CHAPTER: IV
WALT WHITMAN’S DEMOCRATIC FOOT STEPS IN
DRUM-TAPS
Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not disheartened, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,
Those who love each other shall become invincible,
They shall yet make Columbia victorious
(Over the Carnage Rose a Prophetic Voice
(Walt Whitman.1986:315).
America was still in its awkward infancy, barely a country in the early
eighteenth century. The United States were recently 'united' and had yet to establish
much of an identity or personality. The prevailing thoughts on sexuality at the time
were largely influenced by British Victorianism, which discouraged discussion of sex
and promoted strict moral values. American writers were beginning to emerge,
however, and offer a voice that differed from other authors writing in English. They
made attempts to give new voice of America to the world.
Walt Whitman is often seen as the pre-eminent American poet. He loved
America and the things that were distinctly American, and celebrated the new country
in his poetry. It is difficult to separate the man from his work, because his poetry was
also celebratory of the individual. It was not singularly American which is certainly a
trait of democracy to which Whitman also believed strongly. The ideologies of
democracy were a driving force behind Whitman's poetics. Whitman's poetry is
democratic, as well as poetic because he resolves the “inherent conflict between the
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individual and the universe...at the level of the transpersonal self, where the individual
being himself is also the self of all. At the core of his being the individual is one with
the cosmic whole” (V.K.Chari.1967:127).
This chapter discerns the context that brings about the failure of the ideals of
Whitman's democracy starting from the impact of the Civil War. Whitman seems
disappointed. He laments the failings of political democracy. Primarily he has deep
faith in the ideals of his democracy and in its ability to create individuals whose
affection will contribute to the ideal democratic society through brotherly love. With
Drum-Taps, Whitman assumed the role of a mediator, hoping that his own record of
the war and, by extension, the event of the Civil War in itself would re-unite the
country. It would persuade its citizens to embrace a new democratic society which
departed from corrupt antebellum America. Further it incorporated the values that the
soldiers in Whitman’s poems represented.
Leaves of Grass is essentially a poem in process, with each succeeding edition
representing a unique period in the poet's life as well as the nation's. This is perhaps
best illustrated by Whitman's Civil War poetry. Originally they were published in
1865 as a separate volume entitled Drum-Taps. But later on integrated into Leaves of
Grass, growing in importance in the book as the war's historical significance became
clearer in Whitman's mind. He would eventually claim that Leaves of Grass revolves
around that four year's war, which, as I was in the midst of it, becomes, in Drum-Taps,
pivotal to the rest entire.
I consider the war of attempted secession, 1860–65, not as a struggle
of two distinct and separate peoples, but a conflict (often happening
and very fierce) between the passions and paradoxes of one and the
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same identity – perhaps the only terms on which that identity could
really become fused, homogeneous and lasting (Walt Whitman.1964:
426–7).
The poles of individual and nation were an extension of a perennial paradox
within the United States itself: the constitution of separate states within a federal
system. One of Whitman’s favorite names for the nation was ‘these States,’ a name
that underscores the plurality of national identity and also its augmentative identity,
where the political status of the accumulation was at issue for half of Whitman’s
lifetime. The Civil War tested this American system of democracy well before the
date that Whitman began to write, the coherence of the United States was in question.
He lived in a nation highly self-conscious about its identity because of its
sense of imminent disintegration, a fact which makes his pose of being hopeful an
even braver one than it would be today, in more settled times. When he writes of the
‘nation one and indivisible, whatever happens’ in the note book revisions, he
demonstrates his greater belief in the theory of the States, the fact that it’s true identity
had not yet been achieved. The political outcome and national continuance in many
ways was immaterial; in the middle of the war, uncertainty was an extension of the
extant disjunction between the ‘one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’
and generations of Americans living without liberty.
Whitman believed that with the Union struggle came the true existence of the
United States; with the Union struggle, his poems also lived again. When he says that,
“his book and the war are one” (Walt Whitman.1986:05). He is referring to Leaves of
Grass, not ‘Drum-Taps.’ His positive interpretations of the conflict bear witness to a
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plurality of humanity on the battlefield and in the hospitals; the very soldiers he
grieves give him hope in the national character, to be reborn at the end of the war.
His view was not just personal and poetical but political; in his eyes, the Civil
War accomplished for America what he hoped his poetry would accomplish a
democratization process. “It blew away many of the social ills that his early poetry
tried to rectify. It cleared the atmosphere like a thunderstorm, an image he liked to use
for the war. It seemed to rid North, especially, Manhattan, of many of its prewar
problems. It turned the fuzzy, shifting issue of states’ right versus national power into
Secession versus Union. It made most people in the Northern states rally around the
ideal of union he had long cherished. It pulled together virtually all Americans, North
and South, in a common action and a spirit of heroic self-sacrifice” (Reynolds David
S.1996:413-14).
Whitman makes his understanding of the identity of his poetic self necessary
to the identity of the nation. The provisional identity of the States continues after the
war and requires correction and a role for the poet, as stated in his prose work
Democratic Vistas a lovingly tough, resoundingly rough criticism of the United States
in Reconstruction. The Constitution and founding documents of the United States, the
‘compact,’ for Whitman, comprised not merely words but their interpretation, an
important judicial point crucial to understanding of the Civil War.
One of the central point’s he makes in Democratic Vistas is that the letter of
the law is not enough; the spirit of a nation must be interpreted rightly. The poet, he
believes, best expresses the nation, including its laws. What is necessary the spirit that
cannot be legislated; therefore the unacknowledged non legislator, the poet, is the best
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chance for the nation; making poetics, above and beyond politics, crucial to a nation’s
destiny. As Richard Rorty notes:
Whitman thought that we Americans have the most poetical nature
because we are the first thoroughgoing experiment in national selfcreation: the first nation-state with nobody but itself to please – not
even God (Richard Rorty.1998: 22).
Issues of equality fought out in the Civil War in particular demonstrated that
the ways in which America represents itself to its own self and the world does not
necessarily accord with historical facts. Whitman’s insistence on interpretation of the
laws and on ‘spirit’ recognizes this whitewashing, but also recognizes the power of
that belief for good as well as ill. The States never were a nation of freedom during
Whitman’s lifetime, yet they had the framework to become that.
Whitman’s idea of ‘liberty’ is the freedom to choose something for oneself,
therefore, ‘liberty’ is never really gone, but rather, it is forfeited in the beginning of
war. The soldier goes on to follow the orders of his perceived superiors and, in turn,
he loses any ‘liberty’ to make a decision for himself. His autonomy is seized from
him, and he becomes a faceless and Unknown Soldier sacrificing his life for, what he
thinks a greater cause. But to Whitman, war is not a greater cause than one’s own
cause, his or her life. Whitman writes about his experience in the Civil War in a letter,
“to see what I see so much of, puts one entirely out of conceit of war – still for all that
I am not sure but I go in for fighting on – the choice is hard on either part, but to cave
in, the worst” (Whitman Quoted in John Harmon Mc Elroy.1999:30-31). Though
Whitman seems to be advocating for war, the key word here is ‘choice.’ War is a
choice. Although Whitman believes that in the midst of war to cave in is the worst, he
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thinks that the decision to fight in the very beginning is an even bigger mistake. The
soldiers and the nation always have the ‘liberty’ to choose whether or not to fight. It is
a paradox, then, that soldiers use their autonomy to choose to fight, for in doing so,
they ultimately give up this very autonomy.
To Whitman, the armed forces are against his ideal of democracy in which all
human beings are equal regardless of skin color, occupation, gender, and other such
qualities. For Whitman, each person is of the same stature and any institution, such as
the army, that would set up a separation in ranks or status which is anti-democratic in
Whitman’s eyes. He writes in this way to erase the distinction between different
classes of people in various conditions. Folsom writes in his article, Democracy, “As
part of his democratic effort, Whitman tried to invent poetry as open, as
nondiscriminatory, and as absorptive as he imagined an ideal democracy would be”
(Folsom.1998:171). In Whitman’s poetry, true democracy is the voice of the common
man, the voice of the individual, over any authoritative figure. In his poem, Says,
Whitman writes, with one man or woman no matter which one-I even pick out the
lowest,
With him or her I now illustrate the whole law;
I say that every right, in politics or what-not, shall be eligible to
that one
man or woman, on the same terms as any
(Says, Walt Whitman.1986:24-26).
Each common man or woman has the right to power just as much as does any
man or woman in the legislature.
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The common man, even […] the lowest, has equal power. He or she
has a voice in the whole law without exception to any one part of the
politics or what-not. All common men and women have ‘every right’ to
be heard just as much as anyone else. Everyone is on the same terms,
no matter how much money he or she has or how powerful he or she is
seen in society
(Walt Whitman.1964:262).
