With Malice Toward None

The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition    

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Walt Whitman’s Civil War Diary

Walt Whitman’s Civil War Diary (147.00.00)

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In December 1862 Whitman saw the name of his brother George, a member of the 51st New York Infantry, listed among the wounded at Fredericksburg. Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to the Washington area to search the hospitals and encampments for George. During this indoctrination to the ghastly consequences of warfare, he began to make acquaintance of the soldiers and recorded accounts of those who had served in battle. Here Whitman recounts the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam.

(Transcription)

at Antietam there was a very large barn & farm house—the barn was filled with wounded, & the barn yard, an[d] the farm house as full as it could stick ...


In December 1862 Whitman saw the name of his brother George, a member of the 51st New York Infantry, listed among the wounded at Fredericksburg. Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to the Washington area to search the hospitals and encampments for George. During this indoctrination to the ghastly consequences of warfare, he began to make acquaintance of the soldiers and recorded accounts of those who had served in battle. Here Whitman recounts the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam.