O Captain, My Captain: Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War

Summary

Dramatic, lyrical, and beautiful, O Captain, My Captain tells the story of one of America’s greatest poets and how he was inspired by one of America’s greatest presidents.

Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln shared the national stage in Washington, DC, during the Civil War. Although the two men never met, Whitman often saw Lincoln’s carriage on the road. The president was never far from the poet’s mind, and Lincoln’s “grace under pressure” was something Whitman returned to again and again in his poetry.

Whitman witnessed Lincoln’s second inauguration and mourned along with America as Lincoln’s funeral train wound its way across the landscape to his final resting place.

This recording includes the poem “O Captain! My Captain!” and an excerpt from “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” as well as brief biographies of Lincoln and Whitman, a timeline of Civil War events, endnotes, and a bibliography.