however, the Calamus poems did not cause as much sensation as Children of
Adam because, even though they portrayed same-sex affection, they were only mildly
sensual, evoking handholding, hugging, and kissing, while the Children of Adam
poems evoked a more explicit genital sexuality. Emerson and others were apparently unfazed
by Calamus and focused their disapprobation on Children of Adam. Only
later in the century,when homosexuality began to be formulated in medical and
psychological circles as an aberrant personality type, did the Calamus poems
begin to be read by some as dangerous and "abnormal" and by others as brave
early expressions of gay identity.
With the 1860 edition of Leaves, Whitman began the incessant
rearrangement of his poems in various clusters and groupings. Whitman settled on cluster
arrangements as the most effective way to organize his work, but his notion of particular
clusters changed from edition to edition as he added, deleted, and rearranged his poems in
patterns that often alter their meaning and recontextualize their significance. In
addition to Calamus and Children of Adam, this edition contained
clusters called Chants Democratic and Native American, Messenger Leaves,
and another named the same as the book, Leaves of Grass. This edition also
contained the first book printings of "Starting from Paumanok" (here called
"Proto-Leaf") and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" (here called
"A Word Out of the Sea"), along with over 120 other new poems. He also revised
many of his other poems, including "Song of Myself" (here called simply
"Walt Whitman"), and throughout the book he numbered his poetic verses, creating
a Biblical effect. This was no accident, since Whitman now conceived of his project as
involving the construction of what he called a "New Bible," a new covenant that
would convert America into a true democracy.
[. . . .]
Whitman’s time in Boston—the first extended period he had been
away from New York since his trip to New Orleans twelve years earlier—was a
transforming experience. He was surprised by the way African Americans were treated much
more fairly and more as equals than was the case in New York, sharing tables with whites
at eating houses, working next to whites in printing offices, and serving on juries. He
also met a number of abolitionist writers who would soon become close friends and
supporters, including William Douglas O’Connor and John Townsend Trowbridge, both of
whom would later write at length about Whitman. When he returned to New York at the end of
May, his mood was ebullient. He was now a recognized author; the Boston papers had run
feature stories about his visit to the city, and photographers had asked to photograph him
(not only did he have a growing notoriety, he was a striking physical specimen at over six
feet in height—especially tall for the time—with long, already graying hair and
beard). All summer long he read reviews of his work in prominent newspapers and journals.
And in November, Whitman’s young publishers announced that Whitman’s new
project, a book of poems he called Banner at Day-Break, would be forthcoming.
The Beginning of the Civil War
But just as suddenly as Whitman’s fortunes had turned so unexpectedly
good early in 1860, they now turned unexpectedly bad. The deteriorating national situation
made any business investment risky, and Thayer and Eldridge compounded the problem by
making a number of bad business decisions. At the beginning of 1861, they declared
bankruptcy and sold the plates of Leaves to Boston publisher Richard Worthington,
who would continue to publish pirated copies of this edition for decades, creating real
problems for Whitman every time he tried to market a new edition. Because of the large
number of copies that Thayer and Eldridge initially printed, combined with
Worthington’s ongoing piracy, the 1860 edition became the most commonly available
version of Leaves for the next twenty years and diluted the impact (as well as
depressing the sales) of Whitman’s new editions.
Whitman had dated the title page of his 1860 Leaves
"1860-61," as if he anticipated the liminal nature of that moment in American
history—the fragile moment, between a year of peace and a year of war. In February
1861 he saw Abraham Lincoln pass through New York on the way to his inauguration, and in
April he was walking home from an opera performance when he bought a newspaper and read
the headlines about Southern forces firing on Fort Sumter. He remembers a group gathering
in the New York streets that night as those with newspapers read the story aloud to the
others in the crowd. Even though no one was aware of the full extent of what was to
come—Whitman, like many others, thought the struggle would be over in sixty days or
so—the nation was in fact slipping into four years of the bloodiest fighting it would
ever know. A few days after the firing on Fort Sumter, Whitman recorded in his journal his
resolution "to inaugurate for myself a pure perfect sweet, cleanblooded robust body
by ignoring all drinks but water and pure milk—and all fat meats late suppers—a
great body—a purged, cleansed, spiritualised invigorated body." It was as if he
sensed at some level the need to break out of his newfound complacency, to cease his
Pfaff’s beerhall habits and bohemian ways, and to prepare himself for the challenges
that now faced the divided nation. But it would take Whitman some time before he was able
to discern the form his war sacrifice would take.
