Strayed Cattle

Whitman’s war writings have been criticized on the grounds that he turns to pastoralism to justify the violence of the Civil War. Whitman was in fact intrigued by the pastoral tradition stretching from Virgil forward. Rather than being in thrall to arcadian fantasies, Whitman instead “sees through” (in both senses) pastoralism. His writings avoid romantic claptrap that serves to justify wartime violence. He experienced the war from the vantage points of New York City and Washington, DC, and he shows no yearning for an idyllic rural retreat, nor does he indulge in nostalgia for a lost way of life. Pastoralism often involves the care of cattle, and this chapter probes the ties between African Americans, cattle, and an anti-pastoral tradition.

Multi-racial Democracy and Black Democratic Vistas

Democratic Vistas and Whitman’s later poetry and prose writings were shaped by his experiences in Washington, DC, a key site of experimentation with multi-racial democracy, and a city where local experiments had national implications. Washington was the nation’s first emancipated city and after the Civil War the combined forces of newly gained suffrage and effective political organizing led to a brief but remarkable surge in African American political power. Yet after promising initial gains, multi-racial democracy foundered, and ultimately democratic government itself was lost in the city when it became governed by appointed commissioners. Whitman’s mid-career achievements and failures can be illuminated against the backdrop of these local developments and the national scope of his work within the attorney general’s office.

Social Calamity, Personal Perturbations, and Office Decorum

Whitman’s various roles as a government clerk shaped his life and writing from 1863 to 1873. Whitman’s years in the attorney general’s office coincided with his revising of Leaves of Grass, especially the creation of an annotated volume known as the “Blue Book,” considered in detail below, and the writing of Democratic Vistas, considered in the next chapter. I argue that there is a relation between the decorum required of an employee—a clerk in a government office—and the evolution of Whitman’s creative life in these years, particularly his treatment of sex and the body. Compared to his editorial labor on newspapers, Whitman’s government stint has received less attention, though it is illuminating to view him through this lens, as he tried on new identities during the war and in the immediate postwar years. His government work provided him with a network of contacts different from the bohemian world of New York or New Orleans journalists, but his new milieu nonetheless offered him friendship, collaboration, and intellectual stimulation. The identification of nearly 3,000 documents in Whitman’s handwriting from his clerking years leaves us now better able to study this portion of his life in its full complexity and to reevaluate his literary accomplishments. His scribal documents let us see how his roles as poet of democracy and clerk in bureaucracy were more entangled than we’ve ever known or imagined.

Whitman, Washington, and the Convulsiveness of Civil War

In the Civil War, more wounded soldiers were treated in Washington, DC, than in any other city, and Whitman, a visitor to dozens of hospitals, gravitated toward the epicenter of suffering. He returned repeatedly to Armory Square Hospital, which hosted the worst cases and had the highest death rate. At a time of unprecedented maiming and killing, Whitman engaged in the work of healing. Leaves of Grass, his poetic masterpiece, intertwined the physical bodies of men and women and the symbolic body of the nation and saw in both a capacity to embrace contradictions and diversity while still remaining united and whole. Both the nation and Whitman’s poetic project were at risk as he confronted innumerable broken and battered bodies. In this new context, he reassessed the possibilities for poetry, the future of democracy, and even the efficacy of affection, a quality that he had always believed sustained civil society. Faced with massive destruction, in what ways did Whitman succeed and fail in making meaning of it, in finding reasons for hope?

Whitman as a Paradoxical “Missionary to the Wounded”

Whitman described himself as a “missionary to the wounded.” The phrase is striking and deserves exploration. Both before and after the Civil War he tended to be critical of missionaries. Why, then, did Whitman use this charged term in describing his work with soldiers in the Civil War hospitals? Two of the major organizations aiming to assist soldiers were the Christian Commission and the Sanitary Commission; Whitman signed up with the former. Joining the Christian Commission was in some ways an odd choice since the Christian Commission had evangelical purposes, and Whitman was not a church-goer. However, Whitman admired the Christian Commission’s reliance on volunteer delegates unlike the Sanitary Commission with its paid staff. Moreover, many principles of care-giving recommended by the Christian Commission were ones made famous by Whitman’s own dedicated care for wounded soldiers. There is no evidence that Whitman was ever dismissed by the Christian Commission, though he did quickly decide that he preferred to aid soldiers, as he said, “on my own hook.”