The Sacrificial Years: A Chronicle of Walt Whitman's Experiences in the Civil War

by Walt Whitman, John Harmon McElroy (Editor)

In late 1862, at the height of the Civil War, the poet and former newspaperman Walt Whitman traveled to a Virginia base camp in search of his wounded brother. The unattended misery he found--rows of unburied corpses, piles of amputated limbs, wounded men lying on the frozen ground--moved him to "a profound conviction of necessity" that he had to help relieve it. Whitman spent the next four years, at great personal and professional sacrifice, working as a voluntary nurse at military hospitals in the frontline capital of Washington, tending the sick and wounded well past the war's end. The Sacrificial Year is Walt Whitman's story of his involvement in the Civil War, and of his thoughts and feelings about this great crisis. Whitman himself never kept a diary of his experiences--a fact he later regretted-- but he did write hundreds of letters, newspaper articles, and "memoranda." While many of these works have been published individually, editor John Harmon McElroy is the first to select and arrange Whitman's prose writings on the war in chronological sequence--including previously unpublished extracts from his recently discovered Civil War notebook--thereby reconstructing a continuous narrative of his month-to-month experience in his own words. Poignant and powerful, encompassing all the horror and scope of that immense conflict, Walt Whitman's war chronicles are among the essential documents of those crucial years. This edition contains nearly 300 entries, and is further enhanced with over 50 compelling period photographs of the places, people, and events that Whitman captured so vividly in his prose.

Genres: History, Biography, War

167 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."

Reviews

[R.E. E. Derouin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Sacrificial Years Edited by John Harmon McElroy 2/16/2023 Paper

While this book is in no way a total biography of poet Walt Whitman, it does give a close look at the man, at an important time of his life. We read his notes and correspondence during the years of the Civil War and shortly after. It is not a book for the squeamish as we read details of the horrible suffering after Whitman spends hour after hour comforting injured and ill soldiers, principally in Washing, D.C.

We must applaud his sacrifice as the man’s devotion to this personal challenge took place at the expense of his career and life during a large part of his middle years. While there is much repetition of the sadness and agony he witnessed, the entire picture of the horror of this war is indelibly printed on the readers mind. The diary-type notes give us a detailed picture of Washington, the city at a gruesome time in history. The photos displayed graphically add to the story. Additionally, Whitman’s candor is enlightening. At times, he does not shrink from giving himself considerable credit.

From a historical viewpoint, this is a most rewarding read. I do find it difficult to recommend it to anyone unless they are truly interested in the detailed subject.