The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War

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Summary: A different perspective on the war
Review: I have not read a great deal of Whitman's work(Leaves Of Grass being the exception) however I was so impressed with his observations as recorded here that I intend to dive in. This book is fascinating on several levels. For those who are avid Civil War readers here is an entirely unique perspective.The descriptions of the hospitals and Whitman's caring relationships with so many of the wounded are especially moving. I highly recommend this to anyone with an intersest in the period even if you are not overly familiar with Whitman's work.

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Summary: Whitman as Civil War hero.
Review: Many were called to serve, and many paid the ultimate price, and then there were those who were called to witness. Walt Whitman, as evidenced in such poems as "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "O Captain! My Captain!," proved our greatest witness. Yet, this volume delves into a side of the poet heretofore never expounded upon, that of the benevolent stranger, a purveyor of hope and good will. From the moment he arrived in Washington D.C. Whitman was a daily visitor to the myraid of makeshift hospitals, bringing gifts of tobacco, books, paper and pencils. He would read to patients, write letters for them, and offer his sympathy and affection. In turn he was looked on as 'brother,' 'father,' 'uncle' and 'friend.' A great soul. This biographical sketch doesn't attempt to canonize Whitman. It talks frankly about his promiscuity, drinking and general caousing; as well as his homosexualty and his longtime companion, Peter Doyle. It is a poignant look at the defining years in the great scribes life, presenting Whitman, justly, as a true hero of the Civil War.

Rating:
Summary: Whitman as Civil War hero.
Review: Many were called to serve, and many paid the ultimate price, and then there were those who were called to witness. Walt Whitman, as evidenced in such poems as "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "O Captain! My Captain!," proved our greatest witness. Yet, this volume delves into a side of the poet heretofore never expounded upon, that of the benevolent stranger, a purveyor of hope and good will. From the moment he arrived in Washington D.C. Whitman was a daily visitor to the myraid of makeshift hospitals, bringing gifts of tobacco, books, paper and pencils. He would read to patients, write letters for them, and offer his sympathy and affection. In turn he was looked on as 'brother,' 'father,' 'uncle' and 'friend.' A great soul. This biographical sketch doesn't attempt to canonize Whitman. It talks frankly about his promiscuity, drinking and general caousing; as well as his homosexualty and his longtime companion, Peter Doyle. It is a poignant look at the defining years in the great scribes life, presenting Whitman, justly, as a true hero of the Civil War.

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Summary: A well-written and entertaining narrative!
Review: Roy Morris has done a really outstanding job in this narrative of Walt Whitman's life during the war years. Although Whitman was already an established -- if little understood -- poet by the war's beginning, Morris is right on the mark in highlighting the importance of the war in shaping Whitman's outlook on life and writing style.

There is little doubt that Whitman was greatly caught up in the war and its ultimate outcome. The author explores the evolution of Whitman's political opinions, chronicles his working life, poetry, and very active social life. Throughout the book, Morris nicely intertwines Whitman's poetry in to the narrative, allowing the poet's own creative and energetic words provide the backdrop to his life.

For those of us more inclined to be interested in Civil War history, the book is full of fascinating insight into life in the home front -- this includes both war-time Brooklyn and life in Washington. Even more useful in the way it depicts federal hospitals in and around Washington, DC. Several chapters are devoted to Whitman's work in these hospitals, where he enjoyed virtually untrammeled access to the suffering soldiers, many of whom were greatly affected by his warm presence. Of course, he was in turn deeply changed by this interaction as well.

The book also explores Whitman's troubled family life, and many passionate relationships he maintained. For his time, he was incredibly open about a lifestyle that was widely viewed by his contemporaries as morally degenerate at the time. Again, all of this occurs in the context of the Civil War, and thereby gives those of us with an interest in this fascinating episode in American history greater depth.

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Summary: Great Poet, Great Soul of the Civil War
Review: The magnificent Civil War-era poet Walt Whitman is well served by this fascinating study by Roy Morris, Jr., of Whitman's experiences during the war. At the beginning of this book, Morris observes that Whitman considered his work during the conflict, visiting thousands of wounded and ill soldiers at hospitals in and surrounding Washington, D.C., "the greatest privilege and satisfaction" of his life. As a result, this period in the colorful poet's colorful life deserves much more attention than it has previously received. As much as I enjoyed this book, I fundamentally disagree with this point by Morris: "Of the comparative handful of American writers who personally witnessed the Civil War, Whitman was the unlikeliest candidate to become its recorder. Not only was he nearly forty-two years old when the war began, but he also was a poet, a philosopher, a freethinker, a mystic, a near Quaker, and a homosexual." For precisely those reasons, Whitman was the ideal chronicler of the greatest and most tragic crisis in American history. As an outsider, Whitman was able to view the war with detachment, criticizing Northern politicians and generals when necessary but invariably sympathetic to the young men on both sides who did the actual fighting, suffering, and dying.

