1. Whitman, Walt, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Grier, Edward F., 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1984), vol. 2, p. 762.Google Scholar

2. Whitman, Walt, Sequel to Drum-Taps. (Since the Preceding Came from the Press.) When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd. And Other PoemsGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865–6), ed. DeWolfe Miller, F. (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1959)Google Scholar. References to Lilacs and Other Pieces and Drum-Taps are noted in the text by page number.

3. In his introduction to the facsimile reprinting of Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865–6), F. DeWolfe Miller presents a detailed account of the publishing history of Lilacs and Other Pieces, but offers no critical examination of the poems. Quoting from Miller's edition, Betsy Erkkila devotes chapter 9 of Whitman the Political Poet to a political-historical analysis of the sequel, but examines only the two most famous pieces, “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd.” In her discussion of Drum-Taps she looks at a few of the sixteen other poems but (like other critics) ignores Lilacs and Other Pieces as an arrangement of poems. See DeWolfe Miller, F., Introduction to Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865–1866)Google Scholar; and Erkkila, Betsy, Whitman the Political Poet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

4. See Sixbey, George L., “‘Chanting the Square Deific’: A Study in Whitman's Religion,” American Literature 9 (05 1937): 171–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollis, C. Carroll, Language and Style in Leaves of Grass (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), pp. 148–53Google Scholar; and Larson, Kerry C., Whitman's Drama of Consensus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 226–29.Google Scholar

5. See Erkkila, , Political Poet, pp. 226–37Google Scholar; Larson, , Drama of Consensus, pp. 231–44Google Scholar; and Thomas, M. Wynn, The Lunar Light ofWhitman's Poetry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 239–51Google Scholar. See also Sweet, Timothy, Traces of War: Poetry, Photography, and the Crisis of the Union (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 67–77Google Scholar; Grossman, Allen, “The Poetics of Union in Whitman and Lincoln: An Inquiry Toward the Relationship of Art and Policy,” in The American Renaissance Reconsidered, ed. Michaels, Walter Benn and Pease, Donald E. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 183–208Google Scholar; and Parkinson, Thomas, “‘When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd’ and the American Civil Religion,” Southern Review 19 (01 1983): 1–16Google Scholar. Two recent critics, George B. Hutchinson and David Kuebrich, have examined “Lilacs” in its historical context without focusing on its sociopolitical meanings. Taking an anthropological perspective informed by the work of Victor Turner, Hutchinson sees Whitman as a literary shamanist with a clear sense of the social and religious function of poetry. Whitman in “Lilacs” is a shaman escorting the dead to their final resting place and the poem itself a ritual bestowing “sacred significance” (p. 162)Google Scholar on the war. Kuebrich's perspective is cultural and theological, and his discussion of the cultural and religious responses to Lincoln's death as a context for understanding the religious work of “Lilacs” is informative. He does not, however, examine any of the poems in Lilacs and Other Pieces besides the title poem; for a book concerned with “Walt Whitman's New American Religion,” the absence of any comment on “Chanting the Square Deific” seems very odd. See Hutchinson, George B., The Ecstatic Whitman: Literary Shamanism and the Crisis of the Union (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1986), pp. 136–69Google Scholar; and Kuebrich, David, Minor Prophecy: Walt Whitman's New American Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 119–29.Google Scholar

