July 24, 2024 • 31 mins
Dr. Mary Walker was the first and only woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. She worked as a surgeon during the Civil War, saving the lives of Union soldiers. She crossed into dangerous enemy territory to take care of civilians in need. She was a prisoner of war. But her fight didn’t stop once the war was over. Throughout her life, Dr. Walker fought for equal rights, not just for women, but for everyone. She lived her life doing the right thing, no matter the cost.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. A woman walked down a street in Lower Manhattan.
A group of boys and men followed her. It was
early June eighteen sixty six. The crowd was rowdy, jeering, pushing,
trying to get a clearer view of this person who
had been called a thing, a monstrosity. The woman was small,
(00:39):
barely five feet. She had dark hair and a round face,
porcelain skin. Her shoulders were back, her eyes unafraid, she
kept walking. The crowd of hecklers grew bigger. They hurled
insults and threatened to throw worse. Finally, a policeman was
called to disperse the mob. Instead, he arrested the woman.
(01:00):
He grabbed her roughly by the arm and marched her
to the station house. Her crime was a crime against
the community. She was ware barring pants, and that, in
eighteen sixty six was enough to cause a ride of
outrage and horror in New York City, of all places.
But there was something else she was wearing too. Pinned
(01:22):
to her chest, just above her heart was the Medal
of Honor. H I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Medal
of Honor. Stories of courage. The Medal of Honor is
the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for
gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life,
(01:42):
above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must
be approved all the way up the chain of command,
from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.
This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
nature of courage and sacrifice. Today you're going to meet
(02:03):
doctor Mary Walker, the first and so far the only
woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. She
worked as a surgeon during the Civil War, saving the
lives of Union soldiers. She was there at the famous
battles of Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, and Gettysburg. She crossed into dangerous
enemy territory to take care of civilians in need. She
(02:25):
was a prison of war and all her life Mary
fought for equal rights, not just for women, for everyone.
She saw the potential for extraordinary social reform at a
time when everyone else was just pointing and laughing at
her pants. Mary Walker's story is about the power of
a moral compass. We all have one, of course, but
(02:48):
some people have a compass that holds a little faster.
They follow it more faithfully, even when it sets them
on a path that's rocky and lonely and filled with hazards.
Mary Walker was one of those. Mary was born in
(03:10):
eighteen thirty two in Oswego, New York, the fifth daughter
of two free thinking farmers. Back then, that part of
upstate New York was a hotbed of progressive ideas. It
was the center of the abolitionist movement. The first Women's
Rights Convention was held in nearby Seneca Falls when Mary
was sixteen. All of the avant garde trends of the
(03:32):
nineteenth century were right there. Utopian socialism, the temperance movement,
spiritualism and seances, vegetarianism. If it was radical, it was
in the air, and Mary was breathing it in. Belief
in equality was table stakes in the Walker house. People
fleeing slavery would come to the Walker family's white framed
(03:54):
farm house in the middle of the night. It was
a stop on the underground railroad, the network used by
enslaved people running to freedom in the Northern States in Canada.
Early on, her parents taught her how important it was
to fight for justice. Mary and her sisters were educated
well into their teens very rare in those days, and
(04:15):
when young Mary announced that she was going to be
a doctor, her parents were all for it, even though
there were no women doctors at the time. The first
woman doctor in the US wouldn't graduate from medical school
until years later, eighteen forty nine. Just a year earlier,
a prominent doctor, the leading expert at the time in
women's medicine and obstetrics, and a man, of course, had
(04:38):
announced that a woman quote has a head almost too
small for the intellect, but just large enough for love.
But Mary found a new medical college that was co ed.
She started when she was twenty one. There she met
a man who was also studying to become a doctor.
They fell in love and got married. You don't really
need to know about her husband, truth be told, he's
(05:00):
the least interesting part of Mary's story, but you do
need to know about the wedding. It was remarkable for
three reasons. First, Mary insisted on striking obey from the
vows common now but unheard of then. Second, she didn't
take her husband's name. And third, and take note of
this one because it's going to be a theme, she
(05:23):
wore pants instead of a wedding gown pants. You're going
to hear about one of the truly extraordinary women of
the late nineteenth century whose feats of bravery were remarkable.
But it's all going to keep coming back to the pants.
Mary didn't believe in the corsets and heavy layered skirts
(05:44):
that ladies were expected to wear. They were just uncomfortable.
She said they were unhealthy. She was an unwavering supporter
of something called the reform dress, an uncorseted calf length
dress worn over a sensible pair of trousers. Mary saw
the reform dress as practical. The rest of the world
(06:06):
saw it as completely ridiculous. I'm going to have my
co conspirator on this podcast, Meredith Rollins, read Mary's words.
It's not just because she wrote this episode. It's because
she's kind of very obsessed.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
My studies in anatomy taught me the heinousness of the
crime against nature committed by the women who wore the
barbarous corseted dress. But the fools of men are repulsed
by the reform dress because they think it's wearer must
be a strong minded woman.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Strong minded is an understatement when it comes to Mary.
She didn't just wear pants. She shouted their benefits from
the rooftops. She wrote articles and went on lecture tours.
When Mary believed in something, she went in hard. It
was just who she was.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I was naturally timid as a girl, but had to
overcome this through strong convictions of duty. I have felt
that I must do what I believed was right, regardless
of consequences. I do not deserve credit for standing up
to my principles, for I could not do a wives.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Mary and her husband opened a medical practice together, but
patients didn't seem to be interested in a trouser clad
woman doctor. Her husband, it turns out, wasn't interested either.
They got divorced. No marriage, no patience. So in eighteen
sixty one, at the age of twenty eight, Mary lit
(07:32):
out for Washington, d C. She was a die hard
abolitionist and a patriot. The Civil War had just begun
and wounded soldiers poured into the capital. Mary wanted to help.
