Civil War Poetry and Prose by Walt Whitman

Author:Walt Whitman [Whitman, Walt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486112121
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

(In some of the Cemeteries nearly all the dead are Unknown. At Salisbury, N. C., for instance, the known are only 85, while the Unknown are 12,027, and 11,700 of these are buried in trenches. A National Monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark the spot—but what visible, material monument can ever fittingly commemorate that spot?)

As I write this conclusion—in the open air, latter part of June, 1875, a delicious forenoon, everything rich and fresh from last night’s copious rain—ten years and more have pass’d away since that War, and its wholesale deaths, burials, graves. (They make indeed the true Memoranda of the War—mute, subtle, immortal.) From ten years’ rain and snow, in their seasons—grass, clover, pine trees, orchards, forests—from all the noiseless miracles of soil and sun and running streams—how peaceful and how beautiful appear to-day even the Battle-Trenches, and the many hundred thousand Cemetery mounds! Even at Andersonville, to-day, innocence and a smile. (A late account says, ‘The stockade has fallen to decay, is grown upon, and a season more will efface it entirely, except from our hearts and memories. The dead line, over which so many brave soldiers pass’d to the freedom of eternity rather than endure the misery of life, can only be traced here and there, for most of the old marks the last ten years have obliterated. The thirty-five wells, which the prisoners dug with cups and spoons, remain just as they were left. And the wonderful spring which was discover’d one morning, after a thunder storm, flowing down the hillside, still yields its sweet, pure water as freely now as then. The Cemetery, with its thirteen thousand graves, is on the slope of a beautiful hill. Over the quiet spot already trees give the cool shade which would have been so gratefully sought by the poor fellows whose lives were ended under the scorching sun.’)

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