Walt Whitman's Memoranda During the War, 1876

Walt Whitman's Memoranda During the War, 1876

"Of the present Volume most of its pages are verbatim renderings from such pencillings on the spot…I have perhaps forty such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd little livraisons,… Even these days, at the lapse of many years, I can never turn their tiny leaves, or even take one in my hand, without the actual army sights and hot emotions of the time rushing like a river in full tide through me."

From the introduction to Walt Whitman’s memoir of his experiences as a volunteer nurse, Memoranda During the War, 1876. Learn more about Whitman and his works at the Whitman Archive.