She made up her mind that she would join the
federal army as a surgeon. It didn't matter that the
army had no interest in hiring a woman doctor. Why
(07:53):
would that small detail matter to Mary? When she got
to d C. Mary appealed directly to the Secretary of
War and asked for a military commission. When he refused,
she offered her services for free at a local hospital.
Then she wrote home to her.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Family, I suppose you all expected me to go to war,
and I thought it would be too cruel to disappoint you.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Mary did not disappoint We'll be right back. It was
(08:38):
December of eighteen sixty two. More than two hundred thousand
soldiers were fighting over Fredericksburg, Virginia, a sleepy river town
located midway between d C And Richmond. The Confederate forces
were holding an impenetrable line with rifle and artillery fire.
As the Union soldiers advanced, wave after wave of them
(09:00):
just got shot down. By the end, twelve thousand to
five hundred men from the Union Army of the Potomac
were dead or dying on the battlefield. Those who could
be saved were brought to Lacey House, a plantation owner's
mansion turned makeshift hospital, and there was Mary right in
(09:20):
the middle of it, working by lamplight to save the wounded.
She tended teenage soldiers as they underwent brutal and often
lethal amputations. Doctors of the time believed it was better
and more expedient to saw off a damaged limb instead
of trying to save it. Mary disagreed, but she wasn't
in charge. She didn't have her military commission. She was
(09:42):
still a volunteer. The poet Walt Whitman was at Fredericksburg
searching for his younger brother George. He described the carnage
this way, a heap of feet, legs, arms, and human
fragments cut bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening. He
wrote about the dead bodies lined up in the garden,
(10:04):
each covered with its own woolen blanket. The nurse cl
Raah Barton, who had later found the American Red Cross,
was there too. While Mary was naturally wearing pants, Clara,
like all the other women, wore long skirts. She wrote later,
I wrung the blood from the bottom of my clothing
before I could step for the weight about my feet.
(10:29):
Mary darted from one patient to another, trying desperately to
stave off infection and disease. This was before antiseptics were
widely used, and surgeons would wipe their bloody instruments on
their aprons and move on to the next man. The
new York Tribune described her this way. Dressed in male habliments,
she carries herself amid the camp with a jaunty air
(10:51):
of dignity, well calculated to receive the sincere respect of
the soldiers. She can amputate a limb with the skill
of an old surgeon, and administer medicine equally as well.
Strange to say that, although she has frequently applied for
a permanent position in the medical court or she has
never been formally assigned to any particular duty. It would
(11:14):
take another three years for that to change. In February
of eighteen sixty four, Mary made her way to Georgia.
She was going to join the fifty second Ohio Volunteers
in Gordon's Mills on the muddy banks of the Chickamauga River.
Her title contract Civilian assistant Surgeon. It still wasn't an
(11:36):
official military commission, but it was the best rank she
could get, and she was finally getting paid like any
other soldier. Also, for the first time, she was allowed
to wear the uniform of a military surgeon. Mary was
the only woman doctor on either side of the conflict,
so her outfit was appropriately unique. A long dress like
(11:59):
jacket with the official surgeons green sash and pants. By now,
she had grown her hair as long as she could,
so that everybody would know she was a woman. The
men in charge saw the fact that she was a
woman as a bad thing. Mary saw it as the
complete opposite, a fantastic bonus.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
My education has cost me as much as that of
my learned brothers has cost them. I have had far
greater difficulties to overcome, and if any difference is to
be made, it ought to be in favor of the
female physician.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Mary was always her own biggest cheerleader, and just as
she had learned back home in Oswego, she was always
keenly attuned to suffering and injustice around her. The fifty
second Ohio Volunteers were stationed very close to Confederate health territory,
so skirmishes with the enemy were common. But as Mary
(12:54):
rode out from camp each day to tend to the troops,
she couldn't ignore the fact that Union soldiers weren't the
only ones suffering. Southern civilians had been ravaged by the
war too, and they had no medical care. Their doctors
had been rafted into the war long ago. Despite her
(13:14):
disgust for the rebel ideological cause. Mary asked her commanding
officer for permission to help the local settlements.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Both armies had been upon the ground, but the Confederate
Army had been all through there, pressing every man into service,
even those that were too young. And it left the women,
as they said, to root, hog or die. I cannot
tell you how sincerely I pitied those people.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
She spent whatever spare time she had helping children and widows,
treating typhoid and pulling teeth and delivering babies. Because she
was often traveling alone, she kept two revolvers hidden in
her saddlebags. But Mary was Mary, so she had to
add an extra layer of complication to whatever she was doing.
(14:01):
She wasn't just helping the civilians. She was working as
a spy William Tacumsas Sherman, who was preparing to march
on Atlanta. And while Mary was out doctoring, she was
gathering information, listening to gossip, watching for movements in the
communities she was serving. Later, the Judge Advocate General would
(14:25):
write that Mary quote gained information that led General Sherman
to so modify his strategic operations as to save himself
from a serious reverse and obtained success or defeat before
seemed to be inevitable. This is the other way that
being a woman doctor was uniquely useful to Mary. She
(14:46):
was in the perfect disguise a woman doctor. He was
simply too insane to take seriously. But soon enough her
luck ran out. She was captured and arrested outside of
Union lines. In April eighteen sixty four. The Confederates sent
her to prison in Richmond, Virginia. It was called and
I Love this Castle Thunder. A captain witnessed Mary's arrival
(15:11):
in Richmond and wrote, we were all amused and disgusted
too at the sight of a thing that nothing but
the debased and depraved Yankee nation could produce, a female doctor.
