Mary Edwards Walker, MD & only female MOH winner

[John Kettler]

I was trying to find something I read years ago in SOF about a new Chinese Strategy over on the SOF site, when I came across this wholly new to me MOH winner. Mary Edwards Walker, who got hers for unprecedented medical service to the nation during the Civil War. She was a woman of many parts. The daughter of abolitionists and blessed with a doctor father who believed his five daughters deserved equality, she was active her entire life in working for full rights for women, starting with getting into more comfortable, mobility creating clothes and extending into several failed attempts to vote after the Civil War. She was the only woman in her Syracuse Medical University (the nation's first med school) classes, and one of the few coed medical schools. When the War broke out she tried to get a commission, as was standard for doctors joining the Union Army, but was refused. She volunteered and did the job anyway. While she never did get a commission, she was finally appointed Assistant Surgeon to the Army of the Cumberland. There's much more to her pioneering and wide ranging story, including the fact that she invented the idea of the return post card for Registered Mail! Her remarkable story is here.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

[IronCat60]

Thanks John! I love historical tidbits, especially this one. Women deserve equality in all things!

[LukeFF]

Sorry, but she never should have been awarded the medal in the first place.

[fivefivesix]

It is an interesting story, but I have to agree with LukeFF. She unquestionably served the Union Army honorably. But the Medal of Honor is meant for "Conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty".

She should be honored for being revolutionary in the fact that she was the first woman to serve in the capacity as a battlefield surgeon. But find another award, or make one up for her ... the Medal of Honor is a sacred entitlement. The fact that most post-WWI MoH's are awarded posthumously (at least > 60%) should indicate why. 

[Rinaldi]

I'm surprised her MOH wasn't recalled; at the time of the Civil War it was essentially one of the only medals the US had. It was handed out like confetti; volunteers who renewed their contracts so they could take part in the Gettysburg campaign were given MOHs, for example. They were later recalled in the early 1900s as a board decided to make the MOH what we know it as today.