Albery Allson Whitman

After years as a manual laborer, working at a plowshop, on railroad construction and as a teacher, Whitman attended Wilberforce University in 1870.

[4] After six months at Wilberforce, Whitman left to become the financial agent for the university and an African Methodist Episcopal Church pastor in Springfield, Ohio.

[7] Yet Dickson Bruce argues that "Whitman went beyond sentimental ideals in his understanding of literature, and even beyond the ideological directions outlined by [Frederick] Douglass and his colleagues.

The opening four lines suggest high romantic poetry through a sentimental reflection on the South: "Hail land of the palmetto and the pine,/From Blue Ridge Mountain down to Mexic's sea/Sweet with magnolia and cape jassamine,/And thrilled with song, — thou art the land for me!

"[11] Ivy Wilson notes that Whitman employed "multitudinous metrical configurations" and that "he was consumed with the aesthetics of sound.