by Chris Enss
Pinkerton gladly accepted the post of major, heading McClellan’s “Secret Service,” and overseeing all intelligence gathering throughout the western theater. As E. J. Allen, he assumed the role of a gentleman from Augusta, Georgia, traveling the backwaters on horseback and infiltrating troubled border areas.14
As early as September 1862, Dr. Walker had written to the secretary of war:
I again offer my services to my country. . . . I refer to my being sent to Richmond under a “flag of truce” for the relief of our sick soldiers and then use the style ([of double communication in writing their necessities]) that I invented, to give you information as [to] their forces and plans and any important information. No one knows what the style of writing is, except Hon. Mssrs. Cameron Seward and Mr. Allen of the “Secret Service” . . . Any “secret service” that your Hon. Body may wish performed will find in me one eminently fitted to do it.15
Mary’s own words, as well as her reference to Mr. Allen, clearly indicate that her intent was to subtly elicit and gather intelligence regarding Confederate military forces’ locations and strengths, while portraying herself and performing her duties as a physician within the enemy’s countryside. Sharon M. Harris, in her Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832–1919, contends that the idea “the detective [Pinkerton] would have sought to engage Mary in the corps of his Secret Service is plausible.”16 The only response Mary received from this offer was said to have been written with careful words. It simply stated that her request for “employment in Secret Service” had been referred to Major General Henry Wager Halleck, the army’s general in chief.17
Learning about the devastation resulting from the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), and knowing that she would not receive a commission from the War Department, Dr. Walker headed straight for where she knew the need was greatest: the encampment near Warrenton, which held 120,000 men.18 Presenting herself at the Virginia headquarters of Major General Ambrose Burnside, Mary was taken on as a field surgeon.
Back in the Federal capital city, by the time President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect (signed, with finalized issuance) on January 1, 1863, Dr. Walker was becoming known as a political force in Washington, even joining President Lincoln at the Sixth Street Wharf as the Confederate prisoners of Chancellorsville arrived, and attending the annual Democratic receptions for the remainder of her life.
Almost one year after working with Burnside at Warrenton, Walker volunteered at the Chattanooga battlefield hospital in Tennessee, tending the masses of wounded soldiers after the Battle of Chickamauga, and meeting General George H. Thomas, who would prove to be an invaluable contact. Still wanting an official appointment to go to the battlefront, Mary devised and presented a plan to Secretary of War Stanton. Three days before Thomas was appointed commander of the Army of the Cumberland, on November 2, 1863, Mary wrote Stanton an unprecedented proposal: She wanted to establish a regiment of her own, named “Walker’s U.S. Patriots,” in which she would act as first assistant surgeon.19 Mary appealed directly to Lincoln in January 1864 after receiving Stanton’s rejection; he, too, denied her offer.
Needing a replacement assistant surgeon, General George H. Thomas recollected his own observations of Dr. Walker’s skills, demonstrated during the Chickamauga Campaign, and wielded his authority as commander of the Army of the Cumberland. He intervened on Mary’s behalf, and assigned Dr. Walker as the Fifty-Second Ohio Volunteers’ civilian contract surgeon on March 14, 1864. Special Order No. 8 instructed her to “report without delay to Colonel Dan McCook.”20
As directed, Dr. Walker reported to Gordon’s Mills in northern Georgia, across the state line from Chattanooga. By the time Dr. Walker arrived at Gordon’s Mills, most of the severe cases had been transported. It is while she was there that Colonel McCook suggested to Mary that she extend herself beyond the Union lines, to “render aid” to those needing medical (and dental) attention in the war-torn region around the Georgia-Tennessee border. Harris writes, “But her assignment there may have been for reasons beyond her medical skills.” In her book A Woman of Honor: Dr. Mary E. Walker and the Civil War, Mercedes Graf adds, “There is some disagreement as to the nature of Walker’s work in the countryside the winter of 1864. It was rumored that she had submitted a plan that involved her ‘spying’ for the Union while she acted as a contract surgeon. Since she often went deep into enemy territory to assist civilians with their medical problems, she had the perfect cover for such an activity.”21