6. These central concerns in “Lilacs” have, of course, been explored by other critics — critics not particularly concerned with questions about history — some focusing on its elegiac form, others using Freudian or New Critical approaches. For a discussion of “Lilacs” and the elegiac tradition, see Adams, Richard P., “Whitman's ‘Lilacs’ and the Tradition of Pastoral Elegy,” PMLA 72 (06 1957): 479–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Adams's article on Whitman's use of the conventions of pastoral elegy, the first systematic analysis of the relation of “Lilacs” to the pastoral elegy, is important, but ought to be read as only one voice in a debate that includes Chase, Richard, Walt Whitman Reconsidered (New York: William Sloan, 1955), pp. 140–45Google Scholar; Doyle, Charles Clay, “Poetry and Pastoral: A Dimension ofWhitman's ‘Lilacs,’” Walt Whitman Review 15 (12 1969): 242–45Google Scholar; Goodman, Ellen S., “‘Lilacs’ and the Pastoral Elegy Reconsidered,” Books at Brown 24 (1971): 119–33Google Scholar; and Hinz, Evelyn J., “Whitman's ‘Lilacs’: The Power of Elegy,” Bucknell Review 20 (Fall 1972): 35–54Google Scholar. In “Whitman's ‘Lilacs’ and the Grammars of Time” (PMLA 97 [01 1982]: 31–38)Google Scholar, Mutlu Konuk Biasing proposes a startling revisioning of this perspective and challenges many of the assumptions about Whitman's use of traditions and conventions. For an analysis of “Lilacs” through a Freudian grid, see Steele, Jeffrey, “Poetic Grief-Work in Whitman's ‘Lilacs,’” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 2 (1985): 10–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Edmundson, Mark, “‘Lilacs’: Walt Whitman's American Elegy,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 44 (03 1990): 465–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For important New Critical examinations of “Lilacs,” see Matthiessen, F. O., American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), pp. 618–23Google Scholar; Feidelson, Charles Jr., Symbolism and American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 21–25Google Scholar; and Miller, James E. Jr., A Critical Guide to Leaves of Grass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 111–19.Google Scholar

7. This collection also invites consideration as a cluster because of the highly regarded quality of the poems. Although he examines only “Chanting the Square Deific,” George L. Sixbey notes the significance of Lilacs and Other Pieces as a separate publication: “Among the eighteen pieces included in the Sequel to Drum-Taps are several which have become almost universally known and admired. As he hurried this little volume through the press in Washington, possibly even before Drum-Taps had appeared in New York, it seems likely that Whitman attached some special importance to the poems it contained.… That Whitman attached special importance to the poems in the Sequel is shown by their peculiarly serious message and somber tone, and by their separate publication in a special volume” (“‘Chanting the Square Deific,’” pp. 172–73)Google Scholar. In his introduction to Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps, supporting his thesis that Whitman's book “was the most important volume that Whitman published” and “the greatest book of war lyrics ever written by a single author,” F. DeWolfe Miller cites three poems (“Lilacs,” “O Captain,” and “Chanting the Square Deific”), all of which belong to Lilacs and Other Pieces (p. viii)Google Scholar. “Lilacs” and “O Captain” are probably the two most well-known Whitman poems, but this attention to “Lilacs” and “O Captain” should not blind us to the significance of the other poems: the compelling theological revisioning of the Civil War in “Chanting the Square Deific,” the remarkable weaving of “Calamus” themes and Drum-Taps setting in “As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap, Camerado,” and the shocking but beautiful penultimate piece — “Reconciliation” — a poem highly regarded for its “delicacy” and the beauty of its well-made rhythms. See Wright, James, “The Delicacy of Walt Whitman” (1962), in Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, ed. Perlman, Jim, Folsom, Ed, and Campion, Dan (Minneapolis: Holy Cow, 1981), pp. 161–76.Google Scholar

8. Whitman did not, however, write all eighteen poems during that halfyear. “I heard you, Solemn-sweet Pipes of the Organ” originally appeared in a slightly longer version as “Little Bells Last Night” in the New York Leader (10 12, 1861)Google Scholar. Produced before Peter Eckler had begun printing Drum-Taps in April, 1865, a premature advertisement for Drum-Taps listed: “Spirit with muttering voice” (probably an early version of “Spirit whose Work is Done”), “As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado,” “Reconciliation,” “I dream, I dream, I dream” (undoubtedly an early title for “In Clouds Descending, in Midnight Sleep”), and “Race of weapon'd men” (perhaps a primitive version of “Race of Veterans” — if so, the change from “weapon'd men” to “Veterans” is telling). Thus, presumably, at least five or six of the poems were written before April, 1865. Nevertheless, the bulk of these verses took shape in the months following the war's end. See footnote to “I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ,” in Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass, Comprehensive Reader's Edition, ed. Blodgett, Harold W. and Bradley, Sculley (New York: New York University Press, 1965), p. 110Google Scholar. For a facsimile reprinting of this premature Drum-Taps advertisement, see De Wolfe Miller, F., Introduction to Drum-Taps, pp. xxxii–xxxiii.Google Scholar