Castle Thunder was situated in a former tobacco warehouse, a
hulking three story brick building with bars on the windows.
(15:31):
It was a notorious place, overcrowded and filthy. Disease was rampant. Mary,
like all of the inmates, quickly became malnourished, slowly starving
to death because true to form, she was giving her
food away to people who needed it more.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
The peas were always wormy, the rice was musty or
contained vermin, the bacon in several instances, was so rotten
that its odor was unendurable to me after it was served.
But it was never so bad that I always found
someone who would gladly accept my ration.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The theme of this whole story has been how indomitable
Mary was, but this is the part that nearly broke her.
The prison guards kept gas lamps burning day and night,
which let off toxic smoke, and Mary's eyes got infected.
She tried to keep her spirits up, writing jolly letters home,
promising her parents that she would soon be exchanged for
(16:27):
a Confederate prisoner and return to safety. She was, as
ever optimistic, but that prisoner exchange took longer than Mary
had hoped. Her release was delayed over and over again.
She slowly grew weaker, her eyesight got worse. It might
have occurred to a less confident person that the army
(16:49):
that never really wanted her wouldn't be fighting very hard
to get her back, but Mary never saw herself that way.
Her compass held even when things were at their worst.
She believed she had so much to offer the world
that she would never be forgotten or ignored.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
As she put it, I will always be as somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
More on Mary. After a quick break. Seven months into
his presidency, Andrew Johnson was facing a truly annoying problem.
There was this woman. She had spent years in Washington,
(17:37):
d c. And the capital in those years operated like
a small town. This lady knew everyone, the late President
Lincoln and the future President Grant, Frederick Douglas, and Susan B. Anthony.
She was like a pine size zelig in pants. We're
talking about Mary, but she figured that out already. It
was November of eighteen sixty five. The war was over,
(18:00):
and Mary was determined to get the government to acknowledge
the work that she'd done. By God, she wanted her commission.
She started a letter writing campaign. She showed up at
people's offices. She was no longer working as a surgeon.
After about five months at Castle Thunder, the Confederate prison,
her eyesight was permanently damaged, so she had plenty of
(18:20):
time for her other great passion, pestering the government. She
believed that women, not just herself, but all women, deserve
credit and payment for their war efforts.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Not until this cruel war has ceased and peace shall
again be ours at a dozen histories be written containing
all the facts and events. Not I say, until then
shall the world know how much women have done.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
President Johnson must have been desperate for Mary to leave
him alone. He convened a group of officials to figure
out what to do about her, and they came up
with an answer, the Medal of Honor. Let me give
this a little context. The Medal of Honor had only
been created four years earlier away for the federal military
to incentivize new troops to sign up. In this early incarnation,
(19:15):
the medal wasn't just awarded to the most extraordinary heroes
as it is today. It was the only military award
at the time, so it went to pretty much everyone
who did something special. One thousand, five hundred and twenty
two people got the Medal of Honor for their service
in a civil war. To put that into perspective, that's
(19:37):
almost half of the medals ever awarded to this day.
What Mary really wanted was that retroactive military commission, because
it would have meant a pension, plus she saw commission
as a useful wedge. It might open the door so
that other women could join the military. But while Mary
(19:57):
saw a commission as a useful wedge, to the military
brass it was a slippery slope straight to chaos. Imagine
thousands of Mary's just telling you what they think, wearing
pale terrifying. So instead they gave her the Medal of Honor.
The Judge Advocate General wrote to President Johnson saying, this
(20:18):
really was the way to go, and there was no
danger of a slippery slope because Mary's quote sacrifices her
fearless energy under circumstances of peril, her endurance of hardship
and imprisonment at the hands of the enemy, and especially
her active patriotism and eminent loyalty end of quote were
(20:38):
so singular that giving her the Medal of Honor wouldn't
set a precedent. He believed it was simply impossible for
it to ever happen. Again. That certainly proved to be prescient.
She is still the only woman to have been awarded
the Medal of Honor. Mary was delighted by the medal.
The men in charge believed she would now go away,
(21:01):
But we know Mary, she wasn't going to go away. Instead,
she used the medal to give herself an even bigger platform,
a way to keep talking about the things that mattered
to her, and that she believed should matter to everyone.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
It is literally impossible for one with any force of
character and humanity to remain in the background when convinced
by knowledge and reason that their mission is one that
will result in great good.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Here's the thing. She wasn't just working as a surgeon
during the war. She had all these charitable side hustles.
She had worked as an advocate for the disabled and
for soldiers who'd been unfairly accused of deserting. She had
founded the Women's Relief Organization, which gave housing to wives
and mothers of wounded Union army men. She was constantly
(21:52):
advocating for social change, and now with the Medal of
Honor pinned to her chest, Mary took her advocacy on
tour as usual. The topics she picked were decades ahead
of her time. She lectured on universal suffrage, indigenous people's rights,
the health risks of tobacco. She was the first woman
(22:15):
to give an address from the Speaker of the House's
desk uninvited. Of course, she ran for office even when
she couldn't vote. Then, in January eighteen seventy two, all
of her fighting scored an actual victory on Mary's behalf.
United States Congressman Benjamin Butler, a former Union general, introduced
(22:37):
a bill to the House that would benefit quote all
the women who labored for the sick and wounded during
the late war. It passed, the women would be granted
twenty dollars monthly pensions roughly four hundred and sixty six
dollars today, only slightly lower than the pension paid to
male soldiers who had been wounded in the war. It
(22:58):
was Mary's biggest triumph, and yet all the newspapers wanted
to talk about was her pants. They reported breathlessly when
she was met with those jeering crowds and police in
New York. The exact same thing happened in New Orleans
once she was robbed at gunpoint, and one columnist noted,
(23:20):
if she will persist in dressing like a man, she
must expect to be mistaken for a man and sometimes
enjoy the inalienable right of being robbed like any other man.
