05/20/2026
President Andrew Johnson gave Dr. Mary Edward Walker the Medal of Honor on November 11, 1865, for her service as a surgeon during the Civil War.
Dr. Walker was born in Oswego, New York, in 1832 and received her medical degree from Syracuse Medical College when she was twenty-two years old. She was the only woman in her graduating class. Raised by an abolitionist family, she left her private practice to volunteer as a surgeon at the beginning of the Civil War. Dr. Walker treated wounded soldiers for four years, serving in Virginia and Tennessee, and was held as a prisoner of war for four months.
Dr. Walker was also a suffragist and preferred to wear clothing considered exclusively for men. She was arrested at least once for her clothing choice and when asked by an interviewer how she responded to people harassing her in the streets, she replied, “When anyone does say anything unpleasant I usually have something to say in return which makes us quits. Oh, I tell you, trousers are a great thing.”
After eligibility rules changed, Dr. Walker’s award was revoked in 1917 along with over 900 others as part of a thorough review of Civil War service medal recipients, just a few years before her death. The review board allegedly could not verify examples of her valor in the field or that she was a commissioned officer.
She refused to return the medal, saying, according to her great grandniece, “You may have it back over my dead body and only if you rescue it from rigor mortis.” The Army restored her military service honor on June 10, 1977. She is still the only woman to have received the award today.
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Image: National Archives and Records Administration / Library of Congress
