January 29, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Hillsdale professor Kelly Scott Franklin tells the story of how one of America's foremost literary figures was a volunteer on both sides of our nation's Civil War.
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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 (00:33):
It was winter in eighteen sixty two, 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 thirteen thousand casualties, more than
double those of the Southern defenders. From the Union standpoint,
(00:57):
things looked pretty bleak for the formerly United States of America.
News of the casualties hit the papers right away, and
on December sixteenth, the American writer Walt Whitman learned that
his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg. With no
other information, Whitman set out to find his brother. He
searched the hospitals in d C with no luck until
(01:19):
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, something he
never forgot. Outside a field hospital, Whitman saw a heap
(01:42):
of amputated limbs, enough to fill a one horse cart. Horrified,
he wrote in his diary.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
At the foot of a tree. Immediately in front a
heap of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody,
black and blue, sweat, welled and sickening.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
By eighteen sixty two, Walt Whitman had already achieved some
fame and some notoriety as a poet that celebrated the
human body.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I am the poet of the body.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
He had written in his eighteen fifty five 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 (02:24):
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 eighteen
sixty three, Whitman returned to Washington, d c. Where he
began perhaps the greatest undertaking of his life. While the
(02:44):
war raged on, 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,
(03:08):
Whitman could 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,
(03:28):
he brought the ice cream. While in the hospitals, Whitman
wrote down the names and descriptions of the soldiers in
his notebooks, along with anything special they asked for.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Henry Benton Company E. Seventh Ohio Volunteer, Ward K. Bed
forty four wants a little jelly in an orange. Wounded
last Sunday at Chancellorsville in leg I saw the bullet
and a piece of the bone stout hardy Ohio boy
Henry Eberley Bed eight. Ward K. Company h twenty eighth
(04:01):
Pennsylvania Volunteers wants a German prayer book. Wounded in the
left shoulder, pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Not all of his visits were cheerful. Of a man
named Hiram Johnson from the one hundred and fifty seventh
New York Volunteers, Whitman wrote.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
In his note book, this is the bed of death.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
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 nineteen year old boy from Baltimore
whose right leg had been amputated.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
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
(04:59):
had marked him and he was quite alone.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
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 eighteen sixty four, 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 (05:26):
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
(05:47):
poor 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 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
(06:10):
know in the world what has become of him.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
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
(06:35):
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 eighteen fifty five, Whitman
(06:59):
published his 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, 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
(07:21):
at the end 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
(07:42):
for the conflict rages on around them. The narrator charges ahead,
but returns that night to keep vigil for a boy.
He calls both son and.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Comrade 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 (08:04):
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
carefully overhead and carefully under feet. And there and then,
and bathed by the rising sun, my son and his grave,
(08:29):
in his rude, dug 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 never forget how
as day brightened, I rose from the chill ground and
(08:52):
folded my soldier well in his blanket and buried him
where he fell.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
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 six hundred
thousand 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 eighty thousand
(09:19):
and one hundred thousand soldiers. He also wrote that after
his time in the hospitals, the pages of his notebooks
were actually stained with soldier's blood. Walt Whitman would have
a long and fruitful life and career as a writer
right up to his death in eighteen ninety two, but
he always thought about his hospital years as something central
(09:39):
to his life.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction,
and of course the most profound lesson of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
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 3 (10:11):
The real war will never get in the books.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
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 great job on that, Robbie, 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 (00:33):
It was winter in eighteen sixty two, 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 thirteen thousand casualties, more than
double those of the Southern defenders. From the Union standpoint,
(00:57):
things looked pretty bleak for the formerly United States of America.
News of the casualties hit the papers right away, and
on December sixteenth, the American writer Walt Whitman learned that
his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg. With no
other information, Whitman set out to find his brother. He
searched the hospitals in d C with no luck until
(01:19):
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, something he
never forgot. Outside a field hospital, Whitman saw a heap
(01:42):
of amputated limbs, enough to fill a one horse cart. Horrified,
he wrote in his diary.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
At the foot of a tree. Immediately in front a
heap of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody,
black and blue, sweat, welled and sickening.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
By eighteen sixty two, Walt Whitman had already achieved some
fame and some notoriety as a poet that celebrated the
human body.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I am the poet of the body.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
He had written in his eighteen fifty five 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 (02:24):
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 eighteen
sixty three, Whitman returned to Washington, d c. Where he
began perhaps the greatest undertaking of his life. While the
(02:44):
war raged on, 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,
(03:08):
Whitman could 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,
(03:28):
he brought the ice cream. While in the hospitals, Whitman
wrote down the names and descriptions of the soldiers in
his notebooks, along with anything special they asked for.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Henry Benton Company E. Seventh Ohio Volunteer, Ward K. Bed
forty four wants a little jelly in an orange. Wounded
last Sunday at Chancellorsville in leg I saw the bullet
and a piece of the bone stout hardy Ohio boy
Henry Eberley Bed eight. Ward K. Company h twenty eighth
(04:01):
Pennsylvania Volunteers wants a German prayer book. Wounded in the
left shoulder, pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Not all of his visits were cheerful. Of a man
named Hiram Johnson from the one hundred and fifty seventh
New York Volunteers, Whitman wrote.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
In his note book, this is the bed of death.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
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 nineteen year old boy from Baltimore
whose right leg had been amputated.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
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
(04:59):
had marked him and he was quite alone.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
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 eighteen sixty four, 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 (05:26):
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
(05:47):
poor 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 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
(06:10):
know in the world what has become of him.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
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
(06:35):
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 eighteen fifty five, Whitman
(06:59):
published his 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, 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
(07:21):
at the end 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
(07:42):
for the conflict rages on around them. The narrator charges ahead,
but returns that night to keep vigil for a boy.
He calls both son and.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Comrade 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 (08:04):
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
carefully overhead and carefully under feet. And there and then,
and bathed by the rising sun, my son and his grave,
(08:29):
in his rude, dug 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 never forget how
as day brightened, I rose from the chill ground and
(08:52):
folded my soldier well in his blanket and buried him
where he fell.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
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 six hundred
thousand 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 eighty thousand
(09:19):
and one hundred thousand soldiers. He also wrote that after
his time in the hospitals, the pages of his notebooks
were actually stained with soldier's blood. Walt Whitman would have
a long and fruitful life and career as a writer
right up to his death in eighteen ninety two, but
he always thought about his hospital years as something central
(09:39):
to his life.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction,
and of course the most profound lesson of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
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 3 (10:11):
The real war will never get in the books.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
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 great job on that, Robbie, 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
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