Mary and this must have gotten tedious for her, corrected
them over and over.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I do not wear men's clothes. I wear my own clothes.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
But it took its toll.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Every jeer has cut me to the quick. Many times
have I gone to my room and wept after being
publicly derided. No one knows or will ever know, what
it has cost me to live up to my principles,
to be consistent with my convictions. But I have done it,
and I am not sorry for.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
It, Which brings us back to theme Mary's moral compass.
And how does a compass work? North is north, East
is east, west is west, south is south. It doesn't
have a gauge for what, say, the weather's like, or
tell you if there's been a landslide and you can't
actually go do north anymore because of a giant rock pile.
(24:29):
Mary's moral compass was a little like that. It didn't
really check for ground conditions. Let me give you an example.
In eighteen seventy three, Mary decided she wanted a job
in the US Treasury. She'd heard they were hiring women,
so she marched herself into the Executive Mansion, the precursor
of the White House, where President Ulysses S. Grant lived.
(24:52):
I mean, can you imagine this today? It's bananas. She
set up camp in the east room and vowed to
stay until she got a position at the Treasury. Grant
capitulated with two conditions, one that she never occupied the
executive mansion again, and the other that she wear traditional
women's clothing to work. Maybe Mary said she would do that.
(25:15):
It seems unlikely, but she took the job, and she
showed up for her first day at the Treasury wearing pants.
They didn't let her in the building. She came back
the following day still in pants. They turned her away again.
This went on for more than a year. And that's
what you don't get for standing by your unshakable moral convictions,
(25:37):
the chance to be one of the first history making
women in the Treasure department. The pants got in the way.
Mary spent the following decades advocating for the causes that
were dear to her heart. She traveled the country and
the world on the lecture circuit, but upstate New York
always called her home. She bought her parents farm house
(26:00):
and settled near her siblings, none of whom, it's worth noting,
had ever caught the activism bug in the way that
Mary did. In her family, as in the rest of
her life, she stood out. Over the years, Mary's reform
dress evolved into a dapper suit coat, trousers, and a
silk top hat. She was arrested for wearing pants one
(26:22):
final time in nineteen thirteen, when she was eighty and
walking with a cane, and then around the time the
United States entered World War One, Mary then eighty four,
received a letter in the mail. It informed her that
she was one of nine hundred and eleven Medal of
Honor recipients whose medal was being revoked. They called it
(26:46):
the Great Purge of nineteen seventeen. Congress had imposed a
new standard for military decorations and applied it retroactively. The
Medal of Honor would be the highest in a pyramid
of awards requiring gallantry beyond the call of duty and
at the risk of life and limb. It would only
be given to an officer or enlisted person, which at
(27:08):
that point meant it was only for men. A special
board made up of five retired Army generals was assigned
to review each of the Medals of Honor that had
been awarded up to that point. Mary's medal didn't make
the cut. It was supposedly because she was never a
commissioned officer, but other male civilian doctors didn't have their
(27:31):
medals taken away. It wasn't about Mary's lack of commission.
It was because of her sex. Mary was ordered to
return her medal to the War Department. To wear it
or publicly display it would be a misdemeanor. That was
a decree she had no intention of following. She never
(27:52):
sent her medal back, she never took it off. She
wore it until nineteen nineteen when she died where she
was born, in a place where she learned to care
so deeply about humanity asweg of New York. After Mary's death,
her good friend and fellow doctor Bertha Van Houton wrote this,
(28:13):
Doctor Mary's life should remind us that when people do
not think as we do, do not dress as we do,
and do not live as we do, that they are
more likely to be a half century ahead of their time,
and that we should have for them, not ridicule, but reverence.
We talk a lot about originals, risk takers, independent thinkers, visionaries.
(28:38):
In America. We celebrate those people, particularly if they're successful.
Doctor Mary Walker was incontrovertibly and original. But there's a
downside to being on the vanguard. You have to have
a high tolerance for discomfort.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
All people are not heroes. In all things, Women as
well as men who can endure to be misunderstood for
a great length of time are few.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Indeed, eventually mar her metal back in nineteen seventy seven,
she had predicted it. She was uncannily on the right
side of history on most issues, including herself.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I have got to die before people will know who
I am and what I've done. It is a great
shame that people who lead reforms in this world are
not appreciated until after they're dead. Then the world pays
its tribute by piling rocks over the grave of the reformer.
I would be thankful if people would treat me decently
now instead of erecting great piles of stone over me
(29:41):
after I'm dead. But then that's human nature.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
An unshakable moral compass comes with a price. It did
for Mary. And I'm not talking about the eggs thrown
at her on the street, the heckling mobs. I'm not
even really talking about the lack of recognition. I'm talking
about her instinctive decision to stick to her compass no
matter where it led her, even when it actively worked
(30:08):
against her bead interests. She just couldn't help herself. She
had to do what was right. In essence, she had
to wear those pants. Here's what I think those five
generals during the Great Purge of nineteen seventeen missed something
crucial about the Medal of Honor. It isn't the risk
(30:29):
of life and limb that sets Medal of Honor recipients apart.
It's knowing what's right and then doing it, no matter
the cost. By that measure, Doctor Mary Walker is as
deserving as it gets. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage
(30:57):
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins,
Constanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter. The show is edited by
Ben daph Haffrey, Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski,
recording engineering by Nita Lawrence, fact checking by Arthur Gombert's
Original music by Eric Phillips. And If you want to
(31:17):
learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us
on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and videos
of the heroes featured on this show. We'd also love
to hear from you dm us with a story about
a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't know
a veteran, we would love to hear a story of
how courage was contagious in your own life. You can
(31:39):
find us at Pushkinbods. I'm your host, Malcolm Glamwell
Pushkin. A woman walked down a street in Lower Manhattan.
