Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War

"Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors, (not the official surface courteousness of the Generals, not the few great battles) of the Secession war; and it is best they should not--the real war will never get in the books." - Walt Whitman, "Specimen Days" A bibliography of all the books written about the American Civil War since its opening shots fired at Fort Sumter, would easily number in the hundreds of thousands. The Civil War is, by far and away, the most written about topic in American History, and though many have tried, with greater or lesser success, no one, not even those who lived through those four battle bloodied years, has been able to capture the horror of the "real war" in print as it was truly experienced by those who participated in it. Robert Roper, in his book, "Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and his Brothers in the Civil War," has pointedly circumnavigated Whitman's challenge to future historians by not writing a book specifically about the war. Rather than offering his readers a history of the Civil War, he has instead offered up a not only biography of Walt Whitman, but a biography of the whole Whitman family. Walt Whitman came from a large, working-class family of Long Island, New York. He was the second of nine children born to Walter and Louisa (Van Velsor) Whitman, eight of whom lived to adulthood. Like many large families, some of the Whitman siblings remained but sad shadows in the light of their more talented and successful siblings. Though Mr. Roper concentrates on the more successful members of the family - Walt, the poet; George, the soldier; and Jeff, the engineer - his narrative does not neglect the lesser known individuals of the Whitman family. Additionally, the author brings a new interpretation of Whitman's mother, Louisa (Van Velsor) Whitman, the touchstone of the family correspondence, correcting the flawed portrait of a largely illiterate matriarch painted by previous Whitman scholars. Mr. Roper begins his narrative of the Whitman family, nearly at the beginning with the family firmly established in the working class neighborhoods of Long Island. He follows the family who were constantly on the move, from building, living in, and selling house after house until finally coming to rest, more or less permanently in Brooklyn, and the outbreak of the Civil War. Shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, George Whitman enlisted in the 13th New York Militia, a three month regiment and left for the war. After his term of service expired he enlisted as a lieutenant in the 51st New York Infantry. He eventually rose to the rank of major in that regiment, and led his men through twenty-one major battles. He was wounded at Fredericksburg. Two hours after reading George's name listed in a casualty list in the printed in the New York Herald, Walt packed a few clothes, withdrew $50 from his mother's bank account and headed so

This is the best book written on the Civil War in a generation. The author has plumbed the sources (from the National Archives and elsewhere) and come back with a story like none other, a scrupulous history that reads with the vivid intensity of a major novel. The descriptions of actual battles, in which George Whitman, the poet Whitman's brother, fought, are alone worth the price of admission. Roper is interested in many things, and one of them is the bond of devotion that connected Walt to his six brothers. They were the sons of a large, impoverished, severely afflicted Brooklyn family, several of whose members were uncommonly brilliant. Roper brings the Great Mother who presided over this clan into deep focus. Mrs. Whitman has heretofore been known as an illiterate slum matron, churlish and embarrassing; here, that distorted and condescending portrait undergoes a wonderful correction. The book is profoundly moving yet written with stoic reserve. Think of early Hemingway; think of Stephen Crane. Whitman spent the war years working as a nurse in the hospitals on the Union side; brother George, meanwhile, was a line officer fighting for survival in some of the most searing battles in our history. George's war experiences, put into letters from the front, fed Walt's poetry, and among other things this book is a clear-eyed reassessment of Walt's poetic achievement. The only problem with NOW THE DRUM OF WAR is that it eventually ends. Readers caught up in its intensely real recreation of the Civil War and the writing of the great literature of that war will find themselves doling out its final pages sparingly -- to turn the last one was, in my experience, to feel bereft.

Other reviewers have done an excellent job portraying the essence of Roper's new book, so I will keep my words to a minimum. The answer is "yes" - another biography, and yet, it's unlike any I have read thus far. It was refreshing to hear about the family relationships, especially about George and his military career, and the voluminous correspondence. The very thing that drew Walt south was, after all, George's wounding. Read alongside other authors, eg.: David Reynolds, Jerome Loving, Harold Bloom, Kenneth M. Price, Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, Dan Campion, and Sherry Ceniza, to mention just a few - this book adds a much appreciated dimension. You do not have to be a Whitmanian to enjoy this excellent book. - a Whitmanian in Florida, raised in Huntington

"When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd" is a great American poem. This book gives the reader an understanding of how this eulogy to Abraham Lincoln came to be. The family of Walt Whitman was large, with talented members intermixed with sad cases. Here the author, Robert Roper, provides information on the family--with a focus on brothers Walt, the poet, and George, the soldier, and their mother--during the Civil War. Those interested in learning more about the writing career (and love life) of Walt Whitman; the state of hospital care for those suffering from battle wounds; or one American family's experiences during the Civil War period will enjoy this book.

Do our kids learn anything about Walt Whitman in school these days? Do they read any of the work of our nation's greatest poet? Sadly, these are questions worth asking. A sizeable library of books on Whitman has accumulated since his death in 1892. He continues to provide grist for the lit-crit mills and the doctoral thesis industry. For those curious about Whitman's life or just enthralled by his wide-ranging poetic flights, there is a lot out there. Journalist, historian and fiction writer Robert Roper has taken a slightly different tack in NOW THE DRUM OF WAR. While concentrating on the poet's well-known service as a sort of unofficial visiting nurse in the military hospitals around Washington during the Civil War, he also places Whitman within his family situation --- his aging mother back in Brooklyn, his six siblings, his early careers as house builder and journalist, and his once glossed over but now openly acknowledged identity as an open homosexual. Roper's book is not a straightaway biography. It virtually ignores Whitman's childhood and devotes almost as much attention to his heroic soldier-brother George as it does to Walt himself. It is grounded largely in family letters, in Walt's own personal notebooks and in reminiscences of those who knew him both at home and in the military hospitals and camps. Roper sees him as "the war's most knowledgeable noncombatant." Walt Whitman initially went south to visit George after the bloody battle of Fredericksburg, just one of a long string of major battles in which George performed heroic service under hails of shot and shell, while sustaining only one relatively minor wound. Through acquaintances in Washington, Walt was able to find lodging and part-time government work that left him ample leisure to carry out his real mission of visiting the wounded laden with small articles, food items and words of comfort. Roper makes clear that Whitman also saw these injured young men as raw material for his poetry. He gives us a goodly amount of analysis of the poems, showing how many of them reflect places Whitman had seen and men Whitman came to know in his hospital rounds. The author is candid too about the obvious sexual attraction that Whitman felt toward many of the soldiers he comforted. His brother and his elderly mother were both uncomprehending of his poetic gifts, but both loved him and cared for him assiduously by letter. He was, says Roper, his family's father figure. George Whitman could not make heads or tails of LEAVES OF GRASS when that epoch-making collection of poems first appeared, and Mrs. Whitman compared her son's book ruefully with Longfellow --- well, if "Hiawatha" is poetry, I guess his is too. Roper's mining of family letters and journals gives us a good idea of what life was like both at home and in the army camps during the war. Typical of Roper's lack of interest in standard biographical detail is his dismissal in one sentence of the famous incident when a minor governm