The UK’s Telegraph has an excerpt from the new book, The American Civil War, by the military historian John Keegan. It speaks of the suffering of soldiers during the Civil War and Walt Whitman’s role in taking care of them. Here’s a passage:
“Whitman was to become America’s leading 19th-century poet. His poem Come Up from the Fields, Father, is one of the greatest works of literature the war was to inspire and it came from his experiences as an army hospital visitor. What makes it so heart-rending is that everything in it is entirely genuine.”
As well as nursing wounded soldiers, Whitman often wrote letters to their families, a fact that no doubt adds to the immediacy and power of “Come Up from the Fields Father.”