Walt Whitman:
The Civil War through the eyes of The Wound Dresser
Walt Whitman is widely regarded as being one of the greatest poets America has produced. Revolutionary in both style and subject matter, his poetry has impacted generations of poets and thinkers since, and continues to permeate our culture in modern times. Aside from being an artistic and literary figure, though, Whitman was a first-hand witness to one of our nation’s most critical periods of history: The American Civil War. His experiences with this monumental moment in history provided desperately needed relief for wounded soldiers, shaped his poetry for the remainder of his life, and provide modern readers with a unique perspective into the way an artist experienced war.
Walt Whitman was, at his core, devoted to the Union. In his poem, “America”, Whitman describes a nation of equal members, all vital to the whole, and “Song of Myself” is full of language of equality and oneness. So, when it became clear that the nation was on the verge of tearing in two, Whitman was adamantly in favor of the Northern goal of preserving the Union rather than letting it be split in two. While his political and philosophical views tied him to the North, though, his main concern was not battles, legislation, or proclamations, but rather the men who fought for those causes. While Whitman’s poems about America told of freedom, equality, and unity, his verses on the war that divided it concerned humanity and the aftermath that war wrought on its participants. His experiences near the battlefield and in the hospitals, caring for the wounded profoundly impacted him personally, and this strong identification carried over into his writing.
The Essay on Cold War: Cuba and Latin America
There were several motivations for United States policy in Latin America during the 1950’s and the 1960’s. Some of these motivations included the applying of the policy of containment in Latin American to stop the spread of communism. Another motivation was to stop the growing alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union. All of these motivations were set in place to avoid the development of a ...
Prior to the outbreak of the war, with saber-rattling beginning on both sides of the Mason-Dixon, Whitman was living in New York City and his poetry concerning war at this time was not negative, proclaiming, “War! an arm’d race is advancing! The welcome for battle, no turning away;” (Morris, 44).
He, like the rest of America, had no idea how long or deadly the impending war would be. Even when President Lincoln called on 75,000 volunteers to squash the rebellion and Walt’s brother George volunteered, their correspondence show that neither was worried about the possibility of an extended conflict, and George doubted that he would ever even see battle.
Whitman had been volunteering at Broadway Hospital for several years, taking care of injured stagecoach drivers, when the war broke out in 1861. The hospital began to fill with sick and injured soldiers, many suffering from measles after leaving their rural homes for the first time. He spent every Sunday with the soldiers, keeping them company, as few of them had any relatives or friends in New York City. He kept them company, making conversation and reading them his poetry and stories by other authors. As the war progressed and the casualties increased, his visits to the hospital became more frequent, and on weekends he visited nearby Fort Greene where he sought out firsthand accounts of the war, which was still being fought distantly. His investment in the war deepened when, in December 1862, Walt read a casualty report in the New York Tribune and saw listed: “First Lieutenant G.W. Whitmore [sic], Company D” (Morris, 47).
Knowing the harsh conditions that injured soldiers suffered, Walt headed to aftermath of the battle in Fredericksburg, Virginia to find his brother – dead or alive.
After some searching, Whitman found his brother in good spirits and good health, having been wounded only in the cheek by a shell fragment. At the Union camp in Fredericksburg, Whitman first experienced the true horror of war in the form of “’a heap of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening’” (Morris, 52).
The Essay on World War I Soldier
Second Battle of the Marne It was in the summer of 1918 that Germany would commence their battle against the Allied Forces in what would become known as the Second Battle of the Marne, which would be the last major German offensive of World War I (Michael Duffy, 2009). It was this battle that would mark Germany’s last attempt of turning the tables of the war in their favor, though it was destined ...
The mansion of J. Horace Lacy, a confederate sympathizer, was being used as a field hospital, and that was where Whitman began his time as a “Wound-Dresser” (Whitman, 360).
