Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel lives in Civil War Washington [Hardcover]

Daniel Mark Epstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2004

It was more than coincidence—indeed, it was all but fate—that the lives and thoughts of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman should converge during the terrible years of the Civil War. Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position and circumstance, Lincoln and Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character that sprang from the deepest part of their being. They had read or listened to each other’s words at crucial turning points in their lives. Both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the war. In this radiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.

Drawing on the rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts, diary records, and lore that has accumulated around both the president and the poet, Epstein structures his double portrait in a series of dramatic, atmospheric scenes. Whitman, though initially skeptical of the Illinois Republican, became enthralled when Lincoln stopped in New York on the way to his first inauguration. During the war years, after Whitman moved to Washington to minister to wounded soldiers, the poet’s devotion to the president developed into a passion bordering on obsession. “Lincoln is particularly my man, and by the same token, I am Lincoln’s man.”

As Epstein shows, the influence and reverence flowed both ways. Lincoln had been deeply immersed in Whitman’s verse when he wrote his incendiary “House Divided” speech, and Whitman remained an influence during the darkest years of the war. But their mutual impact went beyond the intellectual. Epstein brings to life the many friends and contacts his heroes shared—Lincoln’s debonair private secretary John Hay, the fiery abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, the mysterious and possibly dangerous Polish Count Gurowski—as he unfolds the story of their legendary encounters in New York City and especially Washington during the war years.

Blending history, biography, and a deeply informed appreciation of Whitman’s verse and Lincoln’s rhetoric, Epstein has written a masterful and original portrait of two great men and the era they shaped through the vision they held in common.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Poet and biographer Epstein (What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, about Edna St. Vincent Millay) covers the same ground canvassed most recently, and more ably, by Roy Morris Jr. in his much-praised The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. Where Epstein falters is in his basic paradigm: a narrative that insists on interleaving the "parallel"-but never intersecting-lives of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. The two never met. They shared no common ground in politics-Whitman, a copperhead Democrat, a bigot and no abolitionist, thought the Northern cause in the Civil War absurd. That Lincoln read and was impressed by Leaves of Grass is questioned by most scholars, yet Epstein takes it on face value. Later, moved by the tragic drama of the president's murder, Whitman wrote two elegiac poems ("When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Captain, My Captain"). His subsequent "Specimen Days and Collect" included diary memoranda referring to glimpses of Lincoln around Washington, and in old age the impoverished Whitman sometimes raised money for himself by giving talks containing his reminiscences of Lincoln and wartime Washington. But the "parallels" between these two very different lives don't hold together the thread of Epstein's narrative. As well, readers well versed in the story of Whitman and his milieu during the early 1860s will be annoyed by several small errors. (Example: The New York poet and farmer Myron Benton was not a friend of Whitman's, though he was a fan of the poet's and had a mutual friend in John Burroughs.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

During the final two years of the Civil War, Walt Whitman lived in a Spartan rented room a few rutted blocks north of the White House. The poet and the President who inspired his most popular poem ("O Captain! My Captain!") and his most beautiful ("When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd") never met. But Whitman often planted himself along the route of Lincoln's carriage as it rattled to the President's summer retreat, and the two men would exchange grave, friendly nods. Years later, Whitman, palsied but still Jovian, lectured about the great man to a Gilded Age audience that included Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Andrew Carnegie, and General Sherman. Epstein, an accomplished poet as well as a biographer, imbues his tale of two lives with a natural sense of detail and period that revivifies the familiar figures he writes about.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (January 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345457994
• ISBN-13: 978-0345457998
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #454,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Great Men, One Great Book, February 20, 2004

By 

James Hiller (Beaverton, OR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel lives in Civil War Washington (Hardcover)

Two behemoth men at a time of great crisis in our country, manage to find themselves in the same city at the same time, and the great mystery becomes, do they meet? This question is addressed in the highly enjoyable and highly readable book, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington". In this tome, the reader discovers a deeper understanding of both Lincoln and Whitman, amazingly, through the eyes of each other.

It seems natural to have both of these men appear in a book with each other, as the two are linked somewhat through the times in which they lived and the recognition of their stunning intellect. And the book reads very naturally, moving from one story to another without any interruption. The Lincoln and Whitman presented in the book are demystified, and very much human. Perhaps the closeness of their supposed contact allows us a literary entrance into their lives. As Whitman sympathizes with Lincoln, so do we. As Lincoln wonders about the wild man and shows him respect, so do we, building on connections with each other that are timeless.

