A legendary life
Mary Edwards Walker
1832 – 1919
Surgeon, abolitionist, prisoner of war, and the only woman awarded the Medal of Honor.
Her story
A life that changed history
Mary Edwards Walker earned a medical degree and volunteered with the Union Army during the Civil War despite resistance to women physicians. She treated soldiers and civilians, was captured as a prisoner of war, and later campaigned for women's rights and dress reform.
“There cannot be love without respect, and there cannot be respect unless there is implicit confidence.”
Hit: Essays on Women’s Rights, “Love and Marriage,” 1871
“True conjugal companionship is the greatest blessing of which mortals can conceive in this life—to know that there is supreme interest in one individual, and that it is reciprocated.”
Hit: Essays on Women’s Rights, “Love and Marriage,” 1871
“Every faculty of our being is capable of cultivation and of restraint—and our reason and observation are for the purpose of assisting and inducing action in effecting these designs, of correcting the evil, and cultivating the good.”
Hit: Essays on Women’s Rights, “Love and Marriage,” 1871