Drum-taps

Published in 1865, Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps documents the transition of the American Civil War from early military enthusiasm to the physical reality of mass casualties. The collection moves from the rhythmic, patriotic calls of recruitment in Manhattan to the quiet observations of a volunteer wound-dresser in field hospitals. Whitman focuses on specific imagery: the pale faces of dead soldiers in the moonlight, the smell of ether, the amputation saw, and the sight of brothers buried in communal trenches. The poems record the specific sensory details of camp life and the toll of the conflict on the individual human body.

This book serves historians and readers of nineteenth-century literature who seek an eyewitness perspective on the American Civil War. It provides a primary source account of the psychological shifts that occurred between the battle of Bull Run and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Readers gain a technical understanding of how Whitman altered poetic meter to mimic military drums and bugles. One walks away with a blunt record of the era’s medical limitations and the internal landscape of a nation undergoing violent reconstruction.