These, however, and much more might have gone on and come to naught (almost positively would have come to naught,) if a sudden, vast, terrible, direct and indirect stimulus for new and national declamatory expression had not been given to me. It is certain, I say, that, although I had made a start before, only from the occurrence of the Secession War, and what it show’d me as by flashes of lightning, with the emotional depths it sounded and arous’d (of course, I don’t mean in my own heart only, I saw it just as plainly in others, in millions)⁠—that only from the strong flare and provocation of that war’s sights and scenes the final reasons-for-being of an autochthonic and passionate song definitely came forth.

I went down to the war fields in Virginia (end of 1862), lived thenceforward in camp⁠—saw great battles and the days and nights afterward⁠—partook of all the fluctuations, gloom, despair, hopes again arous’d, courage evoked⁠—death readily risk’d⁠— the cause , too⁠—along and filling those agonistic and lurid following years, 1863⁠–⁠’64⁠–⁠’65⁠—the real parturition years (more than 1776⁠–⁠’83) of this henceforth homogeneous Union. Without those three or four years and the experiences they gave, Leaves of Grass would not now be existing.