The ability to capture and represent a sentimental, poignant scene such as those in the Civil War was advancement in the transmission of information. The camera served as a meaningful tool of preserving and chronologically telling the story of the era between 1861 and 1864. The photograph preserved a literal truth of the war by emphasizing fallen comrades, as well as put a deep patriotic meaning to the war.  The advent of the photograph , and the realistic representations that it, as well as the renowned Walt Whitman, brought to the general public had a profound effect on the morale of the public eye, as the brutal monstrosity of the war became evident. 

In the antebellum years, the Union was on the verge of Civil War as a result of sectional differences over the complex issues of slavery, constitutional disputes, economic differences, and political conflicts. On April 12, 1861, the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter when a boat full of rations attempted to aid soldiers. After two long days of relentless pounding, the Union soldiers took hold of the fort; from that point on, the soldiers committed themselves together behind the patriotic fight to preserve the Union.

Northern citizens were assured that the struggle to suppress the south would only last a few months, at most. Before they knew the extent and the seriousness of the war, mothers were biding farewell to their sons, children to their fathers, and so on.

Before the War, Walt Whitman tried relentlessly to strengthen the bond of the American people, and prevent an unnecessary war, by force of will; and the reiteration of brotherhood, love and compassion for a common cause. President Lincoln tried hard to bring the states together “politically, as Whitman had tried to do so poetically” (Morris 12). One can compare the words of Whitman “affection shall solve every one of the problems of freedom” (Morris 12); to Lincoln’s inaugural address: 

“We are not enemies, but friends […] though passion may have strained, it must not break out bonds of affections. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living hear and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature” (qtd. in Morris 12).

It was advocated in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that American’s should concentrate on “the supremacy of Individuality” (Morris 13).

Such character, strong, limber, just open-mouthed, American-blooded, full of pride, full of ease, of passionate friendliness, is to stand compact upon that vast basis of the supremacy of Individuality—that new moral American continent without which, I see, the physical continent remained incomplete, may-be a carcass, a bloat—that newer America, answering face to face with The States, with ever-satisfying and ever-unsurveyable seas and shores.

(open letter to Emerson in the second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856).

Individuality is what deciphers one man from another. He believed that the states also had individuality, supremacy in their own right, and the differences among men and states should be respected, but they can be respected in a united environment. Whitman reiterated that individualism should be celebrated as it is one the underlying principles in American democracy and society; as we follow in “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Whitman shared a vision of a bonded country that involved a nationalistic passion. He thought the Union was an amenable society that could be advanced as united States. Before his message could be transferred, the passion and pride that existed in the country clashed. The North and the South were two drastically diverse regions with no common ground, and the ability to compromise was overused and rarely successful.

With reference to the human evolution, recall that the most significant events were commonly transcribed into stories, summarizations, and interpretative paintings to be shared and viewed by the public. The new camera could capture reality, leaving the interpretation of what was presented up to the viewer and no longer dependent on the painter. “The botheration with the painters is that they don’t want to let nature have its way: they want to make nature let them have their way” (qtd. in Sweet 101). Whitman commenting on the controversy of the birth of photography:

I find I like the photographs better than the oils—they are perhaps mechanical, but they are honest. The artists add and deduct: the artists fool with nature—reform it, revise it, to make it fit their preconceived notion of what it should be (qtd. in Sweet 101).

An immense amount of information was drawn from photographs that “delineated reality” (Sweet 101), and kept those whom were not involved informed. Whitman believed it would be his own challenge to compete with the truth the camera exposed. He would need to learn to reflect what he saw, instead of imagining what he wanted to see. “Whitman was devoted to the real, in other words, for its potentiality more than its actuality” (Folsom 104). Whitman’s “promiscuous poetics” broke the barrier between art and reality. (Folsom 104).