Democracy, to Whitman, has an equal opportunity. But slavery was the most
important issue facing the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and no one
wrote about American slavery in more powerful, imaginative, and self- contradictory
ways than Walt Whitman. In The Poetry of Slavery: An Anglo- American Anthology,
(1764–1865), a 700-page collection included the works of Blake,
Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Wheatley, Dickinson, and Melville, the editor Marcus Wood states
simply: ‘‘Whitman’s poetry is the most important writing in this book”( Marcus
Wood, 2003: 626). The anthology includes the best known of Whitman’s passages on
black Americans, both slave and free in a democratic society from the 1855 Leaves of
Grass.
Whitman projects a deep, humanitarian empathy for blacks in the 1855 Leaves
of Grass. Yet he consistently opposed the extension of slavery not out of concern for
black persons but rather for white laborers whose economic opportunities and dignity
he felt would be harmed by the presence of slaves. Whitman celebrated the beauty
and dignity of black persons, yet he never argued for their inclusion in a democratic
America. He famously asked in an 1858 editorial: “who believes that the Whites and
Blacks can ever amalgamate in America?” (Whitman 1932: 90). This essay states that
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far from being mystifying or self-contradictory Whitman’s attitudes towards slavery
and black persons remained remarkably consistent among all genres of his writing and
throughout his career.
Whitman’s 1840s Free Soil journalism identifies the white male laborer as the
symbol and hopes of American democracy and champions his freedom over the
possibility of slavery in the new territories. At no point until the 1855 Leaves of Grass
does Whitman display any concern, much less awareness of, the suffering of black
slaves, and at no point does he seriously challenge the statusquo of slavery in the
South. Whitman opposed not slavery, but the extension of slavery. Whitman’s striking
and empathetic portrayal of blacks in 1855 emerged from a distinct coalescing of
circumstances never again to be repeated: a radicalized North after the passage of the
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act (The Kansas-Nebraska Act also led to ‘Bleeding Kansas,’
a mini civil war that erupted in Kansas in 1856. Northerners and Southerners flooded
Kansas in 1854 and 1855, determined to convert the future state to their view on
slavery.) and controversial enforcements of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law (The
Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress
on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave
holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. This was one of the most controversial
acts of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a 'slave power
conspiracy'. It declared that all runaway slaves be brought back to their masters.
Abolitionists nicknamed it the ‘Bloodhound Law’ for the dogs that were used to track
down runaway slaves.)
Whitman’s own dramatic development as a poet of democracy, evident from
notebooks and manuscripts dated 1853–55. Even at its most radical, Whitman’s
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poetry about slavery sought to produce a poetics of Union that would bring together
Northern and Southern whites. Whitman’s poetry argues for the humane treatment of
slaves, especially fugitive slaves but projects a future where whites and blacks would
exist apart. After 1855 Whitman ‘whitens his Leaves’ by deleting previous passages
about black persons, just as he hoped that black persons and American Indians would
eventually “filter through in time or gradually eliminate and disappear” (Kenneth
Price 1985: 205). No matter how self-liberating his poetry projects himself to be,
Whitman could never liberate himself from the hard grip of antebellum American
racism.
When Whitman first wrote about slavery in the 1840s, the idea of an
exclusively white America was embedded in the national consciousness. According to
historian Joseph Ellis, during the revolutionary era none of the founders
“contemplated, much less endorsed, a biracial American society” (Joseph Ellis 2002:
101). In the nineteenth century, whites both North and South continued to share
Thomas Jefferson’s belief that, “the real distinctions that nature has made between
blacks and whites prohibited racial integration” (Thomas Jefferson 1964:132).
Whitman himself consistently championed a form of white nationalism rooted in
freedom and opportunity for white laborers. The most pressing slavery issue for
Whitman was not its persistence in the South, but whether slavery would be permitted
in the new territories.
Whitman speaks of love and affection as that which will bind a nation’s
wounds. He uses the diverse American landscape to portray a national oneness that
will overcome temporary fratricide. As Sweet notes, “The political project of ensuring
a unified nationalism requires that the diversity of the landscape be subject to a
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totalizing image…The complex harmony of the American landscape came to signify
the naturalness of the complex harmony of the Union of States” (Sweet
Timothy.1994:106). Such harmony is what Whitman intends to create through his
cataloguing of American states.
Walt Whitman’s responses to the American Civil War are of great
significance. In Drum-Taps, Walt Whitman continues the task of bringing the nation
together, and hoped his democratic ideals which he implanted through Leaves of
Grass would pay rich dividends. Then in the context of a nation at war, with this new
collection of poems, the author engages in a reconciliatory project that foregrounds
the tragedy of a war between brothers and emphasizes the common humanity inherent
in each individual. After the war Whitman played the role of an instructor of his
country that faced with a second opportunity to regenerate itself by learning from the
errors of the past and becoming a truly democratic and just nation.
My book and war are one, Whitman once said, he might have said as well that
his book and the U.S. are one. “Whitman has been of crucial importance to minority
writers who have talked back to him- extending, refining, battling, endorsing and
sometimes rejecting the work of a writer who strove so insistently to define national
identity and to enrich an inclusive democratic society” (Folsom & Kenneth
Price.2004:20).
He was hardly alone in welcoming the war in poetry, not at the cost of his
democratic ideals. He wished war would bring peace and put an end to slavery. He
was an ardent follower of President Abraham Lincoln. Many American poets, North
or South, used the chance to pen verses celebrating the war. Everyone, it seemed,
produced a rousing recruiting song comparable to Whitman’s “Beat! Beat! Drums!”
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Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows-through doors-burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church and scatter the congregation.
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet-no happiness must he have now with
his bride,
(Beat! Beat! Drums! Walt Whitman.1986:283).
“Beat! Beat! Drums!” is one of the most powerful poems in Drum-Taps. After
the unsuccessful battle of Bull Run nearby Virginia, Whitman expresses his strong
emotions by composing this poem. Here the repeats of beat and blow dramatically
reinforce the poet’s patriotic tone that suggests a positive attitude towards the war;
moreover, the recruiting poem also reflects Whitman’s urge to ask every man to
participate in the following battle, so as to strengthen the solidarity of the Union. He
endorsed the Civil War as a catharsis which would purge the nation of political
corruption and preserve the union. Theodore Tilton’s The Great Bell Rolland,
Whitman’s Following the Drum, Alice Cary’s Song for Our Soldiers, John Pierpont’s
Forward! Charles Godfrey Lealand’s Northmen Come Out! and Fredrick Henry
Hedges, Our Country is Calling were typical Northern poems. A verse from Hedges
poem gives the flavor of the whole.
Our country is calling! we come!
For freedom and Union we rally;
Our heart best echoes the beating drum,
Our thoughts with the trumpets tally,
Each bosoms pant for the doomful day,
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When the rebels shall meet us in battle array
(Henry Hedges Quoted in Frank Moore.1864:23-24).
Furthermore, the war and its cessation will issue in a new era of national
cohesion that cannot be broken by geographical divides. As Reynolds notes, the war,
“pulled together virtually all Americans, North and South, in a common action and a
spirit of heroic self-sacrifice” (Reynolds David S.1996:414). When read through the
lens of a Unionist, this poem is in staunch support of the Union cause. When read
through the lens of an abolitionist, or in light of the slavery question, however, this
poem presents a national understanding that is defined solely by a white presence.
While all citizens of the Union are presented both as Sons of the Mother of All,
as well as by a catalogue of states and national landscapes, it must be understood that
such inclusion extends only to white Americans. The second line of the poem renders
emancipation not as a worthy cause, but as an unfortunate conflict that unnecessarily
caused national fratricide. Whitman uses the iconic image of chattel slavery, the
manacle, as an example of an unnecessary dispute that the nation will overcome
through white brotherly affection. Whitman’s concluding parenthetical aside is an
attack on abolitionists as well as on the emancipation proclamation. Whitman here
brushes aside any legislative or executive action as agents of national reunification.
Neither constitutional amendments nor armies of emancipation will succeed in
healing a nation’s wounds. Only democracy, brotherly love, affection will bring the
nation back together again.
Advocating nationalism, which was the first tenet of democracy for Whitman,
believes that one who loves his nation will support democratic setup in the political
process. Hence his ability to bring whites and blacks together was unfettered. His
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choice, therefore, to refuse a national connection between whites and blacks in DrumTaps is highly significant. Once war broke out and slavery positioned itself as the
issue that would rend America at the seams, Whitman’s poetic attitude towards the
slave shifted from one of sympathy to one of resentment. Whitman’s choice to largely
omit the slave from his war poetry signals the otherness of the slave and the newly
liberated and marks their exclusion from the national brotherly affection referred to in
his poetry.