According to Morris, Whitman may or may not have been intimate with the numerous young men whom he named and described in his Civil War notebooks, but: "For all the breadth and variety of his friendships, Whitman was essentially a lonely man." In mid-December 1862, a few days after the Union Army of the Potomac's horrendous defeat in a battle at Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitman read a newspaper report that his brother George was a casualty of combat. Walt left New York almost immediately for Washington, where, after an exhausting three-day trip, "he trudged dispiritedly from hospital to hospital, hoping to find his wounded brother." Whitman eventually located George, who had already returned to duty as an officer, and then spent several days, recording impressions in his notebook. According to Morris, Whitman also began "to write poems that spoke in the drawling voices of the men themselves, in accents he first heard around the campfires at Fredericksburg." Except for a few brief sojourns to New York, he stayed in the capital until the end of the war. He took a modest-paying government job to support himself, but Morris reports: "Visiting the hospitals quickly became the focal point of Whitman's day." According to Morris: "At the end of 1862 there were approximately thirty-five hospitals in and around Washington, accommodating some thirteen thousand suffering soldiers." Morris then provides a fascinating digression into the state of American medical science in the early 1860s, which, according to Morris, "was not much advanced from the Middle Ages," and it is ugly. What is more important for our purposes, in Morris's words, is that Whitman "found the hospitals - and the handsome young men within them - surprisingly fertile ground for his art." In February 1863, Whitman's article about the hospitals in Washington, entitled "The Great Army of the Sick," appeared in The New York Times, and, a few weeks later, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed Whitman's article "Life Among Fifty Thousand Soldiers." Whitman continued to visit hospitals and to write about his experiences for the next three years.

Some of Morris's brief vignettes of Whitman's ministry eloquently capture the essence of the poet. At one point, for instance, "Whitman suffered a temporary crisis of faith." Morris explains: "He betrayed the strain on his emotions in a heated conversation with Unitarian minister William Henry Channing....Pacing the floor and wringing his hands, Whitman suddenly exclaimed: "I say stop this war, this horrible massacre of men." And Morris writes: "Sitting in the dark in the hospital ward, holding the hand of a dying young man, he is at once doctor and nurse, mother and father, friend and lover, angel and Death." But it is Whitman's writing that attracts our greatest attention. After watching a train of wagons carrying the wounded enter Washington, Whitman wrote: "This is the way men come in now, seldom in small numbers, but always in these long, sad processions." Whitman later produced an eyewitness account of the victorious Union armies' massive Grand Review through Washington on May 23 and 24, 1885, and the triumphant atmosphere starkly contrasted with the parades of ambulances entering the city Whitman had observed on several occasions. Whitman wrote that it was "too impressive to be described," and "the rank & file was the greatest sight of all." If Whitman thought that the Civil War brought out the best in American society, he also believed that the Gilded Age which followed brought out the worst: "The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater....The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably dress'd speculators and vulgarians."

Whitman once predicted that "the real war will never get in the books," but it did, and Whitman, himself,is an important source. According to Morris, Whitman "ended the war as 'the Good Gray Poet,'(the title of a tribute to his Civil War service published in 1866), a beloved, almost mystical figure who personally embodied for millions of Americans a democratic ideal of sharing and brotherhood that remains undimmed nearly a century and a half later." From the cover, a reproduction of a photograph of Whitman with long hair and a full beard which makes him look like an Old Testament prophet, to the final page, this book is splendid and should appeal equally to admirers of Whitman's art and to the multitude of Civil War enthusiasts. Whitman was not merely the war's greatest poet; as Morris ably demonstrates, he also was one of its greatest souls.

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Summary: Whitman's Civil War
Review: This book is a study of Walt Whitman's activities during the American Civil War. Prior to the War, Whitman had already written most of the poetry that would ultimately establish his reputation as the greatest and most quintisentially American poet. With the publication of his Civil War poems, "Drum -Taps" and works in commemoration of President Lincoln (primarily, "When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloomed", Whitman had a second flowering as a poet. These works bear eloquent testimony to the trials that the United States had undergone and to Whitman's vision of America.

Morris's book begins with Whitman in New York City at the outbreak of the War with the poet living a rootless, somewhat purposeless life focused on the bohemian taverns of New York City. With the thought that his brother George might be wounded at the battle of Fredricksburg, Whitman visits the site, views the carnage of the War, and returns changed.

