The concept of national self as reflected in walt whitman's civil war poetry

In the middle of 1850?s when the America nation was gradually drifting apart as aresult of the debates over slavery, an ex- journalist stepped into the literary stage of theperiod. This work presents the journey of Walt Whitman from a Democratic journalist to an?American Bard? who believed that the key to get over all the conflicts was a unity andequality among the members of the American nation and his attempt to create a ?nationalself? that Americans could absorb by heart. He chose poetry as a medium to embrace all menborn on the American land no matter of what color, class and gender they were. In the firstbook of collected poems called Leaves of Grass,(1855) his main intention was to raise anational consciousness by constructing a new model of democratic, equal and humanist self.Until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he called Americans to gather around values likeequality, democracy, brotherhood and national unity. However what Whitman hoped for thefuture of the country, came true not with poetry but with a bloody war. He kept his optimismby assuming that the war could finally be able to unite the nation. After all, he believed that itwould only last for a couple of months. Unfortunately it didn?t. The experiences that he hadon the battle field and in the military hospitals of Washington proved that the nation hadfinally united but the price was too much to pay. While thousands of American men weredying, Whitman began to rethink all the values that he believed and defended for. In 1865 hepublished a new collection of war poems, Drum Taps in which the equal, democratic self wasreplaced by the common, national selves of heroic, courageous and brave American men whodied for the ideals that they believed in and most importantly for their beloved country,America.