Although there are varied opinions among historians regarding Dr. Walker’s spy status, Reverend Nixon B. Stewart, regimental historian of the Fifty-Second, documented, “How she got her commission ‘no one seemed to know.’ . . . [She] provided little in the way of medical services to . . . men of the 52nd. . . . It seems that she never was carried on the rolls, nor do we find her name on the Roster of Ohio soldiers. . . . She began to practice in her profession among the citizens. . . . Every day she would pass out of the picket line. . . . All this time many of the boys believed her to be a spy.”22
According to the book Healers and Achievers: Physicians Who Excelled in Other Fields and the Times in Which They Lived, author Raphael S. Bloch asserts that General George H. Thomas, commander of the Army of the Cumberland, confirmed Dr. Walker’s efforts as a Civil War spy in writing years after the fact: “She desired to be sent to the 52nd [sic] Ohio as Acting Assistant Surgeon, so that she might get through our lines and get information of the enemy.”23 Harris further substantiates when she writes, “In 1865 the judge advocate general [Joseph Holt] revealed that ‘at one time [she] gained information that led General Sherman to so modify his strategic operations as to save himself from a serious reverse and obtain success where defeat before seemed to be inevitable.’ ”24
Dr. Mary Walker was the most honored operative in Allan Pinkerton's Secret Service. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Historians assert that Walker’s request for a pension increase in the late 1870s was denied due to her services as a spy. Bloch continues the case by saying,
A decade after the war ended, one government agency was more forthcoming about her espionage. When in 1876 Mary petitioned the Federal Pension Office for a pension increase based on her contract surgeon service, the request was denied. The commissioner wrote, “Your appointment as contract surgeon was made for the purpose, not of performing duties pertaining to such office, but that you might be captured by the enemy to enable you to obtain information concerning their military affairs; in other words, you were to act in the role of a spy for the United States military authorities.”
The statement leaves little room for doubt about his view of her mission. It also suggests that her capture by the Confederacy was planned, to facilitate her surveillance of the enemy.25
Argues Bloch: “President Johnson’s order on November 11, 1865, awarding Walker the Medal of Honor, also hints that she served as a spy: ‘. . . Much of the service rendered by her to the Government could not have been accomplished by a man.’ ”26
Even Senate Report No. 237 of the 46th Congress, 2d Session, dated February 9, 1880, implies that among the services rendered by Dr. Walker was that of spying. Within the report, it reads:
The petitioner [Walker, who was petitioning for her pension] was assigned to duty as hospital nurse, March 12, 1864. . . . It appears that while acting in this capacity she wandered outside of the lines, and was taken prisoner, in accordance with a preconcerted arrangement entered into between her and the Federal officers, the petitioner thinking that she might obtain information while in the hands of the enemy which would be of value to the Federal officers.27
On April 10, 1864, while on an “expedition” and returning to Gordon’s Mills, where she had been many times before, the doctor reportedly took a wrong road, encountering enemy pickets commanded by General Daniel Harvey Hill. Suddenly finding herself a prisoner of war, she was arrested and taken into
Confederate custody less than one month after her assignment to the Fifty-Second.28
Harris states, “Five days after Mary’s capture, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered all women to leave Union battlefield areas. Many women and military leaders ignored the command, but what few knew was that Grant probably feared the exposure of the military’s use of a woman spy.”29 The new prisoner of war was transported to General Joseph E. Johnston’s headquarters at Dalton, Georgia, on April 12, 1864.