The book details how Whitman works as a nurse in Washington D.C. visiting and tending the sick and wounded. There are graphic descriptions of Civil War Era illnesses and wounds and of the relatively primitive state of American medicine for treating the endless ranks of the sick and wounded.

Whitman made the rounds of the hospitals, brought cheer and comfort to the sick, wrote letters for them home and made them small gifts of food, tobacco, and necessaries. He received the gratitude of many a young man and his family. Morris establishes the distinguished character of Whitman's war service.

In some instances, Whitman became emotionally and perhaps homoerotically attached to the young men in his charge. Morris's descriptions of these relationships are models of restraint and judgment.

Throughtout, Morris amplifies his discussion of Whitman's war activities by quotations from his great collection of Civil War poetry, "Drum Taps". Little is known about the precise dates of composition of the poems in this collection. They represent, however, a major literary legacy of the Civil War era. I turned and reread the poems with renewed understanding after completing Morris's biography.

The Civil War was a watershed for the United States both politically and culturally. Whitman and his contemporary, Herman Melville, were among the few writers whose work encompasses both sides of the Civil War divide. Both wrote memorable books of poetry about the War. (Melville's book is titled "Battle-Pieces" and his Civil War biography is also available.)

In their poignancy, variety, and sweep, Whitman's poetry can illuminate the meaning of the Civil War and the promise of the United States. This book, in turn, illuminates Whitman. A worthwhile book to read.

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Summary: Service takes many forms
Review: This is a beautiful little book, informative, elegantly written, and quite moving. It reminded me that serving one's country can take many forms. Whitman had little use for Christian pieties or military rigidity, neither of which offered much comfort to the thousands of wounded and dying young soldiers the great poet visited at their bedside. What he did offer them was the gift of human connection, kindness, and respect, qualities too often lacking in our American society, then and now. My one complaint is that Morris often quotes from Whitman's poems without always giving the title of the poem in question. One would love to be able to turn from Morris to Leaves of Grass and read a given poem in its entirety, but if one doesn't have the exact edition from 1973 he used then one is out of luck. This is a small criticism, however, and I am deeply grateful to the author for having written such an important, inspiring book.

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Summary: A Biography Lovingly Written-Superb!
Review: This is a sensitively written biography covering in detail the life of America's greatest poet, Walt Whitman, during the Civil War years. This story of course has been told before, but never so completely, so lovingly. The author, Roy Morris, Jr. has done a superb job.

The first chapter gives some background and tells of Whitman's despair, wasting his time, his life in New York's seedy underground bohemian world, especially Pfaff's beer cellar. At 41, Whitman had lost his job as editor of the Brooklyn Daily Times newspaper, and was in a depressing downward spiral, doing only sporadic hack work as a journalist. The Civil War had begun and his brother George had enlisted. When reports reached New York that George was wounded and in a Washington, DC hospital, Walt rushed to be by his brother's side. It was this event that brought Whitman face-to-face with the terrible wartime hospitals and to his beloved dying soldiers. This was the event that turned his life around, even perhaps saved his life as Whitman himself later reported.

Finding that his brother's wounds were slight, Whitman began visiting the battlefield wounded. Here he almost by accident found his calling as the "Better Angel" of the book's title: helping the soldiers, or sometimes just listening and comforting his boys with small gifts and favors. Whitman clearly loved the young soldiers he watched die miserable deaths in the dreadful hospitals. The soldiers clearly loved him in return. This book is written with such sympathy that the reader can feel the love leap of the pages.

Whitman was a prolific letter writer. Much of the story recounted here comes from letters he wrote, especially to his beloved mother. Also the seeds of much of Whitman's Civil War poetry are given here in forms different from the poems themselves, but Morris also includes extensive excerpts from the poems. The scientific advances in medicine (Pasteur, etc.) were still a few years away, so it was a dangerous thing to be spending so much time in these filthy, disease-ridden hospitals. Whitman regularly touched, embraced, even kissed his dying soldiers to comfort them, so it is almost a miracle he only became seriously ill one time from this contact.

With all the sad death, this book is still uplifting and inspiring. Do buy it, read it, love it. After you have finished, you will want to get out your copy of "Leaves of Grass" and read the poems all over again with new insights and understandings. This is a lovely little book.

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Summary: Whitman: the poet and the man, in love and in war
Review: Two of America's most famous nineteenth-century authors wrote enduring memorials about the soldiers of the Civil War--yet neither author fought alongside their colleagues. One, Louisa May Alcott, became known to the American public when she published "Hospital Sketches," about her experiences as a nurse in the typhoid-ridden hospitals of Washington. The second, Walt Whitman, incorporated his hospital experiences as background for a series of poems he eventually included in "Drum Taps." Roy Morris's brief and incisive account of Whitman's unofficial role as a nurse is fascinating not only for the history it contains but for the poetry it elucidates.