Whitman’s brother George immediately enlisted in the Union Army and
would serve for the duration of the war, fighting in many of the major battles; he
eventually was incarcerated as a prisoner-of-war in Danville, Virginia. George had a
distinguished career as a soldier and left the service as a lieutenant colonel; his
descriptions of his war experiences provided Walt with many of his insights into the
nature of the war and of soldiers’ feelings. Whitman’s chronically ill brother
Andrew would also enlist but would serve only three months in 1862 before dying, probably
of tuberculosis, in 1863. Walt’s other brothers—the hot-tempered Jesse (whom
Whitman had to have committed to an insane asylum in 1864 after he physically attacked his
mother), the recently-married Jeff (on whom fell the burden of caring for the extended
family, including his own infant daughter), and the mentally-enfeebled Eddy—did not
enlist, and neither did Walt, who was already in his early forties when the war began.
One of the haziest periods of Whitman’s life, in fact, is the first
year and a half of the war. He stayed in New York and Brooklyn, writing some extended
newspaper pieces about the history of Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Daily Standard;
these pieces, called "Brooklyniana" and consisting of twenty-five lengthy
installments, form a book-length anecdotal history of the city Whitman knew so well but
was now about to leave—he would return only occasionally for brief visits. It was
during this period that Whitman first encountered casualties of the war that was already
lasting far longer than anyone had anticipated. He began visiting wounded soldiers who
were moved to New York hospitals, and he wrote about them in a series called "City
Photographs" that he published in the New York Leader in 1862.
Whitman had in fact been visiting Broadway Hospital for several years,
comforting injured stage drivers and ferryboat workers (serious injuries in the chaotic
transportation industry in New York at the time were common). While he was enamoured with
the idea of having literary figures as friends, Whitman’s true preference for
companions had always been and would continue to be working class men, especially those
who worked on the omnibuses and the ferries ("all my ferry friends," as he
called them), where he enjoyed the endless rhythms of movement, the open road, the
back-and-forth journeys, with good companions. He reveled in the energy and pleasure of
travel instead of worrying about destinations: "I cross’d and recross’d,
merely for pleasure," he wrote of his trips on the ferry. He remembered fondly the
"immense qualities, largely animal" of the colorful omnibus drivers, whom he
said he enjoyed "for comradeship, and sometimes affection" as he would ride
"the whole length of Broadway," listening to the stories of the driver and
conductor, or "declaiming some stormy passage" from one of his favorite
Shakespeare plays.
So his hospital visits began with a kind of obligation of friendship to
the injured transportation workers, and, as the Civil War began taking its toll, wounded
soldiers joined the transportation workers on Whitman’s frequent rounds. These
soldiers came from all over the country, and their reminiscences of home taught Whitman
about the breadth and diversity of the growing nation. He developed an idiosyncratic style
of informal personal nursing, writing down stories the patients told him, giving them
small gifts, writing letters for them, holding them, comforting them, and kissing them.
His purpose, he wrote, was "just to help cheer and change a little the monotony of
their sickness and confinement," though he found that their effect on him was every
bit as rewarding as his on them, for the wounded and maimed young men aroused in him
"friendly interest and sympathy," and he said some of "the most agreeable
evenings of my life" were spent in hospitals. By 1861, his New York hospital visits
had prepared him for the draining ordeal he was about to face when he went to Washington,
D.C., where he would nurse thousands of injured soldiers in the makeshift hospitals there.
Whitman once said that, had he not become a writer, he would have become a doctor, and at
Broadway Hospital he developed close friendships with many of the physicians, even
occasionally assisting them in surgery. His fascination with the body, so evident in his
poetry, was intricately bound to his attraction to medicine and to the hospitals, where he
learned to face bodily disfigurations and gained the ability to see beyond wounds and
illness to the human personalities that persisted through the pain and humiliation. It was
a skill he would need in abundance over the next three years as he began yet another
career.
To the Battlefield
With the nation now locked in an extended war, all of Whitman’s
deepest concerns and beliefs were under attack. Leaves of Grass had been built on
a faith in union, wholeness, the ability of a self and a nation to contain contradictions
and absorb diversity; now the United States had come apart, and Whitman’s very
project was now in danger of becoming an anachronism as the Southern states sought to
divide the country in two. Leaves had been built, too, on a belief in the power
of affection to overcome division and competition; his Calamus vision was of a
"continent indissoluble" with "inseparable cities" all joined by
"the life-long love of comrades." But now the young men of America were killing
each other in bloody battles; fathers were killing sons, sons fathers, brothers brothers.
Whitman’s prospects for his "new Bible" that would bind a nation, build an
affectionate democracy, and guide a citizenry to celebrate its unified diversity, were
shattered in the fratricidal conflict that engulfed America.
Like many Americans, Whitman and his family daily checked