Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps: Shifting Attitude towards the Civil War MD. Abu Shahid Abdullah European Joint Master’s Degree in English and American Studies Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg, Germany Abstract Walt Whitman was completely disgusted by the social and political condition of Pre Civil War America, and his Drum Taps provides an alternative vision of an America ruled by a wave of comradely relationship. However, the poems in Drum Taps provide a shifting attitude towards the Civil War, which is undoubtedly influenced by Whitman’s own war experience. Whereas the initial section welcomes the terrible war, the middle section turns to depict the violence of the war, and the last section focuses on the reconciliation to the cost of the war and the comradeship among the soldiers; this shifting attitude towards the war is the direct outcome of Whitman’s experience in the war hospitals. He believes that the soldiers, transformed by the war experience, will help to build a more egalitarian and democratic society, which he has long been dreaming for. [Key Words: Civil War, Comradeship, Chauvinism, Democratic idea] 1. Introduction Drum-Taps, the masterpiece of Walt Whitman, was written on the event of the American Civil War and it focuses on the shifting attitude of the narrator to the war. Whitman saw the Civil War primarily as a war to preserve the Union. He hoped that the Northerners would discover true, or pure, democracy in the very process of defending it. In Drum-Taps, we find a dual perspective where Whitman assumes the voice of the soldier and also reconcile that experience through the voice of a compassionate observer. “Drum-Taps offers an alternative vision of America, one ruled not by the ‘cash nexus’ coming to dominate northern society, but by a network of intimate, comradely relationships" (Thomas, 1987, p. 187). 9ROXPH ,, ,VVXH ,,, -XO\ ,661 KWWSZZZLMHOOKFRP