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About the Text

The text presented here is derived from Jerome M. Loving, ed., The Civil War Letters of George Washington Whitman (Durham, North Carolina: Duke State University Press, 1975). For a detailed description of discrepancies between this electronic edition and the print source, see our statement of editorial policy .

The manuscript of this diary, dated September 1861 to September 6, 1863, is held at the Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839-1919, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

For more information on the letters of George Washington Whitman, see Jerome M. Loving's introduction to the print edition.

Notes

1. 

From sometime in September 1861 until September 6, 1863, George Whitman recorded his war experiences in a pocket diary.  After he was captured on September 30, 1864, the diary was among the contents of a trunk sent on to his mother's home in Brooklyn, where it arrived on December 26, 1864. Walt Whitman read the diary and recorded the following thoughts in his own diary for that day:

It is merely a skeleton of dates, voyages, places camped in or marched through, battles fought, &c. But I can realize clearly that by calling upon even a tithe of myriads of living & actual facts, which go along with, & fill up this dry list of times & places, it would outvie all the romances in the world, & most of the famous histories & biographies to boot. It does not need calling in play the imagination to see that in such a record as this lies folded a perfect poem of the war comprehending all its phases, its passions, the fierce tug of the secessionists, the interminable fibre of the national union, all the special hues & characteristic forms & pictures of actual battles with colors flying, rifles snapping, cannon thundering, grape whiring, armies struggling, ships at sea or bombarding shore batteries, skirmishes in woods, great pitched battles, & all the profound scenes of individual death, courage, endurance & superbest hardihood, & splendid muscular wrestle of a newer large race of human giants with all furious passions aroused on one side, & the sternness of an unalterable determination on the other (Manuscripts of Walt Whitman in the Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; reprinted in the Introduction to Roy P. Basler, ed., Walt Whitman's "Memoranda During the War" and "Death of Abraham Lincoln" (1962), p. 17.

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2.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 12 April 1862.  (Back)

3.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 9 February 1862.  (Back)

4.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 9 February 1862.  (Back)

5.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 9 February 1862.  (Back)

6.  John Grubb Parke (1827-1900); see Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 23 July 1863 and Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 18 June 1864.  (Back)

7.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 9 February 1862.  (Back)

8.  A parallel account of George Whitman's experiences in the battle of Roanoke Island appears in Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 9 February 1862.  (Back)

9.  David R. Johnson was wounded in action on March 14, 1862; he died on March 19, 1862.  (Back)

10.  George D. Allen was killed in action on March 14, 1862.  (Back)

11.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 16 March 1862.  (Back)

12.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 16 March 1862.  (Back)

13.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 16 March 1862.  (Back)

14.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 30 September 1862.  (Back)

15.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Walt Whitman, 29 April 1864.  (Back)

16.  A parallel account of Whitman's experiences in the battle of New Bern appears in Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 16 March 1862.  (Back)

17.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 27 April 1862.  (Back)

18.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 11 July 1862.  (Back)

19.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 17 August 1862.  (Back)

20.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 5 September 1862(?).  (Back)

21.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 17 August 1862.  (Back)

22.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 5 September 1862.  (Back)

23.  Philip Kearny and Isaac Ingalls Stevens; a parallel account of Whitman's observations in these two battles—Manassas and Chantilly—appears in Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 5 September 1862 and Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 5 September 1862(?).  (Back)

24.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 19 September 1862.  (Back)

25.  Joseph Hooker (1814-1879); see Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 2 April 1863.  (Back)

26.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 19 September 1862 and Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 21 September 1862 for parallel accounts of the battles of South Mountain and Antietam.  (Back)

27.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 10 November 1862.  (Back)

28.  Unidentified.  (Back)

29.  The following note appears at the top of this page in the diary: "[re]ceived my commission as [first lieutenant No]v 15  date of commission Nov 1st" [sic].  (Back)

30.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 16 December 1862.  (Back)

31.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 5 September 1862(?).  (Back)

32.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Walt Whitman, 12 February 1863.  (Back)

33.  Elliot F. Shepard, organizer of the Fifty-First Regiment of New York Volunteers; see Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 9 February 1862 and Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 12 April 1862. For General Dix, see Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 25 February 1863 and Letter from George Washington Whitman to Walt Whitman, 25 February 1863.  (Back)

34.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Charles W. LeGendre, 27 February 1863 and Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 2 April 1863.  (Back)

35.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 2 April 1863.  (Back)

36.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Thomas Jefferson Whitman, 22 April 1863.  (Back)

37.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 21 September 1862.  (Back)

38.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 29 May 1863.  (Back)

39.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 29 May 1863.  (Back)

40.  General Thomas Williams, who had been in command of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and who was killed August 5, 1862, had in the early summer of that year made a survey of the stronghold at Vicksburg, and had projected a canal across the neck of land opposite Vicksburg, with a view of turning the channel of the Mississippi River into a new route—which would have left Vicksburg an inland town, or at most one with a deep and sluggish bayou in front of it. The plan failed because the canal built for this purpose was inaccurately located. Later, Grant made similar attempts—including the construction of a canal that began at Milliken's Bend, about twenty-five miles above Vicksburg and Grant's headquarters during the Vicksburg campaign. Heavy rains, however, defeated this attempt as well as others. Schmucker, pp. 566-67.  (Back)

41.  Johnston; see Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 23 July 1863.  (Back)

42.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 23 July 1863. In his letter to the New York Times , published October 29, 1864, Walt Whitman wrote: "June and July, 1863, found the Fifty-first in the forces under Gen. Grant, operating against Vicksburgh. On the fall of that stronghold they were pushed off under Sherman as part of a small army toward Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. This was a tough little campaign. The drought and excessive heat, the dust everywhere two or three inches thick, fine as flour, rising in heavy clouds day after day as they marched, obscuring everything and making it difficult to breathe, will long be remembered. The Fifty-first was the second regiment entering Jackson at its capture, July 17, 1863." (Emory Holloway, ed., The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman [1921], Vol. II, p. 39.  (Back)

43.  A parallel account of this experience appears in Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 23 July 1863.  (Back)

44.  The following note appears at the top of this page in the diary: "Aug 16 paid by Maj [Rees?] for the Months of June & July."  (Back)

45.  See Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 16 August 1863 and Letter from George Washington Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 7 September 1863.  (Back)

Whitman Archive ID

loc.00487