The
Million Dead, too, summ'd up -- The Unknown.
from Memoranda
During the War, 1862-1866
by Walt Whitman
NOTE: Although published at a later date, most of Whitman's Memoranda During the War, were written between 1862-1866. This one, obviously, from the reference of "ten years' rain and snow," was written later as a conclusion to the collection. ...
-- The Dead in this War -- there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the South -- Virginia, the Peninsula -- Malvern Hill and Fair Oaks -- the banks of the Chickahominy -- the terraces of Fredericksburgh -- Antietam bridge -- the grisly ravines of Manassas -- the bloody promenade of the Wilderness -- the varieties of the strayed dead, (the estimate of the War Department is 25,000 National soldiers kill'd in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown'd -- 15,000 inhumed strangers or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound localities -- 2,000 graves cover'd by sand and mud, by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,) -- Gettysburgh, the West, Southwest -- Vicksburg -- Chattanooga -- the trenches of Petersburgh -- the numberless battles, camps, Hospitals everywhere pass'd away since that War, and its wholesale deaths, burials, graves. (They make indeed the true Memoranda of the War -- mute, subtle, immortal.) From ten years' rain and snow, in their seasons -- grass, clover, pine trees, orchards, forests -- from all the noiseless miracles of soil and sun and running streams -- how peaceful and how beautiful appear to-day even the Battle-Trenches, and the many hundred thousand Cemetery mounds! Even at Andersonville, to-day, innocence and a smile. (A late account says, 'The stockade has fallen to decay, is grown upon, and a season more will efface it entirely, except from our hearts and memories. The dead line, over which so many brave soldiers pass'd to the freedom of eternity rather than endure the misery of life, can only be traced here and there, for most of the old marks the last ten years have obliterated. The thirty-five wells, which the prisoners dug with cups and spoons, remain just as they were left. And the wonderful spring which was discover'd one morning, after a thunder storm, flowing down the hillside, still yields its sweet, pure water as freely now as then. The Cemetery, with its thirteen thousand graves, is on the slope of a beautiful hill. Over the quiet spot already trees give the cool shade which would have been so gratefully sought by the poor fellows whose lives were ended under the scorching sun.')
And now, to thought of these -- on these graves of the dead of the War, as on an altar -- to memory of these, or North or South, I close and dedicate my book.