Before Whitman’s career took strength, he had heard Ralph Waldo Emerson’s call in Emerson’s 1836 essay entitled “Nature.” The essay asked for at least one true, democratic, American literary figure. Walt Whitman, an adolescent at the time, answered Emerson’s call with his publishing of Leaves of Grass. Whitman, unlike previous traditional European poets, used an unrhymed, un-metered, liberalized verse than would represent the American spirit to its fullest extent. “In these Leaves everything is literally photographed. Nothing is poetized, no divergence, not a step, not an inch, nothing for beauty’s sake, no euphemism, no rhyme” (Folsom 104). His work touched various themes scarcely attempted by his predecessors. He was the first American to write of “the city as well as the country, of industry as well as nature, of the body as well as the soul, of the woman as well as the man, of physical as well as spiritual love, and of African Americans, Orientals, and Native Americans as well as whites” (Russell 75). His antebellum poetry contained fabulous descriptions about the self, nature and society; imbuing each within the other elegantly. Whitman’s next challenge was a grueling one, and was a true testament to his ability in poetry.   

Later, Whitman recognized his feat as he was strolling down the sidewalks of Broadway in New York City. He heard voices from a boisterous crowd outside of a newsstand. Whitman approached the news stand to discover what the commotion was all about. He stood silently with other fellow citizens when someone read aloud “Rebel Forces had fired on Fort Sumter. The Civil War had begun” (qtd. in Morris 40). He was deeply angered by the news and slammed his fist in complete abhor of the events that were unfolding. Whitman, along with many other Americans finally accepted the event as inevitable. He briefly considered enlisting into the Union forces but was turned away by the call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the Union. His brother George was committed to the army at once, as he predicted the war would be an early expedited and triumphant process. The prediction of a quick suppression of the rebellion was far off, as the war would endure four years. The South proved to be a force to be reckoned with, as the battle of Bull Run was won by the Confederate Army. Morale amongst Union soldiers dropped from once an enthusiastic army to a disparaged one.  

Consequently, Whitman felt the need to become involved in the war effort. He knew that he couldn’t offer much, as he was never a fighter, and was too old to contribute effectively on the battlefields anyhow. Whitman resorted to what he knew best, poetry. He acknowledged that his “old enthusiastic style of writing was not appropriate for the capturing of the grim realities” of the war (Morris 61). Whitman began to transform his writing into a more liberal, truthful style that was fit for recording a soldier’s serene bravery, and the harsh truth of war. The impressions and accents that he obtained from speaking with soldiers would be replicated in his poetry, thus creating a democratic historical record. Authenticity became a crucial permutation in the Civil War literature and photography. Whitman tried painstakingly to make his writing authentic. It is clear by investigating his writing, that at a given moment, Whitman used all five senses to their fullest capabilities, seldom leaving a detail behind.  In this journal entry, Whitman noted on the conditions of the hospital tents: 

The results of the late battles are exhibited everywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds died every day,) in the Camp, Brigade, and Division hospitals…These are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs or small leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I do much good, but I cannot leave them. Once in a while a youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and sit near him for hours, if he wishes (Memoranda 6-7).

Whitman later wrote a fervent poem entitled “Beat! Beat! Drums!” The poem was an effort to recruit and restore energy into the minds and bodies of returned soldiers. While soldiers were consistently being deployed south, and returning in lesser sums, Whitman continued writing patriotic poems feverishly throughout the first year of the war. One poem entitled “First O Songs for a Prelude” praised New Yorkers for their wholehearted commitment to the war. He wrote, “War! An arm’d race is advancing! The welcome for battle, no turning away; War! Be it weeks, months or years, an arm’d race is advancing welcome it.” A few years later, looking back on the poem and others like it, he admitted to an arrogant, naïve approach to urging a persistent war. His views were altered from emphasizing brotherhood and unity, to promoting war, and then reverted to a more realistic sense that appreciated the brutal truth of the war. In the following poem, Whitman describes his experience with the wounded and the gloomy sorrow that is associated with watching someone die. 

Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the araum, and 

urge relentless war, 

but soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I re-

signed myself,

To sit by the wounded and soothe them or silently watch 

the death.

  These experiences were drawn primarily from the hospitals. They were essentially the closest Whitman ever got to the war. He became heavily involved in them as the result of lost communications with his brother George months into the war. It was later reported in the New York Tribune that among the casualties was George. An anxious Whitman immediately packed his bags and set out for Washington D.C., in search of his brother dead or alive. He traveled to and explored through dozens of large hospital facilities, all the while taking in the seriousness and complexity of a war hardly known to the division of the country he had just traveled from. Whitman found appropriate preparation in the large hospitals of New York, when he first found his innate ability to connect, admire, yet sympathize with young soldiers. Whitman engaged in conversations with diverse soldiers from all different ranks, nationalities, and ethnicities. The general ambience of the Union soldiers after long battles was depressed, angry, injured, and disgusted with the outcome as well as the general idea of war. They remained committed none the less.

For Whitman, the hospitals and the soldiers in them provided therapeutics and healing. Soldiers enlightened Whitman with there selflessness, their dedication, bravery; and comradely love that Whitman all along admired, and therefore reiterated the innate goodness of American people. Here he expresses his faith in America, and his gratefulness to the hospitals; “I wondered if all was not going to the bad with America—the tendency downwards—but the war saved me: what I saw in the war set me up for all time—the days in the hospitals.” Whitman pleaded his sincerity and commitment toward his comrades to his brother:

“I cannot give up my hospitals yet, I never before had my feelings so thoroughly and (so far) permanently absorbed, to the very roots, as by these huge swarms of dear, wounded, sick, dying boys—I get very much attached to some of them, and many of them have come to depend on seeing me, and having me sit by them a few minutes, as if for their lives” (qtd. in Morris 101).  

The pandemonium of the War was described by Whitman as the “the greatest suffering I ever experienced in my life.” Whitman endured a traumatizing and enriching experience all at once, concluding the war actually saved him. “To save is to ‘deliver from sin: to rescue from injury, destruction, or loss.’ In Whitman’s mind, the war did all those things for him personally, even as it also saved the Union itself, delivering it from the sin of slavery, rescuing it from the danger of secession, and preserving it from political destruction” (Morris 3). The majority of the reporters in the War where nothing like Whitman; they were young, full of energy, and wrote in a more callous, direct manner then Whitman. Reporters typically summed up the outcome of battles, and sent them to newspapers for the front page columns. Whitman documented his feelings and his observations before, and after battles. He made an effort to see beyond the statistics of war. Whitman was a liberal thinker, a scholar in philosophy, a bohemian, a mystic, a near Quaker, and a homosexual (Morris 4). These characteristics combined to make Walt Whitman a terrible candidate for the recording of such a brutal, mindless war. Whitman was a mere observer of events, as he never held a musket or saw a battle while it was underway. It was the consequences of the battles that left Whitman enthralled, perplexed, and patriotic all at once.  Whitman would attend the sites of the battlefield, hours after the final shot was fired, and he would open his ears, his eyes, his heart, and his notebook to observe and record his interpretation, and what he believed was an accurate representation of the scene. He was actively involved in the military hospitals, which housed and aided hundreds of beat soldiers all at once. Whitman was urged by many to chronicle and savor the events, bodies, and scenes that he was able to witness. Others, however, believed that Whitman was not capable of reporting or recording the war. He was seen by some as a coward for not joining the ranks and fighting for what he passionately wanted to preserve. In his defense, a young disciple named John Burroughs claimed that there wasn’t anything “…more shocking and incongruous than Whitman killing people? One would as soon expect Jesus Christ to go to war” (qtd. in Morris 5). Whitman saw his service to the Union, not in killing fellow Americans, but instead by assisting and offering companionship to tens of thousands of fallen comrades. The young men found in the hospitals were often in their teenage years, hurt, scared, lonesome, and had low morale. He was able to offer his personable console, which often appeared to be magical, sharing many of the same characteristics as Santa Claus. He would bring fruit, candy, clothing, tobacco, books, magazines, pencils and paper, and other luxuries that most took for granted. Whitman commented on his service, “I supply often to some of these dear suffering boys in my presence and magnetism that which doctors nor medicines nor skills any routine assistance can give” (qtd. in Morris 6). He realized that the solider that he attended to, sacrificed their own bodies, their own liberty, for the cause of the preservation of the Union. A similar way of recording the past, and preserving the truth, was presented by the photograph. 

