Whitman, a celebrated American poet, features throughout the book, in the form of quotes from his work and descriptions of his actions. Whitman drove the campaign to assign names to the unknown dead to give the fallen soldiers a sense of finality and to give their families a means of burying and mourning them. He also spent countless hours writing to soldiers’ next of kin to tell them of their loss. He suffered his own family crisis when his brother became one of the many injured Union soldiers.; Whitman also frequently visited hospitals where he wrote letters home on behalf of soldiers unable to do so themselves. Whitman composed three well-known poems after the death of President Abraham Lincoln, in an attempt to put into words the tremendous anguish so many felt in the wake of that horrendous event. They include "O Captain! My Captain!", "This Dust Was Once the Man," and "Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day."

Born in 1821, Clara Barton was a nurse who founded the American Red Cross. Barton’s participation in wartime medicine began as early as the Baltimore Riot, which historians consider the earliest bloodshed of the Civil War. In just over a year, she received permission to work on the frontlines.