A group of boys and men followed her. It was
early June eighteen sixty six. The crowd was rowdy, jeering, pushing,
trying to get a clearer view of this person who
had been called a thing, a monstrosity. The woman was small,
(00:39):
barely five feet. She had dark hair and a round face,
porcelain skin. Her shoulders were back, her eyes unafraid, she
kept walking. The crowd of hecklers grew bigger. They hurled
insults and threatened to throw worse. Finally, a policeman was
called to disperse the mob. Instead, he arrested the woman.
(01:00):
He grabbed her roughly by the arm and marched her
to the station house. Her crime was a crime against
the community. She was ware barring pants, and that, in
eighteen sixty six was enough to cause a ride of
outrage and horror in New York City, of all places.
But there was something else she was wearing too. Pinned
(01:22):
to her chest, just above her heart was the Medal
of Honor. H I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Medal
of Honor. Stories of courage. The Medal of Honor is
the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for
gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life,
(01:42):
above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must
be approved all the way up the chain of command,
from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.
This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
nature of courage and sacrifice. Today you're going to meet
(02:03):
doctor Mary Walker, the first and so far the only
woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. She
worked as a surgeon during the Civil War, saving the
lives of Union soldiers. She was there at the famous
battles of Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, and Gettysburg. She crossed into dangerous
enemy territory to take care of civilians in need. She
(02:25):
was a prison of war and all her life Mary
fought for equal rights, not just for women, for everyone.
She saw the potential for extraordinary social reform at a
time when everyone else was just pointing and laughing at
her pants. Mary Walker's story is about the power of
a moral compass. We all have one, of course, but
(02:48):
some people have a compass that holds a little faster.
They follow it more faithfully, even when it sets them
on a path that's rocky and lonely and filled with hazards.
Mary Walker was one of those. Mary was born in
(03:10):
eighteen thirty two in Oswego, New York, the fifth daughter
of two free thinking farmers. Back then, that part of
upstate New York was a hotbed of progressive ideas. It
was the center of the abolitionist movement. The first Women's
Rights Convention was held in nearby Seneca Falls when Mary
was sixteen. All of the avant garde trends of the
(03:32):
nineteenth century were right there. Utopian socialism, the temperance movement,
spiritualism and seances, vegetarianism. If it was radical, it was
in the air, and Mary was breathing it in. Belief
in equality was table stakes in the Walker house. People
fleeing slavery would come to the Walker family's white framed
(03:54):
farm house in the middle of the night. It was
a stop on the underground railroad, the network used by
enslaved people running to freedom in the Northern States in Canada.
Early on, her parents taught her how important it was
to fight for justice. Mary and her sisters were educated
well into their teens very rare in those days, and
(04:15):
when young Mary announced that she was going to be
a doctor, her parents were all for it, even though
there were no women doctors at the time. The first
woman doctor in the US wouldn't graduate from medical school
until years later, eighteen forty nine. Just a year earlier,
a prominent doctor, the leading expert at the time in
women's medicine and obstetrics, and a man, of course, had
(04:38):
announced that a woman quote has a head almost too
small for the intellect, but just large enough for love.
But Mary found a new medical college that was co ed.
She started when she was twenty one. There she met
a man who was also studying to become a doctor.
They fell in love and got married. You don't really
need to know about her husband, truth be told, he's
(05:00):
the least interesting part of Mary's story, but you do
need to know about the wedding. It was remarkable for
three reasons. First, Mary insisted on striking obey from the
vows common now but unheard of then. Second, she didn't
take her husband's name. And third, and take note of
this one because it's going to be a theme, she
(05:23):
wore pants instead of a wedding gown pants. You're going
to hear about one of the truly extraordinary women of
the late nineteenth century whose feats of bravery were remarkable.
But it's all going to keep coming back to the pants.
Mary didn't believe in the corsets and heavy layered skirts
(05:44):
that ladies were expected to wear. They were just uncomfortable.
She said they were unhealthy. She was an unwavering supporter
of something called the reform dress, an uncorseted calf length
dress worn over a sensible pair of trousers. Mary saw
the reform dress as practical. The rest of the world
(06:06):
saw it as completely ridiculous. I'm going to have my
co conspirator on this podcast, Meredith Rollins, read Mary's words.
It's not just because she wrote this episode. It's because
she's kind of very obsessed.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
My studies in anatomy taught me the heinousness of the
crime against nature committed by the women who wore the
barbarous corseted dress. But the fools of men are repulsed
by the reform dress because they think it's wearer must
be a strong minded woman.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Strong minded is an understatement when it comes to Mary.
She didn't just wear pants. She shouted their benefits from
the rooftops. She wrote articles and went on lecture tours.
When Mary believed in something, she went in hard. It
was just who she was.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I was naturally timid as a girl, but had to
overcome this through strong convictions of duty. I have felt
that I must do what I believed was right, regardless
of consequences. I do not deserve credit for standing up
to my principles, for I could not do a wives.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Mary and her husband opened a medical practice together, but
patients didn't seem to be interested in a trouser clad
woman doctor. Her husband, it turns out, wasn't interested either.
They got divorced. No marriage, no patience. So in eighteen
sixty one, at the age of twenty eight, Mary lit
(07:32):
out for Washington, d C. She was a die hard
abolitionist and a patriot. The Civil War had just begun
and wounded soldiers poured into the capital. Mary wanted to help.
