Mary Edwards Walker: Civil War Surgeon

Mary Edwards Walker worked as a surgeon in the Civil War. Public Domain

Starting at a young age, Mary Edwards Walker knew that she wanted to make a difference in society. After becoming interested in her father’s medical books as a child, Walker sought to become a doctor.

Edwards was born in Oswego, New York, in 1832 to a Christian family of devoted abolitionists. Her parents opened up the first free school in Oswego for boys and girls.

After she finished primary school, Walker joined two of her older sisters and attended the Falley Seminary in Fulton, New York, for higher education. After graduation, Walker briefly taught at a school in Minetto, New York, where she saved up her money to follow her true dream of attending medical school.

In 1855, Walker graduated from Syracuse Medical College in New York with honors after finishing three 13-week semesters. Walker then married one of her medical school classmates, Albert Miller, and opened up a private practice in Rome, New York.

Once the Civil War broke out in 1861, Walker, as a strong abolitionist, knew she needed to do what she could to help the efforts of the Union. She then traveled to Washington to volunteer her time as a surgeon at a temporary army hospital in the patent office. During this time, she also helped establish an organization that gave aid to women traveling to Washington to visit their wounded relatives.

Surgeon on the Battlefield

Walker served as a surgeon in temporary war camps at the Battle of Manassas in 1861 and the First Battle of Bull Run in 1862. She continued her work as an unpaid field surgeon on the Union frontlines during the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862 and the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863.

Walker continued her push to become a paid surgeon for the Army but was denied until she was appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland in September 1863. During her tenure as a surgeon, Walker gained a reputation for crossing enemy lines to help wounded soldiers and civilians.

But one day in April 1864, Walker found herself in trouble in enemy territory. While she was aiding a Confederate surgeon on an amputation, she was captured by soldiers who suspected she was a spy. Walker spent four months in the infamous Castle Thunder prison near the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia, before she was exchanged for several other surgeons.

In 1864, Walker was contracted as assistant surgeon for the Ohio 52nd Infantry. But due to injuries suffered while she was captured, Walker was transferred to the Louisville Women’s Prison Hospital and then to an orphan asylum in Clarksville, Tennessee.

After the war ended in 1865, President Andrew Johnson awarded Walker a Medal of Honor. “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,’” the President stated in the citation, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. “(Walker) 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.”

However, in 1916, Walker’s Medal of Honor was taken away several years before her death after Congress ruled that civilians could not receive the medal. But then in 1977, her medal was reinstated by President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

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