Walt Whitman's experiences in Washington are at the very core of his poetry and his journals. After his brother George was wounded at Fredericksburg in December of 1862, Walt Whitman came south from Manhattan and began work in Washington as a volunteer.

He spent time with soldiers recovering in the Patent Office Building (now home to the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum), which had been converted into a hospital for much of the Civil War.

Video by Kenneth Chadwick.