“Calvary Crossing a Ford”

Walt Whitman believed in the everyday ordinary man and focused his writings on that concept (Whitman 340). Henry David Thoreau also wrote and firmly believed throughout his life that the common man can reform themselves and in doing so, reform the surroundings and the government (Harding). Thoreau and Whitman had Transcendentalist view on the importance of the individual. In "Calvary Crossing a Ford", Whitman expressed the importance of each individual soldier in a portrayal of the Union troops crossing a river (Whitman 341). Since "each person a picture" as opposed to all of the soldiers being one unit of the Union Army, readers can identify better with the soldiers and the hardships, violence, and death they went through as opposed to reading about the thousands of causalities each side faced and not having that personal connection (Whitman 340). Henry David Thoreau believed that each individual could shape the future and all aspects of their lives (Harding). Based on that, Thoreau would agree with the theory that each soldier in both sides of the Civil War could affect the outcome of each battle and in the end the outcome of the American Civil War. Walt Whitman served as a nurse during the Civil War and treated soldiers on both the Union and Confederate side (Whitman 340). He saw first hand how the individual soldier impacted each battle of the internal conflict.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a role model for Walt Whitman. Emerson thought that the ideal poet was one who "has a new thought... a new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be richer in his fortune" (Whitman 340). Walt Whitman took that to heart and strived to be like Emerson's idea of a great poet. By serving in the Civil War, Whitman used that first hand experience to write about what he observed from the soldiers, surroundings, and overall feelings as he nursed the wounded, sick, and dying American soldiers (Whitman 340). I believe that Whitman succeeded in his goal to be like Emerson's ideal poet as Whitman did make future men "richer" with the knowledge and feelings in all of Whitman's poems.


Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 09 Feb. 2012.

Whitman, Walt. "Calvary Crossing a Ford." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 340-341. Print.