Snapshots of the Past

Walt Whitman & his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle, Washington, D.C., 1865 – Historic Reproduction

Walt Whitman & his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle, Washington, D.C., 1865, 1865 — historic photograph
Walt Whitman & his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle, Washington, D.C., 1865, 1865. Historic photograph from the Washington DC collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

Walt Whitman & his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle, Washington, D.C., 1865 comes to life in this historic photograph, reproduced from the original with every detail intact. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.

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Walt Whitman & his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle, Washington, D.C., 1865

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Here Walt Whitman sits beside Peter Doyle, a young Irish-born man who had fought for the Confederacy before the war ended, and the title's label "rebel soldier" points to that unusual pairing. The two met in Washington, D.C., in the years after the Civil War, when Whitman was working in the city and writing about the conflict in *Drum-Taps*. Their close friendship, which Whitman later described in letters and in the "Calamus" poems of *Leaves of Grass*, is among the most discussed relationships in his life. Doyle went on to work as a streetcar conductor in Washington, and the image now belongs to the Feinberg-Whitman Collection at the Library of Congress.

Created / published1865
Medium1 photographic print on card mount : albumen.
Genre1840-1918
NotesForms part of: Feinberg-Whitman Collection (Library of Congress). Exhibited: Revising Himself : Walt Whitman" at the Library of Congress
SubjectsWhitman, Walt,--1819-1892. Doyle, Peter,--1847-
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,194 × 1,536 px · prints to 4 × 5 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-152437

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