By Melissa A. Winn
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker is the only woman who has ever received the Medal of Honor. With more than 3,500 awarded for acts of valor, it’s a distinction almost unimaginable, but not to Mary. She was used to standing alone. Recognized as the U.S. Army’s first female surgeon, she spent her lifetime advocating for women’s rights, women’s suffrage, and notably dress reform.
Born Nov. 26, 1832, in Oswego, N.Y., Mary was the youngest of seven children. Her mother and father, adherents of the Freethinkers movement who emphasized reason, science, and religious skepticism, raised their children to be critical of regulations and tradition, including modern gender roles and dress. Mary often forsook women’s clothing, such as restrictive and uncomfortable corsets and long skirts, in favor of pants while working on the family farm.
The Walkers educated their daughters alongside their son, and Mary pursued intellectual study eagerly, poring over her father’s medical textbooks. As a young adult, Mary worked as a teacher and paid her way through Syracuse Medical College, where she graduated with honors with a medical degree in 1855, the only woman in her class.
She married a fellow doctor, Albert Miller, though kept her own name. Although the marriage eventually ended in divorce, the two ran a medical practice together for a brief time.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Mary endeavored to join the Union Army as a surgeon, but was denied a commission as a medical officer based on her sex. Undeterred, she became an unpaid volunteer surgeon. She served in this capacity at the U.S. Patent Office Hospital in Washington, D.C., and, in 1862, near the front lines in Fredericksburg and Chattanooga. She insisted that typical women’s clothing interfered with her work and wore a “Bloomer costume,” named for contemporary women’s rights advocate Amelia Bloomer. The outfit usually consisted of a simple skirt worn over trousers—a scandalous combination in the 1860s.
In 1863, the federal government finally accepted Mary’s request to practice as a surgeon. She entered upon her duties as the first female Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon, a civilian role. She served in the Army of the Cumberland with the 52nd Ohio Infantry. The group did not welcome a female doctor, according to biographers, and she spent most of her time treating citizens. “She had the rank of 1st Lieutenant and was dressed just like any other officer,” wrote Rev. Nixon B. Stewart in the 52nd Ohio’s regimental history. “The uniform was dark blue and the trousers had a strip of gold lace down the side. She wore curls, so that everybody would know she was a woman.”
She routinely crossed the lines to treat civilians. On one occasion, in April 1864, Confederate troops arrested her for spying. Confined at notorious Castle Thunder near Richmond, Va., she refused to wear traditional women’s clothing during her imprisonment. She gained her release in a prisoner of war exchange after four months of captivity.
During the remainder of the war, she served at the Louisville Female Military Prison in Kentucky, and at an orphan asylum in Clarksville, Tenn. After the war, the Pension Bureau awarded her disability benefits for muscular atrophy she had suffered while in Castle Thunder. Based on the recommendation of Major Generals William T. Sherman and George H. Thomas, President Andrew Johnson signed a bill on Nov. 11, 1865, presenting Mary with the Medal of Honor for meritorious wartime service. She wore it proudly.
Mary continued to advocate for women’s rights and dress reform. She eventually abandoned the Bloomer costume for male attire, for which she endured constant criticism and harassment, and numerous arrests. In one case, in 1870 in New Orleans, the arresting officer twisted her arm and demanded she tell him if she had ever been in a relationship with a man. Her pat response to those who criticized her choices was, “I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own clothes.”
In 1916, Congress stripped Mary of the Medal of Honor, along with nearly 900 other individuals who received it. The decision revoked the medal from individuals who had been honored as civilians during the war, as no equivalent civilian medal existed at the time. Walker and many others protested the decision and, characteristically, Mary refused to return it, wearing it proudly still until her death.
In 1977, at the behest of her surviving relatives, President Jimmy Carter legally restored Mary’s Medal of Honor.
On Feb. 21, 1919, at age 86, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker died of illness. She was buried in a black suit.
Melissa A. Winn has been enchanted with photography since childhood. Her career as a photographer and writer includes numerous publications, among them Civil War Times, America’s Civil War, and American History magazines. She is currently Director of Marketing and Communications for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Melissa collects Civil War photos and ephemera, with an emphasis on Dead Letter Office images and Gen. John A. Rawlins, chief of staff to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Melissa is a MI Senior Editor. Contact her at melissaannwinn@gmail.com.
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