Walt Whitman's Peaceful Actions and Ideals

Whitman's Civil War Poetry and Pacifist Influences

Mar 9, 2009

According to Walt Whitman scholars, Whitman was not raised within the tenets of one particular religion, but "Quaker thought always played a major role in Whitman's life"

Long before the onset of the Civil War, pacifism – the belief that disputes should be settled peacefully, and that war and violence are unjustifiable [The Compact Oxford Dictionary] played a role in the shaping of our nation. Puritan beliefs regarding nonviolence and the Quaker adaptation of those beliefs created a large constituent adverse to the use of force.

Taking into account the number of individuals adhering to such beliefs, George Washington felt it necessary to exclude “those with conscientious scruples against war” from his Revolutionary War draft call. In keeping with the short history of the nation, Pacifist beliefs continued to survive, and as a result, the Quaker refusal to bear arms sustained the pacifist philosophy throughout the Civil War.

Pacifism and The Civil War

This Quaker belief would surface continuously throughout Whitman’s poetry as he expounded on the individual’s ability to connect with both the inner divinity of the individual and the greater divinity of man’s environment (nature).

However, in an 1848 editorial “the young Whitman explicitly rejected the Quaker refusal to bear arms in these words: ‘Quakerism can never become the creed of the race; and you might as well expect all men to adopt the straight-cut coat and plain phraseology of the followers of Fox, as to hope that the principles of peace will ever become the law of men’s opinions and actions’” (Templin, 168).

A Poet of Peace

If such is the case, then how did Whitman become the poet who wrote the collection Drum Taps? Although Drum Taps did not denounce the Civil War, it did not glorify the conflict. And despite the topic of war, Whitman did not draw undue attention to the aggression, or violence of his subject matter.

As a frequent visitor to army hospitals and a one time impromptu medical caregiver, Whitman experienced first hand the casualties of war. Sitting at bedsides and walking through hallways, Whitman took every occasion to tend to, speak with, and comfort injured soldiers from both sides of the fight. It was these experiences that would prove to be the catalyst in Whitman’s transformation from the hard-nosed youth to the mature poet.

In an 1863 letter to the parents of a deceased soldier, Whitman writes “I write to you this letter, because I would do something at least in his memory – his fate was a hard one, to die so – He is one of the thousands of our unknown American young men in the ranks about whom there is no record or fame, no fuss made about their dying so unknown . . . Poor dear son, though you were not my son, I felt to love you as a son, what short time I saw” (Whitman & Miller, 78).

A Voice of Peace

Through these poems, Whitman fought with words, when he could not fight with weapons. He drew attention to the individual stories of the soldiers, the families who experienced loss, and to the destruction of America’s national identity. And although his age was the restriction regarding his military absence from the war, one may conclude Whitman’s experiences within the war zones, his lost friendships with departed soldiers, and his poet’s heart influenced his peaceful actions and ideals.

Templin, Lawrence. “The Quaker Influence on Walt Whitman.” American Literature 42.2

Whitman, Walt. Whitman Poetry and Prose. New York: Literary Classics of the United States,

Whitman, Walt. Selected Letters of Walt Whitman. Ed. Miller, Edwin Haviland. Iowa:

Allen, Gay Wilson. A Reader’s Guide to Walt Whitman. New York: Syracuse University Press,

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