The Strange Sad War Revolving: Walt Whitman, Reconstruction, and the Emergence of Black Citizenship, 1865-1876

Analysis of Whitman's reflection of civil rights legislation in his work, 1865-1876.

Walt Whitman's prolific Reconstruction project has remained the most uncultivated decade in Whitman studies for over a century. This first book-length analysis seeks to point the way for a needed recovery of Whitman's 1865-1876 publications by embedding them in the legislative discourse of black emancipation and its stormy aftermath. The supposed absence of race relations in Whitman's post-war texts has rece...