Roy Morris Jr. - The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War

ALSO BY ROY MORRIS, JR.

Sheridan: The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan

Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company

The Devil's Dictionary (editor)

WALT WHITMAN IN THE CIVIL WAR

Roy Morris, Jr.

2000

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Copyright 2000 by Roy Morris, Jr.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Morris, Roy.

The better angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War / Roy Morris, Jr.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-19-512482-0

1. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892.2. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892Views on war.3. United StatesHistoryCivil War, 1861-1865War work.4. Poets, AmericanI9th centuryBiography.I. Title.

PS3232.M67 2OOO

811'.3dc2i

[B]

99-086210

Book design by Adam B. Bohannon

For Leslie, with love "You had me at 'Hello.'"

Walt Whitman has never lacked for biographers, beginning with his friend John Burroughs in 1867 and continuing through the millennium. Until now, however, no one has seen fit to devote more than a passing chapter, at best, to Whitman's Civil War years, a time that the poet himself considered "the greatest privilege and satisfaction" of his life. With this book I hope to redress that somewhat surprising historical imbalance and to put, whenever possible, a human face on a most inhuman tragedy.

To all those earlier biographers I offer my thanks. I would like to cite particularly the work of the late George L. Sixbey, whose pioneering doctoral dissertation, "Walt Whitman's Middle Years: 1860-1867," is an invaluable guide to Whitman's often murky existence in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. Thanks also to my agent, Tom Wallace, for his kindness and encouragement; to my editor, Peter Ginna, for his patience, tact, and insightful advice; to my father-in-law, G. Burton Pierce, for his unfailing generosity; and to my wife, Leslie, for teaching me each day for the past twenty years how to be a better person. I don't know how well the lessons have taken, but I couldn't have asked for a more willingor winningteacher.

THE BETTER ANGEL

The Civil War saved Walt Whitman. Saved was his word, and like all great poets, Whitman chose his language carefully. To save is to deliver from sin; to rescue or deliver from danger or harm; to preserve or guard from injury, destruction, or loss. In Whitmans mind, the war did all those things for him personally, even as it also saved the Union itself, delivering it from the sin of slavery, rescuing it from the danger of secession, and preserving it from political destruction. That the nations salvation brought with it a staggering cost in ruined lives and spiritual devastation, Whitman did notindeed could notdispute. But unlike many intellectuals, then and later, he never doubted that the cost had been worth it. How could he, since his own psychic identification with the Union was so complete and unwavering that to have questioned its preservation would have meant questioning his very existence? The republic lived within Walt Whitman as surely as Walt Whitman lived within the republic.

Of the comparative handful of American writers who personally witnessed the Civil War, Whitman was the unlikeliest candidate to become its recorder. Not only was he nearly forty-two years old when the war began, but he was also a poet, a philosopher, a freethinker, a bohemian, a mystic, a near Quaker, and a homosexual. Yet despite the fact that he never saw a battle and only briefly visited the front, his intimate involvement with the aftermath of battlesthe bruised and broken young men who filled the military hospitals, the convalescent camps, and the cemeteriesensured his importance as a wartime witness. Indeed, so closely did Whitman become associated with the war that his friend William D. OConnor repeatedly urged him to write a book about his experiences, predicting accurately that no history of our times would ever be written without it.... [I]t would itself be history.

There were some, to be sure, who did not believe that Whitman had earned the right to chronicle the war. Union Army veteran Thomas Wentworth Higginson, for one, openly accused him of cowardice for not picking up a musket and joining the ranks. The charge was as specious as it was unfair. No one who knew the bluff, companionable Whitman could ever imagine him in the role of a soldier. He said so himself: I had my temptations, but they were not strong enough to tempt. I could never think of myself as firing a gun or drawing a sword on another man. His young disciple John Burroughs was even more adamant. Think of belittling him because he did not enlist as a soldier, Burroughs complained. Could there be any

His lack of military experience, however, did not prevent Whitman from serving the Union cause as wholeheartedly as Higginson or any other frontline soldier. From December 1862 until well after the war was over, he personally visited tens of thousands of hurt, lonely, and scared young men in the hospitals in and around Washington, bringing them the ineffable but not inconsiderable gift of his magnetic, consoling presence. In the process, he lost forever his own good health, beginning a long decline that would leave him increasingly enfeebled for the rest of his life. To his credit, he never regretted his wartime service, or what it had cost him personally. I only gave myself, he told a friend. I got the boys.

And more to the point, they got him. Whitman entered the rank, fever-ridden hospitals in the nations capital like a literal breath of fresh air, bringing with him a knapsack full of humble but much-appreciated gifts: fruit, candy, clothing, tobacco, books, magazines, pencils, and paper. His long white beard, wine-colored suit, and bulging bag of presents gave him a decided resemblance to Santa Claus, and the wounded soldiers, many of them still in their teens, called after him plaintively at the end of each visit: Walt, Walt, come again! Except for a six-month period in late 1864 when he was forced to return home to Brooklyn to regain his health, he did come again, scarcely missing a day on his self-appointed rounds. Walt Whitman, Soldiers Missionary, he styled himself proudly on the front of his notebook.

A few of the more punctilious members of the United States

In return, the soldiers gave Whitman their love, friendship, and eternal gratitude. Through their humble, uncomplaining valor, they also gave him back his countrywhich is to say, himself. He began the Civil War in a deep depression, a crumbling