Here, he also met American Cross founder Clara Barton. Though they had little interaction (both devoted their focus to the wounded soldiers), they were kindred spirits, both having brought food, tobacco, whiskey, and cheerful kindness to the wounded in their home cities, and expanding their efforts to the battlefields when it became apparent that the war would be longer and deadlier than anyone had thought. During his time in Fredericksburg, Whitman penned his first poem of the war, though an unfinished one, “Sights-The Army Corps, Encamped on the War Field”. This would be the first of his many reflections on the Civil War.
Whitman left the battlefield after a few weeks and traveled to Washington, having vowed to never return to New York. He secured a job at an army paymaster’s office and continued to volunteer as a nurse in army hospital. Presently, he also began work on Drum-Taps, the work that would later make Whitman’s name synonymous with Civil War literature. Whitman’s experience of war’s tragedy intensified when, in 1864, George was captured by Confederates in Virginia. After another brother, Andrew Jackson, died of tuberculosis and he had to commit a third brother, Jesse, to an insane asylum, Whitman needed a lift in spirits. Through the help of R.W. Emerson and other writers with connections in the government, he received a job as a clerk in the Department of the Interior. George was released a few months later, and Walt continued to hold government jobs in Washington through the end of the war until 1872 when his mother fell into poor health.
One of these government jobs, and perhaps the most important to his poetry, was in the Attorney General’s office, where, among other things, he interviewed former Confederate soldiers do determine those fit for Presidential pardon. In 1865, less than a month after the end of the Civil War ended, Whitman published Drum-Taps. It was received well, much better than the first several editions of Leaves of Grass had been. The eulogistic poem for President Lincoln, “O Captain! My Captain!” was widely popular, being Whitman’s only poem anthologized during his lifetime (Woodress, 56-58)
The Term Paper on War Poems 2
Wars pre-1914 were very different to WW1. Wars such as the Boer War and the Crimean War were fought by soldiers using mainly sabres and muskets. These wars had little in the way of powerful weaponry such as heavy weight machine guns. WW1 also saw the beginning of trench warfare, tanks, planes and gases. Almost all of the poetry written during WW1 was written while the soldiers were on the front ...
It has been shown here already that Whitman’s involvement in the Civil War effort was extensive, and that his identification with the soldiers who fought for both sides was deeply personal. But how exactly did that impact his poetry? Would Whitman have written differently had he lived in a unified nation without slavery? A reading of Drum Taps and the war-inspired poems in the later editions of Leaves of Grass will answer these questions; one will find that his poetry was synonymous to America’s plight. In “To Thee, Old Cause!” Whitman describes how a specific cause shaped Leaves of Grass:
To thee, old Cause!
Thou peerless, passionate, good cause!
He continues later…
These recitatives for thee-my Book and the War are one,
Merged in its spirit I and mine- as the contest hinged on thee.
As a wheel on its axis turns, this Book, unwittingly to itself,
Around the Idea of thee. (Whitman, 430)
This “Cause” remains unspecified throughout the poem, but Whitman’s reference to “the War” leads one to believe he is referring to the Union’s cause of maintaining itself. The poem also reveals that the war defined his all of his writings from that point forward. Again, in “1861,” Whitman writes about the war and the year it was begun. He declares it a “year of the struggle” and a “hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year” and mourns it as a year when he found no pleasure in music, poetry, or art. Surely, every poem from 1861 forward was informed, some more than others, by his stark experiences with suffering and humanity in the Civil War.
Much of the poetry that drew from these experiences concerned the actual soldiers that he treated. In “The Wound-Dresser,” Whitman describes his experiences dressing the wounds of the wounded, setting broken limbs, and telling stories to ease their spirits. He writes:
O maidens and young men I love, and that love me,
What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls…
….From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;
Back on his pillow the soldier bends, with curv’d neck, and side-falling head;
His eyes are close, his face is pale, (he dares not look on the bloody stump,
The Essay on Comparison Of Whitman And Dickenson Poems
America experienced profound changes during the mid 1800s. New technologies and ideas helped the nation grow, while the Civil War ripped the nation apart. During this tumultuous period, two great American writers captured their ideas in poetry. Their poems give us insight into the time period, as well as universal insight about life. Although polar opposites in personality, Emily Dickinson and ...