Photographs, as well as poetry by Walt Whitman, were exploited throughout the war in an effort to get the “real war” in the books (Sweet 6). Samuel F. Morse once wrote, “The exquisite minuteness of the delineation and the daguerreotype’s identity of aspect with the thing represented” (qtd. in Hambourg). The work of photographers in the battlefield mobilized the representation of the Union, and as a result, altered people’s vantage point (Sweet 7).  The photograph formed a unified, nationalistic outlook on the war effort. One not involved with the war recognized the seriousness and monstrosity associated with a war amongst former and fellow citizens (Sweet pg. 7). Photographed symbols such as a flying American flag after a won or lost battle reminded Americans to “evoke the contemporary aesthetics of patriotism” (Sweet p. 4). The flag has always represented unity and patriotism, similarly found in a segment of the National Anthem: 

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? (Moore 34-35)

 Similarly, Edgar Allen Poe believed that the images produced by the daguerreotype were clear, simplistic, and a “tantamount to truth” (Hambourg 120). This truth was not considered simply objective; but instead it was a form of revelation that could portray an inner truth (Hambourg 120). With the introduction of such an ingenious invention, many people believed it was hypnotic, mesmerizing, and a spreader of emanations (Hambourg 120). Before the photograph, art was essentially the only carte blanche method of replicating a scene. An artist could totally manipulate the truth; and the photographer sometimes could to. The difference is, when a photographer took a picture; the objects in the picture did actually have to exist. A common method of transforming the message of the photograph was simply to rearrange objects (i.e. dead bodies, guns, blood, horses, battlefields ect.) to make them correspond with the photographer’s image in mind, making him or her artistic as well: An artist being one has the ability by virtue of imagination and skill to create works of aesthetic value.  Photographs of the Civil War often permeated scientific precision, unbiased truth, and transcendental expression, which characterized it as a verisimilitude (Hambourg 120). People could rely on photographs to bring home the real news, and document the “real war.” Poets such as Whitman tried to emulate the photograph through their work. Similarly, an artistic form, such as poetry or photography, of historical documentation was more appealing than strictly informative articles according to everyday folk up north.   

An instance of this intriguing, artistic work is a poem by Whitman entitled “Cavalry Crossing a Ford,” he articulately describes a procession of horsemen taking a meandering course through a river. Whitman likely witnessed a Union cavalry crossing a river, or he saw the picture entitled “Federal Calvary at Sudley Ford—Bull Run, VA, March 1862.” It seems quite conclusive that a “large troop of cavalry” would seem to suggest that he had been Burnside’s vanguard, either departing or returning to a fort. Whitman, in this instance, was able to apply his new minimalist theory of poetry. “Calvary Crossing a Ford” is a fragment of perpetual, sepia pigments typical of a Mathew Brady photograph (p. 67 Morris).

A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands; 

They take a serpentine course—their arms flash in the sun—Hark to the musical clank; 

Behold the silvery river—in it the splashing horses, loitering, stop to drink; 

Behold the brown-faced men—each group, each person, a picture—the negligent rest on the saddles; 

Some emerge on the opposite bank—others are just entering the ford—while,

Scarlet, and blue, and snowy white, 

The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind. 