She made up her mind that she would join the
federal army as a surgeon. It didn't matter that the
army had no interest in hiring a woman doctor. Why
(07:53):
would that small detail matter to Mary? When she got
to d C. Mary appealed directly to the Secretary of
War and asked for a military commission. When he refused,
she offered her services for free at a local hospital.
Then she wrote home to her.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Family, I suppose you all expected me to go to war,
and I thought it would be too cruel to disappoint you.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Mary did not disappoint We'll be right back. It was
(08:38):
December of eighteen sixty two. More than two hundred thousand
soldiers were fighting over Fredericksburg, Virginia, a sleepy river town
located midway between d C And Richmond. The Confederate forces
were holding an impenetrable line with rifle and artillery fire.
As the Union soldiers advanced, wave after wave of them
(09:00):
just got shot down. By the end, twelve thousand to
five hundred men from the Union Army of the Potomac
were dead or dying on the battlefield. Those who could
be saved were brought to Lacey House, a plantation owner's
mansion turned makeshift hospital, and there was Mary right in
(09:20):
the middle of it, working by lamplight to save the wounded.
She tended teenage soldiers as they underwent brutal and often
lethal amputations. Doctors of the time believed it was better
and more expedient to saw off a damaged limb instead
of trying to save it. Mary disagreed, but she wasn't
in charge. She didn't have her military commission. She was
(09:42):
still a volunteer. The poet Walt Whitman was at Fredericksburg
searching for his younger brother George. He described the carnage
this way, a heap of feet, legs, arms, and human
fragments cut bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening. He
wrote about the dead bodies lined up in the garden,
(10:04):
each covered with its own woolen blanket. The nurse cl
Raah Barton, who had later found the American Red Cross,
was there too. While Mary was naturally wearing pants, Clara,
like all the other women, wore long skirts. She wrote later,
I wrung the blood from the bottom of my clothing
before I could step for the weight about my feet.
(10:29):
Mary darted from one patient to another, trying desperately to
stave off infection and disease. This was before antiseptics were
widely used, and surgeons would wipe their bloody instruments on
their aprons and move on to the next man. The
new York Tribune described her this way. Dressed in male habliments,
she carries herself amid the camp with a jaunty air
(10:51):
of dignity, well calculated to receive the sincere respect of
the soldiers. She can amputate a limb with the skill
of an old surgeon, and administer medicine equally as well.
Strange to say that, although she has frequently applied for
a permanent position in the medical court or she has
never been formally assigned to any particular duty. It would
(11:14):
take another three years for that to change. In February
of eighteen sixty four, Mary made her way to Georgia.
She was going to join the fifty second Ohio Volunteers
in Gordon's Mills on the muddy banks of the Chickamauga River.
Her title contract Civilian assistant Surgeon. It still wasn't an
(11:36):
official military commission, but it was the best rank she
could get, and she was finally getting paid like any
other soldier. Also, for the first time, she was allowed
to wear the uniform of a military surgeon. Mary was
the only woman doctor on either side of the conflict,
so her outfit was appropriately unique. A long dress like
(11:59):
jacket with the official surgeons green sash and pants. By now,
she had grown her hair as long as she could,
so that everybody would know she was a woman. The
men in charge saw the fact that she was a
woman as a bad thing. Mary saw it as the
complete opposite, a fantastic bonus.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
My education has cost me as much as that of
my learned brothers has cost them. I have had far
greater difficulties to overcome, and if any difference is to
be made, it ought to be in favor of the
female physician.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Mary was always her own biggest cheerleader, and just as
she had learned back home in Oswego, she was always
keenly attuned to suffering and injustice around her. The fifty
second Ohio Volunteers were stationed very close to Confederate health territory,
so skirmishes with the enemy were common. But as Mary
(12:54):
rode out from camp each day to tend to the troops,
she couldn't ignore the fact that Union soldiers weren't the
only ones suffering. Southern civilians had been ravaged by the
war too, and they had no medical care. Their doctors
had been rafted into the war long ago. Despite her
(13:14):
disgust for the rebel ideological cause. Mary asked her commanding
officer for permission to help the local settlements.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Both armies had been upon the ground, but the Confederate
Army had been all through there, pressing every man into service,
even those that were too young. And it left the women,
as they said, to root, hog or die. I cannot
tell you how sincerely I pitied those people.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
She spent whatever spare time she had helping children and widows,
treating typhoid and pulling teeth and delivering babies. Because she
was often traveling alone, she kept two revolvers hidden in
her saddlebags. But Mary was Mary, so she had to
add an extra layer of complication to whatever she was doing.
(14:01):
She wasn't just helping the civilians. She was working as
a spy William Tacumsas Sherman, who was preparing to march
on Atlanta. And while Mary was out doctoring, she was
gathering information, listening to gossip, watching for movements in the
communities she was serving. Later, the Judge Advocate General would
(14:25):
write that Mary quote gained information that led General Sherman
to so modify his strategic operations as to save himself
from a serious reverse and obtained success or defeat before
seemed to be inevitable. This is the other way that
being a woman doctor was uniquely useful to Mary. She
(14:46):
was in the perfect disguise a woman doctor. He was
simply too insane to take seriously. But soon enough her
luck ran out. She was captured and arrested outside of
Union lines. In April eighteen sixty four. The Confederates sent
her to prison in Richmond, Virginia. It was called and
I Love this Castle Thunder. A captain witnessed Mary's arrival
(15:11):
in Richmond and wrote, we were all amused and disgusted
too at the sight of a thing that nothing but
the debased and depraved Yankee nation could produce, a female doctor.
Castle Thunder was situated in a former tobacco warehouse, a
hulking three story brick building with bars on the windows.
