During the American Civil War, Walt Whitman left his bohemian life in New York City to volunteer at Union hospitals in Washington DC, spending time with wounded soldiers and distributing small gifts of fruit, paper, and money. To fund these efforts, the poet solicited charitable donations from his network of friends via letter, one of which we have in the studio with us today. Over its four pages he thanks the recipient for their gift of $75 (a substantial amount of money in 1864) and details overwhelming conditions at the hospitals as they received trainload after trainload of sick and injured men. The suffering and mass death he witnessed in the war—punctuated by quiet moments of courage and affection—would have a transformative impact on Whitman and his later work; these were, in his own words, “real, terrible, beautiful days!”

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