He began by describing the horsemen as a “long array,” or an orderly arrangement. The men seemed stern and in-step with one another. His description characterizes the soldiers as courageous, headstrong, and proper. He goes as far to comment on the “green islands” or the patches of land and rocks which they must ride around. He uses a metaphor, relating them to a serpent, again referring to the windy course that the men took through the river. “Their arms,” meaning their weaponry, glisten in the sun, indicating they were armed and ready for battle. The glistening of the weaponry could once again be compared to the patriotic stars that are on the American flag. The American National Anthem makes numerous references to shinning objects, both literal and figurative. For instance:

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? 

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, […]

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam (Moore 34-350)

He jotted down a broad interpretation of an army unit in unison, and then later in the poem he focuses (like a camera would) on the individuals who made up the unit and centers his gaze to a close-up of a “splashing horse” and the “brown faced men…each person a picture.” The soldiers are clearly individuals, but in this instance, they are united like a family or a gang, each man covering the others back. The shift of vantage point in the poem characterizes a democratic nature to the army, the casting into a homogeneous aggregation, and the beauty of such a representative poem. Whitman’s observation skills were absolutely remarkable. He would jot down notes from an eagles eye perspective, similar to the way a camera would just sit and capture every little detail. He similarly observed vivid images of a Pennsylvania camp in his poem entitled “Sights—The Army Corps, Encamped on the War Field”: 

The cluster of tents-the brigades and divisions

The shelter tents—the peep through the open entrance flap—

The debris around

The balloon up for reconnaissances

The Sights of the hospital tent—the pale faced wounded—

The men lying flat on the ground, on the pine boughs,

The shebangs of branches,–the fires built

The men emerging from their tents in the gray of the 

Morning

The great camp of army corps, the divisions, the brigades

And the camps of the regiments

The sound of the drums—the different calls, the assembly,

The early reveille, the tattoo at night, & the dinner call,

ect.

The rows of tents, the street through them

The Squades out on the open ground going through their evolutions

The long trains of baggage wagons—the huge clouds of

smoke rising over the tents

The ambulances—

It was miraculous descriptions such as these that were adorned by the public. Whitman focused less attention on the way a poem flowed and more attention on “getting down on paper the chaotic welter of new impressions” (Morris 69). Roy Morris, acclaimed biographer, drew from Whitman’s notes in Glicksberg a description of a battlefield that Whitman visited after venturing from one of the camps he had been living in.  “On Christmas Day he purposely removed himself from camp, spending an hour alone in solemn contemplation on a deserted part of the battlefield. The devastation caused by the war was plain to see; for miles around the land had been stripped clear of all trees and vegetation, and the black bloated carcasses of dead horses and mules littered the countryside. A seemingly endless line of supply wagons passed nearby, adding to the heaping mounds of forage and hay in the teamster’s campy beyond” (Morris 69). This description, although not written by Whitman, further describes a scene of a battlefield. 

However, it was not just “significant” events that Whitman recognized, but he also wrote of daily, normal matters. Entries from Memoranda During the War regularly contain a deep influence on the reader. An excerpts entitled Boys in the Army:

As I walk’d home about sunset, I saw Fourteenth street a very young soldier, thinly clad, standing near the house I was about to enter. I stopt a moment in front of the door and call’d him to me. I knew that was an old Tennessee Union regiment, and also an Indiana regiment, were temporarily stopping in new barracks, near Fourteenth street. This boy I found belonged to the Tennessee regiment. But I could hardly believe he carried a musket. He was but 15 years old, yet had been twelve months a soldier, and had borne his part in several battles, even his historic ones……I ask’d him if he did not suffer from the cold and if he had no overcoat. No, he did not suffer from the cold, and had no overcoat, but could draw one whenever he wish’d. His father was dead, and his mother living in some part of East Tennessee; all the men were from that part of the country (Whitman 39). 