Although Whitman himself never took up arms, he experienced the brunt of combat both first-hand, through his trips to the frontlines (to seek out his brother), and--more horrifically in many ways--through his kindly visits to wounded and dying soldiers. He patiently spent hours every day, volunteering wherever he was welcome, bringing gifts and sweets and writing letters home for the incapacitated. His vigils often lasted until the boys' deaths, and he would send emotional, plaintive letters to their parents. There can be no doubt that his attentions were appreciated; many veterans wrote to him for the rest of their lives, addressing him as "Father" or "Uncle," and several named their sons after him.

Although most of his benevolence was altruistic, there can also be little doubt that a few of the relationships "seems to have exceeded mere wartime camaraderie," as Morris phrases it. Before he fell in love with the Confederate deserter Peter Doyle in 1865, Whitman formed intimate (though not necessarily sexual) associations with many of his patients. At their extremes, the aftermaths of these friendships left him desolate and jealous. In one instance, his pleading missives to the unresponsive Thomas Sawyer, a soldier who returned to the front, occasionally approached the shrillness of a spurned lover: "I don't know how you feel about it, but it is the wish of my heart to have your friendship, and also that if you should come safe out of this war, we should come together again in someplace where we could make our living, and be true comrades and never be separated while life lasts." And later, "I suppose my letter should sound strange & unusual to you as it is. . . I do not expect you to return for me the same degree of love I have for you." And later still: "I do not know why you do not write to me. Do you wish to shake me off? That I cannot believe."

Yet, in addition to shining a light on Whitman the man (and, sadly, Whitman the racist), Morris's book provides a wonderful guide to Whitman the poet, showing how certain biographical incidents manifested themselves in the haunting lyrics of "Drum Taps" and in the blunt reminiscences recorded ten years later in "Memoranda during the War." By that time, Whitman had become disillusioned by the nation's ability to forget the sacrifices so many men made, on both sides, during the Civil War. Through his poetry and journals, however, the "Good Gray Poet" guaranteed that the souls of his "dear suffering boys" would never be forgotten.

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Summary: Without a conventional weapon, he fought his own war?
Review: While I am not a frequent reader of poetry, I am enamored with both History and Biography, and that is what drew my interest to "The Better Angel" by Mr. Roy Morris Jr. My knowledge of this Country's notable poets and their work is a void in my reading. Were there to be more books written in this manner it is a gap I believe that would be lessened.

I did not expect to read Mr. Whitman's work to any extent as I thought this was a biography of a time period in the poet's life. Mr. Morris does indeed share a great deal about a familiar name in American Literature; he also selectively uses the work of Mr. Whitman, and finally places it all within the context of the deadliest war this Country has ever fought.

Approximately 750,00 died in our Civil War. The numbers were so astronomically high due to the nature of the fighting, the ammunition used, and the medical profession's ignorance of even the most basic hygiene, infection, the inability to care for those wounded expeditiously, and the use of medicines that poisoned as often as they helped. Dysentery killed 100,000; one particularly virulent infection, Pyemia claimed 97.4% of those infected. Tetanus was also responsible for killing 89% of its victims. I take the space to mention these statistics, as this was the environment that Mr. Whitman made a major part of his life for years, and many consider this same commitment caused his lingering illnesses and finally his death.

While it is true he introduced many to ice cream, brought with him countless small gifts, including a requested toothpick, his time and the comfort he gave to these soldiers made him a hero to thousands forever. All too many times his act was to sit with the dying so that they did not do so alone. He wrote countless letters for those too injured or unable to do so for themselves. He visited the families of some who had been slain.

He was a man torn by his personal feelings about the war, the price it exacted, and what was bought. The man was very complex in his thoughts and the angst and contradiction he was forced to deal with. He had a Brother who fought for nearly the entire war, was for a time a prisoner but ultimately survived. He Family in New York included a Mother he loved, and a Brother who slipped into madness and violence as the disease that consumed him advanced.

This is not a lengthy book, but it provides a well-written documentary on a portion of this famous man's life. It puts some of his work into the context from which it was created, and how the same circumstances so affected the poet.

There was one facet of Mr. Whitman that was mentioned and associated so many times that it began to sound defensive. I suggest this part of the man need not be defended, as it did not add or subtract from his deeds, and while it certainly was part of his writing, his works were not the focus of this book.

Long after Mr. Whitman died he lived on in the children grateful soldiers had named after him who lived from Syracuse New York to Kentucky, and one imagines many points between.