Read the passage '
Mary Edwards Walker: Civil War Doctor' and
answer the question below:
Mary Edwards Walker: Civil War Doctor
Mary Edwards Walker: Civil War Doctor
1 Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation’s 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn
the Congressional Medal of Honor for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of
other women, was honored in the newlydedicated
Women in Military Service for America Memorial
in October 1997.
2 Controversy surrounded Walker throughout her life. She was born on November 26, 1832, in
the town of Oswego, New York, into an abolitionist family. Her birthplace on the Bunker Hill Road is
marked with a historical marker. Her father, a country doctor, was a free thinking participant in many
of the reform movements that thrived in upstate New York in the mid1800s.
He believed strongly in
education and equality for his five daughters: Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia (there was one
son, Alvah). He also believed they were hampered by the tightfitting
women’s clothing of the day.
3 Walker became an early enthusiast for Women’s Rights, and passionately espoused the issue of
dress reform. She discarded the unusual restrictive women’s clothing of the day. Later in her life she
donned full men’s evening dress to lecture on Women’s Rights.
4 In June 1855 Walker, the only woman in her class, joined the tiny number of women doctors in
the nation when she graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation’s first medical
school and one which accepted women and men on an equal basis. She graduated at age 21 after
three 13week
semesters of medical training for which she paid $55 each.
5 In 1856 she married another physician, Albert Miller. At their wedding, Walker wore trousers
and a man’s coat, and later decided to keep her own name. Together they set up a medical practice
in Rome, N.Y., but the public was not ready to accept a woman physician, and their practice
floundered.
6 When war broke out, Walker came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a
commission as a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon —
the first female surgeon in the U.S. Army. As an unpaid volunteer, she worked in the U.S. Patent
Office Hospital in Washington. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for
almost two years (including Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga).
7 In September of 1863, Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the
Cumberland for which she made herself a slightly modified officer’s uniform to wear, in response to
the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. She was then appointed
assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this assignment it is generally accepted that she
also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. She was taken
prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was
English 11 2nd semester exam Page 2 of 28
exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for seventeen Confederate surgeons.
8 She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war
practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan’s asylum in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16
for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20, but still
less than some widows’ pensions.
9 On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognize her
contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman
ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country’s highest military award.
10 In 1917 her Congressional Medal, along with the medals of 910 others, was taken away when
Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include “actual combat with an enemy.” She
refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. A relative told
the New York Times: “Dr. Mary lost the medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of
her time and no one could stomach it.” An Army board reinstated Walker’s medal posthumously in
1977, citing her “distinguished gallantry, selfsacrifice,
patriotism, dedication, and unflinching loyalty to
her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex.”
11 After the war, Mary Edwards Walker became a writer and lecturer. She toured here and abroad
lecturing on Women’s Rights, dress reform, health, and temperance issues. Women’s clothing, she
said, was immodest and inconvenient. She was elected president of the National Dress Reform
Association in 1866. She was also something of an inventor, coming up with the idea of using a return
postcard for registered mail. She wrote extensively, including a combination biography and
commentary called Hit and a second book, Unmasked, or The Science of Immortality. She died in
the town of Oswego on February 21, 1919, and is buried in the Rural Cemetery on the Cemetery
Road.
12 A 20¢ stamp honoring Dr. Mary Walker was issued in Oswego, N.Y., on June 10, 1982. The
stamp commemorates the first woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and
the second woman to graduate from a medical school in the United States.
“Mary Edwards Walker, Civil War Doctor” from www.northnet.org, A Women of Courage profile written and produced by the St.
Lawrence County, NY Branch of the American Association of University Women. Used by permission.
1. Which technique does the author use to convince the reader that Mary Edwards Walker deserved the
Congressional Medal of Honor?
A. an appeal to emotion
B. bandwagon
C. an appeal to authority
D. testimonial
See Luttke for correct answer.
