty more as a nurse than a doctor. Finally in 1863 she was ordered to Chattanooga where she replaced the male medical officer of an Ohio Infantry regiment and became the official surgeon. She wore a military uniform of her own design that included a tunic and a knee-length overskirt over trousers. General William Tecumseh Sherman chastised her for her choice of clothing. She told him it was unimportant what she wore. She had nothing but contempt for the female corset and the hoopskirt. This was at a time when 50 dozen hoopskirts a week where sent to New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Dr. Walker was captured by a Confederate patrol. She was sent to a prison called "Castle Thunder." Her value to the Union Army was shown when she was exchanged for a Confederate officer. At the end of the war, President Andrew Johnson awarded her the Medal of Honor.
 Mary Edwards Walker Civil War Doctor
Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997.
Controversy surrounded Mary Edwards Walker throughout her life. She was born on November 26, 1832 in the Town of Oswego, New York, into an abolitionist family. Her birthplace on the Bunker Hill Road is marked with a historical marker. Her father, a country doctor, was a free thinking participant in many of the reform movements that thrived in upstate New York in the mid 1800s. He believed strongly in education and equality for his five daughters Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia (there was one son, Alvah). He also believed they were hampered by the tight-fitting women's clothing of the day.
His daughter, Mary, became an early enthusiast for Women's Rights, and passionately espoused the issue of dress reform. The most famous proponent of dress reform was Amelia Bloomer, a native of Homer, New York, whose defended a colleague's right to wear "Turkish pantaloons" in her Ladies' Temperance Newspaper, the Lily. "Bloomers," as they became known, did achieve some popular acceptance towards the end of the 19th century as women took up the new sport of bicycling. Mary Edwards Walker discarded the unusual restrictive women's clothing of the day. Later in her life she donned full men's evening dress to lecture on Women's Rights.
In June 1855 Mary, the only woman in her class, joined the tiny number of women doctors in the nation when she graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation's first medical school and one which accepted women and men on an equal basis. She graduated at age 21 after three 13-week semesters of medical training which she paid $55 each for.
In 1856 she married another physician, Albert Miller, wearing trousers and a man's coat and kept her own name. Together they set up a medical practice in Rome, NY, but the public was not ready to accept a woman physician, and their practice floundered. They were divorced 13 years later.
When war broke out, she came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a commission as a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon -- the first female surgeon in the US Army. As an unpaid volunteer, she worked in the US Patent Office Hospital in Washington. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for almost two years (including Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga).
In September 1863, Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland for which she made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform to wear, in response to the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. She was then appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this assignment it is generally accepted that she also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. She was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons.
She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20, but still less than some widows' pensions.
On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognize her contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country's highest military award.
In 1917 her Congressional Medal, along with the medals of 910 others was taken away when Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include only actual combat with an enemy She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. A relative told the New York Times: "Dr. Mary lost the medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of her time and no one could stomach it." An Army board reinstated Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, citing her "distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex."
After the war, Mary Edwards Walker became a writer and lecturer, touring here and abroad on women's rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues. Tobacco, she said, resulted in paralysis and insanity. Women's clothing, she said, was immodest and inconvenient. She was elected president of the National Dress Reform Association in 1866. Walker prided herself by being arrested numerous times for wearing full male dress, including wing collar, bow tie, and top hat. She was also something of an inventor, coming up with the idea of using a return postcard for registered mail. She wrote extensively, including a combination biography and commentary called Hit and a second book, Unmasked, or the Science of Immortality. She died in the Town of Oswego on February 21, 1919 and is buried in the Rural Cemetery on the Cemetery Road.
 A 20 stamp honoring Dr. Mary Walker was issued in Oswego, NY on June 10, 1982. The stamp commemorates the first woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the second woman to graduate from a medical school in the United States.
Special thanks to Theresa A. Cooper, President of the Town of Oswego Historical Society and Town Clerk for supplying additional information for this Profile. WALKER, DR. MARY E.
Rank and organization: Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian), U. S. Army. Places and dates: Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861; Patent Office Hospital, Washington, D.C., October 1861; Chattanooga, Tenn., following Battle of Chickomauga, September 1863; Prisoner of War, April 10, 1864_August 12, 1864, Richmond, Va.; Battle of Atlanta, September 1864. Entered service at: Louisville, Ky. Born: 26 November 1832, Oswego County, N.Y.
CITATION:: 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 llntirin~ 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 Major Generals 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.
(Medal rescinded 1917 along with 910 others, restored by President Carter 10 June 1977.)
Dr Mary Walker
Civil War Union Army Contract Surgeon, only woman ever granted the nation's highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor.
 Born on a farm near Oswego, N.Y. on November 26, 1832. She graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855 and later earned a second degree in 1862 from Hygeia Therapeutic College in New York. During the Civil War, she worked at first as a volunteer at Manassas and Fredericksburg. Later she worked as a contract physician for the 52nd Ohio Infantry Regiment.
Medal of Honor Citation:
Rank and organization: Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian), U. S. Army. Places and dates: Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861; Patent Office Hospital, Washington, D.C., October 1861; Chattanooga, Tenn., following Battle of Chickomauga, September 1863; Prisoner of War, April 10, 1864-August 12, 1864, Richmond, Va.; Battle of Atlanta, September 1864. Entered service at: Louisville, Ky. Born: 26 November 1832, Oswego County, N.Y. Citation: 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 Major-Generals 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 ,
President
Dr Walker's medal was rescinded 1917 along with 910 others after a review of all Medal of Honor recipients that year. It was restored by President Carter on 10 June 1977. In June 1982, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 20 cent stamp commemorating "Dr. Mary Walker, Army Surgeon."
U.S. Army Women's Museum
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