September 1, 2026 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in December 1862, Walt Whitman set out for Virginia searching for his brother, who had been wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He found him alive with only a minor wound. But outside a field hospital, Whitman encountered something he would never forget: a heap of amputated arms, legs, and other human remains. For the poet who had once written that the human body was sacred, the Civil War suddenly became horrifyingly real.
Whitman soon began spending his days in Washington's military hospitals, bringing food and small gifts, writing letters, listening, and comforting wounded men far from home. Although he supported the Union, he cared for Northerners and Southerners alike. Hillsdale College professor Kelly Scott Franklin shares how those years of service became what Whitman called “the most profound lesson” of his life and helped shape some of his greatest writing about the Civil War.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
Support the show: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here with Our American Stories, and we
love telling stories from the great American literature canon. You've
probably read Walt Whitman, or at least you were supposed
to in your high school English class. But even if
you've heard of Leaves of Grass, you've probably never heard
this tale that Hillsdale College professor Kelly Franklin brings us.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It was winter in 1862, and Americans were fighting our
nation's civil war. In mid-December, the Union suffered a disaster
at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The entrenched Confederates cut
down wave after wave of Union soldiers, leaving the Northern
Army with 13,000 casualties, more than double those of the
(00:52):
Southern defenders. From the Union's standpoint, things looked pretty bleak
for the formerly United States of America. News of the
casualties hit the papers right away, and on December 16th,
the American writer Walt Whitman learned that his brother George
had been wounded at Fredericksburg. With no other information, Whitman
(01:13):
set out to find his brother. He searched the hospitals
in D.C. with no luck until a friend lent him
money and got him a pass to the front where George,
if he were still alive, might be found. Then, in Falmouth, Virginia,
Whitman located his brother safe and sound with only a
minor wound to his face. But Whitman also saw something else,
(01:36):
something he never forgot. Outside a field hospital, Whitman saw
a heap of amputated limbs, enough to fill a one-horse cart. Horrified,
he wrote in his diary, At.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
The foot of a tree, immediately in front, a heap
of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody, black
and blue, swelled and sickening.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
By 1862, Walt Whitman had already achieved some fame and
some notoriety as a poet that celebrated the human body.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
I am the poet of the body.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
He had written in his 1855 book, Leaves of Grass.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And I am the poet of the soul. The man's
body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
But in that grisly moment outside the field hospital, Whitman
got his first real glimpse of the human cost of
the Civil War. It wasn't long before he knew what
he wanted to do about it. In January of 1863,
Whitman returned to Washington, D.C., where he began perhaps the
greatest undertaking of his life. While the war raged on,
(02:45):
Whitman threw himself into the task of visiting the sick
and wounded men, both northerners and southerners, who languished in
the Civil War hospitals. The Union already had many doctors
and nurses but Whitman intuitively knew that people need more
than medical treatment to get well. Companionship, comfort, morale boosting,
even a kind word. And as a volunteer, Whitman could
(03:08):
provide that to the soldiers. He worked a part-time job
in the mornings and spent the afternoons and evenings in
the hospitals. He talked with the men, sat with them.
He brought a satchel full of little gifts, candy, clothes, fruit, money, tobacco, stamps,
and paper for writing letters. When the weather was hot,
he brought them ice cream. While in the hospitals, Whitman
(03:31):
wrote down the names and descriptions of the soldiers in
his notebooks, along with anything special they asked for.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Henry Benton, Company E, 7th Ohio Volunteer, Ward K, Bed 44.
Wants a little jelly and an orange. Wounded last Sunday
at Chancellorsville in leg. I saw the bullet and a
piece of the bone. Stout hearty Ohio boy. Henry Eberle,
Bed 8, Ward K, Company H, 28th Pennsylvania Volunteers, wants
(04:02):
a German prayer book, wounded in the left shoulder pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Not all of his visits were cheerful. Of a man
named Hiram Johnson from the 157th New York Volunteers, Whitman.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Wrote in his notebook, This is the bed of death.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Although he supported the union, Whitman left the politics of
the war outside the hospital doors and treated the wounded equally.