9. Walt Whitman quoted in Traubel, Horace, With Walt Whitman in Camden, (New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1915), vol. 2, p. 333Google Scholar. Although I believe this observation sheds some light on the immediacy of the collection's response to the emotional events of 1865, Whitman made this comment in a conversation with Traubel in which they were damning “O Captain” with faint praise. Whitman said: “The thing that tantalizes me most is not its rhythmic imperfection or its imperfection as a ballad or rhymed poem (it is damned bad in all that, I do believe) but the fact that my enemies and some of my friends who half doubt me, look upon it as a concession made to the philistines — that makes me mad. I come back to the conviction that it had certain emotional immediate reasons for being: that's the best I can say for it myself.”

10. New York Times, 04 16, 1865Google Scholar; and Nast, Thomas, “Victory and Death,” Harper's Weekly (06 10, 1865): 360–61Google Scholar. The public mourning of Lincoln's death included a cross-country funeral parade, a multitude of sermons and poems on Lincoln, the wearing of mourning clothes and badges, Lincoln memorabilia, and much more. For an analysis of the shift in national mood, see Turner, Thomas Reed, Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), pp. 18–52, 65–89Google Scholar. For a 19th-century account of Lincoln's funeral, see Coggeshall, William T., Lincoln Memorial: The Journeys of Abraham Lincoln (Columbus: Ohio State Journal, 1865)Google Scholar; and, for an examination of Lincoln's funeral parade within a history of American parades, see Ryan, Mary, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” The New Cultural History, ed. Hunt, Lynn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 132, 141–44Google Scholar. For poems dedicated to Lincoln's memory, see Poetical Tributes to the Memory of Abraham Lincoln (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1865)Google Scholar; and Hanaford, P. A., Our Martyred President (Boston: B. B. Russell, 1865)Google Scholar. For sermons, see Our Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln Memorial Addresses (1865; rept. New York: Abingdon, 1915).Google Scholar

11. Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 7.Google Scholar

12. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 82.Google Scholar

13. For another view of humanitarianism that endeavors to avoid these “social control” and liberal-humanist extremes, see Haskell, Thomas L., “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility,” American Historical Review 90 (04 and 06 1985): 339–61, 547–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although my focus, methods, and conclusions are much different, my essay is indebted to Haskell's analysis of 19th century humanitarians and 20th-century historians and historiographers.

14. Fredrickson, George M., The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 98, 102Google Scholar; and Walt Whitman, letters to Van Velsor Whitman, Louisa, 06 22, 1863 and March 29, 1864Google Scholar, in The Correspondence, ed. Miller, Edwin Haviland, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), vol. 1, pp. 110–11, 205Google Scholar. For recent accounts of the Sanitary Commission in its cultural context, see Ginzburg, Lori D., Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 133–73Google Scholar; and Bremner, Robert H., The Public Good: Philanthropy and Welfare in the Civil War Era (New York: Knopf, 1980), pp. 35–71Google Scholar. For more on Whitman's conflict with the Sanitary Commission, see Whitman, Walt, Prose Works 1892, ed. Stovall, Floyd, 2 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1963–1964), vol. 1, pp. 84–85Google Scholar; Kaplan, Justin, Walt Whitman: A Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), pp. 270–84, esp. pp. 273–80Google Scholar; and Allen, Gay Wilson, The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman (1955; rept. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 288–90Google Scholar. For an example of someone who shared Whitman's dislike of the Sanitary Commission as well as his approach to suffering, see the comparisons of Clara Barton and Whitman made by Fredrickson, , Inner Civil War, pp. 89–91Google Scholar; Bremner, , Public Good, pp. 68–69Google Scholar; and Pryor, Elizabeth Brown, Clara Brown: Professional Angel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 101–2, 106–7Google Scholar. For examples of soldiers' views of coercive humanitarianism, see Lewis K. Brown, letter to Whitman, , 11 5, 1863Google Scholar, and William E. Vandemark, letter to Whitman, , 12 16, 1863Google Scholar, in Drum Beats: Walt Whitman's Civil War Boy Lovers, ed. Shively, Charley (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1989), pp. 121, 207.Google Scholar

