For everybody of your own idealism of Popular Landscapes, although not, work clearly emerged out of Whitman’s struggle with the fresh significant government of your own Repair point in time, therefore introduces worrisome and perhaps unanswerable questions relating to his perceptions with the the brand new Significant Republican schedule off easily securing civil rights and you can voting legal rights getting freed (male) submissives. If the Whitman’s faith subsequently away from American democracy are obvious, their attention of your place of African People in the us in this coming was blurred. When he is writing Popular Landscapes, the form of your the fresh nation is undecided, once the malleable while the serious debates and you will shifting ballots off an excellent Congress that has been revising the Structure and harmful to impeach the new president, Andrew Johnson. Whitman, during this time period, proceeded to spend evenings visiting the Municipal Combat healthcare facilities you to definitely remained started, still full of injured troops a couple of years adopting the combat got concluded, but the guy and additionally dedicated some of his time for you to trips so you can the newest Capitol to look at the brand new extraordinary evening training with their impassioned debates on Reconstruction regulations, for instance the Fourteenth and you will 15th Amendments toward Structure. Towards Major Republicans exactly who managed Congress, the war increasingly seemed to have been fought not just to emancipate brand new slaves (the new Thirteenth Modification had off the beaten track that) but so you can enfranchise him or her and you may make sure them equal legal rights underneath the Composition (this is the newest arena of the fresh new Fourteenth and 15th Amendments, and the incredible discussions looked after the very difficult problem of seeking unwrite the latest Constitutional provision you to slaves counted as the only three-fifths off one, and you can seeking inscribe what the fresh new black individuals newly provided full mankind created).
While the Whitman, for example the majority of the nation, is reconstructing the rationale to your Municipal War, he had been and reconstructing their view of the area off black colored Us citizens in the life of the nation
While you are planning to new arguments, the guy looked at the newest racially changed world about him: “We had the number one black procession right here last Thursday-I did not thought there can be so many darkeys, (especially wenches,) international-it had been the fresh wedding away from emancipation inside Region” (Corr., 1:273-4). Once blacks resolved its freshly obtained directly to vote regarding the District out of Columbia, his fear intense so you’re able to security: We had the newest strangest procession right here past Monday evening, in the 3000 darkeys, dated & young, guys & women-I noticed them-they turned-out in honor of their winnings during the electing the new Gran, Mr. Bowen-new guys was all armed which have nightclubs or pistols-aside from the procession in the street, there clearly was a set ran along the pavement for the single-file having bludgeons & sticks, screaming & gesticulating instance madmen-it actually was slightly comical, yet very disgusting & alarming in a few areas-These people were very insolent, & completely it actually was a mysterious vision-it appeared as if unnecessary insane brutes cut loose-thousands of slaves throughout the South plantations has actually congested upwards right here-lots of people are supported by the Gov’t. (Corr., 2:34-5).
But how should your mass of one’s blacks in the versatility inside the the brand new You
It is alarming you to Whitman didn’t were any sustained site to help you submissives and bondage in his totally new Instrument-Taps poems, in which he never 
raises the case of the place of one’s freed submissives into the Western society. After the battle, but not, he’d begun inquiring particular troubled questions: “Performed new vast mass of the blacks, for the Thraldom in the usa, establish a bad and you may deeply complicated problem from only finish century? S. all through new ensuing millennium, would be to expose a yet far more awful and you will deeply complicated state?” (PW, 1:326). Whitman, up until the war, try even more settled to the matter of slavery than he was pursuing the battle into matter of Dark colored citizenship. Through to the conflict, he had been getting independence with the submissives; following conflict, ab muscles character of the freedom became a challenge for your.