This week’s reading surrounds the Civil War and President Lincoln’s assassination. Drum-Taps and Memories of President Lincoln are both filled with deeply moving passages that recall both the build up before the war and the immense grief felt after that unfortunate night in April 1865. “First O Songs for a Prelude” speaks of the changes felt as the conflict became imminent:
How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were
heard in their stead,
How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs
of soldiers,)
How Manhattan drum-taps led.
Lincoln’s original strategy was to avoid war and not take any action against the Confederacy (which was established prior to his election); however, in April 1861, the Confederacy made it clear that war was inevitable when it attacked and took control of Fort Sumpter. The above passage describes the change in the Union’s attitude as it prepared to go to war against those trying to tear it apart.
The “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” moves us into the midst of war:
I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,
I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,
I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!
But more tellingly, Whitman describes the feeling of disunity and the precariousness of the States, saying, “Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States.”
However, the passage I found to be the most compelling is the last in this week’s selection. “The Dust was Once the Man” is only four lines, but it speaks volumes about Whitman’s view of Lincoln and the condition of the United States after the war. The first line reads, “The dust was once the man.” The Torah describes G-d’s creation of man in Genesis 2:7:
Then the LORD G-d formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
(emphasis mine)
After the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, G-d condemns man to eventual death, saying in Gen. 3:19, “In the sweat of your face shall your eat bread, till you return unto the ground; for out of it were you taken; for dust you are, and unto dust shall you return” (emphasis mine). “Gentle, plain, just and resolute” as he may be, all of us are destined to return to our source, both in spirit and in body.
However, while he was alive, “the foulest crime in history known in any land or age” was resolved “under [his] cautious hand.” As the first line of the passage alludes to, we are all from the same stuff—we are all dust. This common bond connects us, and denying our interconnectedness in order to segregate and dominate is the greatest crime one can commit; however, because of Lincoln’s prowess and cautionary demeanor, he was able to supress the effort and “[save] the Union of these States.”
The last line in the passage is an interesting precursor to a dramatic change in the way the United States viewed itself, as well as how the rest of the world viewed her. Before the Civil War, the Union was not much more than a collection of loosely connected States—people said, “The United States are.” After the war, there was a shift in grammar, and people began to say, “The United States is.” Lincoln unified the States and transformed them into a nation. Through that lens, it is easy to see the pain one would feel at his passing as is movingly described by Whitman in Memories.
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I think it’s intriguing to note how Whitman’s insistence on the sublime “interconnectedness” of the entire material world crops up again in his attempt to cope with the death and separation caused by the Civil War. His most fundamental conception of physical reality, the sense that “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (27), thus serves as the first point at which to heal the regional divisiveness of the war and the outrage and misery at Lincoln’s assassination. (Remember that many southerners and Northerners alike thought that Lincoln represented the only hope of a fruitful reunion of the nation’s halves.) Whitman’s idea that every particle of flesh “effuse[s]… in eddies and drift[s]… in lacy jags” (88) renders laughable any attempt to insulate a southern body/population/etc. from a northern one, even when those divisions continue to loom menacingly.
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I would argue that the remark on the States in “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” is still an example of Whitman’s early optimism for the war. He states a few lines later that the soldiers stand for not one state, but for all the states in unity. Only later does he become disillusioned and turn to the terrible casualties of the war.
Your remark on the United States turn to a singular noun is very interesting! I had no idea that the change occurred at this time. Perhaps at first it was a half-heated attempt to sew the divided nation together. Today, we can all agree that the idea has succeeded–patriotism is one of this nation’s greatest driving forces.
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I agree. I think Whitman was optimistic, and I think his words show that. I was simply commenting on the view of the United States as simply that–a group of united States–and the change to viewing them as a single nation after the war. I’m not certain who started the change, but Lincoln used the singular in his speeches following the war, and it trickled down after that I believe.
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That’s a neat point about the shift in referring to the United States as a group rather than many-singulars: That after the Union and Confederacy were brought back together, it was likely Lincoln who popularized the “collective” idiom. I was not aware of that.
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