Whitman, however, insisted he be referred to as something simpler, calling himself a mere "visitor & consolatory," one who brought "soothing invigoration" to the sick and wounded.
This time in the hospital would have a major effect on his poetry with some of the poems in Drum-Taps being directly based on events transpired in these places.
Years later, Whitman told Horace Traubel that Drum-Taps was "put together by fits and starts, on the field, in the hospitals as I worked with the soldier boys."
By June 23, 1864, Whitman was on the verge of a mental breakdown and grew to be so terribly ill from the work he had been doing in the hospitals that he was forced to retire to his home in Brooklyn.
"I intend to move heaven & earth to publish my Drum-Taps as soon as I am able to go around", Whitman told his friend and associate William O'Connor.
[6]: 184 It was Whitman's perception that his past works had been so highly controversial that he had now scared off any legitimate publishers from wanting to buy his poetry.
Whitman explained to O’Connor, “I shall probably try to bring it out myself, stereotype it, & print an edition of 500 – I could sell that number by my own exertions in Brooklyn and New York in three weeks."
[7]: 240 Months later, on March 6, 1865, he received a letter from his mother explaining that George, who had survived the poor conditions experienced at many prisoner of war camps, had been released and was now going home to Brooklyn on medical leave.
[6]: 217 Things began to proceed smoothly until the morning of April 15, 1865, when the newspapers told the story of the assassination of President Lincoln.
He conveys this through the poem "The Centenarian's Story" in which a veteran of George Washington's campaign in the Revolutionary War recalls for a Civil War volunteer both the heroism and bravery of watching men charge willingly into terribly perilous situations and the horror of watching a large proportion of this mass of men be slaughtered.
For example, "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame" relentlessly describes the hollow feeling a soldier begins experience as his naïve enthusiasm for war slips away and he must now come to grips with the terror and suffering of conflict.
Poems range from the unequivocal suffering experienced by a mother who learns of the wounding and consequential death of her son in "Come Up from the Fields Father" to the camaraderie of "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night" which tells the story of a soldier who watches one of his fellow soldiers die at his side before continuing on in the battle he is engaged in.
During the night he later returns to the corpse to pay his respects to his dead friend and recall how much this young man meant to him in life one last time.
John Burroughs, Whitman's early biographer, after gaining the perspective from Whitman of what his goal with Drum-Taps was, would write that "War can never be to us what it has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never the main fact--the paramount condition, tyrannizing over all the affairs of national and individual life; but only an episode, a passing interruption.
This poem is interesting in that it does not stretch to melodrama to exaggerate the tragic reality of war but rather to mock the poet's futile effort to keep up with it.
It is only when the sun has set and the battle ends that the poet can go properly grieve his departed companion, telling the corpse of the great passion he had for him in life.
Finally, it states that there is no great bond that occurs in this life than the one that takes place between one who will perish without assistance and the one tends to that person.
Its nocturnal setting where a man fails to get any sleep and is instead forced to relive some of the cruelest times in his life is consistent with what we now refer to as post-traumatic stress.