Erica Smith Smith is a writer and editor. In the following essay, she examines how "Cavalry Crossing a Ford," although a description of healthy men preparing for battle, is a tender eulogy for many of these soldiers who are about to fall in battle.

Walt Whitman's poem "Cavalry Crossing a Ford" was originally published within the volume Drum-Taps (1865) and was later collected within a later edition of Leaves of Grass. First appearing in 1855 as a self-published volume of just ninetyfive pages, Leaves of Grass contained what came to be Whitman's most famous poem, "Song of Myself." Leaves of Grass swelled over the years to become Whitman's opus, absorbing all of Whitman's writing, even the volumes that were originally issued separately (as were Drum-Taps and, later, Passage to India, 1871.

Whitman wrote, cut, and rewrote Leaves of Grass extensively through nine editions, the last edition issued in 1891-1892. The...