(15:31):
It was a notorious place, overcrowded and filthy. Disease was rampant. Mary,
like all of the inmates, quickly became malnourished, slowly starving
to death because true to form, she was giving her
food away to people who needed it more.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
The peas were always wormy, the rice was musty or
contained vermin, the bacon in several instances, was so rotten
that its odor was unendurable to me after it was served.
But it was never so bad that I always found
someone who would gladly accept my ration.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The theme of this whole story has been how indomitable
Mary was, but this is the part that nearly broke her.
The prison guards kept gas lamps burning day and night,
which let off toxic smoke, and Mary's eyes got infected.
She tried to keep her spirits up, writing jolly letters home,
promising her parents that she would soon be exchanged for
(16:27):
a Confederate prisoner and return to safety. She was, as
ever optimistic, but that prisoner exchange took longer than Mary
had hoped. Her release was delayed over and over again.
She slowly grew weaker, her eyesight got worse. It might
have occurred to a less confident person that the army
(16:49):
that never really wanted her wouldn't be fighting very hard
to get her back, but Mary never saw herself that way.
Her compass held even when things were at their worst.
She believed she had so much to offer the world
that she would never be forgotten or ignored.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
As she put it, I will always be as somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
More on Mary. After a quick break. Seven months into
his presidency, Andrew Johnson was facing a truly annoying problem.
There was this woman. She had spent years in Washington,
(17:37):
d c. And the capital in those years operated like
a small town. This lady knew everyone, the late President
Lincoln and the future President Grant, Frederick Douglas, and Susan B. Anthony.
She was like a pine size zelig in pants. We're
talking about Mary, but she figured that out already. It
was November of eighteen sixty five. The war was over,
(18:00):
and Mary was determined to get the government to acknowledge
the work that she'd done. By God, she wanted her commission.
She started a letter writing campaign. She showed up at
people's offices. She was no longer working as a surgeon.
After about five months at Castle Thunder, the Confederate prison,
her eyesight was permanently damaged, so she had plenty of
(18:20):
time for her other great passion, pestering the government. She
believed that women, not just herself, but all women, deserve
credit and payment for their war efforts.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Not until this cruel war has ceased and peace shall
again be ours at a dozen histories be written containing
all the facts and events. Not I say, until then
shall the world know how much women have done.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
President Johnson must have been desperate for Mary to leave
him alone. He convened a group of officials to figure
out what to do about her, and they came up
with an answer, the Medal of Honor. Let me give
this a little context. The Medal of Honor had only
been created four years earlier away for the federal military
to incentivize new troops to sign up. In this early incarnation,
(19:15):
the medal wasn't just awarded to the most extraordinary heroes
as it is today. It was the only military award
at the time, so it went to pretty much everyone
who did something special. One thousand, five hundred and twenty
two people got the Medal of Honor for their service
in a civil war. To put that into perspective, that's
(19:37):
almost half of the medals ever awarded to this day.
What Mary really wanted was that retroactive military commission, because
it would have meant a pension, plus she saw commission
as a useful wedge. It might open the door so
that other women could join the military. But while Mary
(19:57):
saw a commission as a useful wedge, to the military
brass it was a slippery slope straight to chaos. Imagine
thousands of Mary's just telling you what they think, wearing
pale terrifying. So instead they gave her the Medal of Honor.
The Judge Advocate General wrote to President Johnson saying, this
(20:18):
really was the way to go, and there was no
danger of a slippery slope because Mary's quote sacrifices her
fearless energy under circumstances of peril, her endurance of hardship
and imprisonment at the hands of the enemy, and especially
her active patriotism and eminent loyalty end of quote were
(20:38):
so singular that giving her the Medal of Honor wouldn't
set a precedent. He believed it was simply impossible for
it to ever happen. Again. That certainly proved to be prescient.
She is still the only woman to have been awarded
the Medal of Honor. Mary was delighted by the medal.
The men in charge believed she would now go away,
(21:01):
But we know Mary, she wasn't going to go away. Instead,
she used the medal to give herself an even bigger platform,
a way to keep talking about the things that mattered
to her, and that she believed should matter to everyone.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
It is literally impossible for one with any force of
character and humanity to remain in the background when convinced
by knowledge and reason that their mission is one that
will result in great good.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Here's the thing. She wasn't just working as a surgeon
during the war. She had all these charitable side hustles.
She had worked as an advocate for the disabled and
for soldiers who'd been unfairly accused of deserting. She had
founded the Women's Relief Organization, which gave housing to wives
and mothers of wounded Union army men. She was constantly
(21:52):
advocating for social change, and now with the Medal of
Honor pinned to her chest, Mary took her advocacy on
tour as usual. The topics she picked were decades ahead
of her time. She lectured on universal suffrage, indigenous people's rights,
the health risks of tobacco. She was the first woman
(22:15):
to give an address from the Speaker of the House's
desk uninvited. Of course, she ran for office even when
she couldn't vote. Then, in January eighteen seventy two, all
of her fighting scored an actual victory on Mary's behalf.
United States Congressman Benjamin Butler, a former Union general, introduced
(22:37):
a bill to the House that would benefit quote all
the women who labored for the sick and wounded during
the late war. It passed, the women would be granted
twenty dollars monthly pensions roughly four hundred and sixty six
dollars today, only slightly lower than the pension paid to
male soldiers who had been wounded in the war. It
(22:58):
was Mary's biggest triumph, and yet all the newspapers wanted
to talk about was her pants. They reported breathlessly when
she was met with those jeering crowds and police in
New York. The exact same thing happened in New Orleans
once she was robbed at gunpoint, and one columnist noted,
(23:20):
if she will persist in dressing like a man, she
must expect to be mistaken for a man and sometimes
enjoy the inalienable right of being robbed like any other man.
