Walt Whitman and War

The war of 1861-65, between the Federal Government and the Southern Confederacy, was the most important period of Whitman's life.

In Specimen Days he narrated the story of the outburst of patriotic feeling in the North—the confident anticipations of easily suppressing what at first appears to have been mistaken for something of but little more consequence than a riot—the battle of Bull Run; and the feeling of stupor in the North consequent upon the result of that engagement; and the reaction following the defiant attitude of the great New York dailies.

The enthusiasm—for the war—aroused in New York is powerfully drawn in First, 0 Songs for a Prelude!¹ The forcible call to arms, Beat! Beat! Drums!²was probably inspired by recollections of the same circumstances.

In December, 1862, at the battle of Fredericksburgh, Whitman's brother George, a captain (subsequently lieutenant-colonel) in the 51st New York Volunteers, received a wound in the face,³ and the poet, having hurried South to look after his brother, was now introduced to experiences which made a lasting impression upon his mind. After being at the front but a very short time, he realised that, for the present, the work of his life lay with the army, in the hospitals and camps.

1 Leaves of Grass, p. 219.
2 Ibid, p. 222.
3 Prose, p. 71: "My brother, George W. Whitman—in active service all through, four years, re-enlisting twice—was promoted, step by step (several times immediately after battles), lieutenant, captain, major, and lieut.-colonel—was in the actions at Roanoke, Newbern, 2d. Bull Run, Chantilly, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson, the bloody conflicts of the Wilderness, and at Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and afterwards around Petersburgh."

Whitman's prose work, Specimen Days, up to the end of 1865, is mainly a record of his experiences and impressions in and about the military camps and hospitals. Some of the writing of this record is simple and commonplace; at times it is powerful, often pathetic, and occasionally even sublime.

"To anyone dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door;
Turn the bedclothes toward the foot of the bed;
Let the physician and priest go home!

I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will;
0 despairer, here is my neck;
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me!

I dilate you with tremendous breath; I buoy you up;
Every room of the house I fill with an arm'd force;
Lovers of me, bafflers of graves."¹

Whitman first published the above lines in 1855; in 1863-4-5 he was living them. The ideal, so strenuously insisted upon in the poems grouped as Calamus, of "intense and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate attachment of man to man,"² now becomes the familiar atmosphere of every-day life.

1 Leaves of Grass, p. 66. 2 Prose, p. 239.

Apart from such revelations of his movements in those years as Whitman has given us in Specimen Days, we have a more intimate account of his life in The Wound Dresser¹ - a collection of letters written by the poet from the camps and hospitals. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, quoting a letter from Specimen Days²—written by Whitman to the mother of a young soldier who had died after an amputation —remarks: "If you are of the weeping order of mankind, you will certainly find your eyes fill with tears, of which you have no reason to be ashamed."³ We may use precisely the same words with reference to the letters included in The Wound Dresser. They are simple and natural; no conscious appeal to the emotions of an audience; no word-painting, no straining after effect; just the every-day words that "a patient, helpful, reverent man, full of kind speeches "⁴ writes to his mother and other relatives, and nearly every page may draw tears. These letters also reveal the peculiarly close affection which the poet bore for his immediate relatives—his brothers and sisters and their children, and, of course, his mother:—

In my visits to the hospitals I found it was in the simple matter of personal presence, and emanating ordinary cheer and magnetism, that I succeeded, and help'd, more than by medical nursing, or delicacies, or gifts of money, or anything else. During the war I possess'd the perfection of physical health. My habit, when practicable, was to prepare for starting out on one of those daily or nightly tours of from a couple to four or five hours, by fortifying myself with previous rest, the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as cheerful an appearance as possible.⁵

1 Edited by Dr. R. M. Buoke.
2 Prose, p. 264.
3 "Familiar Studies of Men and Books"
4 Ibid.
5 Prose, p. 32.

In 1865, after Whitman had been dismissed from a post he had held in the public service, at Washington, for being the author of Leaves of Grass,¹ his friend, Mr. William Douglas O'Connor, published an expostulatory pamphlet, entitled The Good Gray Poet,² from which work we quote the following sentences:—

Usually his plan is to pass, with haversack strapped across his shoulder, from cot to cot, distributing small gifts; his theory is that these men, far from home, lonely, sick at heart, need more than anything some practical token that they are not forsaken; that someone feels a fatherly or brotherly interest in them; hence, he gives them what he can; to particular cases, entirely penniless, he distributes small sums of money, fifteen cents, twenty cents, thirty cents, fifty cents, not much in each case, for there are many; but under the circumstances these little sums are and mean a great deal. He also distributes and directs envelopes; gives a letter, paper, postage stamps, tobacco, apples, figs, sweet biscuit, preserves, blackberries; gets delicate food for special cases; sometimes a dish of oysters, or a dainty piece of meat, or some savoury morsel for some poor creature who loathes the hospital fare, but whose appetite may be tempted. In the hot weather he buys boxes of oranges, and distributes them, grateful to lips baked with fever he buys whatever luxuries his limited resources will allow, and he makes them go as far as he can. Where does he get the means for this expenditure? For Walt Whitman is poor; he is poor, and has a right to be proud of his poverty; for it is the sacred, the ancient, the immemorial poverty of goodness and genius. He gets the means by writing for newspapers; he expends all he gets upon his boys, his darlings, the sick and maimed soldiers. He adds to his own earnings the contributions of noble souls, often strangers, who have heard that such a man walks the hospitals, and who volunteer to send him this assistance; when at last he gets a place under Government he has a salary which he spends in the same way; sometimes his wrung heart gets the better of his prudence, and he spends till he himself is in difficulties. He gives all his money, he gives all his time, he gives all his love.³

1 See Chapter VI.
2 Reprinted in the Appendix to Part I. of Walt Whitman, by Dr. R. M. Bucke.
3 The Good Gray Poet, by W. D. O'Connor.

And elsewhere:—

Now realise a man without worldly inducement, without reward, from love and compassion only .......foregoing pleasure and rest for vigils, as in chambers of torture, among the despairing, the mangled, the dying, the forms upon which shell and rifle and sabre have wrought every bizarre atrocity of mutilation; immuring himself in the air of their sighs, their moans, the mutter and scream of their delirium; breathing the stench of their putrid wounds; taking up his part and lot with them, living a life of privation and denial, and hoarding his scanty means for the relief and mitigation of their anguish. That man is Walt Whitman.¹

From Mr. Donaldson's book we make the following extract, only regretting that we have not space to quote the entire chapter:

From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand ; they gazed at him. To one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, pipe, or tobacco, a sheet of paper, or a postage stamp; all of which, and many other things, were in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an errand; to another, some special friend, he would give a manly, farewell kiss. He seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The lights had gleamed for hours in that hospital that night before he left it; and as he took his way toward the door you could hear the voice of many a stricken hero calling "Walt! Walt! Walt! come again! come again! "²

1 The Good Gray Poet, by W. D. O'Connor. 2. Walt Whitman, the Man.