Specimen Days---Down At The Front

In this entry Whitman gives an eye witness account of his visit to the "camp hospitals in the army of the Potomac" where he observed the casualties of war.  It's a very morbidly dark scene, " I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, a full load for a one-horse cart".  I wonder what motivated him to visit these American soldiers if only to offer any help he could give them, which he does.  I'm guessing, even though he doesn't mention it, that he did know people who fought in the Civil War and who probably ended up as casualties.  I for one have to admire his courage to visit these soldiers under such devastating conditions.  It takes somebody with a big heart and a strong stomach to endure and withstand seeing suffering to this degree.  Compassion is the necessary virtue to possess when one must confront suffering, and Whitman delivers compassion even to a wounded Mississippian Captain who was badly wounded in the leg, and who asked Whitman for papers to which he gave him.  In his eyes in this particular circumstance North and South are indiscriminate, and Whitman, being from New York, makes this distinction.