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- Feb 5, 2017
It took me quite a while to track this story down but I finally did. This is true. This is from the University of Iowa.
The month before, General Grant had ordered an all-out Union assault on Confederate forces that had long been dug in south of Petersburg, Virginia. Major Clifton Prentiss of the 6th Maryland Union Volunteers personally led the attack and penetrated the enemy fortifications, only to be shot in the lung. Prentiss's younger brother, William, was one of the Confederate soldiers defending the fortification, and, in the same battle, he received a shell fragment in his knee. Some of the Maryland Union soldiers, after their victory, were tending to the wounded on the battlefield when they came upon William Prentiss, who told them that he had a brother in the 6th Maryland. The soldiers realized that Prentiss's brother was in fact their major, who was lying gravely wounded not far away. William said he wanted to see his brother. When word was brought to Clifton, however, the Union soldier refused to see his Confederate brother, whom he now considered a traitor. The Union commanding officer begged Clifton to relent and ordered William to be brought over beside his brother. Clifton glared at William, but William smiled back, and then both men, who hadn't seen each other since the war began, broke into tears and were briefly reunited. Soon after, William had his leg amputated, and Clifton's lung became infected.
Clifton and William then ended up in Armory Square hospital together, where Whitman cared for both of them. But his notebook entry lingers on his warm encounters with the Confederate William, with whom Whitman could enact the affection across the regional divide that he believed was the only hope for the country's future. When William tells the poet he is "a rebel soldier," Whitman replies that "it made no difference." In Whitman's quiet response, we can hear the erasure of "difference," the hoped-for fading away of distinction between Union and Confederate, as the nation began its long process of healing. Clifton and William had fought each other fiercely through four years, but here at the end of the war they were "both brought together" in Armory Square "after a separation of four years." Neither would survive the wounds they received in the same battle. The entire country, it seemed to Whitman, had been hospitalized for the duration of the war: the poet had written to Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1863 that "America" was "already brought to Hospital in her fair youth," and, as Whitman wandered the wards of the hospitals that had colonized and taken over the nation's capital, he encountered young men from the North and South and West, black youth and white youth, immigrants and native-born, a microcosm of the young, vast and expanding nation battered, torn, suffering, and dying. William would never leave Armory Square, dying there in June. Clifton managed to get to his home in Brooklyn but died soon after in August. They became part of Whitman's "million dead." But, increasingly, for Whitman and the rest of America that emerged from the war hospital to face and build a future, the question now was how to carry on the democratic experiment that had just passed through its most dire test. America may have been in its "fair youth" when it was brought to the hospital of the war, but the country that was released from that hospital was now, as it faced its own massive Reconstruction, forced to quickly mature.
The month before, General Grant had ordered an all-out Union assault on Confederate forces that had long been dug in south of Petersburg, Virginia. Major Clifton Prentiss of the 6th Maryland Union Volunteers personally led the attack and penetrated the enemy fortifications, only to be shot in the lung. Prentiss's younger brother, William, was one of the Confederate soldiers defending the fortification, and, in the same battle, he received a shell fragment in his knee. Some of the Maryland Union soldiers, after their victory, were tending to the wounded on the battlefield when they came upon William Prentiss, who told them that he had a brother in the 6th Maryland. The soldiers realized that Prentiss's brother was in fact their major, who was lying gravely wounded not far away. William said he wanted to see his brother. When word was brought to Clifton, however, the Union soldier refused to see his Confederate brother, whom he now considered a traitor. The Union commanding officer begged Clifton to relent and ordered William to be brought over beside his brother. Clifton glared at William, but William smiled back, and then both men, who hadn't seen each other since the war began, broke into tears and were briefly reunited. Soon after, William had his leg amputated, and Clifton's lung became infected.
Clifton and William then ended up in Armory Square hospital together, where Whitman cared for both of them. But his notebook entry lingers on his warm encounters with the Confederate William, with whom Whitman could enact the affection across the regional divide that he believed was the only hope for the country's future. When William tells the poet he is "a rebel soldier," Whitman replies that "it made no difference." In Whitman's quiet response, we can hear the erasure of "difference," the hoped-for fading away of distinction between Union and Confederate, as the nation began its long process of healing. Clifton and William had fought each other fiercely through four years, but here at the end of the war they were "both brought together" in Armory Square "after a separation of four years." Neither would survive the wounds they received in the same battle. The entire country, it seemed to Whitman, had been hospitalized for the duration of the war: the poet had written to Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1863 that "America" was "already brought to Hospital in her fair youth," and, as Whitman wandered the wards of the hospitals that had colonized and taken over the nation's capital, he encountered young men from the North and South and West, black youth and white youth, immigrants and native-born, a microcosm of the young, vast and expanding nation battered, torn, suffering, and dying. William would never leave Armory Square, dying there in June. Clifton managed to get to his home in Brooklyn but died soon after in August. They became part of Whitman's "million dead." But, increasingly, for Whitman and the rest of America that emerged from the war hospital to face and build a future, the question now was how to carry on the democratic experiment that had just passed through its most dire test. America may have been in its "fair youth" when it was brought to the hospital of the war, but the country that was released from that hospital was now, as it faced its own massive Reconstruction, forced to quickly mature.
Bringing the