In the note, he emphasizes the madness associated with putting a fifteen year old boy in the war to fight for a cause for reasons he probably knows little about. Since the boy was fourteen he had been a solider, and contributed in several deadly battles. Whitman inquires if the boy is cold in the frigid winter temperatures, and if so, does he have access to an overcoat? This concern for others shows how Whitman was such a compassionate and humane person in a time where such characteristics were seldom found. The boy said that he didn’t suffer from the cold, and if he did need an overcoat, he would be able to get one. His father had died in the war, and his mother’s location was vaguely known. The boy doesn’t have much to live for, and he is reliant on himself to stay alive. It is likely that Whitman was the first to ask the young boy if he needed a jacket, as the other soldiers were probably more concerned with themselves. Young boys such as this one were somewhat common through the war, especially towards the end, when much of the older generation had passed away in the war. The boy recognizes his role, to protect the Union, but it isn’t his place, at such a young age to do so.  Whitman is perplexed by the harshness, and thoughtlessness associated with war. When citizens read passages such as these, many began to question the War just had Whitman was.  This may have made some soldiers/citizens more adamant about the War, but for the most part people just wanted the fighting to cease, and peace to be restored.

Furthermore, the camera became known as the American instrument of seeing, a combination of “sight and chemistry, organism and mechanism” (Sweet 100). The photograph enabled those that could not travel west or see the horrors of the war to do just that. The camera brought news and insight right into their homes. Pictures could take hold of the imagination of the viewer, taking them to places, and witnessing scenes they otherwise would not have seen. At the start of the war back in April of 1861, President Lincoln announced the need for thousands of militiamen to put down an insurrection of rebellious southern States.  Mathew Brady asked the President if he could follow the troops and photograph all of the scenes he could. Lincoln wanted to utilize the new technology to keep the nation informed of success or defeat. It is likely he believed the photograph would support his beliefs in the rights of man (therefore supporting the abolition of slavery), and his firm stance for the Union. He rightfully granted permission to Brady and his constituents to capture the grim realities of the insurrection turned war.  The war was intended to be concise and to the point, but that wasn’t the case. After losing all of his equipment in the first engagement of the war as a consequence of defeat, Brady knew he couldn’t do the job alone. He thereby hired a group of photographers to make a photograph gallery that would cover the war effort from different angles (Hambourg 122). He hired Alexander Gardner and others to do this demanding job. The battle fields proved to be too hectic and restless for a photographer to lug in his massive wagon full of tedious wet plate equipment. It was more common for a photograph to be taken of a camp scene, retreat from action, strategic sites, and occasionally the abysmal aftermath of battle (Hambourg 122). The few photographs taken of war scenes were often taken weeks after the battle, and “they strangely evoke its appalling conditions: a dark (solarized) sky broods over ravaged trees human skeletons, recapturing the choking darkness of the tangled forest where, in the dense smoke of artillery and forest fires, men fought—virtually blind—to the death.” (Hambourg 122). 

Moreover, Gardner was asked to voyage westward and document his experiences through the photograph. His pictures represented a freedom and openness that existed within the open lands of the future. It was difficult to transport extremely heavy equipment on house drawn wagon. “Gardener’s photographs and Whitman’s words make a revealing pair, for both record the fading but still palpable grandeur of American’s native race as it confronted a whiteness as foreign and vast imposing as the capital building itself” (Folsom 100). Whitman combined the use of the mechanical (photograph) with the spiritual essence of his words. He wrote about the railroads, Suez Canal, soldiers, hospitals, and nature; this brought a distant nation, closer together. He believed, as did others, that he could see farther than his camera. He saw emotions, immense detail; he heard sounds, felt objects and more just by looking at the picture. Whitman aspired to be a great poet, one “who performs the office of the camera to the world, merely reflecting what he sees—art is mere reproduction” (Folsom 102). The camera united mankind’s imagination with technological accuracy that comes with mechanical precision. The revelation of the camera seemed to be magical and for many, it represented a mystical, transcendental expression (Hambourg 120). 