Ethiopia Saluting the Colors continues the divisive work that Over the
Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice began. Although the poem takes the important steps
of including not only the slave, but her voice as well, its message still marks the
inherent separation between the slave and the nation:
Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,
With your wooly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony
feet?
Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?
(Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sands and pines,
Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com’st to me,
As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.) Me master years
a hundred since from my parents sunder’d,
A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,
Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.
No further does she say, but lingering all the day,
Her high-borne turban’d head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye,
And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.
What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?
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Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?
Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have
seen?
(Ethiopia Saluting the Colors Walt Whitman.1986:318).
There is a little in the poem that hints at a unifying national effect between the
soldier and the slave-woman. It is his army that is marching through Carolina, not
hers. It is the flag of his nation, not hers. Her clothes and her name mark the otherness
of her national identity. Her story is brief, barely discernible and minimally
informative. She is, indeed, hardly human. Generally considered stereotypical if not
racist in its portrait of an old slave woman, was widely admired by black intellectuals
before the Second World War. “It was set to music as a war song for the First World
War by Harry T.Burleigh, a prominent black composer. Black writers lamented that
Whitman’s influence has been limited by the unpopularity of his poetic form” (J.R. Le
Masters, Kummings Donald.1998:29).
Whitman's sympathetic identifications with slaves in the poems of Leaves of
Grass, a poem like Ethiopia Saluting the Colors, which is in Drum-Taps, suggests his
ambivalence, notwithstanding the African-American poet Langston Hughes's embrace
of the poem. Especially on the question of prisoner exchange, “Whitman's racism
flares up, as he decries Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's insistence that black men
count the same as white men in prisoner swaps between the North and the South”
(Morris Roy Jr.2000:192). Desperately wanting his brother George released from
Confederate prison, Whitman is perfectly willing to overlook the rights of black
Americans, seeing those rights merely as impediments.
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The poem A Man’s Body at Auction makes a heartrending and heartening
appeal to common humanity and professes his belief in “universal fraternity, within
their runs blood/the same old blood! The same red-running blood!”(Walt
Whitman.1959:74), if such a daring statement is only Whitman’s strong reaction to
slavery, he represents in ‘Salut au Monde! his vision of an ideal world where people
of all nations, all cultures, all classes, all religions, all races, are welcomed, with the
black recognized equals: “You dim-descended, black, divine-soul’s African large, fine
headed, nobly-form’d, superbly destined, on equal terms with me!” (Walt
Whitman.1959:105). The message is clear and loud to the black poet Langston
Hughes.
One of the most convincing items of evidence used by Whitman’s
internationalization of the typical racial prejudices of the nineteenth century American
whites is the famous quotation recorded by his Camden disciple Horace Traubel
during one of their routine evening chats on 8th September, 1888. Whitman was
quoted saying “the American white and the Southern black will mix but not ally”
(Traubel Horace.1961:283). At present, after one hundred and twenty three years, we
have earned ourselves a better perspective in reconsidering Whitman’s ambiguous
racial views which contradicts his belief in America’s democratic setup.
The question that opens the poem denotes the insistence that the war being
fought is not for emancipation, but the reunification of the nation. The slave’s place is
located firmly outside the realm of the Union cause. This is perhaps less surprising
when reminded of Whitman’s earlier musings on blacks in America: “Who believes
that Whites and Blacks can ever amalgamate in America? ... Or who wishes it to
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happen? Nature has set an impassable seal against it. Besides, is not America for the
Whites? And is it not better so?” (Morris, Roy Jr.2000:80).
Whitman’s belief in the inherent natural differences between blacks and
whites taints his seemingly magnanimous poetic choice in allowing the slave woman
a chance to speak in her own voice. At the outset, one might glean a sense of power
from her ability to tell her own story. The fact that Whitman chooses to ‘color that
voice’ as an almost distinct language with inverted sentence structures, however,
highlights the fact that the slave and the soldier do not share any natural connections.
The slave’s voice is yet another indication of the chasm that stands between her, the
solider, and the nation, a chasm whose existence, Whitman believed, was naturally
appropriate.
Whitman’s less than progressive handling of slavery within Drum-Taps can be
disappointing to the modern reader. As Reynolds points out, Whitman has
experienced his share of criticism from modern authors. “Some have expressed
dissatisfaction at his failure to become a social activist. D.H. Lawrence pointed out
that it is one thing to sympathize with slaves…but quite another to agitate for their
emancipation. Henry Miller, likewise, complained that Whitman never took on the
causes of those much oppressed peoples he ostensibly championed” (Reynolds David
S.1996:144).
Slaves do not exist as members within Whitman’s wartime poetic
understanding of America. The slaves were a danger to Whitman’s poetic
construction of national unity by bringing the root of the sectional conflict to bear.
The love that will inevitably reunite the nation and heal its wounds does not extend to
the nation’s slave population. Emancipation, rather than being that which elevated the
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war to a higher purpose, is that which started the unnecessary national bloodletting in
the first place. Slavery is a side issue to Whitman, and thus surprises those who
understand Whitman as one of the nation’s prominent democratic orators.
Whitman sets up a utopian world in his poems in which this sense of equality
is lucidly demonstrated. There is no class division, no caste system, and no difference
in rank. To Whitman, all men really are created equal. He writes in his poem The
Sleepers, “The call of the slave is one with the master’s call and the master salutes the
slave” (Walt Whitman.1986:188). In 1855 at the time of publication, slaves and
masters were considered opposite poles in terms of social class. However, in
Whitman’s idea of a perfectly democratic world, there is no sense of this class system.
The master and the slave are equals. The call of the slave is deemed equivalent to the
orders or the master’s call. The master shows respect to the slave in saluting him, thus
bringing the master down to the slave’s level or even bringing the slave up to the
master’s level. Regardless of the order, though, the master and the slave are seen as
equal. Whitman extends this idea of equality to himself by placing himself at the same
level as his readers.
Whitman reveals the true order of things in his notion of the perfect
democracy. Whitman uses these power structures of the slave and the master and the
President and the citizen as examples to reveal other negative relationships based on
power, including that of the chief, the officers, and the soldiers. The armed forces set
up a separation in ranks, positions, and power. This perspective is evident in
Whitman’s poem, A March in the Ranks Hard Prest, and the Road Unknown. He
writes, “Ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks” (Walt Whitman.1986:306).
Everyone has a rank, a title assigned to individuals to diminish the notion of equality
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of the chief, the officer and the soldier. An officer is ranked above the soldier. A chief
is perceived to be higher than the officer.
In his poem The Sleepers Whitman first sets up the separation of rank in
labeling one man the chief and the others officers and soldiers. However, Whitman
uses the image of a retired chief in a tavern to emphasize the division of rank that has
been broken down between the chief, the officers, and the soldiers now that the war is
over. He writes,
The same at last and at last when peace is declared,
He stands in the room of the old tavern….the well beloved soldiers all
pass through
The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,
The chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses them on the
cheek,
He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another….he shakes hands
and
bids goodbye to the army
(The Sleepers, Walt Whitman.1986: 305-306).
Only after the war is over, when peace is declared, is the chief equal with his
officers and soldiers. They become ‘the same at last.’ The soldiers are no longer
faceless beings to yell orders at. They are now the well beloved soldiers. These men
are speechless and slow, as if tiptoeing around the sensitive aspect of the ranks being
broken down. The war set up a division in ranks and now, in the tavern, the chief, the
soldiers, and the officers must figure out how to treat each other as equal men once
again. It is a humbling experience when the chief encircles the soldiers’ necks with
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his arm and kisses them on the cheek. He is to be a great hero and yet he sits in a
tavern hugging and kissing the soldiers that were always seen as subservient to him.
He shows humility in this way, kissing the cheeks of those who were once his
inferiors. The soldiers all have wet cheeks as they cannot help but cry for the decision
they made to fight. They say goodbye to the army, and yet the army and its power
hierarchies will never leave them.
Whitman’s poetry reflects the vitality and growth of the early United States.
During the nineteenth century, America expanded at a tremendous rate and its growth
and potential seemed limitless. But, sectionalism and the violence of the Civil War
threatened to break apart and destroy the boundless possibilities of the United States.
