Chapter 83: The Poet Walt Whitman Memorializes President Lincoln

November 1865

In 1865 Whitman, who serves as a nurse in Union hospitals during the war, remembers his fallen leader.

“O Captain, my Captain, our fearful trip is done.
The ship has weathered every rack,
The prize we sought is won.
The port is near, the bells I hear,
The people all exalting.
But O heart! Heart! Heart!
O the bleeding drops of red.
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”