Title: Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.
Description: Walt Whitman was already famous for Leaves of Grass when he journeyed to the nation's capital at the height of the Civil War to find his brother George, a Union officer wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Whitman eventually served as a volunteer "hospital missionary," making more than six hundred hospital visits and serving over eighty thousand sick and wounded soldiers in the next three years. With the 1865 publication of Drum-Taps, Whitman became poet laureate of the Civil War, aligning his legacy with that of Abraham Lincoln. He remained in Washington until 1873 as a federal clerk, engaging in a dazzling literary circle and fostering his longest romantic relationship, with Peter Doyle. Author Garrett Peck details the definitive account of Walt Whitman's decade in the nation's capital.
Subjects: History, American Poets, Whitman, walt, 1819-1892, Washington (d.c.), biography
Places: United States, Washington (D.C.)
People: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Time periods: Civil War, 1861-1865, 19th century