The Authors and the Hospitals

"Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither." --- Walt Whitman 1862

The author Walt Whitman was one of several writers that participated in the Civil War. Herman Melville was another author during that era and he went on scouting rides just to get a glimpse of the soldier's lifestyle. Melville went on to write Battle Pieces and Aspects of War. The female author Louisa May Alcott published Hospital Sketches in 1863. She served as a nurse during the winter of 1862. Her nursing career ended when she contracted typhoid fever and had to return home.

Whitman wrote, "The expression of American personality through this war is not to be looked for in the great campaign, and the battle fights. It is to be looked for in the hospitals, among the wounded."

That is exactly where he spent his time. In the converted church hospitals in Washington: Ascension, Methodist Episcopal, Epiphany, Union Methodist Episcopal, Harewood, Armory, Campbell and Carver. It was in these hospital corridors that he wrote his wartime prose. Walt Whitman's book of poetry entitled Drum Taps was published in 1865.