As a way of dealing with both the population growth and the massive deaths during
the Civil War, Whitman focused on the life cycles of individuals: people are born,
they grow old and reproduce, and they die. Such poems as When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom’d imagine death as an integral part of life. The speaker of When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d realizes that flowers die in the winter, but they
re-bloom in the springtime, and he vows to mourn his fallen friends every year just as
new buds are appearing. Describing the life cycle of nature helped Whitman
contextualize the severe injuries and trauma he witnessed during the Civil War linking
death to life helped give the deaths of so many soldiers, a meaning.
Personal and political liberation are, of course, central themes in Whitman's
early writing. In the 1855 Preface, he uses the figure of the prisoner to suggest
Liberty's opposite, the man who needs to be freed by comradely democracy. The poet,
he claims, will win the battle, free the prisoners:
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Poets [...] are the voice and exposition of liberty [...] Liberty relies on
itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is
positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle
rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat . . . .
the enemy triumphs . . . . the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace
and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and lead balls do their work . . . . the
cause is asleep . . . . the strong throats are choked with their own blood
. . . . the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they
pass each other . . . . and is liberty gone out of that place? No never
(Walt Whitman.1982.262).
Whitman’s devotion to the Union was indeed unwavering; his poems on death
are less involved in serving Northern Union ideology and more concerned with
explaining the nation’s new reality of death for soldiers and their families. As Harold
Aspiz explains in Walt Whitman’s Poetry of Death (2004), “Whitman viewed death as
an eternal and benign mystery that he was destined to interpret for himself and to
translate for his readers…he felt duty bound to prevent the American public from
becoming indifferent to the war’s casualties” (Aspiz Harold.2004: 171).
Whitman, appreciated death’s power as the defining element of the Civil War.
His ability to face the harsher sides of reality can be seen with his experience.
Transcendentalism accepts that harsh circumstances exist as part of life, but the
individual can decide how to act in regard to circumstances: “there is no object so foul
that intense light will not make beautiful. Even the corpse hath its own beauty” (Ralph
Emerson.1992:9). Centered on death, his works articulate the complete rupture in the
antebellum social understandings of death wherein the dead died at home, named,
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among family, and having been given their last rites as well as a dignified burial.
Further, the poetry chronicle, the means by which the nation coped with the war’s
unprecedented volume and type of death by constructing new forms of death rites that
included standing vigils for comrades, poring over photos and letters of loved ones,
and depending on the nurses and doctors who acted as surrogate families for the
dying.
Ironically, Whitman, and Melville understood that battlefield death in its
ferocity and ubiquity is what linked all members of the fractious nation together. As
Faust explains, “The nation was a survivor, too, transformed by its encounter with
death, obligated by the sacrifices of its dead. The war’s staggering human cost
demanded a new sense of national destiny…by the end of the century the Dead had
become
the
vehicle
for
a
unifying
national
project
of
memorialization”(Faust.2008:268-9).Death was an experience that everyone in the
nation shared. As a result, Whitman, and Melville hoped, death would usher in a
period of unified national mourning and democratization of loss that would bring the
nation back together as a grieving family.
For Whitman and many of his contemporaries, the Civil War had initially been
welcomed as a cleansing agent that would wash away all the social evils of
antebellum America. The poet, thus, assumed that “the conflict would provoke a
violent –but necessary– catharsis, enabling the purification of the nation and its
emergence as a powerful, truly democratic and reunited country. Choosing war before
disunion, he rejected to present the conflict as one of North against South,” (Betsy
Erkkila.1989:208) presenting it, instead, as a “struggle going on within one identity”
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(Quoted in Peter Coviello.2006) and the only means by which this identity could
reunite again.
Yet, Whitman’s attitudes toward the war changed throughout the 1860s
because of his coming into contact from 1862, with what he frequently referred to as
the “real war” (Specimen Days.1995:80) Whitman always claimed that his
Washington years had offered him “the most profound lesson of my life…. It has
given me my most fervent view of the true ensemble and extent of these States”
(Lowenfels Walter.1989:5).
Drum-Taps is not just a poetic volume about the Civil War; it is Whitman’s
volume about Whitman’s Civil War, as it contains an extremely personal and,
therefore, partial approach to the conflict which corresponds to the aspects the poet
had been directly in contact with and which highlights –above all– the human and
individually-centered dimension of a war that, Whitman thought, would and could
never be recorded in any book.
If the Whitman of the 1850s had already announced the significance of the
national poet, he continued emphasizing this centrality and, therefore, his own value
as poet of America more fervently during the war, as he perceived the poet had to
assume an essential function in a fundamental moment of the history of the United
States. It is true that, when the war began, he remained expectant for some years as if
considering the voice he was to adopt. Erkkila argues that, during the Civil War,
Whitman abandoned “the romanticism of the 1850s of democracy in order to take on
a more realistic perspective: if in the prewar period Whitman had viewed himself as a
poet-prophet … during the war years he came to see himself as a kind of poet-
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historian, preserving a record of the present moment for future generations” (Betsy
Erkilla.1989:205).
Though Whitman did not fully abandon his previous prophetic voice, it is
observable that his obsession during these years was to record part of the war not only
for future generations, but also for those contemporary Americans who had not
participated or had any insight into the war. Drum-Taps, thus, aims to fulfill this
intention. Through his text, Whitman endeavored to connect two worlds that were
separated from each other by bringing the experiences of soldiers in direct contact
with the war to those civilians in the big cities who enjoyed a sense of peace.
The perfect democratic society was, according to Whitman, characterized by
the capacity to unite American men despite differences of age, social class or
geographical origin i.e. North or South, East or West through a love that would
neutralize their differences and highlight their common Americanness, abolishing,
thus, any hierarchical relationships among them. This constituted for Whitman his
vision of a perfectly democratic society, which –he thought– had to spread to the rest
of the United States so that the nation could abandon the materialism and class
divisions that had predominated until the Civil War and embrace the nurturing values
this utopian society represented.
As a universal poet, the issue of conflicts is what he attempts to handle and
overcome in his writing. Then, through his volunteer work during the Civil War,
Whitman shows his great patriotism and sympathy in helping people in need, and his
experiences modify certain perspectives of his transcendental vision, especially in the
respect of death. Nevertheless, the cruelty of the war does not diminish his
transcendental vision; instead it brings out his deeper understanding of death and life
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and predicts the future development of American democracy. His transformation took
under the impact of the civil war; from patriotism to sympathy with both North and
South so as to reach conciliation. Such a change also influences his attitude towards
democracy in the postwar reconstruction.
It is evident that Whitman suffers a lot physically and mentally from the
horrors of the fratricidal war, but at the same time, his transcendentalism goes through
a great transformation as he gradually realizes the nation’s tremendous loss in its
struggle for reunion and democracy. During the Civil War, Whitman comes to see the
darkness behind the cruel war and tries to transcend suffering and grief in the war so
as to express his vision of reconciliation.
To a great extent, the experience in wartime hospitals offers him more than
just a source for writing; it also provides him with a valuable opportunity to ponder on
the meaning of the war and the importance of democracy. As M. Thomas points out,
“Whitman’s observation in the terrible scenes is that the Northerners would now at
last discover true, or pure, democracy in the very process of defending it” (Wynn
Thomas, M.1987:185). However, no matter how much the war means to the
Northerners, if it is a battle for democracy, the massacre on the battlefield is ironically
against the spirit of it. Through his firsthand contact with the cruel realities of the war,
Whitman shows different feelings from patriotic enthusiasm to people’s torment in
the war. Apart from Whitman’s patriotism, we can also see his constant efforts to
transcend harsh realities in his Civil War poems. That is to say, his concerns are not
just about the reunion of the nation, but also about the devastation of the fratricidal
war that caused great hardship and suffering to numerous people.
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As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible for Whitman to neglect the
significance of the war to express his vision of reconciliation. Still, even if the value
of reunion is highly emphasized in his poetry, there is no denying that the trauma
brought by the secession war sometimes cannot be expressed by words, as he writes
in Specimen Days, “the real war will never get in the books” (Walt
Whitman.1986:778). Thus Drum-Taps, to a profound degree, holds great significance
not merely in recording one of the most tragic events in American history but also in
suggesting the unknown aspects of the war.
Although the First O Songs depicts a city in the grip of an enlistment fever
that sweeps across occupations and ignores social classes, the emphasis is
nevertheless on. “The mechanics arming, the trowel, the jack plane, the blacksmith’s
hammer, tost aside with precipitation” (Walt Whitman.1986:281). This was in
keeping with Walt’s deepest political conviction, his abiding belief which the war was
profoundly to confirm that the true custodian of his visionary democracy was not the
ruling elite but the working class, of which his brother was a representative member.
In Drum-Taps, there is scarcely a mention of the enemy in the early phases of
war. Whitman’s feelings about the South were so mixed and so complicated that he
found it much easier to construct a positive rhetoric in favor of the union, democracy,
liberty, etc. What is certain is that he believed that, “the Union army, whose formation
was so joyously celebrated in First O Songs, would be a revolutionary bodyrevolutionary in the sense that, unlike all the armies of history, it would be thoroughly
democratic in spirit and in structure”(Wynn Thomas M.1995:30). When reality struck
home, it therefore struck with a revelatory force that eventually dictated the vision,
the terms of Whitman’s war poetry.
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He had informed his prospective publisher, James Redpath that, “the officers
should almost invariably raise from the ranks- there is an absolute want of democratic
spirit in the present system and officers-it is the feudal spirit exclusively”(Miller,
Edwin Haviland.1961:171). In fact, his brother George did gradually win promotion
in precisely this way. Whitman continued to be possessed by the desire to produce a
revolutionary book that would “push forward the very big and needed truth, that our
national military system needs shifting, the revolutionizing and made to tally with
democracy, the people” (Miller, Edwin Haviland.1961:171). In a way, Drum-Taps
was the book, undemonstratively egalitarian in language and outlook, and bearing
quiet testimony to the pure democracy of courage and of suffering, Whitman believed
he’d been privileged to witness in the hospitals.
Despite his inspiring patriotism, Whitman incurred criticism due to the
exaggerated overflow of his idealistic poetic expression, for he urged almost without
reserve his people to fight bravely for the union of their nation:
War! an arm’d race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no
turning away;
War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm’d race is advancing
to welcome it
(Walt Whitman.1986:236).
Folsom observes, “Whitman exalted the Union because it had become for him
a sacred and mystical notion to which everything, if necessary, must be sacrificed”
(Folsom.2000:155). It is worth noticing that the poet emphasizes the absolute
importance of the Union at any cost during the war, for he is a prophet of the
democratic future of America. In terms of his devotion to democracy, Whitman can
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be viewed as a pioneer in American democracy, as Folsom indicates, “Whitman, who
was a pioneer among the pioneers in the vanguard of the American nation, could not
but throw himself wholeheartedly into the conflict—at least in imagination”
(Folsom.2000:156). Thus, in Drum-Taps, we can see Whitman’s high-spirited
patriotism as well as his vision of democracy make him believe that only by the
victory of the Union can America keep her future prosperity.
He bestows honor upon them whose nation was saved by their noble sacrifice.
Thus, in the poem, As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods, Whitman shows his
great love for the soldiers sacrificed in the war.
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,
Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt,
alone, or in the crowded street,
Comes before me the unknown soldier’s grave, comes the
inscription rude in Virginia’s woods,
Bold, cautious, true and my loving comrade
(As Toil some I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods, Walt
Whitman.1986:307)
Here, Whitman pays respect to those soldiers who make contribution to
America through their sacrifice in the war. Facing the terrible destruction of the war,
Whitman hopes that his poetry will help to heal his nation. In poems like this, we see
Whitman transcending the grief of the war by seeing those wounded and dead as his
true…and loving comrades, a comradeship that will make possible the reunion of the
divided nation. As Morris indicates, “The young men, Whitman saw there each day
represented him a pure distillation of the American spirit” (Morris Roy Jr.2000:120).
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From the sacrifice of these young men, Whitman sees his country suffer in the
national upheaval. Even after a series of turbulences and struggles in the war,
Whitman’s faith is not defeated. Instead, his transcendental vision develops with the
accumulation of his life experiences and is strengthened.
It can be inferred that Whitman wishes to absorb all the aftermath of the war
in his poetry: “Leave me your pulses of rage bequeath them to me fill me with
currents convulsive” (Morris Roy Jr.2000:273). Seeing pain and sorrow, Whitman
intends to resolve the violence and revenge caused by the war. He wishes to reconcile
national conflicts and looks forward to a good bright future for his country and DrumTaps cluster. Anthony Szczesiul points out that “the war poems progress from
jingoistic idealism to doubt and reflection, and they finally move toward a
reconciliation with and interpretation of the war’s significance on both the personal
and national level” (Szczesiul Anthony.1993:131). That is to say, in his writing about
the tragic war, Whitman combines his patriotism with sympathy by his voluntary
work and seeks to transcend the hostilities in the wartime upheaval. In Reconciliation,
he shows his wish to reconcile both sides of the nation;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw
near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in
the coffin
(Reconciliation, Walt Whitman.1982:321).
In this poem, Whitman’s kiss for a dead Confederate soldier signifies that in
the future there will be no more hatred between North and South. “He believes that
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only by the love born out of comradeship can people let bygones be bygones. Even
after the war was over, Whitman still kept on visiting soldiers in the hospitals. He did
not and could not forget them; instead, he mourned for them. Morris points out,
Whitman never forgot his soldier boys, but as the war receded into the past, he
sometimes despaired that the nation as a whole had already forgotten them” (Morris
Roy Jr.2000:238). No matter how quickly people forgot the victims in the war,
Whitman never stopped sympathizing with those who suffered in the war and to him;
ultimately the war would lead the nation to a better democracy.
After the Civil War, America entered into a long period of reconstruction.
Apart from the work to restore the operation of the society, there was another
significant movement the development of democracy; however, even though
Whitman is a poet of democracy, he assumes “Democracy to be at present in its
embryo condition while the only large and satisfactory justification of it resides in the
future” (Walt Whitman.1982:765). To him, “it is a word the real gist of which still
sleeps, quite unawaken’d” (Walt Whitman.1982:765). Still, he has great confidence in
the future vista of democracy. Whitman believes that one of the fundamental elements
of democracy lies in the relation between the individual and the mass. His democratic
vision of the world is reflected in the opening section of Leaves of Grass, in which he
emphasizes the balance between the individual and the mass, that is, the communion
between the self and nation.
With the publication of Drum-Taps (1865), the Sequel to Drum-Taps (18651866) and to the Centennial edition of Leaves of Grass (1876), Whitman has never
lessened his emphasis on the importance of democracy. In fact, he places democracy
above anything else. In 1871, six years after the war, Whitman brought the two essays
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together, Democracy and Personalism and combined them into Democratic Vistas. To
articulate the close relationship between democracy and his nation, he writes, “I shall
use
the
words
America
and
democracy
as
convertible
terms”
(Walt
Whitman.1982:758).
Through such a concept of interchangeability, Whitman wishes to transcend
the difficulties in the war as well as in the postwar reconstruction to envision the
blueprint of the future democratic development in America. David Reynolds
indicates, “Despite lapses, Whitman says, American democracy is basically sound and
will ultimately heal itself” (Reynolds David S.1996:478). This shows Whitman’s
great hope for democracy in his nation.
The Civil War in reality had great influence on Whitman’s vision of American
democracy. Kenneth Cmiel observes that in Democratic Vistas, “Whitman
remembered the war heroically. For him, it was a time when the people themselves
fought for the principles of democracy” (Cmiel Kenneth.2000:223). The cruel realities
of the war did not blur his ideal vision of democracy. He still viewed the war
positively because he thought that it would eventually lead the nation toward
democracy.
The movements of the late secession war, and their results, to any sense that
studies well and comprehends them, show that, “popular democracy, whatever its
faults and dangers, practically justifies itself beyond the proudest claims and wildest
hope of its enthusiasts” (Walt Whitman.1982:763). Yet, despite his faith in
democracy, the political development after the war was different from what he
expected. In fact, during the postwar reconstruction of the States, Whitman saw
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problems that obstructed the development of democracy. For instance, he gives his
observation in Respondez:
Stifled, O days! O lands! In every public and private
corruption!
Smother’d in thievery, impotence, shamelessness, and mountain-high;
Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean’s waves
around and upon you, O my days! my lands!
For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightings
of the war, have purified the atmosphere
(Respondez.Walt Whitman.1982:591-92).
These lines show Whitman’s severe accusations of American society in the
postbellum years. One of them is the prevalence of corruption in society. As he writes
in Democratic Vistas, “we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face,
like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more
hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. These social
problems
postponed
the
development
of
democracy
in
America”
(Walt
Whitman.1982:760).In spite of Whitman’s complex feelings about American
democracy, he still wishes to find some way to improve it, and he suggests that the
vision of American democracy should be carried out by “the great literatus of the
modern” (Walt Whitman.1982:760).
It is the national literature that counts especially in its archetypal poems.
Above all previous lands, “a great original literature is surely to become the
justification and reliance, (in some respects the sole reliance,) of American
democracy”(WaltWhitman.1982:760). Whitman strongly advocates the significance
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of literature in the development of American democracy. Thus, we can find his
concept of democracy even in his early poems.
