The Secession war? Nay, let me call it the Union war.
Though whatever call'd, it is even yet too near us -
too vast and too closely overshadowing - its branches
unform'd yet, (but certain,) shooting far into the fu-
ture - and the most indicative and mightiest of them
yet ungrown. A great literature will yet arise out of
the era of those four years, those scenes - era com-
pressing centuries of native passion, first-class pic-
tures, tempests of life and death - an inexhaustible
mine for the histories, drama, romance, and even phil-
osophy, of peoples to come - indeed the verteber of
poetry and art, (of personal character too,) for all
future America - far more grand, in my opinion, to the
hands capable of it, than Homer's siege of Troy, or
the French wars to Shakespeare.
But I must leave these speculations,
and come to the theme I have assign'd
myself to. Of the actual murder of
President Lincoln, though so much has
been written, probably the facts are
indefinite in most persons' minds ..
Walt Whitman
Complete Poetry
and Collected Prose
Democratric Vistas
Collect
1867
Justin Kaplan
editor
The Library of America, 1982©
David Cole
The New York Review of Books
May 23, 2017©
J.D. Crowe, drawing
2016
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