Walt Whitman wrote a letter for a dying soldier to his wife.

Walt Whitman has been labeled many things, but humble is not one of them.

The same Walt Whitman that gets guff for being cocky about his writing ability is also the same Walt Whitman modest enough to spend many days during the Civil War visiting hospitals filled with wounded and dying soldiers, writing letters for them or simply sitting down to have a chat.

Jackie Budell, a specialist with the National Archives, tells NPR that a letter discovered by researchers in February is only the third known document written by a solider to his family, but done in Whitman's hand.

"He just literally visited people. And he bought stationery and he would bring it with him and he would offer to write letters home for them," she tells NPR's Michel Martin. "Many [soldiers] were illiterate but also many were just too sickly to write so he would offer to do that."

One such sickly soldier was Robert Nelson Jabo, a French Canadian living in New York state who was a Union soldier dying in a hospital too far away to reach family. Whitman sat down with Jabo to write the following:


Washington, Jan. 21, 1865(6)

My Dear Wife,

You must excuse me for not having written to you before. I have not been very well + did not feel much like writing – but I feel considerably better now – my complaint is an affection of the lungs. I am mustered out of service, but am not at present well enough to come home. I hope you will try to write back as soon as you receive this + let me know how you all are, how things are going on – let me know how it is with mother. I write this by means of a friend who is now sitting by my side + I hope it will be God's will that we shall yet meet again. Well I send you all my love + must now close.

Your affectionate husband,
Nelson Jabo

Written by Walt Whitman
a friend.


"I think Walt's time was the most important gift that he was giving these men," Budell tells NPR. "Really they just needed someone to sit by their side."

As did Jabo. He died from tuberculosis shortly after this letter was written.

He never made it home, he never saw his wife.