Dr. Mary
Walker, a Civil War surgeon and the nation's first female surgeon , was awarded the Medal of Honor, for her efforts at Bull Run on July 21,1861,
becoming the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor and one of only eight civilians to ever receive it. She was recommended for
the medal after the war by General William Tecumseh Sherman. President Andrew
Johnson signed his approval in 1865.
Her name was removed from the honor
list of awardees in 1917, along with others, when the terms used to designate
eligibility for the award were reappraised. She refused to surrender the medal,
however, and continue to wear it for the rest of her life. In 1977, thanks to
the efforts of her family and a Congressional reappraisal of her achievements,
the honor was restored.
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| Mary Walker |
Dr. Walker was a militant feminist before the word became part of our vocabulary and worked especially hard on "dress reform" as part of women's emancipation.
Born a farmer’s
daughter, she did not wear women’s clothing doing farm labor because it was too
restricting and refused to “dress as a woman” while doing medical work during
the war. The only women in her 1855 medical class, after graduation she married
a doctor but kept her own name. She volunteered as a surgeon, working on the
front lines.
She refused to wear
cumbersome skirts while doing medical work during the Civil War. On April 10, 1864, when she took
a wrong turn on a road, she was captured and accused of being a spy since she
was “disguised” in men’s clothing, making her the first female POW. Upon release, she worked in a women’s
prison, where the women prisoners didn’t like her wardrobe of long pants and a
tunic & asked for a “real” (man) doctor.
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| Mary Walker |
After the war she became a
writer/speaker in the suffrage movement, particularly on the topic of women’s
clothing. She was arrested for
impersonating a man several times, although she argued that Congress had
awarded her special permission to dress in this way.
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