In his memoir of the Civil War, Whitman later described
taking care of a 19-year-old boy from Baltimore whose right
leg had been amputated.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
He writes, As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain,
he says to me suddenly, I hardly think you know
who I am. I don't wish to impose upon you.
I am a rebel soldier. I said I did not
know that. But it made no difference. Visiting him daily
for about two weeks after that while he lived, death
(04:58):
had marked him and he.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Was quite alone.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Many of these Civil War soldiers died far from family
and home. Some of them even died unknown and unidentified.
It was the era before dog tags and DNA testing.
In March of 1864, Whitman described one of these cases
in a letter to his mother. Whitman wrote of the
arrival of a train carrying sick and wounded soldiers.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Mother, it was a dreadful night, pretty dark, the wind gusty,
and the rain fell in torrents. One poor boy, he
seemed to me quite young, he was quite small. He
groaned some as the stretcher-bearers were carrying him along, and
again as they carried him through the hospital gate. They
set down the stretcher and examined him, and the poor
(05:47):
boy was dead. The doctor came immediately, but it was
all of no use. The worst of it is, too,
that he is entirely unknown. There was nothing on his
clothes or anyone with him to identify him, and he
is altogether unknown. Mother, it is enough to rack one's heart,
such things. Very likely his folks will never know in
(06:09):
the world what has become of him.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And many men died unknown in the war. Many were
hastily buried or lost altogether in the chaos and aftermath
of battle. This meant that families and friends were denied
many of the rituals of grief. But Walt Whitman was
also at the height of his career as a poet,
and during the war he would write poems of grief
and mourning that would help him and the nation express
(06:34):
those terrible losses. Walt Whitman had worked with words and
language for most of his life. Born on Long Island,
he supported himself from a very young age, working at
a printing shop, in a law office, and as a teacher.
But he soon found his way to authorship, writing journalism,
conventional poems, and fiction. Then, in 1855, Whitman published his
(06:59):
experimental book, Leaves of Grass, which violated all the current
norms of poetry and celebrated the full range of human life,
from democracy to sexuality to writing in powerful free verse
about the body, the soul, nature, and city life, and
the labors of working-class men and women. But now, Whitman
had a war to write about, and at the end
(07:21):
of it, he published a book of war poems called
Drum Taps. In one of his best poems, Vigil Strange,
I kept on the field one night. Whitman recreates an
imaginary moment of grief and burial for the fallen dead.
The poetic speaker describes seeing a young soldier struck down
in the heat of battle. Unable to stop for the
(07:41):
conflict rages on around them, the narrator charges ahead, but
returns that night to keep vigil for a boy he
calls both son and comrade.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around
me the battlefield spreading. Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there
in the fragrant silent night.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The speaker stays with the body all night.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as
the dawn appeared, my comrade I wrapped in his blanket,
enveloped well his form, folded the blanket well, tucking it.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Carefully overhead and carefully under feet.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
And there and then, and bathed by the rising sun,
my son in his grave, in his rude grave, I deposited.
Ending my vigil strange with that Vigil of night and
battlefield dim Vigil for boy of responding kisses Never again
on earth responding Vigil for comrade swiftly slain Vigil I
(08:46):
never forget how as day brightened I rose from the
chill ground And folded my soldier well.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
In his blanket And buried him where he.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Fell Like in most of his poems, the soldier remains
nameless which means that he could be anyone, known or unknown,
Yankee or rebel, any of the more than 600,000 men
who perished in the war. Whitman continued to visit the
hospitals on and off throughout the war. He once estimated
that he had visited somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 soldiers.
(09:20):
He also wrote that, after his time in the hospitals,
the pages of his notebooks were actually stained with soldiers' blood.
Walt Whitman would have a long and fruitful life and
career as a writer, right up to his death in 1892.
But he always thought about his hospital years as something
central to his life.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction,
and of course, the most profound lesson of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Those years of hospital visits represent a tremendous act of
service to his fellow Americans during a time of war.
while we tend to remember him as one of America's
great poets. Walt Whitman's sacrificial charity during the Civil War
may be his greatest legacy. But we can also be
thankful he was a writer, although he once claimed that.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The real war will never get in the books.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Walt Whitman's diaries, letters, poems, and memoirs constitute a powerful
eyewitness account a moving record of one man's mind and
heart during this bloody chapter in the story of American history.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And thank you to Hillsdale professor Kelly Franklin for telling
us about a great man and a part of his
life so few people know. Walt Whitman's story, the story
of the American Civil War. This is Our American Stories.
