The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War

by Roy Morris

Overview

For nearly three years, Walt Whitman immersed himself in the devastation of the Civil War, tending to thousands of wounded soldiers and recording his experiences with an immediacy and compassion unequaled in wartime literature anywhere in the world. In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest account of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War years and an historically invaluable examination of the Union's treatment of its sick and wounded. Whitman was mired in depression as the war began, subsisting on journalistic hackwork, his "great career" as a poet apparently stalled. But when news came that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman rushed south to find him. Deeply affected by his first view of the war's casualties, he began visiting the camp's wounded and found his calling for the duration of the war. Three years later, he emerged as the war's "most unlikely hero," a living symbol of American democratic ideals of sharing and brotherhood. Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, The Better Angel explores a side of Whitman not fully examined before, one that greatly enriches our understanding of his later poetry. Moreover, it gives us a vivid and unforgettable portrait of the "other army"--the legions of sick and wounded soldiers who are usually left in the shadowy background of Civil War history--seen here through the unflinching eyes of America's greatest poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198028895
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/27/2000
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	869 KB

About the Author

Roy Morris, Jr. is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is the author of Sheridan: The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan and Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments,	ix
INTRODUCTION The Medicine of Daily Affection	3
CHAPTER ONE New York Stagnation	9
CHAPTER TWO A Sight in Camp	48
CHAPTER THREE The Great Army of the Sick	75
CHAPTER FOUR The Real Precious & Royal Ones of This Land	124
CHAPTER FIVE The Melancholy Tide	161
CHAPTER SIX Retrievements Out of the Night	201
EPILOGUE Lose Not My Sons	238
Notes,	245
Bibliography,	259
Index,	263

What People are Saying About This

Simon Winchester

This deftly written, almost unbearably moving book serves to remind us powerfully of the horrors faced by the wounded on the Civil War battlefields, of the genius and compassion of Walt Whitman in dealing with them, and of the remarkable skill of one of America's most accomplished biographers in researching and telling so poignant a story.
— Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and The Madman

Robert H. Abzug

The Better Angel illuminates Walt Whitman's Civil War years with frankness and compassion. His insights and compelling narratives afford us new and humanly rich understandings of the poet and his vision of America.
— Robert H. Abzug, author of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination and Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps

Sean Wilentz

Elegant and moving…Essential reading for everyone who cares about American culture.

Editorial Reviews

Since the 1980s--when scholars such as Michael Moon and Robert K. Martin reinvigorated Walt Whitman scholarship by queering it--the poet has inspired something of a literary cottage industry. Now Morris takes Whitman scholarship in a captivating new direction. In this study, the first complete account of the poet's Civil War years, Morris (Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company) shows how the War Between the States changed Whitman as a man and a poet. Indeed, in Morris's rendering, Whitman becomes a kind of metaphor for the country itself, a nearly transcendental signifier of American-style democracy and sexual freedom (though he was rather more ambivalent concerning the place of the "African" in American society). Whitman was, the author argues, depressed and adrift in New York's bohemia before the war; suffering from writer's block regarding his poetry, he occupied himself with journalistic hackwork. But when his brother was wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman found a cause that revived his sense of purpose: he spent three years visiting tens of thousands of wounded soldiers in and around Washington, D.C.--and by the end of the war, he had become "the good gray poet," a larger-than-life figure Morris calls "almost mystical." The war, as Whitman himself acknowledged, "saved" him. His wartime experience inspired some of his best work, including the masterpiece "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." The postwar years also engendered a deep despair, however. Fearful that the nation had forgotten its soldiers in the heady days of the Gilded Age, the poet attacked "the post-war climate of graft and malaise." However despondent, Whitman produced important writing after the dust had cleared. The Better Angel enriches our understanding of his subsequent life and work. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The Civil War killed Whitman's dream of a world founded on "the blissful love of comrades" and replaced it with the horror of fratricide. Deeply depressed, the poet lost himself in "an aimless round of bohemian posturing, late-night roistering, and homosexual cruising." When he learned that his brother George had been wounded at the battle of Fredericksburg, Whitman rushed to find him; George's injury was slight, but in the sufferings of other soldiers, Whitman found new purpose in life and, eventually, in poetry, culminating in his masterpiece, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." In this first full account of Whitman's Civil War years, Morris, editor of America's Civil War magazine and biographer of Gen. Phil Sheridan and Ambrose Bierce, leaves readers with a new image of what he calls "a great mothering sort of man" who visited the hospitals in and around Washington, DC, for three years, bringing his charges ice cream, tobacco, brandy, books, magazines, pens, and paper; he wrote letters for those who could not, and more than a few died in his arms. "His long white beard, wine-colored suit, and bulging bag of presents gave him a decided resemblance to Santa Claus," writes Morris; small wonder that, each time he left, many of the wounded soldiers, some of them still in their teens, called out, "`Walt, Walt, come again!'"--David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

