Wikiwand - Mary Edwards Walker

Mary Edwards Walker (November 26, 1832 – February 21, 1919), commonly referred to as Dr. Mary Walker, was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war, and surgeon.^[1] She is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor.^[2]

In 1855, she earned her medical degree at Syracuse Medical College in New York,^[3] married and started a medical practice. She attempted to join the Union Army at the outbreak of the American Civil War and was denied. She served as a surgeon at a temporary hospital in Washington, D.C. before being hired by Union Forces and assigned to Army of the Cumberland and later the 52nd Ohio Infantry, becoming the first female surgeon in the US Army.^[4][5] She was captured by Confederate forces^[3] after crossing enemy lines to treat wounded civilians and arrested as a spy. She was sent as a prisoner of war to Richmond, Virginia until released in a prisoner exchange.

After the war, she was approved for the Medal of Honor, for her efforts to treat the wounded in battle and across enemy lines during the Civil War. Notably, the award was not expressly given for gallantry in action at that time, and in fact was the only military decoration during the Civil War. Walker is the only woman to receive the medal and one of only eight civilians to receive it. Her name was deleted from the Army Medal of Honor Roll in 1917 (along with over 900 other recipients); however, it was restored in 1977.^[3] After the war, she was a writer and lecturer supporting the women's suffrage movement until her death in 1919.

Mary Edwards Walker was born in the Town of Oswego, New York, on November 26, 1832, the daughter of Alvah (father) and Vesta (mother) Walker. She was the youngest of seven children: she had five sisters and one brother. Alvah and Vesta raised both their son and their daughters in a progressive manner that was revolutionary for the time. Their nontraditional parenting nurtured Mary's spirit of independence and sense of justice that she actively demonstrated throughout her life. While they were devoted Christians, the Walkers were Freethinkers who raised their children to question the regulations and restrictions of various denominations.^[6] The Walker parents also demonstrated non-traditional gender roles to their children regarding sharing work around the farm: Vesta often participated in heavy labor while Alvah took part in general household chores.^[6] Walker worked on her family farm as a child. She did not wear women's clothing during farm labor because she considered it too restricting. Her mother reinforced her views that corsets and tight lacings were unhealthy.^[7]

Her elementary education consisted of attendance at the local school that her parents had started. The Walkers were determined that their daughters be as well-educated as their son, so they founded the first free schoolhouse in Oswego in the late 1830s.^[6] After finishing primary school, Mary and two of her older sisters attended Falley Seminary in Fulton, New York.^[6] Falley was not only an institution of higher learning, but a place that emphasized modern social reform in gender roles, education, and hygiene.^[6] Its ideologies and practices further cemented Mary's determination to defy traditional feminine standards on a principle of injustice. In her free time, Mary would pore over her father's medical texts on anatomy and physiology; her interest in medicine is attributable to her exposure to medical literature at an early age.^[6] As a young woman, she taught at a school in Minetto, New York, eventually earning enough money to pay her way through Syracuse Medical College, where she graduated with honors as a medical doctor in 1855, the only woman in her class.^[6]

She married a fellow medical school student, Albert Miller, on November 16, 1855, shortly before she turned 23.^[6] Walker wore a short skirt with trousers underneath, refused to include "obey" in her vows, and retained her last name, all characteristic of her obstinate nonconformity.^[6] They set up a joint practice in Rome, New York.^[8] The practice did not flourish, as female physicians were generally not trusted or respected at that time.^[9] They later divorced, on account of Miller's infidelity.^[10]

Walker briefly attended Bowen Collegiate Institute (later named Lenox College) in Hopkinton, Iowa, in 1860, until she was suspended for refusing to resign from the school's debating society, which until she joined had been all male.