After recovering from major injuries sustained at the Battle of Seven Pines (May 31–June 1, 1862), Johnston was somewhat demoted and given command of the Western Department of the Confederacy, mostly an administrative post. According to Bloch, “During the Confederate occupation of Dalton, in the winter of 1863–1864, General Joseph E. Johnston and his staff officers were entertained in the Blunt house [home of Cherokee missionary Ainsworth Emery Blunt and wife Elizabeth]. While held there [Johnston’s headquarters] for a week, [Dr. Walker] consented to treat some sick Southern soldiers.” One of those may have been the general himself, because in early April, Johnston was laid up again with lingering problems from his wound. Now he was forced to contend with Dr. Mary E. Walker. After being held for several days, Walker was transported by rail some 700 miles to Castle Thunder Prison in Richmond, Virginia.30
Seized by the Confederate government for military purposes, Castle Thunder was in actuality three separate, large, old redbrick tobacco warehouses. Many Castle Thunder prisoners were awaiting death sentences due to the nature of their crimes. By November 1862, the prison was less than one year old, and run by new commandant Captain George W. Alexander, who was developing his reputation for brutality after only one month; even by Southerners’ standards it was considered fearsome. The reports of unnecessary brutality brought about a Confederate House of Representatives investigation in the spring of 1863, possibly close to the time of Mary’s incarceration.31
Mary’s arrival at Castle Thunder received lots of publicity from the area newspapers. Graf states, “Many Southerners, however, assumed that Walker had engaged in spying activities for her government. Why else would she have been arrested? Their speculations would have seemed justified if they had been privy to the statement made the following year by the Judge Advocate General [Holt].” She continues by saying, “Nevertheless, she [Walker] had every intention of being a spy if the opportunity presented itself. A telegram from Army Headquarters substantiates this.”
She then goes on to report Thomas’s aforementioned letter. Furthering her case, Graf states, “A terse reply to Thomas from E. D. Townsend, Assistant Adjutant General, strongly suggests that Walker had been engaged in trying to gather information from the enemy as she rode about the countryside: ‘Telegram received. Is there anything due the woman, and if so, what amount for secret service or other services. The object is to give her some funds in her need if anything is due.’ ” General Thomas responded to Townsend, “Her services have no doubt been valuable to the Government, and her efforts have been earnest and untiring and have been exerted in a variety of ways.”32
Dr. Walker was never charged as a spy. After four months of imprisonment, she was exchanged on August 12, 1864, as a surgeon for a Southern surgeon with the rank of major. In the subsequent years, she would apply for a pension due to the effects of imprisonment rendering her unable to perform as a surgeon, and would continue to press for her commission, even writing General Sherman, stating that she had “acted in various capacities.”33 The commission she so desperately wanted and deserved continued to elude her for her remaining days. Relieved of duty on May 25, 1865, Mary and the army parted ways. Her service officially ended June 15, 1865.
After having been petitioned by Dr. Walker’s many supporters, President Andrew Johnson was still unable to grant her request for a commission. However, driven by his belief that she deserved commendation of some kind, Johnson persisted until he found that Congress had passed an act in 1862 which allowed the US president, at his sole discretion, to award the Medal of Honor to an individual showing “unusual gallantry in action.” In November of 1865, Mary received notification that President Johnson had signed the presidential order awarding her the Medal of Honor, making her the only woman to receive the country’s highest military honor. It immediately became her most prized possession, and she wore it every day for the remainder of her life.34
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker died on February 21, 1919, at the age of eighty-seven, and was buried in the family plot at Rural Cemetery in Oswego, New York.35
Notes
1. “Mary Edwards Walker,” About North Georgia (www.aboutnorthgeorgia.com/ang/Mary_Edwards_Walker); “Mary Edwards Walker,” American Civil War.com (americancivilwar.com/women/mary_edwards_walker.html).
2. “History,” Congressional Medal of Honor Society (www.cmohs.org/medal-history.php).
3. “Dr. Mary E. Walker,” Association of the United States Army (www.ausa.org/dr-mary-e-walker); “Mary Edwards Walker, Civil War Doctor,” St. Lawrence Branch of AAUW (stlawrence.aauw-nys.org/walker.htm).
4. St. Lawrence Branch of AAUW (stlawrence.aauw-nys.org/walker.htm).
5. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, pp. 9–10; Graf, A Woman of Honor: Dr. Mary E. Walker and the Civil War, pp. 44–46; Leonard, Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War, pp. 106–07.
6. Leonard, Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War, pp. 106–07.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, pp. 26–33.
10. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 26–33; Graf, A Woman of Honor, p. 24.
11. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 26–33.
12. Ibid.
13. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 26–33; Bonansinga, Pinkerton’s War: The Civil War’s Greatest Spy and the Birth of the US Secret Service, pp. 139–40.