And we continue here with Our American Stories, and we
love telling stories from the great American literature canon. You've
probably read Walt Whitman, or at least you were supposed
to in your high school English class. But even if
you've heard of Leaves of Grass, you've probably never heard
this tale that Hillsdale College professor Kelly Franklin brings us.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It was winter in 1862, and Americans were fighting our
nation's civil war. In mid-December, the Union suffered a disaster
at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The entrenched Confederates cut
down wave after wave of Union soldiers, leaving the Northern
Army with 13,000 casualties, more than double those of the
(00:52):
Southern defenders. From the Union's standpoint, things looked pretty bleak
for the formerly United States of America. News of the
casualties hit the papers right away, and on December 16th,
the American writer Walt Whitman learned that his brother George
had been wounded at Fredericksburg. With no other information, Whitman
(01:13):
set out to find his brother. He searched the hospitals
in D.C. with no luck until a friend lent him
money and got him a pass to the front where George,
if he were still alive, might be found. Then, in Falmouth, Virginia,
Whitman located his brother safe and sound with only a
minor wound to his face. But Whitman also saw something else,
(01:36):
something he never forgot. Outside a field hospital, Whitman saw
a heap of amputated limbs, enough to fill a one-horse cart. Horrified,
he wrote in his diary, At.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
The foot of a tree, immediately in front, a heap
of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody, black
and blue, swelled and sickening.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
By 1862, Walt Whitman had already achieved some fame and
some notoriety as a poet that celebrated the human body.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
I am the poet of the body.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
He had written in his 1855 book, Leaves of Grass.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And I am the poet of the soul. The man's
body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
But in that grisly moment outside the field hospital, Whitman
got his first real glimpse of the human cost of
the Civil War. It wasn't long before he knew what
he wanted to do about it. In January of 1863,
Whitman returned to Washington, D.C., where he began perhaps the
greatest undertaking of his life. While the war raged on,
(02:45):
Whitman threw himself into the task of visiting the sick
and wounded men, both northerners and southerners, who languished in
the Civil War hospitals. The Union already had many doctors
and nurses but Whitman intuitively knew that people need more
than medical treatment to get well. Companionship, comfort, morale boosting,
even a kind word. And as a volunteer, Whitman could
(03:08):
provide that to the soldiers. He worked a part-time job
in the mornings and spent the afternoons and evenings in
the hospitals. He talked with the men, sat with them.
He brought a satchel full of little gifts, candy, clothes, fruit, money, tobacco, stamps,
and paper for writing letters. When the weather was hot,
he brought them ice cream. While in the hospitals, Whitman
(03:31):
wrote down the names and descriptions of the soldiers in
his notebooks, along with anything special they asked for.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Henry Benton, Company E, 7th Ohio Volunteer, Ward K, Bed 44.
Wants a little jelly and an orange. Wounded last Sunday
at Chancellorsville in leg. I saw the bullet and a
piece of the bone. Stout hearty Ohio boy. Henry Eberle,
Bed 8, Ward K, Company H, 28th Pennsylvania Volunteers, wants
(04:02):
a German prayer book, wounded in the left shoulder pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Not all of his visits were cheerful. Of a man
named Hiram Johnson from the 157th New York Volunteers, Whitman.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Wrote in his notebook, This is the bed of death.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Although he supported the union, Whitman left the politics of
the war outside the hospital doors and treated the wounded equally.
In his memoir of the Civil War, Whitman later described
taking care of a 19-year-old boy from Baltimore whose right
leg had been amputated.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
He writes, As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain,
he says to me suddenly, I hardly think you know
who I am. I don't wish to impose upon you.
I am a rebel soldier. I said I did not
know that. But it made no difference. Visiting him daily
for about two weeks after that while he lived, death
(04:58):
had marked him and he.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Was quite alone.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Many of these Civil War soldiers died far from family
and home. Some of them even died unknown and unidentified.
