She came back from Castle Thunder thin and weakened, with the lasting muscular effects that the pension record documents. She continued working. After her Army contract expired she supervised a women’s prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and led an orphanage in Clarksville, Tennessee. The capacity for sustained institutional service, even in the depleted physical state her imprisonment had left her, was characteristic of a woman who did not stop working when things became harder.
## The Medal of Honor: 1865
The war ended with the Confederate surrender in April 1865. Walker returned to civilian life with no active Army employment, the same barrier to formal commission that had existed since the war began, and a request she now pressed with the support of her commanding officers.
She sought a retroactive military commission. The request was denied. The applicable law at the time did not provide a mechanism by which a civilian contract surgeon could receive a commission or honorary rank, whatever the merits of the individual case. The Army bureaucracy had no procedure for what she was asking.
What it did have was the Medal of Honor.
The medal had been established in 1861 and 1862 through congressional action, initially as an award for enlisted men of the Navy and Army and later extended to officers. By 1865 it had been awarded to hundreds of individuals for acts of valor in battle and for sustained distinguished service. It was not exclusively a combat valor award; it had been given for a range of service that the awarding authorities considered meritorious enough to warrant the distinction.