And has not yet look’d on it.) (Whitman, 360, 362).
Whitman’s descriptions of the soldiers he cared for goes on for sixty-two lines, showing just how much their presence in his life, though fleeting, impacted him. He enshrines their memory, their struggle, and their moments of death. Again, in “Dirge For Two Veterans,” he mourns the death of a father and son who died together:
For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them (Whitman, 366).
This, again, pays tribute to men who made the ultimate sacrifice; men who would remain unknown if not for the homage Whitman paid with a poem. These, and many other poems concerning wounded and dead soldiers, bring to light the obligation Whitman felt to those for whom he cared. He felt a duty to commemorate the lives, struggles, and deaths of men whose sacrifices would otherwise go unknown. Furthermore, each soldier remains nameless in these poems, giving the loved ones of every fallen soldier the hope and comfort that their son or husband, brother or father, was in caring hands when he died, and that a great poet memorialized his death. In essence, every casualty of the American Civil War, whether Union or Confederate, was the subject of the many poems Whitman wrote chronicling the lives of the few that impacted him.
These men did impact him, perhaps more than most readers comprehend. He loved each soldier he cared for, platonically, of course, but the fact that Whitman was homosexual adds an additional level to our understanding of his kindness toward these men. Whitman had wrestled with his sexuality for as long as he had been writing poetry, confessing early on:
Beneath this impassive face the hot fire of hell continually burn- within me the lurid
Smutch and the smoke;
Not a crime that can be named but I have it in me waiting to break forth,
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,
I walk with delinquents with passionate love (Morris, 28).
Whitman felt embarrassment from his homosexuality for much of his life. His early romantic interests either never knew of Walt’s feelings, because of his need to hide who he was in the culture that rejected his sort of love, or rejected his advances. One of these failed early loves was a New York City coach driver with whom Whitman lived. He later wrote the poem “Hours Continuing Long” concerning this failed affair, in which he ends, “I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d” (Whitman, 486).
The Essay on Ancient Spartan Government Children Men And Slaves
During the time in which Sparta existed, Spartans were well aware of what to expect in their life. Spartan life was simple, yet disciplined. The government of Sparta was harsh, however it was orderly and stable. Spartan government provided a life in which Spartans were offered few choices, instead, many choices would be made for them. The form of government practiced in Sparta was controlling ...
This interaction led him to the eventual habit of volunteering at Broadway Hospital to care for injured cabbies, ultimately resulting in his affinity to care for wounded soldiers.
Whitman’s love for the soldiers for whom he cared had, in retrospect, a romantic component to it. Later in life, possibly due to one or more requited loves, Whitman grew to accept his own sexuality, often writing about it, however veiled, in Leaves of Grass. To modern gay writers and activists, Whitman’s poems alluding to homosexual love and those concerning his deep care for the wounded soldiers are fantastic examples of unembarrassed male love (Morris, 101).
However, despite his uncommon feelings toward the young men he encountered in the hospitals, Whitman’s actions were undoubtedly driven by kindness, not by a desire for romantic or sexual conquest. In much the same way a male nurse’s care for a wounded female soldier would be different than that of a female nurse’s, Whitman felt a special bond with men he treated, caring for them emotionally as well as physically. Whitman’s poem, “The Wound-Dresser,” concludes with an apt depiction of his love for the soldiers for whom he cared:
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips) (Whitman, 362).
Never before has such a beautiful verse been penned concerning the platonic love of a man for another man. All in all, Whitman made sure the men in his care were comforted and felt the love of another human being in the midst of their anguish, far from the familiar love of their families. In their dying moments, many young soldiers felt the comfort a kind, bearded, grandfatherly figure easing the loneliness of their passing.
