She was not the only person arrested under these ordinances in the period. Cross-dressing arrests were a persistent feature of urban law enforcement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, targeting a range of people whose clothing choices violated conventional gender presentation. Walker’s arrests were distinctive because she made them into public arguments rather than quiet resolutions.
Her response to the New Orleans arrest — “I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own clothes” — is the most quoted version of an argument she made in many forms across the years. The specific phrasing is from accounts that may themselves be somewhat reconstructed rather than direct transcription, so the exact words should be treated as attributed rather than verbatim. But the substance of the argument was consistent with everything else she said and wrote about dress, women’s freedom, and the illegitimacy of conventions that served no purpose except to constrain women.
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**Slug:** mary-edwards-walker-civil-war-surgeon-medal-of-honor-rescission-restoration
**Meta description:** Mary Edwards Walker earned the Medal of Honor as a Civil War surgeon and prisoner of war. In 1917, a review board struck her name from the rolls. She refused to give back the medal and wore it until she died. The restoration came 58 years later.
**Category:** Overlooked History / Civil War Medicine
**Featured image hook:** A photograph of Mary Edwards Walker in formal men’s clothing with the Medal of Honor pinned to her lapel, circa 1870s-1880s, Oswego, New York.
**Tracking ID:** BM-CANDIDATE-081