One thing that struck me was Whitman's volunteer efforts in hospitals in the DC area. Knowing that he did that, I never knew just how deeply it effected him and the lives of the soldiers that he visited. Well documented, even with quotes from Whitman's own letters, he expresses his care and concern for the men, many of whom suffered very painful deaths, but were someone appeased by the poet who talked with them and held their hand. It might be tempting to draw conclusions based on Whitman's sexuality, but Epstein respects the poet, and his readers, enough not to do that.

Refreshingly, the author doesn't shy away at all from Whitman's romantic life, detailing the men that inhabited his life. We are with Whitman the night he meets Peter Doyle on that street car, starting a seven year relationship despite a huge age gap. I was even more surprised to learn that Doyle himself was in Ford's Theater, sitting directly across from Lincoln, the night he was assassinated. Doyle's story lends credence to Whitman's undertaking as a Lincoln expert later in his life.

Almost a third character in the story is Washington DC itself. Painfully recreating the town, Epstein brings the 1860's capital alive unlike other writers have in the past. The muddy streets, the horrible smells, the buildings all come alive with fresh, succinct descriptions that are wonderfully detailed. Being a visitor to the city many times, I began to "see" it in a different, exciting way.

As we wander through both of these extraordinary Americans lives, we come to love both men for their individuality and their connections. And as the book concludes in an amazing, heartbreaking way, we find ourselves sorry that the tale ends, craving more knowledge of them both, separate and together, bringing history alive in a way that hasn't for some time. I'm eagerly awaiting Daniel Mark Epstein's next book, while reading and re-reading this one for times to come.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Good Gray Poet...and Lincoln as Muse, March 16, 2006

By 

Amanda (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington (Paperback)

Daniel Mark Epstein succeeds at what seems simple, but in truth is a daunting task: combining the literary and the historical in a moving, evocative narrative. The book gracefully moves between and across the lives of Lincoln and Whitman, with a cathartic spirit uniting the stories of both men. Epstein makes no claims that the spiritual union was, in reality, anything more than a parallel, largely reliant on the troubled times (and Whitman's obsession...or coincidence). There is a somewhat amplified mysticism surrounding Lincoln and Whitman as "characters" in this historical narrative, but such characterization errs more often on the positive than it does otherwise. The parallels between the lives of both men are compelling, revealing, and informative, and the ending is truly poignant. Civil War Washington also comes alive with a mapmaker's eye and a storyteller's gift for detail. Wonderful!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Don't ignore this book because of the review above, September 28, 2005

By 

Prof. cjt (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington (Paperback)

Please note that the Publisher's Weekly review is wildly inaccurate itself. Whitman was not a copperhead, and he certainly did not think the Union's cause in the war was absurd. I wonder if the reviewer is confusing Whitman with Hawthorne, but if not, clearly he is not a Whitman scholar. Do copperheads publish recruitment poems in major Northern publication (Beat! Beat! Drums! in the Boston Evening Transcript, the New York Leader and Harpers Weekly)? Do they consider joining the fight, as Whitman actually did despite being in his early 40s? No, Whitman actually had ambivalent feelings about Lincoln before the 1860 election, he opposed Republican efforts to centralize governmental power, and he argued for peace before the war began, but once it did, he was behind the effort, and after going to Fredricksburg to find his brother and subsequently serving in some of the army's hospitals, he still was essentially behind it, despite his concerns about the manner in which is was conducted, his deep sadness for the fratricidal nature of it, and his concerns for its potential to open the door for post-war anti-democratic problems.

Epstein's book is flawed, I think, because it refuses to admit that Whitman dared to argue outside of Lincolnian rhetoric, but this is a matter of critical differences between us. The difference is that when my study of Lincoln's cultural narrative and its influence on American thought and literature is published with its chapter on Whitman within (look for it in a few years!), any argument with Epstein will have behind it months of research. And you can be assured that I would never be so irresponsible as to tell people not to read a book if I did not have the critical foundations to make such a recommendation.

Eric Foner is a respected scholar, a professor at Columbia. Amazon would do well not to pair a review from someone like him with one so obviously written out of ignorance.