Walt whitman biography civil war influence
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How the American Civil War Gave Walt Whitman a Call to Action
Walt Whitman did all he could to advance the fortunes of his own book, Leaves of Grass. He reviewed it himself, not once but three times.
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“An American Bard at last,” he crowed. Whitman, the New Yorker, was commercially minded. Quickly, he got to work on a new edition. He wrote more poems and published them a year later in the edition of 1856. This volume is short and squat, a quarto, not an expansive folio like the 1855. It looks to be loaded with compact muscle.
Whitman did something memorable to the 1856 volume, which he published himself, something that Emerson probably never fully forgave him for. He took a line from the moving letter that Emerson sent him to celebrate the first edition of Leaves and embossed it in gold on the spine of the book.
“I greet you at the beginning of a great career, R. W. Emerson,” the binding says. Whitman neglected to ask Emerson’s permission, and, we’re told, the Sage of Concord was quite angry with the American Bard. Emerson did regain his equanimity—in which he put considerable stock—though this was not the last time that he would grow unhappy with the pupil who turned out to be more than a pupil. In the new book, Whitm
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Walt Whitman and the Civil War
The poet Walt Whitman wrote about the Civil War extensively. His heartfelt observation of life in wartime Washington made its way into poems, and he also wrote articles for newspapers and a number of notebook entries only published decades later.
He had worked for years as a journalist, yet Whitman did not cover the conflict as a regular newspaper correspondent. His role as an eyewitness to the conflict was unplanned. When a newspaper casualty list indicated that his brother serving in a New York regiment had been wounded in late 1862, Whitman traveled to Virginia to find him.
Whitman's brother George had only been slightly wounded. But the experience of seeing army hospitals made a deep impression, and Whitman felt compelled to move from Brooklyn to Washington to become involved with the Union war effort as a hospital volunteer.
After securing a job as a government clerk, Whitman spent his off-duty hours visiting hospital wards filled with soldiers, comforting the wounded and the sick.
In Washington, Whitman was also perfectly positioned to observe the workings of the government, movements of troops, and the daily comings and goings of a man he greatly admired, President Abraham Lincoln.
At times Whitman would contribut
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Kenneth M. Price
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