[(result of year in army hospitals]

Whitman Archive Title: [(result of year in army hospitals]
Whitman Archive ID: bos.00002
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Alice and Rollo G. Silver Collection, Department of Special Collections, Boston University
Box: 1
Repository Title: I have had one feeling. . .
Date: about 1864
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: Prose draft fragment decrying the lack of democratic sensibilities among commissioned officers. Edward F. Grier transcribes this manuscript under the title "[(Result of Year]" in Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts (New York: New York University Press, 1984) 2: 675. Grier suggests that this manuscript is (at least thematically) linked to portions of Democratic Vistas (1871). However, these notes seem to be an early working of ideas that Whitman would later return to and incorporate into his prose. In this manuscript, Whitman mentions the of the role of "true Democracy" in forming a military structure "worthy of America," an idea which he further develops in "A New Army Organization Fit for America," Specimen Days & Collect 1882–1883.