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Whitman Bicentennial
Whitman in Washington: Emotions of War
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) met streetcar conductor and former Confederate soldier Peter Doyle in Washington during the Civil War. The two became intimate friends, Whitman had great empathy for common soldiers, and he captured their trials and battlefield comradeship in his poetry. He also came to deeply admire Abraham Lincoln, whom he commemorated in his "Death of Lincoln" lectures and memorialized for a nation experiencing loss in "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Las tin the Dooryard Bloom'd." |