Whitman clearly expresses his intention to enact a close relationship between
himself and his readers. Through his celebration and singing of his self, the poet
wishes to identify himself with his readers. Everything he assumes to be good and
also be assumed by them, which will lead to a high degree of harmony that is the basis
of democracy. As the self is dynamic enough to include the self and the other, such a
poetic declaration illustrates that Whitman’s democratic vision moves beyond
political levels. Madison Morrison observes, Whitman universalizes democracy and
so transforms it into something else. He goes on, “By democracy, Whitman also
means freedom, not that freedom from political tyranny spoken of in the ‘Declaration’
but rather the modern doctrine of one’s freedom to realize oneself, and the nation as a
whole”(Morrison Maddison.1993:143). Besides the notion of freedom to realize
oneself, Whitman’s democratic ideals also concern the establishment of communion
and trust between people by comradeship. In For You O Democracy, the love of
comrades is closely associated with the development of a democratic society.
He intends to strengthen democracy by comradeship. He elaborates that
democracy involves union of the individual and society. According to him, possibility
of democracy lies not only in the individual’s realization of himself, but also in
mutual respect and understanding in society. In this way we may say that in his
democratic vision he stresses the union of the individual and the mass in the American
society.
In Democratic Vistas, Whitman, as an advocator of a democratic society,
believes that the idea of democracy would become the mainstream ideology in future
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America. No matter what problems may emerge in the practice of democracy, he
firmly believes that it will be accepted and realized in the future, as John Stuart Mill
says in On Liberty: “It is as certain that many opinions now general will be rejected
by the future as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present” (Rapaport
Elizabeth.1978:53). It is no wonder that when Whitman reviews his life, he places
democracy as his top priority. In Souvenirs of Democracy, he writes:
But I, my life surveying,
With nothing to show, to devise, from its idle years,
Nor houses, nor lands—nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends,
Only these Souvenirs of Democracy—In them—in
all my songs—behind my leaving
(Souvenirs of Democracy, Walt Whitman.1982; 615).
Like many of Whitman’s transcendental concepts, his democratic vision looks
forward to the future. He sees democracy as one of the most important legacies he
leaves to future generations. More than he does anything else in his life, Whitman
hopes what he advocates can be proved by the future development and prosperity of
American democracy. The Civil War serves a turning point in the development of his
transcendental vision because the war brings challenges from the severe national
turmoil. As Mark Maslan points out, “if Whitman’s poetry could not maintain its
vitality in the face of disunion, one could expect to see evidence of this early in the
war, not after its successful conclusion” (Maslan Mark.1994:135). Betsy Erkkila also
observes. “If in the prewar period Whitman had viewed himself as a poet-prophet,
mythically embodying democracy and the revolutionary traditions of the past, during
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the war years he came to see himself as a kind of poet-historian, preserving a record
of the present moment for future generations” (Betsy Erkila. 1989:205).
Even in some circumstances in which Whitman inclines toward certain views
such as his patriotism during the war, he still endeavors to see beyond patriotism to a
transcendental vision. Thomas Haddox observes, “Aware that his need to take
political stands conflicts with his desire to encompass everything, Whitman most
often squares the circle by maintaining that apparent conflicts disappear within the
greater unity that he, as the poet of America, both perceives and continually creates.
In Whitman’s war poems, what remains unchanged is the poet’s transcendental vision
of unity and democracy instead of narrow sectarianism” (Thomas Haddox.2004:03).
It is especially worth noticing that Whitman presents the sublimation of all
things in a united whole. We may even say that his pursuit of the wholeness is not
only related to the spirit of democracy but also connected to his wish to be in
communion with everything in the world. His works show that he intends to dissolve
conflicts and differences among various things, as he writes, “I do not call one
greater and one smaller, that which fills its period and place is equal to any” (Walt
Whitman.1982;70). When everything gets its own place, it does not mean that it only
exists in a state of isolation. Rather, it exerts it’s influences through it’s relationship to
other beings in the universe. According to Whitman, “every condition promulges not
only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself” (Walt Whitman.1982; 71).
Whitman, in his conception of wholeness, not only respects the significance of all
things but also emphasizes the universal communion of them.
Whitman must have felt the fulfillment of this dream in the hospitals when he
saw that, in the midst of suffering and death, men were creating a new type of
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humanism. Hospitals constituted for the poet an experiment where he could test the
power of his affection, and where he could teach, at the same time, other men to
welcome and, eventually, incorporate democratic values of brotherhood, freedom,
equality and also (traditionally feminine), values like caring, warmth, solidarity, and
love. Whitman considered himself a “Wound-Dresser’ able to restore the bonds
between different types of Americans at such strongly divisive period as the Civil
War” (Walt Whitman.1986:308). Whitman believed that, after the war, those men
would spread the principles they had learnt from him to the rest of the democratic
society.
In this respect, Drum-Taps was also an instrument to report to civilians the
true democracy; soldiers had been creating paradoxically, and in the context of the
hospitals and tents, during the war. With his collection of poems, Whitman assumed
the role of a mediator, hoping that his own record of the war and, by extension, the
event of the Civil War in itself would re-unite the country and persuade its citizens to
embrace a new democratic society that departed from corrupt antebellum America
and incorporated the values that the soldiers in Whitman’s poems represented.
America however, was not ready to listen to Walt Whitman at this point. Neither did
soldiers transmit this new humanitarianism or utopian democracy to the rest of the
nation after the war.
And curious as it may seem, the War, to me, proved
Humanity, and proved America and the Modern
(Walt Whitman, Quoted in Peter Coviello.2006).
Whitman considered the whole of America was represented in those soldiers,
who were in strong need of love and empathic connections with other human beings.
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The poet believed these soldiers constituted a perfect democracy, as they displayed
the values of generosity, affection, manliness and equality that confirmed his belief in
comradeship and love as principles, that, if incorporated to America, would clean
away its social evils and help it emerge as a more
powerful and democratic nation.
Throughout Whitman's life, there were many things that influenced his
character and ideas, but his biggest achievement was his role in the Reconstruction
Period after the Civil War, both physically and mentally. Whitman had strong views
of America and her situation and many of his works represent the Civil War and its
hard times. Whitman's poems express his belief in democracy with ideas of the
patriotism, despite the ongoing corruption and struggle during the Reconstruction Era.
He was a huge advocate of democracy, and he fully supported the equal rights
of all human beings. “He was a democrat early on, but became a Republican with the
changing in the party's views. He was a strong supporter of the Free Soil party, those
who opposed having slavery in the new states of the Union, and he greatly wanted to
preserve the Union” (Miller James Jr.1962: 19). There were many noteworthy events
in Whitman's life, but one of the biggest defining moments was the inception of the
Civil War, and its destructiveness.
He was a great American writer with great American views, and he brought
individualism, some who believed in the right of every person to do as he or she
pleases, to a new point: egotism. As well as being “an individualist and an egotist, he
was an eager sexualist, and was not afraid to discuss his private affairs. In many of his
writings, the theme of sex is readily seen, and he was not ashamed to discuss his
dreams, despite living in a time of secrecy and humbleness” (Unger Irvin.1995:07).
188
Besides his views, he also greatly pushed America forward in his work and he
was “...very much around us, telling of his sweeping plans one moment, gossiping
about his ground achievement the next” (Miller James Jr.1962: 9). He was never
afraid to express his accomplishments or ideals in his work, and he wrote like a strong
American, which was what the United States needed at the time. Despite the influence
Whitman had on America, he was not nearly as popular during his time as he is today,
but his dream and legacy does live on through his work.
Whitman created a book whose physical form echoed the challenges the
postwar nation was facing stormy period of reconstruction. Whitman, too, was
entering a period of poetic reconstruction, searching for ways to absorb the personal
and national trauma of the Civil War into Leaves of Grass. As soon as the war ended,
“he began to realize that the nation’s hopes and history had to be reunified and that his
original goals for Leaves of Grass- to project an optimistic democratic future for
America-should not be abandoned but rather had to be integrated with the trauma of
the Civil War. He faced the difficult task now of reopening Leaves of Grass to find a
way to absorb into his growing book the horror of the nation’s fratricidal
war”(Folsom, Price.2005:92).
In Democratic Vistas and Memorandum During the War, it is apparent that
Whitman is looking forward to the new hopes of American Democracy, yet how he
also shows his concerns for the Civil War. “He shows his fears of the process of
America uniting back together, but he expresses how he will remain confident
throughout the time” (Mancuso Luke.1998:22). This was very influential for
Americans, because many of them felt that there was no hope to the country and that
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they were eventually doomed. Whitman's writings gave the citizens some sense of
security, and made them feel as if everything was going to be alright.
