Whitman and the Humanitarian Possibilities of Lilacs

Abstract

In 1865 while Whitman was preparingDrum-Tapsfor publication in New York, John Wilkes Booth fatally wounded Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington. As the nation expressed its grief in public mourning, poems, sermons, speeches, and funeral parades, Whitman paid close attention to the country's bewilderment and the “strange mixture of horror, fury, [and] tenderness” that followed the “black, black, black” of Lincoln's death. Although some volumes ofDrum-Tapswere bound and distributed, Whitman apparently realized that his new book needed a companion collection about Lincoln's death and the war's end. Postponing the release ofDrum-Taps, Whitman began work on “a little book” (p. 23), a collection of eighteen poems titledSequel to Drum-Taps (Since the Preceding Came from the Press). When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd. And Other Pieces. More than any other group of poems by Whitman,Lilacs and Other Piecesis a response to a moment in history; this immediacy of relation to historical discourses and events makes the volume an uncommonly suggestive example of Whitman's dialogue with his culture.