Whitman and the Civil War

Celebrate Poe

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Welcome to Celebrate Poe - This is episode 250 Whitman and the Civil War.
Walt Whitman was forty-two years old when the Civil War started. Some critics would charge that he should have joined the Union Army, but anyone who knew him, like his friend and biographer John Burroughs, could hardly conceive of the mild and empathic poet as a soldier. "Could there be anything more shocking and incongruous than Whitman killing people?" Burroughs would write. "One would as soon expect Jesus Christ to go to war." Yet Whitman found another way to serve his country.
While in Washington, D.C., Whitman discovered that he DID have something to contribute to the war effort — this episode deals with that contribution.