Walker volunteered at the outbreak of American Civil War as a surgeon – first for the Army, but was rejected because she was a woman (despite having kept a private practice for many years). She was offered the role of a nurse but declined and chose to volunteer as a surgeon for the Union Army as a civilian. The U.S. Army had no female surgeons, and at first, she was allowed to practice only as a nurse.^[3] During this period, she served at the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, and at the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, D.C. She worked as an unpaid field surgeon near the Union front lines, including at the Battle of Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga.^[11] As a suffragist, she was happy to see women serving as soldiers, and alerted the press to the case of Frances Hook, in Ward 2 of the Chattanooga hospital, a woman who served in the Union forces disguised as a man.^[12] Walker was the first female surgeon of the Union army.^[11] She wore men's clothing during her work, claiming it to be easier for high demands of her work.^[11]

In September 1862, Walker wrote to the War Department requesting employment as a spy, but her proposal was declined.^[13] In September 1863, she was employed as a "Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)" by the Army of the Cumberland, becoming the first female surgeon employed by the U.S. Army Surgeon.^[14] Walker was later appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During her service, she frequently crossed battle lines and treated civilians.

On April 10, 1864, she was captured by Confederate troops, and arrested as a spy, just after she finished helping a Confederate doctor perform an amputation. She was sent to Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, and remained there until August 12, 1864, when she was released as part of a prisoner exchange.^[15] While she was imprisoned, she refused to wear the clothes provided her, said to be more "becoming of her sex". Walker was exchanged for a Confederate surgeon from Tennessee on August 12, 1864.^[4]

She went on to serve as supervisor of a female prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and as the head of an orphanage in Tennessee.^[14]

After the war, Walker was awarded a disability pension for partial muscular atrophy suffered while she was imprisoned by the enemy. She was given $8.50 a month, beginning June 13, 1865, but in 1899 that amount was raised to $20 per month.^[16]

She became a writer and lecturer, supporting such issues as health care, temperance, women's rights, and dress reform for women. She was frequently arrested for wearing men's clothing, and insisted on her right to wear clothing that she thought appropriate.^[17] She wrote two books that discussed women's rights and dress. She replied to criticism of her attire: "I don't wear men's clothes, I wear my own clothes."^[18]

Walker was a member of the Central Woman's Suffrage Bureau in Washington, DC and solicited funds to endow a chair for a female professor at Howard University medical school.^[4] She attempted to register to vote in 1871, but was turned away. The initial stance of the movement, following her lead, was to claim that women already had the right to vote, and Congress needed only to enact enabling legislation. After a number of fruitless years advocating this position, the movement promoted the adoption of a constitutional amendment. This was diametrically opposed to her position, and she fell out of favor with the movement. She continued to attend suffrage conventions and distribute her own literature, but was virtually ignored by the rest of the movement. Her penchant for wearing masculine clothing, including a top hat, only exacerbated the situation.^{[clarification needed][14]} She received a more favorable reception in England than in the United States.^[19]

In 1907, Walker published "Crowning Constitutional Argument", in which she argued that some States, as well as the federal Constitution, had already granted women the right to vote. She testified on women's suffrage before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1912 and 1914.

After a long illness, Walker died at home on February 21, 1919, at the age of eighty-six.^[20] She was buried at Rural Cemetery in Oswego, New York, in a plain funeral, with an American flag draped over her casket, and wearing a black suit instead of a dress.^[21] Her death in 1919 came one year before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed women the right to vote.^[14]

Inspired by her parents' novel standard of dressing for health purposes, Walker was infamous for contesting traditional female wardrobe, a campaign then known as rational dress. In 1871, she wrote, "The greatest sorrows from which women suffer to-day are those physical, moral, and mental ones, that are caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing!"^[10] She strongly opposed women's long skirts with numerous petticoats, not only for their discomfort and their inhibition to the wearer's mobility but for their collection and spread of dust and dirt. As a young woman, she began experimenting with various skirt-lengths and layers, all with men's trousers underneath. By 1861, her typical ensemble included trousers with suspenders under a knee-length dress with a tight waist and full skirt.^[10]

