The essay Democratic Perspectives, as well as the rest of the fragmentary letters and notes that make up this edition, are probably the most important prose works of Walt Whitman, written during the Civil War (where he served as volunteer and nurse of the Union) and a few years later, during the national reconstruction. Without ever abandoning his famous lyrical tone, the author offers us an unforgettable song to political freedom, in one of the best written defenses on democracy. In these pages, the great poet is shown as a demanding political commentator, more combative than ever. We do not find the happy vagabond who sings the epic of American democracy, but with an anguished and disillusioned reflection on a distorted democracy, degraded and incomplete, that does not reach to become the expected scenario for the appearance of the man who deserves it. Shocked by the rudeness of institutional democracy, vote-dealers and political clubs, quarrelsome and intolerant, Whitman recommends participation in politics, but at the same time calls for distance from the parties, which in his opinion "will be useful, perhaps necessary , but they are brutal instruments of cynicism ».