Analysis of Whitman's "Drum Taps" and "The Wound Dresser" Like most of the unprepared, naive Americans who believed the Civil War would consist of a few short battles and little casualties, who then after the war reached it's second year truly saw the Civil War for what it really was- the bloodiest in America's history; Walt Whitman's "Drum Taps" represents this ideal from start to finish. From the war's first battle in 1861 when Whitman saw the endeavor as a chance for the North to put to rest all of the turmoil the South created, to the see-saw battles and first hand knowledge of the detriments war could create, the poet's attitud