15. I specify upper and middle classes because many of the customs that I discuss were expensive, and thus not generally practice by poorer classes. The scholarship on mourning and death in 19th-century America is considerable. For the best discussion of mourning customs, see Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 124–52Google Scholar; but see also Pike, Martha V., “In Memory Of: Artifacts Relating to Mourning in Nineteenth-Century America,” Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture, ed. Browne, Ray B. (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1980), pp. 296–315Google Scholar; and Taylor, Lou, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983)Google Scholar. For discussions of American attitudes toward death, see Farrell, James J., Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and the essays collected in Death in America, ed. Stannard, David E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in Passing: The Vision of Death in America, ed. Jackson, Charles O. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1977)Google Scholar. For the perspective of a social scientist on 19th-century grief, see Rosenblatt, Paul C., Bitter, Bitter Tears: Nineteenth-Century Diarists and Twentieth-Century Grief Theories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983)Google Scholar. On the rise of the rural cemetery movement, see Bender, Thomas, “The ‘Rural’ Cemetery Movement: Urban Travail and the Appeal of Nature,” New England Quarterly 47 (06 1974): 196–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; French, Stanley, “The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and the ‘Rural Cemetery’ Movement,” in Death in America, pp. 69–91Google Scholar; and Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977), pp. 208–13Google Scholar. On the development of funeral undertaking as a profession, see Habenstein, Robert and Lamers, William M., The History of American Funeral Directing (Milwaukee: National Funeral Directors Association, 1955), pp. 225–50Google Scholar. For scholarship on the responses of 19th-century writers to death, see Aaron, Daniel, “The Etiquette of Grief: A Literary Generation's Response to Death,” Prospects 4 (1979): 197–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cameron, Sharon, “Representing Grief: Emerson's ‘Experience,’” Representations 15 (Summer 1986): 15–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kennedy, J. Gerald, Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Tolchin, Neal L., Mourning, Gender, and Creativity in the Art of Herman Melville (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Halttunen, , Confidence Men, pp. 144–45.Google Scholar

17. Arthur, T. S., “Going Into Mourning,” Godey's Lady's Book 23 (10 1841): 174Google Scholar; Halttunen, , Confidence Men, p. 125.Google Scholar

18. Chapin, E. H., The Crown of Thorns: A Token for the Sorrowing (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1860), p. viGoogle Scholar; Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, The Gates Ajar, ed. Smith, Helen Sootin (1868; rept. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Anspach, F. R., The Sepulchres of Our Departed (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1854), pp. 369, 335, viii.Google Scholar

19. Phelps, , Gates Ajar, pp. 144, 147Google Scholar; Chapin, , Crown of Thorns, p. 218Google Scholar; Emerson, Ralph Waldo, The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. von Frank, Albert J. et al. , 4 vols. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 309–10.Google Scholar

20. Douglas, , Feminization of American Culture, p. 220.Google Scholar

21. Poetical Tributes, pp. 132, 176, 110.Google Scholar

22. Lincoln, Abraham, Speeches and Writings, 1859–65, ed. Fehrenbacher, Don E. (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 644.Google Scholar

23. Darling, Henry, Grief and Duty: A Discourse (Albany: S. R. Gray, 1865), pp. 7, 17.Google Scholar

24. Although this essay is not a study of Lilacs and Other Pieces's literary and intellectual sources, I do want to suggest a few of the correspondences between these poems and the discourses on death, grief, mourning, and consolation in 19th-century culture. In ways similar to Lilacs and Other Pieces, British Romantic poetry, Bryant's “Thanatopsis,” and rural cemeteries all made explicit connections between death and nature (see Bender, , “‘Rural’ Cemetery Movement”Google Scholar; French, , “Cemetery as Cultural Institution”Google Scholar; and Douglas, , Feminization of American Culture, pp. 208–13)Google Scholar. Like Whitman, various consolationists were strongly attached to the notion of “process” in consolation discourse (see, for example, Emerson, , Sermons, vol. 1, pp. 310–11)Google Scholar. Universalists and Spiritualists rejected the doctrine of eternal damnation (see, for instance, Foster, B. F. and Lozier, J. H., Theological Discussions on Universalism and Endless Punishment [Indianapolis: B. F. Foster, 1867])Google Scholar. Arthur and Beecher each criticized rigid, formal mourning customs (see Farrell, , Inventing the American Way of Death, pp. 81–82)Google Scholar. Barton, Thoreau, and numerous soldiers launched attacks on coercive humanitarianism and, by offering his consolation in verse, Whitman participated in a widespread, highly conventional practice: the use of poems to console the bereaved.

