The role of a witness is a heavy responsibility, especially the role of a war correspondent. We have had the comfort of Walter Cronkite, the routine of our network news and had our world changed by the birth of CNN and Cable News.

At the time of the Civil War we had our Writers, Poets, and Artists to report from the Front. Some bore double roles.

Walt Whitman, a New York carpenter, print setter and author who had his own newspaper at the age of 19, grabbed the attention of the nation with his book of poems, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 with his own money. It also caught the attention of a young lawyer in Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, who used to read it aloud in his law office.

Later in his career as a U.S. Senator, Lincoln spoke of his fear that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was elected President in 1860 although several of the Southern States did not have him on the ballot. Within one month the attack on Fort Sumter occurred.

The Nation was plunged into War. A War against each other and often times brothers. Former classmates at West Point were now the Generals that waged battle against one another. Families were divided. Mary Todd Lincoln lost two of her step brothers who had fought on the side of the Confederacy.

Walt Whitman’s brother, George, enlisted and the family learned by letter at one point that George was injured. Walt headed South to the tent hospitals of Washington D.C. to search for his brother. What he discovered were mountains of discarded limbs. He stayed on to comfort the soldiers, to change their bandages, to write letters - often the last - home for them. The toll of the Civil War was steep: 620,000 lives were lost and over 460,000 were severely wounded - most returning missing a limb and maimed for life.

The Exhibit is a very comprehensive study of the period curated by Kevin Sharp of The Dixon Gallery and Gardens of Memphis, Tennessee. It is not a textbook study of the War Between the States, there is nothing dry about it. Using the art of the period we capture and are swept up in the emotion of the time.

The two galleries are divided by the Curator into three sections: The Poetics of a House Divided, The Poetics of Service, and The Poetics of Endings and Beginnings. Here you will find the reportage of the era whether it be with paintings, the poetry of Whitman, or wood cuts that later became engravings for Harper’s Weekly and other papers in order to quench the appetite for news. There is also the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School which mirrored the turbulence, the hope, plus the reverence for nature and Divine Harmony.

Artists included in this exhibit are the well known Winslow Homer, T. Buchanan Read, Thomas Nast, Eastman Johnson, Enoch Wood Perry, Fredrick Edwin Church, Sandford Gifford and John Frederick Kensett. The others you will soon know as well as this is an exhibit that you will not forget.

This new exhibit at The Katonah Museum of Art will run until January 24th, 2010. For additional Museum information, events and lectures based on the current exhibit go their website KatonahMuseum.org.

Walt Whitman:

“….On a tablet scrawl’d and nail’d on the tree by the grave, Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.”

“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring, But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.”

Photos courtesy of the Katonah Museum of Art

Posted By: Karen Benvin Ransom