14. Bonansinga, Pinkerton’s War: The Civil War’s Greatest Spy and the Birth of the US Secret Service, pp. 139–40.
15. Ibid.
16. Graf, A Woman of Honor, p. 65.
17. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 57–58.
18. Ibid., pp. 57–65.
19. Fitzgerald, Mary Walker: Civil War Surgeon and Feminist, p. 47; Graf, A Woman of Honor, p. 30; Leonard, Yankee Women, pp. 120–21.
20. Leonard, Yankee Women, pp. 120–21; Graf, A Woman of Honor, pp. 52–55.
21. Graf, A Woman of Honor, pp. 52–55; Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 55–57.
22. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 55–57; Graf, A Woman of Honor, pp. 52–55.
23. Graf, A Woman of Honor, p. 58; Bloch, Healers and Achievers: Physicians Who Excelled in Other Fields and the Times in Which They Lived, p. 610.
24. Graf, A Woman of Honor, pp. 55–58; Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 55–57.
25. Bloch, Healers and Achievers, pp. 610–17; Graf, A Woman of Honor, pp. 66–68.
26. Bloch, Healers and Achievers, pp. 610–17.
27. Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States for the First and Second Sessions, 1879–1880.
28. Graf, A Woman of Honor, p. 63; Bloch, Healers and Achievers, pp. 610–17.
29. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, p. 58.
30. Bloch, Healers and Achievers, pp. 610–17.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Graf, A Woman of Honor, pp. 61–62.
34. Graf, A Woman of Honor, pp. 61–62; Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 73–74.
35. Harris, Dr. Mary Walker, pp. 73–74; Graf, A Woman of Honor, p. 79.
Chapter Ten
Operatives L. L. Lucille and Miss Seaton
The newspaper ad that appeared in publications throughout the city of Chicago in 1861 highlighted the talents of a fortune-teller named L. L. Lucille. The remarkable soothsayer whose descendants were from Egypt was making her first appearance in the Midwest, and invited residents to visit her at the Templ
e of Magic anytime between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. “She will cast the horoscope of all callers,” the advertisement boasted. “She will tell them the events of their past life and reveal what the future has in store. The Great Asiatic Sibyl proudly announced that she had cast the horoscope of all the crowned heads of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and specialized in helping the sorrowful and afflicted. She will tell who loves you; who hates you; and who is trying to injure you. She will show you your future husband or wife.” The fee for such services was $10.00.1
According to Allan Pinkerton, who had written the notice about Lucille, the trade of fortune-telling was unique at the time, and many people were attracted to the idea. Pinkerton described the mystic’s place of business on Clark Street as nearly square, with a large mirror the shape of the doorway on one end. His description continued:
The wall and windows were draped with dark colored material that blocked any sunlight from getting through. There was a swinging lamp in all four corners of the room and one in the center. They were bronze and silver, with Oriental patterns, and they swung slowly around in a circle. Several charts, mystic symbols, and small gloves filled low shelves and a variety of tables. Near one of the tables was a small table upon which stood a peculiarly shaped retort, [vessel or chamber in which substances are distilled or decomposed by heat] and from this, issued pungent, aromatic incense.
It was into this mystic, perfumed setting that L. L. Lucille would greet enthusiastic patrons anxious to receive predictions about important aspects of their lives. Customers waited for the fortune-teller in a lounge area furnished with large easy chairs. At just the right time, the medium would slip into the room through the folds of a curtain at one side of a gigantic mirror. Kate Warne played the part of L. L. Lucille, and Pinkerton wrote in his case files that “he hardly knew her, so great was her disguise.” Kate’s face and hands were stained a clear olive, and instead of wearing her hair up as she usually did, it hung down in heavy masses to her waist. She wore a long dress made from rich fabric and trimmed with Oriental accents. She carried a small wand around which twined two serpents at the top. Her whole appearance was dignified and imposing. Pinkerton was confident that Kate would deliver a convincing performance and help apprehend the woman attempting to kill one of the agency’s clients, Captain J. N. Sumner.