The Reconstruction Period also brought a new hope to Whitman's life, where
he was reassured of his faith in American democracy. Although “Whitman had many
hopes for the new country, he also was upset with the outcome of the war. It can be
seen in his work from the time, that he was upset about how America had transformed
from farmers to industry workers, and his anxiety towards the freedom of the black
race” (Meltzer Milton.2002: 126).
Despite his doubts, he continues to act as a patriot in full support of
democracy, and “The end of the war brought relief, optimism, and for Whitman, a
belief that the revitalized union would initiate a new era of political and social justice”
(Hall Nancy.2004:n.pag). The Reconstruction Era was a huge time for Whitman and
his readers, and he gave America a different type of patriot to follow, and he gave
them hope during a time when things looked in a downward spiral. During all these
rough times the country was going through, Whitman never lost his sense of
democracy and his patriotism. Democracy had been something that Whitman had
been admiring ever since he was born, and he has seen it through hard times, but he
never abandoned his beliefs.
“He had tremendous faith in democracy, which was mostly rooted in the belief
that all people have good souls, not just in the belief of the Constitution” (Gambino
Richard: 2003:14-17). In his works of the time, he generally always incorporates the
ideals of democracy into his work, especially in Democratic Vistas and Leaves of
Grass. In Democratic Vistas, he talks about democracy various times, and he splits it
up into three main parts. “The first part discusses the heroicness of those in the Civil
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War, and the sacrifices they made. The second part is about democracy, and how it
can be uprooted through individualism. The third part talks about the American
Literature of the time, and how it affects the culture” (Allen. Gay Wilson: 1973: 66).
Democratic Vistas provided a new outlook on the war, and how a better situation was
in the making.
In Leaves of Grass, Whitman also discusses democracy. Many think that “he
was saying how tremendous America was, and while this is true. He was actually
commenting on how democracy is decaying and how the natural ways are becoming
no more” (Meltzer, Milton.2002:82). Also, he was trying to describe how democracy
was the driving force that pushed Americans, and he was saying how democracy
would be what brought us into the future. It is said that the Whitman in Leaves of
Grass is the hero of American Democracy and that he was given divine characteristics
that made him. Also, he can be seen trying to make his science and democracy into
gods.
Besides the role he plays in the work, Whitman also uses a variety of symbols
to express his democratic views. In Leaves of Grass, “the grass can represent
Whitman's idea of democracy, which is the individuality in balance with the mass”
(Miller.1962:159 & 115). Also, “we can see symbols that represent the celebration of
industry, innovation, and expansion throughout the piece of literature” (Hall Nancy:
2004:n.pag). In Leaves of Grass, “Whitman takes on his new role as the poet of
democracy, and he is his own epic hero, but he emerges from Leaves as clearly
mythical as Homer's or Virgil's heroes. He emerges bigger than life, displaying traits
of Democracy's Superman” (Miller.1962:158). Whitman had the utmost faith in
democracy, and his works represent his feelings.
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In all of his works that were completed during the time period, a common
theme of patriotism is apparent in each piece. In his editions of Leaves of Grass and in
Democratic Vistas he gives the reader a strong sense that America is back on the right
path. “Whitman had a very strong love for democracy, and he was a man with a great
deal of love for life, for America, and for his fellow man” (Price Kenneth 2002:1823). Without Whitman's influential writing styles and pieces, the American citizens
might not have had any place of hope, and they would have seen destruction in their
near future. Whitman gave America a new meaning for democracy, and despite his
death, he still lives on in the hearts of Americans, pressing the ideas of a democracy.
Whitman felt the need to write about the war and to create poetic monuments
to the thousands of unknown individuals who lost their lives in it. With his texts,
Whitman engaged in the process of rescuing from the eternal darkness of the grave of
those anonymous men who had been neglected by the big forces of war, in order to
make them visible and acknowledged by his nation. Whitman asserted that the million
human beings dead during the war were obliterated under “the significant word
‘Unknown’, adding that in some cemeteries ‘nearly all the dead are Unknown’ and
wondering if any ... visible, material monument can ever fittingly commemorate
them” (Quoted in Peter Coviello.2006: 103-104). Whitman created his personal poetic
monuments with Drum-Taps and tried to rescue these unknown men from their
anonymity. Choosing to pay attention to different elements, the poet included the
events or experiences by which he had felt most moved, creating his own
representations of the war, transmitting them to the nation, and expecting the United
States to incorporate their voices and learn from his poems.
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Without fully abandoning his characteristically prophetic voice, the
democratic voice emerges especially in the first and last group of poems of DrumTaps, though, as we have seen, it is juxtaposed with a more realistic voice that
reminds readers of the non-glorious side of the war. In Drum-Taps, Whitman acquires
a more realistic and even pathetic tone. In this collection of poems, the poet chooses
not to celebrate the greatness of specific battles or figures of the war, but to praise
unknown individuals of both sides who suffer the consequences of these major events.
This is something organic to his previous work in Leaves of Grass, where Whitman
had focused on random anonymous people whom he had struggled to dignify.
In order to continue with his homage to common people, in Drum-Taps,
Whitman makes use of the experiences he was exposed to during the years he spent in
Washington, which bring him to commemorate not presidents, generals, or glory in
battle but the humblest men who died nameless and uncelebrated. In this respect, the
poems do not celebrate heroes in battle, as they concentrate either on its preceding
moments or its aftermath but not on the fight itself. This serves Whitman to highlight
the bravery and noble qualities the soldiers embodied, together with the tragic
consequences these men encountered in the Civil War.
Nonetheless, Whitman’s portrayal of the conflict is characterized by a certain
degree of unintentional irony: if it was clear that, in Drum-Taps and in other later
prose writings. Whitman demystified the war and realized that it did not lead to
personal glory. Instead of expressing pain, suffering, death and anonymity, he
expected that the war would conduct him to literary glory. Since he considered it was
his definite opportunity to rise from public neglect. This question can also be applied
to Melville, who saw in the war a new opportunity to achieve the recognition of his
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compatriots. By the end of the volume, therefore, we may realize Melville’s BattlePieces is in fact no celebration of the Civil War or America, but a portrayal of the
human costs of the conflict and homage to unknown individuals of both sides.
However, in the same way as it brought anonymity and neglect to unknown soldiers,
the Civil War would also result in the neglect of both Walt Whitman and Herman
Melville. Whitman and Melville adopted this genre in different ways. Whitman
abandoned his celebratory voice of the 1850s in order to adopt a more realistic and
pathetic style. “Drum-Taps permeates a feeling of vividness and immediacy that
reflects the intensity with which Walt Whitman might have gone through the events
that inspired these poems, in the midst of the war’s convulsiveness” (Quoted in Peter
Coviello.2006: 105).
However, not even when talking about hospitals does Whitman define the type
of democracy he believes the country needs to assume. Despite his optimism and hope
for the United States, Whitman never indicates how reconciliation will be
accomplished. This reunion addresses the concluding part of Drum-Taps which
remains vague as to what type of future the poet envisions for America and in what
ways he wants the country to be truly democratic. Consequently, Drum-Taps remains
closer to a prayer for peace or re-union than to an explicit statement of Whitman’s
political convictions about the future of the country or to a personal involvement of
the poet in the political debates of the period.
Whitman makes plea that the Civil War may teach America, by involving
himself directly in the debates of the nation after the war. As a consequence,
Whitman’s prayer in Drum-Taps and his plea for peace and re-union helps the
Americans to participate in the political debates of his country. Reminding his
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contemporaries the challenges of the United States that would face after the war. He
believes the nation should aim at the kind of pacification and reconstruction.
Whitman’s foremost objective with Drum-Taps was to capture the emotional
impact with which he witnessed the scenes that inspired his poems. He wished to
transmit that impact to the rest of his compatriots in order to facilitate their learning
while the war was still warm in the national imaginary. Whitman thus, saw his poems
as important pieces in this process of enlightenment, since he believed that poets had
an essential function as instruments for the instruction of Americans and for the
improvement of the United States.
Drum-Taps only reaches up to the victory of the Union, without even
including Lincoln’s murder. Such rush in the publication of Drum-Taps responds to
Whitman’s eagerness to produce the volume while the war was still fresh in his
readers’ minds. The span of time, his text covers, the poet considered he had an
essential function to perform in relation to the future of his nation. It brought a
transformation in him to assume the role of a mediator and instructor of a period that
he believed was full of possibilities, for the United States to renew itself.
