The Army needed a different mechanism if it was going to give Walker any formal recognition at all. The Medal of Honor, which had been used somewhat broadly during the war for a range of distinguished service, was that mechanism. By giving Walker the medal, the Army could formally acknowledge her service without creating a commissioned officer category that the existing law did not support.
This context matters for the 1917 rescission. The medal was given in 1865 specifically as an alternative to the commission that the law would not allow. It was given precisely because Walker was a civilian and could not receive the commissioned recognition her service would otherwise have warranted. When the 1917 board then struck her name on the grounds that she was a civilian and therefore ineligible, it was applying a standard that inverted the original logic of the award: she had been given the medal because she was a civilian and could not receive a commission, and she lost it because she was a civilian and therefore did not qualify.
The generals and the President who authorized the original award understood the situation. They were not making an error or a sentimental gesture. They were using the available legal instrument to accomplish a recognition they had concluded was justified. The 1917 board, applying different standards retroactively, reached a different conclusion without fully engaging with the original logic.
## The National Woman Suffrage Association and the Walker Disagreement
The specific strategic dispute between Mary Edwards Walker and the mainstream suffrage movement deserves more attention than it usually receives, because it reflects a genuine substantive disagreement rather than mere personality conflict.