Walt Whitman’s Letter to the Parents of the Soldier Erastus Haskell

An episode from 11/10/20: Tonight, I read Walt Whitman's 1863 letter to the parents of Erastus Haskell. Haskell was wounded during the Civil War, and was befriended and cared for by Whitman in one of the many Washington, D.C., hospitals that the poet frequented. Haskell eventually died of his wounds.

The letter can be found in the best account of Whitman’s life during the Civil War, Roy Morris Jr.’s The Better Angel: Walt Whitman & the Civil War.

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Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].