I will agree with Neely that Whitman seems to make no acknowledgement of the Emancipation Proclamation in his work. However, were there many (or any) white poets at the time who were making any acknowledgement of it? I don't believe that Whitman was alone in his quickness to make little of this huge event. As we have seen in the other Civil War poem by Timrod that not much acknowledgement is given to African Americans in the first place. Timrod only chooses to include the dusky fingers of the slave that he is describing. He could care less about the rest of his body. This slave as a person with worth was not allowed inside his poem. I'm not sure which Neely would consider worst, Whitman's total neglect of the Emancipation Proclamation, or Timrod's blatant disregard for African Americans. It seems to me that Whitman is very concerned with his country and the union. Throughout his poem, "Beat! Beat! Drums!" Whitman makes a call to men to join up and fight for their country. However, perhaps Whitman saw that the Emancipation Proclamation did not do as much as people think it did on that very first day. The Emancipation Proclamation at first only freed those slaves that had already escaped to the Union side. I want to make clear that I acknowledge that this was one of the most important moments in the fight against slavery. However, most people believe that the Emancipation proclamation freed all slaves. That is just not the case. Once the union army moved south more and more slaves were eventually freed. But it was not until the thirteenth amendment that slavery was officially banished. For all we know Whitman could have been disgruntled by the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation was not a total disbandment of slavery. This is probably a stretch, however, I believe that the fact that Whitman does not write about the Emancipation Proclamation does not give us room to say that he did not care at all.