The three phases are connected by consistency of character: in each, she assessed a situation, concluded that the institutional response was inadequate or wrong, and continued doing what she had concluded was right despite the institutional resistance. The persistence was not defiance for its own sake but confidence in her own assessment, applied across different circumstances over nine decades of life.
## The Question of Recognition She Never Received
It is worth noting what Walker did not receive in her lifetime, alongside what she did.
She did not receive a formal military commission. The Army rejected every request she made for commissioned status. The specific form of recognition that would have placed her on equal legal footing with the male physicians who served alongside her was never granted.
She did not, by most accounts, build a successful civilian medical practice after the war. The barriers that had frustrated her joint practice with Miller in the late 1850s continued to operate in her post-war life. She was a physician who could not fully practice her profession on the terms she had trained for.
She did not, in her lifetime, see the constitutional suffrage amendment ratified. The vote she had argued women were already entitled to was not cast by women in a federal election until 15 months after her death.
She did not see the Medal of Honor restored. The official acknowledgment of the question she had answered daily by wearing the medal — that the rescission was wrong and that the recognition belonged to her — came 58 years after the rescission and 58 years after her death.