Photo of the Day

It is April 1861 and America has been torn in two.

Secession has culminated in the formation of the Confederate States of America.

The South Carolina militia has fired upon the federal garrison at Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter after Confederate bombardment and the surrender of Federal troops, April 1861.

Northern states have answered President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteer soldiers in overwhelming numbers.

They are on the march to Washington to defend the nation’s capital from Southern armies forming on the other side of the Potomac River.

The poet Walt Whitman, a native New Yorker, was walking down Broadway at midnight on April 12, 1861, when he heard that Confederate forces had fired upon Fort Sumter.

Later, he wrote this poem about the year 1861.

Thomas Nast's painting of New York's Seventh Regiment marching down Broadway, April 19, 1861.

Arm'd year! year of the struggle!

No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!

Not you as some pale poetling,

seated at a desk,

lisping cadenzas piano;

Federal troops on 0the Washington Mall. The unfinished Washington Monument is in the background, 1861.

But as a strong man,

erect,

clothed in blue clothes,

advancing,

carrying a rifle on your shoulder,

With well-gristled body

and sunburnt face and hands—

with a knife in the belt at your side,

Private Emory Eugene Kingpin, Michigan.

As I heard you shouting loud—

your sonorous voice ringing across the continent;

Your masculine voice,

O year,

as rising amid the great cities,

200,000 New Yorkers gathered in Manhattan's Union Square on April 20, 1861, to rally in support of the Union.

Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you,

as one of the workmen,

the dwellers in Manhattan;

Union Private D.W.C. Arnold.

Or with large steps crossing the prairies

out of Illinois and Indiana,

Uniion blacksmiths at work.

Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait,

and descending the Alleghanies;

Union camp near Nashville, Tennessee, December 1864.

Or down from the great lakes,

or in Pennsylvania,

or on deck along

the Ohio river;

Scouts and guides for the Army of the Potomac, October 1862.

Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers,

or at Chattanooga on the mountain top,

Inflating a Union observation balloon in Northern Virginia, May 1862.

Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs,

clothed in blue,

bearing weapons,

robust year;

New York Seventh Regiment cavalry parade, 1861.

Heard your determin'd voice,

launch'd forth

again and again;

Religious service aboard the USS Passaic, 1864.

Year that suddenly sang by the mouths

of the round-lipp'd cannon,

Whitman, age 36, in 1855.

I repeat you,

hurrying, crashing,

sad,

distracted year.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

“1861” is one of Walt Whitman’s poems in “Leaves of Grass,” 1867.