It was the era before dog tags and DNA testing.
In March of 1864, Whitman described one of these cases
in a letter to his mother. Whitman wrote of the
arrival of a train carrying sick and wounded soldiers.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Mother, it was a dreadful night, pretty dark, the wind gusty,
and the rain fell in torrents. One poor boy, he
seemed to me quite young, he was quite small. He
groaned some as the stretcher-bearers were carrying him along, and
again as they carried him through the hospital gate. They
set down the stretcher and examined him, and the poor
(05:47):
boy was dead. The doctor came immediately, but it was
all of no use. The worst of it is, too,
that he is entirely unknown. There was nothing on his
clothes or anyone with him to identify him, and he
is altogether unknown. Mother, it is enough to rack one's heart,
such things. Very likely his folks will never know in
(06:09):
the world what has become of him.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And many men died unknown in the war. Many were
hastily buried or lost altogether in the chaos and aftermath
of battle. This meant that families and friends were denied
many of the rituals of grief. But Walt Whitman was
also at the height of his career as a poet,
and during the war he would write poems of grief
and mourning that would help him and the nation express
(06:34):
those terrible losses. Walt Whitman had worked with words and
language for most of his life. Born on Long Island,
he supported himself from a very young age, working at
a printing shop, in a law office, and as a teacher.
But he soon found his way to authorship, writing journalism,
conventional poems, and fiction. Then, in 1855, Whitman published his
(06:59):
experimental book, Leaves of Grass, which violated all the current
norms of poetry and celebrated the full range of human life,
from democracy to sexuality to writing in powerful free verse
about the body, the soul, nature, and city life, and
the labors of working-class men and women. But now, Whitman
had a war to write about, and at the end
(07:21):
of it, he published a book of war poems called
Drum Taps. In one of his best poems, Vigil Strange,
I kept on the field one night. Whitman recreates an
imaginary moment of grief and burial for the fallen dead.
The poetic speaker describes seeing a young soldier struck down
in the heat of battle. Unable to stop for the
(07:41):
conflict rages on around them, the narrator charges ahead, but
returns that night to keep vigil for a boy he
calls both son and comrade.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around
me the battlefield spreading. Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there
in the fragrant silent night.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The speaker stays with the body all night.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as
the dawn appeared, my comrade I wrapped in his blanket,
enveloped well his form, folded the blanket well, tucking it.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Carefully overhead and carefully under feet.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
And there and then, and bathed by the rising sun,
my son in his grave, in his rude grave, I deposited.
Ending my vigil strange with that Vigil of night and
battlefield dim Vigil for boy of responding kisses Never again
on earth responding Vigil for comrade swiftly slain Vigil I
(08:46):
never forget how as day brightened I rose from the
chill ground And folded my soldier well.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
In his blanket And buried him where he.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Fell Like in most of his poems, the soldier remains
nameless which means that he could be anyone, known or unknown,
Yankee or rebel, any of the more than 600,000 men
who perished in the war. Whitman continued to visit the
hospitals on and off throughout the war. He once estimated
that he had visited somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 soldiers.
(09:20):
He also wrote that, after his time in the hospitals,
the pages of his notebooks were actually stained with soldiers' blood.
Walt Whitman would have a long and fruitful life and
career as a writer, right up to his death in 1892.
But he always thought about his hospital years as something
central to his life.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction,
and of course, the most profound lesson of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Those years of hospital visits represent a tremendous act of
service to his fellow Americans during a time of war.
while we tend to remember him as one of America's
great poets. Walt Whitman's sacrificial charity during the Civil War
may be his greatest legacy. But we can also be
thankful he was a writer, although he once claimed that.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The real war will never get in the books.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Walt Whitman's diaries, letters, poems, and memoirs constitute a powerful
eyewitness account a moving record of one man's mind and
heart during this bloody chapter in the story of American history.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And thank you to Hillsdale professor Kelly Franklin for telling
us about a great man and a part of his
life so few people know. Walt Whitman's story, the story
of the American Civil War. This is Our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.