YA-Morris notes in his introduction that Whitman, no stranger to the practice of using precise vocabulary, claimed he was "saved" by the Civil War. The author explains his subject's salvation by tracing the effects of crisis and suffering on one man's spirit and artistry. Since this was also the man who articulated America's voice in his groundbreaking Leaves of Grass, Whitman's evolution personified that of the country he celebrated and loved. In 1860, the poet was feeling cynical and unfocused, mired in a "New York [s]tagnation." Then, following the bloody battle of Fredericksburg in December, 1862, word reached the Whitmans that Walt's brother had been wounded. Walt immediately left Brooklyn for Virginia, beginning the journey that would define the remainder of his life. While George's injury was slight, Walt's experiences with the Union's sick and wounded both revitalized and seasoned him. For the next several years this "great mothering sort of man," bearing small gifts and treats, comradeship and compassion, became a fixture in soldiers' hospitals. Morris's skills as a researcher are evident and his writing is first rate. Teens can read Better Angel as a moving introduction to Whitman, for its information on the home front and the medical profession during the Civil War, or to gain insight into the sociological and psychological aftermath of war on individuals or nations.-Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Equal parts biography and Civil War history, The Better Angel also incorporates the poetry as it reflects Whitman's wartime experiences. It is a thrilling narrative told with empathy and vast learning, rich with images that reinvigorate figures as familiar as Lincoln: ''Whitman felt it would take four different sorts of genius -- Plutarch, Aeschylus, Michelangelo and Rabelais -- to truly sketch Lincoln's portrait.''
—New York Times Book Review

Deborah De Costa

This moving chronicle of a mere half decade of Witman's life takes his sexuality, refreshingly for granted.
—Out Magazine

Schneider

Biographer Morris (Ambrose Bierce, 1995, etc.) explores Walt Whitman's relationships with family, friends, soldiers—and ultimately with America—through the context of the Civil War. Morris raises the curtain on Whitman's life in early 1861, portraying the poet as trapped between his career (producing journalistic hackwork to support his memorably dysfunctional family) and his milieu (living an unsatisfying bohemian life with New York's literati). The advent of the Civil War and the subsequent enlistment and wounding of Whitman's brother moved him to rush to the military hospitals around Washington, DC. Although his brother's wound was slight, Whitman's exposure to the other soldiers' humble dignity (in spite of their extreme suffering) inspired him to spend much of the remaining war years comforting the wounded with visits and small gifts. Visiting battlefields, easing the soldiers' physical pain, and suffering along with them all had a profound effect on Whitman and helped to reconnect him with the universality of the American experience. While Morris's study is well-researched and beautifully written, his biographical readings of Whitman's poems are of limited use. Morris effectively integrates the poetry into his narrative, demonstrating the redemptive effects of the war experiences on Whitman's personal life. Unfortunately, Morris fails (particularly in his consideration of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd") to place his insights within the larger context of Whitman scholarship. Support from the well-thumbed body of Whitman criticism would have provided much-needed credibility to his purelybiographicalliterary criticism. In spite of this drawback, however, Morris deftly balances general historical sources with insightful selections of correspondence and poetry to construct an important addition to the body of Whitman scholarship. The most engaging and complete work on Whitman's Civil War years to date.

Kirkus Reviews

"This deftly written, almost unbearably moving book serves us to remind us powerfully of the horrors faced by the wounded on the Civil War battlefields, of the genius and compassion of Walt Whitman in dealing with them, and of the remarkable skill of one of America's most accomplished biographers in researching and telling so poignant a story."—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and The Madman

"The Better Angel illuminates Walt Whitman's Civil War years with frankness and compassion. Its insights and compelling narrative afford us new and humanly rich understandings of the poet and his vision of America."— Robert H. Abzug, author of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination and Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps

"Roy Morris, Jr.'s elegant and moving book shows how the great civil war that redeemed the nation's soul also reawakened the soul of the nation's greatest poet, Walt Whitman. It is essential reading for everyone who cares about American culture."—Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, author of Chants Democratic and The Kingdom of Matthias

From the Publisher