Finally, any discussion of any Civil War era figure would be incomplete without mentioning slavery and emancipation. Though Whitman’s involvement in the Civil War effort was undeniably a testament to his kindness, this kindness had its limits. This limit was found in Whitman’s attitude toward slavery and even freed blacks. Though living in the Union his entire life, he did not support abolition, and was a “Free-Soiler,” one who believed slavery should be allowed in the agricultural South where it was already had roots, but should not be extended to the North or the western territories of America. He once stated that “’the dangerous and fanatical insanity of “Abolitionism” [is] as impractical as it is wild” (Morris, 81).
Whitman Essay Love Relationship Speaker
Whitman Essay Love is the greatest gift that God has bestowed upon mankind. Defining love is different for every culture, race, and religion. Walt Whitman's love is ever changing for anyone who tries to love him or understand his work. Love can be broken down into a multitude of emotions, and feelings towards someone or some object. In order to find love that is searched for, preparations must be ...
Furthermore, though he was strongly devoted to the Union’s goal of restoring America as one nation, he sympathized with white Southerners. When he spent three months as editor of the New Orleans Crescent, he undoubtedly observed the way of life in the slave-owning South, both of the slaves and their owners, but concluded that it worked well in its current confinement only, and should go no further. When discussing the issue with an abolitionist minister, Whitman declared, “I don’t care for the niggers in comparison with all this suffering and the dismemberment of the Union” (Morris, 119).
As far as the war was concerned, the issue of secession and reunification was far greater to Whitman than the plight of slaves.
In his poetry, though, Whitman was much more sympathetic toward slaves. In Leaves of Grass, he portrays both the suffering and the dignity of the slave, writing in “Song of Myself”:
I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen;
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore drips, thinn’d with the ooze of my skin;
I fall on the weeds and stones; (Whitman, 44).
Here, Whitman gives a voice to suffering slaves, including them in his list of all the people who are part of him. Another poem in Leaves of Grass gives voice to a freed slave; in “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors,” Whitman tells of an encounter with a freed slave woman named Ethiopia. The poem, written in 1871, is a reflection on the abolition of slavery (Reynolds, 46).
Here speaking in his own voice, he addresses Ethiopia as she approaches the Union army:
Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?
Then, he speaks in Ethiopia’s voice, giving a voice of dignity to the freed slaves:
Me, master, years a hundred, since from my parents sunder’d,
A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught;
Then hither me, across the sea, the cruel slaver brought (Whitman, 444).
He concludes the poem by surmising her reaction to the colors (The Union Flag) is due to the difference of her newly freed life to the enslaved life she had lived. Here, it seems that Whitman is voicing appreciation to Union on behalf of the newly emancipated slaves. All in all, he treated slaves and freed blacks with compassion in his poetry, but even once freed, Whitman’s personal view was that blacks should not have full rights of citizenship or the right to vote. Whitman addresses this apparent hypocrisy in “Song of Myself,” declaring:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large-I contain multitudes) (Whitman, 66).
Even though Whitman was a man who was stuck in the culture of racism in which he lived, in his poetry he treated slaves and freed blacks as equally as the President, the prostitute, the drunk, the carpenter, or the soldier; each was woven into the song of Walt Whitman.
Leaves of Grass has captured, for countless readers, the sense of unity that ties every man and woman, and especially every American, together. Walt Whitman’s ideals of acceptance and love make for great poetry, but they were also the ideals by which Whitman lived his life. His sense of devotion to every dying soldier was not just the kindness of an elderly gay man, but a living instruction as to how every American should treat veterans of war: men who chose to offer their lives to preserve the freedom that Whitman praises in numerous poems about America. When it came down to the individual, to him there was no Union or Confederate, black or white, but simply a nation of people singing a song, which Whitman compiled into his “Song of Myself.” The American Civil War, though tragic, was a lens through which Whitman could further encapsulate those core ideals and visions, moving generations of readers hence to a greater sense of what it means to love, what it means to be human, and what it means to be American.
