There Was Only One Woman Who Has Ever Received The Medal of Honor, And This Is Her Incredible Story
Did you know that there is only one woman who has ever received the Medal of Honor?
Her name was Mary Edwards Walker, and she was a surgeon, an advocate for women’s rights, and a significant influence on the history of women in medicine.
Mary was born in upstate New York in 1832. She was one of five children born to two abolitionists who encouraged her to get an education and speak her mind.
She attended a school her parents opened in order for all their children to receive an equal education. She then attended the Falley Seminary in Fulton, New York, and became a teacher after graduating.
She worked hard to save money and eventually attended medical school at Syracuse Medical College, where she became the only female doctor to graduate in her class in 1855. After graduating, she married another medical student named Albert Miller.
They attempted to open their own medical practice in Rome, New York, but it failed because people did not want to see a female doctor.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Mary traveled to Washington D.C. to serve as a surgeon in the army but was turned down because of her gender. So instead, she decided to volunteer at the U.S. Patent Office Hospital, where she worked as a surgeon for free.
She also volunteered to work near the Union front lines as a surgeon before finally becoming the first female U.S. Army surgeon in 1863.
While working during the war, Mary often wore men’s clothes to move more efficiently, which was practically unheard of at the time. During the war, she would often cross battle lines to help care for soldiers and was even captured by the Confederate army and arrested as a spy in 1864.
Mary was imprisoned at Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, for four months before she was released.
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After her release and heroic work in the war, President Andrew Johnson awarded Mary the Medal of Honor. She was and is still the only woman to receive a Medal of Honor.
In 1916, the medal was taken away from her through government action, but President Jimmy Carter reinstated it in 1977.
Mary continued to advocate for women’s rights after the war. She was a supervisor at a female prison in Kentucky and was head of an orphanage in Tennessee. She continued fighting for dress reform.
She wrote articles about it for a women’s journal and was even arrested in New Orleans in 1870 for dressing like a man.
In 1912 and 1914, she helped fight for women’s voting rights when she testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives.
She wrote and gave lectures on the issue before she passed away in 1919 at 86, just six months before the passing of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
Mary’s life serves as a great reminder to go against social norms when it comes to fighting for what is right.
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