INTRODUCTION
I have once or twice fear’d that my little tract would prove,
at best, but a batch of convulsively written reminiscences.
Well, be it so.
—Memoranda During the War
In Whitman’s grand presence, with his big mind and body vibrating in response to the men he observes, we can witness the wounded and dying soldiers of the Civil War as they lie suffering in bed, seemingly unnoticed or overlooked by anyone else. In a Washington, D.C., hospital we see and feel what Whitman, the “soldiers’ missionary,” feels as he gazes on New York Cavalry Private Thomas Haley: “He lies there with his frame exposed above the waist, all naked, for coolness, a fine built man, the tan not yet bleach’d from his cheeks and neck.... Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with profuse beautiful shining hair. One time as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, he suddenly, without the least start, awaken’d, open’d his eyes, gave me a long, long steady look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier—one long, clear silent look—a slight sigh—then turn’d back and went into his doze again. Little he knew, poor death-stricken boy, the heart of the stranger that hover’d near.”1
Whitman’s heart had brought him several months before to Washington in search of his brother George, who was serving in the 51st New York Volunteers and had been listed as a “casualty” at the battle of Fredericksburg in December of 1862. It was while hunting for George, ten years younger than Walt and who had enlisted at the first opportunity in the spring of 1861, that Walt discovered what the war really was. Not finding George in any of the few dozen hospitals in Washington, Walt traveled to the Union camps near Fredericksburg, where he learned from George’s fellow soldiers that George, whose cheek had been pierced by a fragmented shell, was otherwise in fine health. (George Whitman served the entire war and was promoted at its end to Major. On September 30, 1864, he was captured with his regiment in Virginia and spent almost five months as a prisoner of war.)
Walt, most readers will remember, had been born in West Hills, Long Island, on May 31, 1819, the second son in a large family. He grew up in Brooklyn and at the age of eleven began working as an office-boy; over the next twenty years he worked variously as a printer, school-teacher, editor, and writer. In 1855, he published what became the first internationally influential collection of American poetry, Leaves of Grass. (Most of the initial hubbub about the unique volume was created by Whitman himself, after planting self-written reviews and testimonials and publicizing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s kind but private response to the poems.)
When the War of Secession (as Whitman calls it) started in the spring of 1861, the poet, already 41, continued his freelance writing life and railed away from the sidelines at the local and national politicians. Visiting the battlegrounds and war hospitals, however, converted him into a beneficent and active participant. He had found his new and consuming purpose in Washington, and he moved there, where through friends he obtained a part-time job in the Army Paymaster’s Office. His primary work, though, was as a volunteer “soldiers’ missionary,” which, for him, involved no orthodox Christian preaching but, instead, passionate and tactful sympathy. He was not, as is sometimes mistakenly believed because of his great “The Wound-Dresser” poem, a wound-dresser, but a spiritual comforter. He chatted with the men, he listened to them, he petted them, kissed them, held their hands, and brought them gifts of money, knickknacks, food, and writing materials; he wrote letters for them and took dictation. He was the foster brother, uncle, father, mother, or dear friend they hungered for. “Each case has its peculiarities, and needs some new adaptation,” he noted in his Memoranda. “I have learnt to thus conform—learnt a great deal of hospital wisdom. Some of the poor young chaps, away from home for the first time in their lives, hunger and thirst for affection. This is sometimes the only thing that will reach their condition.... The men like to have a pencil, and something to write in. I have given them cheap pocket-diaries, and almanacs for 1864, interleav’d with blank paper.”2 His gift-giving was funded by his own salary and by donations from his friends and acquaintances, for whom he described his experiences.
