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