Roy Exum
On this very day 153 years ago, the City of Chattanooga was not only in shock, it was completely overwhelmed with misery. Throughout the day and the night before, streams of wagons, all dripping blood and carrying the moans from many dying men, had brought the casualties and the wounded into Tennessee from the Battle of Chickamauga, said to be so bloody the creeks actually ran red with Union and Confederate blood.
Just imagine: Union losses were 16,170 (1,657 killed, 9,756 wounded, and 4,757 captured or missing), Confederate 18,454 (2,312 killed, 14,674 wounded, and 1,468 captured or missing). Where do you suspect they took over 22,000 wounded soldiers? Erlanger? Seriously, can you imagine how catastrophic September 21, 1863 was in our city? Only Gettysburg was more deadly in the Civil War.
But here’s the delight: In the middle of the surgery ward at the hospital in Chattanooga, there was the strangest sight you ever saw. Not only was a Union Army field surgeon a female, she was wearing gold-striped pants beneath her green surgical frock and a colorful ostrich feather in her straw hat. At the time female doctors were a total rarity but Mary Edwards Walker was an even greater oddity – she was the best field surgeon among them all.
How good? I can tell you this. As a dedicated group of patriots are pushing back against some shameful nay-sayers who oppose a Medal of Honor shine in our Coolidge Park, Bill Raines and his star-studded committee better add another room: Mary Edwards Walker is the only female to ever be awarded the Medal of Honor and it came as a direct result of what she did to save lives in this very town in the harrowing aftermath of the Battle of Chickamauga.
Better still, Dr. Walker is the only female to ever be presented the nation’s highest military award only to have it taken back! Get this: In 1917 a government review board determined Dr. Walker was not a member of the U.S. Military and therefore ineligible. She had signed on as a volunteer after becoming an M.D. at the nation’s first medical school, Syracuse Medical School in 1855.
Never mind that her medal was proposed by both General William T. Sherman and General George H. Thomas for uncompromised valor in the front lines of battle at Chickamauga – she went where no male surgeon dared to go, crossing enemy lines in a shower of Minnie balls to tend to the fallen. Are you kidding me? Even Abraham Lincoln had signed off on the generals’ testimonial for Dr. Walker before he was assassinated. The Medal proper was personally presented to the surgeon who wore her trademark man’s top hat on Nov. 11, 1865 by President Andrew Johnson.
When the army demanded the medal back, Dr. Walker flatly refused, telling the board she had jolly-well earned it, and … in far more worse words back in the day … to go take a flying leap. And she most proudly wore her medal every day until she died two years later at age 85. Don’t worry: In 1977 a resolution before the Senate Armed Service Committee restored full Medal of Honor rights to Dr. Walker and she most definitely must be included when the Medal of Honor Heritage Memorial is placed in Coolidge Park. She earned the Medal right here!
It is most likely that Dr. Walker was stripped of the metal because “she was 100 years before her time.” With Susan B. Anthony, she was a key figure in the suffragette movement and was not popular among the males who thought women should “stay in their place.” Dr. Walker actually gave speeches in full male evening dress with the Medal of Honor dangling from her left lapel.
The fact she wore men’s clothes caused the New York Times to refer to her as “that curious anthropoid” but Dr. Walker could have cared less. Big deal! After all, the first female surgeon in the United States Army had been taken prisoner by the Confederates. She was caught crossing enemy lines to help civilians injured in the crossfire of battle. She spent four treacherous months in a POW enclave in Richmond – suffering horribly at the hands of her captors -- before she gained her freedom in a prisoner swap, called a “man for man” exchange for a Confederate major from Tennessee.
When her Medal of Honor was stripped away, that’s when all copies of her Medal of Honor citation went missing but the 1977 review returned her medal, the committee’s reasoning being “that if she had been a man she would have immediately been given a commission.”
As a matter of fact, when she began working as a field surgeon, she requested a commission but was turned down because she was a female. At that, she continued as a “volunteer” for the remainder of the Civil War and there is no doubt from any corner that Dr. Walker saved many lives of soldiers and civilians alike.
Her clothing style began as a young girl while working on her family’s farm in Oswego, N.Y. She was required to help with manual labor and found women’s clothes too confining. According to a note on Wikipedia, “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."
Once a reporter demanded to know why she wore men’s clothes and she retorted, “These are not men’s clothes … they are my clothes.” There was a strong feeling that Dr. Walker’s dress detracted from the public’s view of the suffragette issue but one year after she was buried in a men’s black suit, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote.
During World War II, a Liberty ship, the SS Mary Walker, was named for her and, in 1982, the U.S. Postal Service issued a twenty-cent stamp in her honor, marking the anniversary of her birth. The medical facilities at SUNY Oswego are named in her honor (Mary Walker Health Center). On the same grounds a plaque explains Oswego as her birthplace and her importance in the community.
But do you know what will break your heart? When Dr. Walker’s Medal of Honor was restored in 1977, there was nobody to claim the medal. It is believed to be currently held by the Oswego Historical Society. Let’s bring it home!
What a thrill it would be if Dr. Mary Edwards Walker could share a spot in Chattanooga’s future Medal of Honor shrine. She deserves to be here -- 153 years ago to this day she worked around the clock trying to save men’s lives in a local hospital. And she did it.
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After the existing citations for Dr. Mary Edwards Walker were lost, here is how her current Medal of Honor citation reads:
“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.”
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To date there have been 3,515 Medals of Honor awarded to the nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen since the decoration's creation, with just less than half of them awarded for actions during the four years of the American Civil War. Eight civilians have been awarded the Medal of Honor and only one female – Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.
royexum@aol.com