The best of many unmatched moments in Whitman’s Memoranda are those caught on the fly, and these moments are the germ of a real book, a book that the Memoranda promises to be but did not after all become: “As the period of the war recedes, I am more than ever convinced that it is important for those of us who were on the scene to put our experiences on record. There is infinite treasure—O inestimable riches in that time! ... I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote, wrote, wrote. No prepared picture, no elaborated poem, no after-narrative could be what the thing itself was.... You want to catch the first spirit, to tally its birth. By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.”3 And of course he was right—he repeatedly catches life in his notes, but many of the entries of the Memoranda were not written “at the instant” but only later as uninspired reflections: “Who know the conflict hand-to-hand—the many conflicts in the dark, those shadowy-tangled, flashing-moonbeam’d woods—the writhing groups and squads—hear through the woods the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols—the distant cannon—the cheers and calls, and threats and awful music of the oaths—the indescribable mix—the officers’ orders, persuasions, encouragements—the devils fully rous’d in human hearts …” (As if waiting for the Muse to rescue him with a tap on the shoulder, he concludes: “Of scenes like these, I say, who writes—who e’er can write, the story?”4)
Unfortunately, when Whitman relies on hearsay, history, or received opinion, he usually gives us little that is better or smarter than any other uninformed by-standing commentator. Neglecting to keep his attention on the myriad details in front of him, he hears nothing but his own voice and thoughts; he agrees with himself (not at all contradictory). In the “Notes,” which are essentially appendices of discards and outtakes with which he concludes Memoranda During the War, the otherwise extraordinary author becomes not everyone but nobody, and sometimes a disagreeable nobody, espousing dime-a-dozen prejudices on, among other topics, race, patriotism, and democracy. Finally, his repeated returns to Abraham Lincoln, about whom he would recite “memories” and refabricate his friend’s eye-witnessing of the assassination at Ford’s Theatre, became morbid and exploitative: “The sense of Lincoln’s murder as a dramatic set piece came later; at the time Whitman was as shocked and depressed as everyone else.”5
On the other hand, we can read thousands of pages of eyewitness accounts of the Civil War and discover no observations more brilliant and evocative and moving as many in the Memoranda hodgepodge; in Whitman’s portrait of a twenty-year-old from Wisconsin, after he recounts the boy’s background and recent heroism, he concludes: “He kept a little diary, like so many of the soldiers. On the day of his death, he wrote the following in it: Today, the doctor says I must die—all is over with me—ah, so young to die. On another blank leaf he pencill’d to his brother, Dear brother Thomas, I have been brave, but wicked—pray for me.”6
These descriptions he also used in letters and articles for The New York Times and later in the Weekly Graphic. In the midst of his experiences, he also saw a bigger opportunity, pitching a book proposal in the fall of 1863: “My idea is a book of the time, worthy the time—something considerably beyond mere hospital sketches—a book for sale perhaps in a larger American market—the premises or skeleton memoranda of incidents, persons, places, sights, the past year (mostly jotted down either on the spot or in the spirit of seeing or hearing what is narrated)—... full of interest I surely think—in some respects somewhat a combination in handling of the Old French Memoires, & my own personality (things seen through my eyes, & what my vision brings)—a book full enough of mosaic, but all fused to one comprehensive thing—...” (The intended fusion of the book Whitman describes here never happened, but Memoranda During the War, read with his other treatments of the war, is indeed a unique contribution.) “I have many hospital incidents, [that] will take with the general reader ... the book is very rapid—is a book that can be read by the five or ten minutes ... (being full of small parts, pieces, paragraphs with their dates, incidents &c)—...”7
The Memoranda did not find a publisher at the time, but Whitman, never averse to making do, having indeed already used large patches in articles and letters and sounded the depths of his experiences in his poems, Drum-Taps and Sequel (1865), continued to mine them, turn them over, and publish and revise them into verse and prose. He published Memoranda During the War himself in 1876, and then incorporated most of the material into Specimen Days in 1882. He was not, after all, satisfied with the results, but what has lasted and will last are the vivid, body-electric recordings of men and moments he collected in his little homemade notebooks: “Even these days, at the lapse of many years, I can never turn their tiny leaves, or even take one in my hand, without the actual army sights and hot emotions of the time rushing like a river in full tide through me.”8 Just as they evoked memories for him, they have created impressions for us.
Again and again, Whitman lands his attention on the young men—invariably attractive—who are near death. (When or where Whitman first understood his homosexuality has been unresolvedly debated; whether he more gloried in his understanding of it or tortured himself over it is also not clear. But he certainly found personal freedom of expression of his whole self in his poetry and in his on-the-spot observations—observations he trusted, as can we, because they were recordings of the world and his simultaneous responses to it.) His admiration of the wounded men’s beauty turns any traces of his pity into sympathy, and, at times, into Whitman’s weird and believable imaginings of himself in the young “unknown’s” place: “... and there, haply with pain and suffering, (yet less, far less, than is supposed,) the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him—the eyes glaze in death—none recks—Perhaps the burial squads, in truce, a week afterwards, search not the secluded spot—And there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in the soil of mother earth, unburied and unknown.”9 He had already, in the original edition of Leaves of Grass, mused on his peculiar ability to imagine himself in someone else’s suffering:
Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels …. I myself become the wounded person,
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.10
America’s man of feeling, sympathizing with every fiber of his body and every impulse of imagination, is in his finest moments the closest observer of the hospitalized horrors of America’s terrible war. His susceptible sympathies go all out to soldiers of all stripes, of either side. He admires almost everyone and blames almost no one—and the blameworthy are beyond his ken, the Southern leaders of the Secession, whom Whitman fairly suspected were intent on establishing a slave-nation.