While encouraged by her family, Walker's wardrobe choices were often met with criticism. Once, while a schoolteacher, she was assaulted on her way home by a neighboring farmer and a group of boys, who chased her and attacked her with eggs and other projectiles.^[6] Female colleagues in medical school criticized her choices, and patients often gawked at her and teased her. She nevertheless persisted in her mission to reform women's dress. Her view that women's dress should "protect the person, and allow freedom of motion and circulation, and not make the wearer a slave to it" made her commitment to dress reform as great as her zeal for abolitionism.^[22] She famously wrote to the women's journal, The Sibyl: A Review of the Tastes, Errors, and Fashions of Society, about her campaign against women's fashion, among other things, for its injuries to health, its expense, and its contribution to the dissolution of marriages.^[6] Her literature contributed to the spread of her ideas and made her a popular figure among other feminists and female physicians.

In 1870, Walker was arrested in New Orleans^[5] and mocked by men because she was dressed as a man. The arresting officer twisted her arm and asked her if she had ever been in a relationship with a man.^[5] Walker was released from custody when she was recognized at Police Court.^[5]

During World War II, a Liberty ship, the SS Mary Walker, was named for her.^[28]

In 1982, the U.S. Postal Service issued a twenty-cent stamp in her honor, commemorating the anniversary of her birth.^[29][30]

The medical facilities at SUNY Oswego are named in her honor (Mary Walker Health Center). On the same grounds a plaque explains her importance in the Oswego community.

There is a United States Army Reserve center named for her in Walker, Michigan.^[31]

The Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C., is named in honor of the poet Walt Whitman, who was a nurse in D.C. during the Civil War, and Mary Edwards Walker.^[32]

The Mary Walker Clinic at Fort Irwin National Training Center in California is named in honor of Walker.^[33]

The Mary E. Walker House is a thirty-bed transitional residence run by the Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service & Education Center for homeless women veterans.^[34][35]

In May 2012, a 900-pound bronze statue honoring Walker was unveiled in front of the Oswego, New York Town Hall.^[36]

In 2019, Walker was included in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton's book The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience.^[37]

On August 25, 2023 Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia was officially renamed Fort Walker in her honor, as part of the US Defense Department's decision to change the names of military bases named after Confederate soldiers. Walker thus became the first woman in US History to have a United States military installation exclusively named after her.^[38][39]

Walker will be an honoree on an American Women quarter in 2024.^[40] The design depicts Walker holding her pocket surgical kit with the Medal of Honor and a surgeon's pin on her uniform.^[41]

• Mary Edwards Walker; United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary, Edward Thomas Taylor, Jane Addams (1912). Woman suffrage, No.1: hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty-second Congress, second session, statement of Dr. Mary E. Walker. February 14, 1912. Government Printing Office. Retrieved February 11, 2010. Mary Edwards Walker.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Walker, Mary Edwards (1871). Hit: Essays on Women's Rights. The American News Company. Retrieved November 29, 2022. Reissued in paperback with a new introduction in 2003.^[22]
• Mary Edwards Walker (1878). Unmasked, or the Science of Immorality, To Gentlemen by a Woman Physician and Surgeon.

• Negley, Keith. Mary Wears What She Wants, January 15, 2019
• DiMeo, Nate. Mary Walker Would Wear What She Wanted The Memory Palace Podcast Episode 76 Archived 2017-09-20 at the Wayback Machine, October 19, 2015. (Podcast detailing Mary Walker, her early life and accomplishments.)
• Gall-Clayton, Nancy. I'm Wearing My Own Clothes! (Full-length play commissioned and produced by Looking for Lilith Theatre Company, July 2017. I’m Wearing My Own Clothes!)
• Kaminski, Theresa. Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-4930-3609-7.
• Lambil, Willy & Cauvin, Raoul. Miss Walker , Dupuis 2010, is a Belgian comic book in the "Bluecoats"-series (Les Tuniques Bleues). The comic album portrays Mary Walker in a caricatural way as a combative feminist during the civil war.

• Mollie Bean
• Mary Ann Bickerdyke
• Malinda Blalock
• Albert Cashier
• Sarah Emma Edmonds
• Sarah Taylor (soldier)
• Loreta Janeta Velazquez
• Laura J. Williams