President Johnson signed the legislation that awarded, on the recommendation of General W.T. Sherman, the Medal of Honor, the Union's highest award for valor to Mary E. Walker who, serving as a nurse had crossed battle lines to treat wounded and had been captured and imprisoned in the Confederacy. Later Army reforms in 1917 saw her removed from the official list of recipients but President Carter officially restored the award to her in 1977. She is still, in 2016, the only female holder of the medal. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Dale L. Walker, Mary Edwards Walker: Above and Beyond (New York: MacMillan, 2005), np.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Women/Families
