When the Civil War began in the spring of 1861, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker shut down her practice and headed to Washington, DC, where she found a city overrun with soldiers wounded during the Battle of Bull Run.[4] Walker believed that she had an obligation to act that inaction wasn't an option, Dante Alighieri wrote that “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” [5]
She went straight to Secretary of War Simon Cameron and presented herself as a willing and able surgeon. Cameron found her a modified Bloomer costume and would not consider commissioning a woman for any rank above a nurse. Her services were readily accepted by Dr. J.N. Green, the lone surgeon of the Indiana Hospital, a makeshift infirmary hastily set up inside the unfinished U.S. Patent …show more content…
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 corps, she has never been formally assigned to any particular duty.”[4]
The Tribune continued to criticize the military's reluctance to recognize her efforts, asking, "If a woman is proved competent for duty, and anxious to perform it, why restrain her?"[4] Even President Abraham Lincoln would not invite a national controversy by appointing a female physician to the Union Army, even one he knew had been acting in such capacity on nearly half a dozen battlefields. In 1864, Lincoln wrote a carefully worded letter to Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
“The Medical Department of the army is an organized system in the hands of men supposed to be learned in that profession and I am sure it would injure the service for me, with strong hand, to thrust among them anyone, male or female, against their
She went straight to Secretary of War Simon Cameron and presented herself as a willing and able surgeon. Cameron found her a modified Bloomer costume and would not consider commissioning a woman for any rank above a nurse. Her services were readily accepted by Dr. J.N. Green, the lone surgeon of the Indiana Hospital, a makeshift infirmary hastily set up inside the unfinished U.S. Patent …show more content…
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 corps, she has never been formally assigned to any particular duty.”[4]
The Tribune continued to criticize the military's reluctance to recognize her efforts, asking, "If a woman is proved competent for duty, and anxious to perform it, why restrain her?"[4] Even President Abraham Lincoln would not invite a national controversy by appointing a female physician to the Union Army, even one he knew had been acting in such capacity on nearly half a dozen battlefields. In 1864, Lincoln wrote a carefully worded letter to Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
“The Medical Department of the army is an organized system in the hands of men supposed to be learned in that profession and I am sure it would injure the service for me, with strong hand, to thrust among them anyone, male or female, against their