All about Walt Whitman

M. Wynn Thomas on Whitman and the Civil War:

M. Wynn Thomas is the author of the second article, “Fratricide and Brotherly Love: Whitman and the Civil War” (1997, pp.27-44). It focuses on the importance of Whitman’s relationship with his brother George, who fought for the Union during the four years of the war, and received many promotions due to his bravery on the battlefield. The critic suggests that “it was at least partly through George that Whitman was led to an intimate understanding of the real, hidden nature of the war” and that his connection with his brother that helped the poet to “arrange several of those imaginative configurations that articulated his hopes and anxieties and that supplied the deep structure of his war poetry” (1997, p.27). In fact, Whitman went to Washington, in December 1862, to look for George, for he had read news that “George had been wounded in the battle of Fredericksburg” (BLOOM, 1985, p.143). After a terrible trip and a day and a half wandering around Washington hospitals and another trip by boat to Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg, he found his brother in the camp, with his minor wound already healing. After walking around the camp and back to the hospitals, watching horrible scenes and meeting a former publisher and a friend, William O’connor[1], he decided to stay in Washington, which he did until 1874. From the beginning, Whitman was always taking notes of everything he witnessed. Actually, writing was one of his great help to soldiers at camp hospitals, for usually they were unable to, due to trauma or wounds. As we have said, the book Drum-Taps is his poetic production of this period.

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[1] 1832-1889; O’connor is the author of the famous The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, 1866, a pamphlet in defense of Whitman’s poetry.

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