Capt. Sally Tompkins was awarded her military rank merely to satisfy the technical requirement that Richmond’s Robertson Hospital be run by an officer. And in that hospital, she did amazing work. She cared for 1,333 soldiers with only 73 deaths, the lowest mortality rate of any military hospital in the Civil War. But that relationship to the Confederate States of America, her acceptance of a commission in order to continue doing the work of saving soldier’s lives, seems to have tarnished the Mathews native’s modern reputation. By modern, we mean in just the last few years. Tompkins was one of only a dozen women selected to be honored with bronze statues as part of Voices from the Garden: The Virginia Women’s Monument on Richmond’s Capitol Square. The final statues were installed this May … but Tompkins was conspicuously not a part of the dozen (now 11). What happened? Among other things, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. His 2020 death sparked a m...