25. In recent scholarship there is an interesting debate on this issue. For arguments supporting the affirmation of immortality in “When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd,” see Kuebrich, , Minor Prophecy, pp. 119–29Google Scholar; and Miller, James E., Critical Guide, p. 111Google Scholar. For contrary arguments, see Adams, , “‘Lilacs’ and the Pastoral Elegy,” p. 486Google Scholar; Biasing, , “‘Lilacs’ and Grammars of Time,” pp. 37–38Google Scholar; Chase, , Whitman Reconsidered, p. 144Google Scholar; Larson, , Drama of Consensus, pp. 233–43Google Scholar; and Steele, , “Grief-Work in ‘Lilacs,’” pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

26. Larson, , Drama of Consensus, p. 240.Google Scholar

27. See Whitman, , Prose Works, vol. 2, p. 503.Google Scholar

28. Whitman, , Leaves of Grass, p. 84.Google Scholar

29. Although the opinion was unpopular in the months after Lincoln's assassination, Whitman's call for reconciliation with the South was not unheard of (see, for example, Tyng, Stephen H., in Our Martyr President, pp. 40–59)Google Scholar. Instead, what is so striking is Whitman's conception of the mourning process. Perhaps I can clarify Whitman's distinctive approach to mourning by a brief look at two widely accepted “solutions” to grief in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Most analyses of grief and mourning begin with the assumption that human beings grieve because they are affected by the loss of someone who is significant or beloved. According to Freud, grief is the clinging to the lost love object. The end of grief is the freeing of the libido from its desire for the lost object. Thus, the conclusion of successful mourning is declaring the lost love object dead. Phelps offers the opposite solution to the problem of grief: she consoles the bereaved with promises of a future reunion with their loved ones who are living a peaceful existence in heaven (see Phelps, , Gates AjarGoogle Scholar; and Freud, Sigmund, “Mourning and Melancholia” [1917], The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. Strachey, James, 24 vols. [London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1974], vol. 14, pp. 237–58)Google Scholar. See also the important revisions of Freud's insights (Klein, Melanie, “Mourning and Its Relationship to Manic Depressive States,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 21 [1940]: 125–53Google Scholar; and Kristeva, Julia, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, trans. Roudiez, Leon S. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1989], pp. 1–30).Google Scholar

30. See Pease, Donald E., Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 123–31, 138–42.Google Scholar

31. W[illiam] D[ean] Howells, review of Drum-Taps, by Whitman, Walt, The Round Table 2 (11 11, 1865): 147.Google Scholar

32. See Miller, James E., Critical Guide, pp. 117–19Google Scholar; and Hutchinson, , Ecstatic Whitman, pp. 149–69.Google Scholar

33. See Miller, James E., Critical Guide, pp. 119, 113Google Scholar; and Elledge, W. P., “Whitman's ‘Lilacs’ as Romantic Narrative,” Walt Whitman Review 12 (09 1966): 59–67.Google Scholar

34. Whitman, , Prose Works, vol. 2, p. 503.Google Scholar

35. Fredrickson, , Inner Civil War, p. 96Google Scholar; and Larson, , Drama of Consensus, p. 226.Google Scholar

36. Allen, , Solitary Singer, p. 358Google Scholar. See Fleissner, R. F., “Whitman as Heretic?” American Notes and Queries 9 (06 1971): 153Google Scholar; Goodson, Lester, “Whitman and the Problem of Evil,” Walt Whitman Review 16 (06 1970): 45–50Google Scholar; and Allen, , Solitary Singer, pp. 358–59.Google Scholar

37. Barthes, Roland, S/Z, trans. Miller, Richard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), p. 4.Google Scholar

38. Whitman, , Leaves of Grass, p. 570.Google Scholar

39. Whitman, , Leaves of Grass, p. 4.Google Scholar