Before “Leaves of Grass,” Walt Whitman spent three years comforting wounded Civil War soldiers

The Good Gray Poet During the Civil War

In December 1862, Walt Whitman rushed to Virginia after seeing his brother’s name on a casualty list. What started as a family emergency turned into something much bigger.

Whitman spent the next three years visiting wounded soldiers in Washington DC hospitals every single day. He brought them oranges, wrote letters to their families, and just listened to their stories.

This work changed him from a struggling poet into America’s voice of the Civil War. Here’s the story of how Whitman became the Good Gray Poet, preserved at his Camden house where you can visit today.

Walt rushed to find his brother after seeing his name on a casualty list

On December 16, 1862, Walt Whitman saw “First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore [sic], Company D” in the New York Tribune’s list of soldiers hurt at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Worried his brother George was injured, Walt packed quickly and headed to Washington where Union hospitals were set up. His trip got worse when someone stole his money at the Philadelphia train station.

He reached Washington on December 29, 1862, when the Daily Morning Chronicle counted 13,267 sick and wounded soldiers in the capital’s hospitals.

Desperate days spent searching crowded military hospitals

Walt looked for George for three exhausting days and nights, going from hospital to hospital through streets full of demoralized Union soldiers.

He later told his mother this time brought “the greatest suffering I ever experienced in my life. ” Washington had at least 43 separate hospitals when Walt arrived in late December 1862.

Adding to his stress, rumors spread about Confederate forces possibly attacking the capital as Walt continued his search.

Amputated limbs in a cart changed his view of war forever

In early January 1863, Walt finally traveled to Fredericksburg and found George alive with only a small face wound.

While there, he saw something that deeply upset him: “a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.— about a load for a one-horse cart. ” He called these “human fragments, cut, bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening.”

This awful sight convinced Walt that American democracy itself was at risk, making him stay to help the wounded soldiers.

Simple gifts of fruit and paper made him a beloved hospital visitor

Walt started visiting Washington hospitals regularly in January 1863, bringing small gifts of fruit, candy, books, pencils, and paper to hurt soldiers.

His notebook shows he called himself “Walt Whitman, Soldiers’ Missionary.”

He first visited just to check on Brooklyn soldiers he knew before the war, but it soon became his daily routine.

He spent most of his time at Armory Square Hospital, which took in the worst injuries and had the highest death rate among Washington hospitals.

Teenage soldiers found comfort from the gray-bearded poet

From 1863 to 1864, Walt acted like a father or older brother to the wounded soldiers, most just teenagers or in their early twenties.

He spent hours listening to their stories, writing letters to their families, and bringing them small comforts like fresh oranges and candy.

Just two months into his volunteer work, Walt wrote to his brother Jeff: “I never before had my feelings so thoroughly and (so far) permanently absorbed, to the very roots, as by these huge swarms of dear, wounded, sick, dying boys.”

His own health collapsed after witnessing too much suffering

By June 23, 1864, Walt grew very sick from his hospital work and had to go back to Brooklyn.

He told his mother: “O the sad, sad sights I see, the noble young men with legs and arms taken off, the deaths, the sick weakness, sicker than death, that some endure, after amputations.”

Walt spent several months getting better at his family home.

Despite being ill, he returned to Washington as soon as he could to keep helping the wounded soldiers.

Notebook scribbles turned into powerful war poems

Walt told his friend Horace Traubel that his book Drum-Taps came together “by fits and starts, on the field, in the hospitals as I worked with the soldier boys.”

His experiences filled his notebooks with rough poems that became his 1865 publication.

The poems show Walt’s changing feelings about the war, from early excitement to doubt to direct watching to deep caring for the wounded.

Rather than wait for paper prices to drop after the war, Walt picked larger paper and “condensed” his poems to cut costs.

News of Lincoln’s death halted his book’s printing

While visiting family in Brooklyn and checking proofs of Drum-Taps, Walt learned of Lincoln’s killing on April 15, 1865. The news crushed him, as it did the whole nation.

He quickly wrote his first Lincoln poem “Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day” dated April 19, 1865, the day of Lincoln’s funeral in Washington.

Walt stopped the printing of Drum-Taps, feeling the book now seemed unfinished without properly noting Lincoln’s death and what it meant for the country.

Grief sparked his most famous poems about the fallen president

During summer 1865, Walt quickly wrote eighteen more poems, including some of his most famous works about Lincoln. Among these were “O Captain! My Captain! ” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” both written in the months after the killing.

By November 1865, Walt had the updated book ready to print.

To save money, he simply sewed together the original Drum-Taps with the eighteen post-assassination poems, calling this addition Sequel to Drum-Taps.

Broken branches formed the perfect symbol for his war book’s title

Drum-Taps, with its 24-page insert called Sequel to Drum-Taps, reached bookstores on October 28, 1865. The complete work had 43 poems about the Civil War that tracked Walt’s emotional journey through the conflict.

For the title, Walt chose a font made of broken limbs and branches, showing the broken nation trying to grow back together. The Lincoln poems, especially “O Captain!,” helped make the writer of Leaves of Grass more acceptable to mainstream readers who had previously rejected his work.

Paralysis and family tragedy kept him in Camden forever

After suffering a paralyzing stroke in early January 1873, Walt moved from Washington to his brother George’s home in Camden, New Jersey.

His mother Louisa died on May 23, 1873, a loss he called “the saddest loss and sorrow of my life” and “the great cloud” of his life.

Walt first planned to stay in Camden for just two months while getting better, but his ongoing health problems changed those plans.

He took over much of the emotional and financial care for his disabled brother Eddie, and never left Camden for the rest of his life.

Visiting Walt Whitman House in Camden, NJ

The Walt Whitman House at 330 Mickle Boulevard in Camden is where the famous poet spent his final years after the Civil War. You can see his original bedroom with the rocking chair where he wrote “Leaves of Grass.”

The house contains Whitman’s personal items including his walking canes, eyeglasses, and the lap desk he used while volunteering in Civil War hospitals.

Many of his handwritten notes and letters about caring for wounded soldiers are on display. The house is small but packed with authentic belongings from his transformation period.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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