Essay from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Augsburg (Philologisch-Historische Fakultät), course: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, language: English, abstract: The Civil War (1861-1865) was a significant and crucial experience for the still young nation of the United States. As a logical consequence, it immediately became a very important topic in American literature and culture. In this essay, I am going to compare two poems by Walt Whitman in order show the transformation in the perception and the resulting representation of the Civil War in American culture. Across all areas of culture, there is a development in the way the war is depicted. Whitman's own transformation from celebration to mourning is typical for the change undergone by the entire nation. Both poems are part of Whitman's collection Drum-Taps which was published in 1865, after the end of the war. However, they were created at different times. The first poem I am going to look at, First O songs for a prelude, was written in 1861 after the first battle at Fort Sumter and the resulting outbreak of the Civil War. The date of the second poem, The Wound-Dresser, is not exactly known, but Whitman certainly created it after 1862. That was the year where he found out that his brother was missing and then set out to look for him around the battlefields. So by the time The Wound-Dresser was written, Whitman had actually experienced war and undergone a comprehensive transformation, just as the whole nation.

This book is the first to offer a comprehensive selection of Walt Whitman’s Civil War poetry and prose with a full commentary on each work. Ed Folsom and Christopher Merrill carry on a dialogue with Whitman (and with each other) as they invite readers to trace how Whitman’s writing about the Civil War develops, shifts, and manifests itself in different genres throughout the years of the war. The book offers forty selections of Whitman’s war writings, including not only the well-known war poems but also his prose and personal letters. Each are followed by Folsom’s critical examination and then by Merrill’s afterword, suggesting broader contexts for thinking about the selection. The real democratic reader, Whitman said, “must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or frame-work,” because what is needed for democracy to flourish is “a nation of supple and athletic minds.” Folsom and Merrill model this kind of active reading and encourage both seasoned and new readers of Whitman’s war writings to enter into the challenging and exhilarating mode of talking back to Whitman, arguing with him, and learning from him.

A stunning and elegant 150th Anniversary Edition of Whitman's celebrated Civil War poems, accompanied by moving photographs and artwork shedding new light on this tragic but significant chapter in American history. Drum Taps is the complete Civil War poem collection by Walt Whitman, including the celebrated Oh, Captain, My Captain!, and augmented with Whitman's essays from the period on subjects such as Secession, Abraham Lincoln, working in the Civil War hospitals, and the assassination of the president. For the first time ever, each poem is set on a single page, and augmented with stunning artwork from the period: bright, rich, full-color engravings from Currier & Ives; the brooding and detailed photography of Alexander Gardner and Matthew Brady; watercolors from the battfield by Winslow Homer and other famous artists; and classic photographs and art from America’s richest collections, including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery, the George Eastman House, and many other collections. With gorgeous, old-fashioned hot type, beautifully restored period artwork, and an authoritative introduction by Civil War historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner James McPherson, this is the richest edition of these moving and thoughtful poems by America’s greatest poet ever published.

Shortly after the third edition of Leaves of Grass was published, in 1860, Walt Whitman seemed to drop off the literary map, not to emerge again until his brother George was wounded at Fredericksburg two and a half years later. Past critics have tended to read this silence as evidence of Whitman's indifference to the Civil War during its critical early months. In this penetrating, original, and beautifully written book, Ted Genoways reconstructs those forgotten years—locating Whitman directly through unpublished letters and never-before-seen manuscripts, as well as mapping his associations through rare period newspapers and magazines in which he published. Genoways's account fills a major gap in Whitman's biography and debunks the myth that Whitman was unaffected by the country's march to war. Instead, Walt Whitman and the Civil War reveals the poet's active participation in the early Civil War period and elucidates his shock at the horrors of war months before his legendary journey to Fredericksburg, correcting in part the poet's famous assertion that the "real war will never get in the books."