Walt Whitman, his function of instruction and mediation was closely related to
his experiences in the hospitals, which he perceived were an experiment in his ideal
society of comrades. In that context, the poet became the source as well as the
recipient of love of men who were in need of warmth and affection. Becoming a nurse
and a “sustainer of spirit and body in time of need” (Quoted in Peter
Coviello.2006:101), the poet turned into an emotional wound-dresser for these
soldiers and into a substitute of the family, friends, lovers, etc. the war had forced
these men to leave behind.
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Whitman confessed that he felt recompensed with all the love he gave and
received during those years. It indicates that from the poet’s point of view, the
relationships he developed in the hospitals were reciprocally enriching for both the
soldiers and him. He also felt that he was learning from those privileged experiences
with different types of Americans. Thus, considering, he had acquired the “true
ensemble and extent of The States” (Quoted in Peter Coviello.2006:101). Whitman
felt ready and willing to teach them to the rest of society, something he longed for his
Drum-Taps to accomplish.
He claimed himself as a guide or instructor of the nation and in the
opportunity of enlightenment the war offered. He believed that it was the poet’s
function to connect his fellow men through love as he had witnessed in the hospitals.
The opposing sides of the American identity could be truly one again. “What is any
Nation, after all and what is a human being but a struggle between conflicting,
paradoxical, opposing elements and they themselves and their most violent contests,
important parts of that one identity, and of its developments?” (Quoted in Peter
Coviello.2006:126). In talking about the American identity unlike Melville, Whitman
was mainly referring to white Northerners and Southerners. Whitman’s perception of
his task as a poet was similar to the wound-dressing role he had been performing in
hospitals. He expected it to be extended to the larger context of the nation so that he
could become the healer of the wounds or fissures the war had widened and the
instrument through which peace and reunion could finally be accomplished.
The caesura of the Civil war marked a new beginning for Whitman’s thoughts
on democracy. Despite the great problems his country had faced with the
consequences of the Civil War, Whitman remained optimistic that “America […]
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counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success […] almost entirely on the future.
[…] for our New World I consider far less important for what it has done, or what it
is, than for results to come”(Walt Whitman.2002:757). Even though Whitman used
America and democracy as convertible terms, he nevertheless was so naive to deny
the possibilities of fiasco, for the United States are destined either to surmount the
gorgeous history of feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous failure of time.
Therefore, Whitman’s essay Democratic Vistas was intended to be a creative vision of
a future America, which hoped to be an inspiration for other writers yet to come.
Interestingly, Whitman wanted the reader to know that his essay was not
written from the perspective of a scholar, but was the result “of the ordinary sense,
observing, wandering among men, these States, these stirring years of war and peace”
(Quoted from Michael Moon.2002:758). This of course shows the democratic
demands in Preface 1855-Leaves of Grass in which he requested literature to be from,
about and for the common man. In Democratic Vistas, Whitman claimed to be that,
“common man, who was not superior, but on equal terms with his fellow countrymen.
His attempt therefore was to write about the state of America’s democracy from
anywhere in the past, under opposite influence. Therefore, Whitman argued that the
fundamental want to-day in the united States, with closest, amplest reference to
present conditions, and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of
native authors, literatures, far different, far higher in grade then any yet known,
sacerdotal, modern, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass
of American mentality, taste, belief” (Quoted from Michael Moon.2002:759).
Whitman’s call for a national American Literature had grown louder after the
Civil War. His trust in America’s economical and political leadership to solve the
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problems had declined. Once again, Whitman turned to the literatures, perfect
personalities and sociologies, original, transcendental, to bring to the American
people “a religious and moral character beneath the political and productive and
intellectual bases of the states” (Quoted from Michael Moon.2002:760). Whitman put
greater emphasis on the importance of education, which had not played such an
important part in his earlier essay. It is noticeable, that the role of the poet had also
changed since Whitman’s 1855 Preface. From being an observer and interpreter, he
was now expected to serve his country as a moral and religious role model.
Democratic Vistas must be seen in the context of the Civil War, which had
almost split the country into two parts, and the following Reconstruction era, which
advanced the country economically, but which failed to re-unite the American people.
Stephen John Mack argued that “Whitman saw that to ‘make a nation’ meant to
conceptualize a national identity not a nation of juxtaposed but dissociated souls such
as he celebrated before 1860 but a public, a cohesive organization of free people
motivated by an essential need to work together, to build the structures of democratic
life” (Stephen John Mack.2002:153). Whitman was convinced that the making of a reunited nation after the Civil war could only be achieved through a national literature,
which would give national identity to all Americans. Above all, he believed that ‘a
great original literature is surely to become the justification and reliance of American
democracy.’
And in the final passage of the war memoranda, he movingly ‘sums up’ the
casualties, both moral and material of the War. Closing with a description of the ruins
of Andersonville Prison: “Even at Andersonville, to-day, innocence and a smile. It is
perhaps significant he mentions the infamous prison last, as if it were the worst
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atrocity to be overcome in the healing process of the Union”(Qtd from Peter
Coviello.2006:n.pag).
The final poem in Drum-Taps, Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice,
suggests that only by replacing the bonds of prisons with the ties of mutual affection
can this be accomplished: these shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of
iron. We may conclude, this is precisely the message of Over the Carnage Rose
Prophetic a Voice, which claims manly love as the principle that can “solve the
problems of freedom” (Walt Whitman.1986: 314-15). By establishing bonds between
men from different and confronted regions of the United States. With this poem,
Whitman connects his ideal democratic society i.e. the society of comrades he had
witnessed and helped to set up in hospitals during the war, to the United States at
large, at the same time that he becomes the instrument that will bring different
Americans together despite their age, geographical origins and social backgrounds.
This is probably the closest we get in Drum-Taps to Whitman’s definition of the
nature of the type of democracy he envisioned.
Even though, Whitman unlike Melville’s (Battle Pieces, 1866) Drum- Taps
does not give a room in his volume to the challenges of the country after the war. He
does not make this volume participate in the political debates of the reconstruction.
He does try to become an instrument toward peace and re-union. After experiencing
what for him was a true democratic society in the hospitals, he expected to extend
through Drum-Taps. This ideal democracy to his country at large after the war in
order to heal the disunion of the nation through the principle of manly affection that,
he believed, would bring Americans together and enable the pacification of the
country.
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We hope to celebrate and situate Walt Whitman as someone who deserves to
be considered, alongside Emerson and Emily Dickinson, a great American poet of the
nineteenth century, since “The greatest poet is not [s/] he who has done the best; it
is[s/]he who suggests the most; … who leaves you much to Desire, to explain, to
study, much to complete in your turn” (Walt Whitman.1995: 294).
Whitman's interest in democracy and American political events and issues is
revealed in his poetry and also a major focus of criticism. The Civil War diminished
Whitman’s faith in democratic sympathy. While the cause of the war nominally
furthered brotherhood and equality, the war itself was a quagmire of killing. The
seeming contradiction between asserting on the one hand that the real war will never
get in the books and on the other hand declaring that my book and the war are one is
at the very heart of Whitman’s lasting ambivalence about the war.
In many ways, he came to regard the war as a necessary purgative act, a trial
by fire from which the disparate states were forged into a national whole, and yet this
unity came at a cost that Whitman had a difficulty in accepting it. He had seen too
many soldiers endure amputation, suffer fever and gangrene, and die alone in large
hospitals far from their homes and families. As Susan Stewart writes, Whitman
“shows how fratricide blocks the enthusiasm of epic” (Stewart Susan.2002:300). The
only solution as outlined in the final section of Lilacs was to remember the human
tally, the sacrifice of each common, brave soldier. Their sacrifice, for Whitman,
became central to the survival of the democratic experiment and, thus, became central
to Whitman’s chants of democracy.
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass made him one of the first American poets to
gain international attention. His literary style was experimental, a free-verse
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avalanche in celebration of nature and self that has since been described as the first
expression of a distinctly American voice. He was the first American poet to achieve
a truly international reputation, and his work has influenced writers such as Henry
Miller and D.H. Lawrence.
Walt Whitman once said that, “democracy can never prove itself beyond
cavil, until it finds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools,
theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere” (Walt
Whitman.1964:262). Walt Whitman did just that during his many years of life by
producing poetry and essays that changed the way Americans thought. His words
were the influential keystone that gave the Americans hope during the Civil War, and
after its conclusion. He aided the sick, gave the common man hope, and showed
dreams of democracy and a land free of turmoil and sectionalism. His democratic
voice continues to be echoed in the poems of the other famous poets of the twentieth
century.
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