I COULD NOT DO OTHERWISE

A biography of a woman born “one hundred years before her time.”

Born to freethinking White abolitionist farmers in New York’s Finger Lakes region in 1832, Mary Edwards Walker became an early advocate for women’s rights, especially clothing reform. She eschewed corsets as unhealthy and endured ridicule for wearing loose shortened skirts over long trousers. She became one of the country’s first female physicians when she graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855 and, after a brief, unhappy marriage, overcame considerable prejudice to become a surgeon for the Union Army during the Civil War, a part-time spy, Confederate prisoner, and the only female recipient of the Medal of Honor. But despite the award, which she cherished, the government for years refused her the pension male soldiers received. Walker became a popular paid lecturer, but her outspoken personality, insistence on dress reform, and open criticism of some influential suffragists’ lack of support for racial equality eventually caused her to be ostracized by the leaders of the suffrage movement and all but forgotten to history. Mary’s attire and appearance became more conventionally masculine as she aged, but she does not seem to have regarded herself as transgender. Latta’s carefully researched story, drawn primarily from contemporary accounts and featuring many photographs, places Walker in the context of her time and shows her as the complicated and principled person she was.

An eye-opening and engaging tribute to a fascinating historical figure.