Whitman’s gift and the gift he shares with us today and with the soldiers of the Civil War is, as he says so characteristically immodestly yet so truly, “Personal Presence”: “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.”11 He gave himself credit for understanding his own talent and charisma—and he did seem to see into the souls and desires of the young wounded men. He brought them what they needed, with tact, and what they wanted, with good cheer. He of the great, measureless Self, was at his best as the selfless, engaged “soldiers’ missionary.” His vitality was, as in his best poetry, immediately attractive and winning. The naturalist John Burroughs, an admirer of Whitman’s verse, described his first impression of the poet: “a well-dressed, large, benevolent-looking man, cleanly and neat, with a grizzly, shaggy appearance about the face and open throat. Without rising he reached out to me a large, warm, soft hand, and regarded me with a look of infinite good nature and contentment. I was struck with the strange new beauty of him as he sat there in the gas light—the brightness of his eyes, the glow of his countenance, and the curious blending of youth and age in his expression.... I was struck likewise with his rich mellow voice—a voice that was at once an index to the man, implying not only deep human sympathies and affinities, but the finest blood and breeding, a gentle, strong, cultivated soul.”12
Aware of his vitality, aware of his affect, he deliberately brought the wounded soldiers his best performance. Addressing his mother in a letter, he takes up his brother Jeff’s inquiry (“has the immense number of unfortunate and heart-working cases given you a sober and melancholy look?”): “I suppose he means as much of a beauty as ever—whether I look the same—well, not only as much, but more so—I believe I weigh 200 and as to my face, (so scarlet,) and my beard and neck, they are terrible to behold—I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the hospitals, among the poor languishing & wounded boys, is that I am so large and well—indeed like a great wild buffalo, with much hair—many of the soldiers are from the west, and far north—and they take to a man that has not the bleached shiny & shaved cut of the cities and the east.”13 His mastery of charisma made him feel responsible for its continued production. The big buffalo waited as he watched the sick, the amputated, and the dying; he sympathized and listened; he spoke if speaking was wanted. A Union colonel offered this testimonial: “Walt Whitman’s funny stories, and his pipes and tobacco were worth more than all the preachers and tracts in Christendom. A wounded soldier don’t like to be reminded of his God more than twenty times a day. Walt Whitman didn’t bring any tracts or Bibles; he didn’t ask if you loved the Lord, and didn’t seem to care whether you did or not.”14 Religiously minded but no traditional believer, he all the same did read from the New Testament to any who requested it: “The poor, wasted young man ask’d me to read the following chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble. It pleas’d him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He ask’d me if I enjoy’d religion. I said: ‘Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may be, it is the same thing.’ He said: ‘It is my chief reliance.’ He talk’d of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: ‘Why, Oscar, don’t you think you will get well?’ He said: ‘I may, but it is not probable.’ He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it discharg’d much. Then the diarrhea had prostrated him, and I felt that he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned four-fold.”15
In a letter from Washington, where he was living with close friends, a married couple, he wrote home to his mother, about his work: “Mother, it is lucky I like Washington in many respects, & that things are upon the whole pleasant personally, for every day of my life I see enough to make one’s heart ache with sympathy & anguish here in the hospitals, & I do not know as I could stand it, if it was not counter-balanced outside—it is curious, when I am present at the most appalling things, deaths, operations, sickening wounds (perhaps full of maggots), I do not fail, although my sympathies are very much excited, but keep singularly cool—but often, hours afterward, perhaps when I am home, or out walking alone, I feel sick & actually tremble, when I recall the thing & have it in my mind again before me.”16 Either the overwork and strain of these feelings finally got to him or the development of an illness forced him to return to Brooklyn in June 1864, and recuperate. When he came back to Washington in the beginning of 1865, he obtained an ideally unstressful job at the Patent Office (which he reminds us in the Memoranda had served for a time as a hospital) with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where he did little but save up his strength for his daily charity work at the hospitals.17
Though the war has been blamed for Whitman’s ill health from the 1870s, when he had his first stroke in 1873, until his death in 1892, Whitman never seemed to begrudge what he suffered or gave because the Civil War gave him gifts, the pride of service and the continued gratitude he received to the end of his life from the surviving soldiers: “Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sights,) and of course, the most profound lesson and reminiscence of my life. I can say that in my ministerings I comprehended all, whoever came in my way, Northern or Southern, and slighted none.”18
While the Memoranda During the War would likely not be well-known if its author was not who he is, its details are, at their best, as riveting and immediate as any sketches left us from those who were there. “I now doubt whether one can get a fair idea of what this War practically is,” he reflected in the midst of his “ministerings” in the hospitals, “or what genuine America is, and her character, without some such experience as this I am having.”19
BOB BLAISDELL
Bibliography
Justin Kaplan. Walt Whitman: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1980.
Walter Lowenfels, editor. Walt Whitman’s Civil War. New York: Knopf. 1961.
Roy Morris, Jr. The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000.
Gary Schmidgall, editor. Intimate with Walt: Selections from Whitman’s Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1888–1892. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. 2001.
Charley Shively, editor. Drum Beats: Walt Whitman’s Civil War Boy Lovers. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press. 1989.
Walt Whitman. Civil War Poetry and Prose. Edited by Candace Ward. New York: Dover. 1995.
_______. The Correspondence, Volume 1: 1842–1867. The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman. Gay Wilson Allen and E. Sculley Bradley, editors. New York: New York University Press. 1961.
_______. Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition. Mineola, New York: Dover. 2007.
_______. Memoranda During the War. Edited by Peter Coviello. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
_______. Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. (Library of America). 1996.
Electronic Sources
Poet at Work: Walt Whitman Notebooks 1850s–1860s: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/whitman/index.html.
“Whitman’s Memory”: http://www.classroomelectric.org/volume2/price/memoranda/annotations/.