object:1.whitman - Virginia--The West
author class:Walt Whitman
subject class:Poetry
book class:Whitman - Poems
class:chapter
The noble sire fallen on evil days,
I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,
(Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,)
The insane knife toward the Mother of All.
The noble son on sinewy feet advancing,
I saw, out of the land of prairies, land of Ohio's waters and of Indiana,
To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring,
Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders.
Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking,
As to you Rebellious (I seemed to hear her say,) why strive against me and why seek my life?
When you yourself forever provide to defend me?
For you provided me Washington -- and now these also.
Written 12 years after the conclusion of the War, Whitman's poem expresses the anguish felt by many when Virginia ("the noble sire") left the Union ("the Mother of All") and cast her lot with the Confederacy.
Virginia had always prided herself on being "the mother of states and statesman." Not only had she provided many of the most prominent political leaders and military men of the Revolutionary War era, but many of those who moved further west as the new nation expanded its borders could boast of roots in the Old Dominion as well. Whitman's poem points out the folly of Virginia's rebelling against a government and a country that she herself had done so much to establish. Those who came from Ohio, Indiana, and other Midwestern states to join the Union Army were, in a sense, returning to bear arms against the one who had sent them forth to begin with -- an irony that was not lost on Whitman.
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