Mary and this must have gotten tedious for her, corrected
them over and over.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I do not wear men's clothes. I wear my own clothes.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
But it took its toll.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Every jeer has cut me to the quick. Many times
have I gone to my room and wept after being
publicly derided. No one knows or will ever know, what
it has cost me to live up to my principles,
to be consistent with my convictions. But I have done it,
and I am not sorry for.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
It, Which brings us back to theme Mary's moral compass.
And how does a compass work? North is north, East
is east, west is west, south is south. It doesn't
have a gauge for what, say, the weather's like, or
tell you if there's been a landslide and you can't
actually go do north anymore because of a giant rock pile.
(24:29):
Mary's moral compass was a little like that. It didn't
really check for ground conditions. Let me give you an example.
In eighteen seventy three, Mary decided she wanted a job
in the US Treasury. She'd heard they were hiring women,
so she marched herself into the Executive Mansion, the precursor
of the White House, where President Ulysses S. Grant lived.
(24:52):
I mean, can you imagine this today? It's bananas. She
set up camp in the east room and vowed to
stay until she got a position at the Treasury. Grant
capitulated with two conditions, one that she never occupied the
executive mansion again, and the other that she wear traditional
women's clothing to work. Maybe Mary said she would do that.
(25:15):
It seems unlikely, but she took the job, and she
showed up for her first day at the Treasury wearing pants.
They didn't let her in the building. She came back
the following day still in pants. They turned her away again.
This went on for more than a year. And that's
what you don't get for standing by your unshakable moral convictions,
(25:37):
the chance to be one of the first history making
women in the Treasure department. The pants got in the way.
Mary spent the following decades advocating for the causes that
were dear to her heart. She traveled the country and
the world on the lecture circuit, but upstate New York
always called her home. She bought her parents farm house
(26:00):
and settled near her siblings, none of whom, it's worth noting,
had ever caught the activism bug in the way that
Mary did. In her family, as in the rest of
her life, she stood out. Over the years, Mary's reform
dress evolved into a dapper suit coat, trousers, and a
silk top hat. She was arrested for wearing pants one
(26:22):
final time in nineteen thirteen, when she was eighty and
walking with a cane, and then around the time the
United States entered World War One, Mary then eighty four,
received a letter in the mail. It informed her that
she was one of nine hundred and eleven Medal of
Honor recipients whose medal was being revoked. They called it
(26:46):
the Great Purge of nineteen seventeen. Congress had imposed a
new standard for military decorations and applied it retroactively. The
Medal of Honor would be the highest in a pyramid
of awards requiring gallantry beyond the call of duty and
at the risk of life and limb. It would only
be given to an officer or enlisted person, which at
(27:08):
that point meant it was only for men. A special
board made up of five retired Army generals was assigned
to review each of the Medals of Honor that had
been awarded up to that point. Mary's medal didn't make
the cut. It was supposedly because she was never a
commissioned officer, but other male civilian doctors didn't have their
(27:31):
medals taken away. It wasn't about Mary's lack of commission.
It was because of her sex. Mary was ordered to
return her medal to the War Department. To wear it
or publicly display it would be a misdemeanor. That was
a decree she had no intention of following. She never
(27:52):
sent her medal back, she never took it off. She
wore it until nineteen nineteen when she died where she
was born, in a place where she learned to care
so deeply about humanity asweg of New York. After Mary's death,
her good friend and fellow doctor Bertha Van Houton wrote this,
(28:13):
Doctor Mary's life should remind us that when people do
not think as we do, do not dress as we do,
and do not live as we do, that they are
more likely to be a half century ahead of their time,
and that we should have for them, not ridicule, but reverence.
We talk a lot about originals, risk takers, independent thinkers, visionaries.
(28:38):
In America. We celebrate those people, particularly if they're successful.
Doctor Mary Walker was incontrovertibly and original. But there's a
downside to being on the vanguard. You have to have
a high tolerance for discomfort.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
All people are not heroes. In all things, Women as
well as men who can endure to be misunderstood for
a great length of time are few.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Indeed, eventually mar her metal back in nineteen seventy seven,
she had predicted it. She was uncannily on the right
side of history on most issues, including herself.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I have got to die before people will know who
I am and what I've done. It is a great
shame that people who lead reforms in this world are
not appreciated until after they're dead. Then the world pays
its tribute by piling rocks over the grave of the reformer.
I would be thankful if people would treat me decently
now instead of erecting great piles of stone over me
(29:41):
after I'm dead. But then that's human nature.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
An unshakable moral compass comes with a price. It did
for Mary. And I'm not talking about the eggs thrown
at her on the street, the heckling mobs. I'm not
even really talking about the lack of recognition. I'm talking
about her instinctive decision to stick to her compass no
matter where it led her, even when it actively worked
(30:08):
against her bead interests. She just couldn't help herself. She
had to do what was right. In essence, she had
to wear those pants. Here's what I think those five
generals during the Great Purge of nineteen seventeen missed something
crucial about the Medal of Honor. It isn't the risk
(30:29):
of life and limb that sets Medal of Honor recipients apart.
It's knowing what's right and then doing it, no matter
the cost. By that measure, Doctor Mary Walker is as
deserving as it gets. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage
(30:57):
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins,
Constanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter. The show is edited by
Ben daph Haffrey, Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski,
recording engineering by Nita Lawrence, fact checking by Arthur Gombert's
Original music by Eric Phillips. And If you want to
(31:17):
learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us
on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and videos
of the heroes featured on this show. We'd also love
to hear from you dm us with a story about
a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't know
a veteran, we would love to hear a story of
how courage was contagious in your own life. You can
(31:39):
find us at Pushkinbods. I'm your host, Malcolm Glamwell
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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