The photograph, like Whitman’s poetry was very democratic, and left nothing out. The obstacle of this new aesthetic was to translate wickedness into life, and death into importance. Poetry was a powerful source of connecting with the public. It often could reveal a hidden beauty in otherwise grotesque objects. “Photography was teaching the mid-nineteenth century how beauty could emerge out of the most mundane and unattractive reality simply by turning that reality into an image of itself…invisible photos of our lives that transformed confusion into order” (Folsom 126). The Civil War, for the most part was chaotic. The poetry and the photographs produced by Whitman and Brady were order, and brought a realistic understanding of the War. The pictures produced by Brady or his counterparts, taught Americans to realize the truth associated with war, and not the heroic-romantic approach that they typically saw. “My experiences on the field have shown me that writers catch very little of the real atmosphere of a battle. It is an assault, an immense noise, somebody driven off the field—a victory won: that is all. It is like trying to photograph a tempest” (qtd. in Folsom 126). Gardener’s photographs represent an impulse to control, alter and “subordinate them to the visual unity of the composition” (Sweet 105). This self conscious image was seemingly similar to the way that Whitman’s “organicist political and poetic ideology transformed traces of violence in signs of the Union” (Sweet 105). 

In conclusion, photography, as well as poetry, played integral roles in the documentation of a crucial era in American history. America moved on from it’s adolescence in this war, and began its full democratic career with the surrender at Appomattox. The “real war” finally made it into the text books with the help of Whitman and Mathew Brady (along with his counterparts). The photograph provided the first truly democratic art form, a philosophy which the United States was founded upon. Whitman was tested mentally, physically, spiritually, and most notable artistically. Paradigmatic instances were substituted with countless experiences of death and discouraging scenes.  The visual of a photograph was as good as real and the truth was shared with those who didn’t know what to believe. For Whitman, his main concern was recognizing and caring for those soldiers who selflessly put their lives at risk for the Union. “The power of photography, Whitman said, was in its “knack of catching life on the run, in a flash, as it shifted, moved, evolved.” Reality became for the first time represented “and the changing, shifting, evolving face of every individual over time was part of the new pile of images photography brought into consciousness” (Folsom 159). 

Works Cited

Brady, Mathew, Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr. Mathew Brady and His World. Morristown, NJ: Time-Life Books, 1997.   

Folsom, Ed. Walt Whitman’s Native Representations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 

Frizot, Micheal, ed. A New History of Photography.  Köln: Konemann, 1998.

Freehling, William W. The Road To Disunion: Secessionists at Bay 1776-1854. New  York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Hambourg, Maria Morris., et al. The Walking Dream: Photography’s First Century. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1993.

Lossing, Benson J. Mathew Brady’s Illustrated History of the Civil War: With his War Photographs and paintings by Military Artists. New York: Gramercy Books, 1891.

McCausland, Elizabeth. “Photography in War.” New Deal Network. 1942. Photo league, 18 Jan. 2005 http://newdeal.feri.org/pn/pn542.htm.

McPherson, James M. Ordeal By Fire. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1982.

Moore, Frank, ed. Rebellion Record. Vol. 3, 1864 pp. 34-35. New York: 1864.

Morris, Roy Jr. The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000.  

Russell, Hilary. The Anthology of American poetry: Colonial to Contempory. Wayside Publishing. 1992. 

Sandler, Martin W. American Image: Photographing One Hundred Fifty Years In the Life of a Nation. Chicago: Contemporary Book, Inc., 1989. 

Stampp, Kenneth M. America In 1857: A Nation on the Brink. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Sweet, Timothy. Traces of War: Poetry, Photography and the Crisis of the Union. 

Baltimore: The John’s Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Whitman, Walt. Memoranda During the War. 1875. Massachusetts: Applewood Books, 1993.