Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was raised on the frontier in the early 19th century, living in Kentucky and Indiana before settling in Illinois, serving in the state legislature, and marrying Mary Todd.
[1] Walt Whitman established his reputation as a poet following the release of his poetry collection Leaves of Grass (1855); the volume came to wider public attention following a positive review by American transcendentalist lecturer and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.
[2][3] Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic and had developed a free verse style inspired by the cadences of the King James Bible.
[4][5] Reviewing Leaves of Grass, some critics objected to Whitman's blunt depiction of sexuality and what they perceived as an undercurrent of homoeroticism.
"[9] After he found his brother, Walt Whitman remained in Washington, where he had a series of government jobs—first with the Army Paymaster's Office and later with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
[12] Whitman's wartime experience greatly influenced his poetry, and he shifted to writing reflections on death and youth, the brutality of war and patriotism.
[16] While visiting Brooklyn, Whitman signed a contract to have his collection of Civil War poems, Drum-Taps, published.
[17] In June 1865, the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered a copy of Leaves of Grass and fired Whitman from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, describing the collection as "obscene".
[23] Whitman noticed Lincoln's "striking appearance" and "unpretentious dignity", and trusted his "supernatural tact" and "idiomatic Western genius".
[26] Later that year, Whitman wrote a letter about Lincoln in which he described the president's face as a "Hoosier Michel Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful".
[b][39] Near the publication of Drum-Taps, Whitman decided the collection would be incomplete without a poem on Lincoln's death and hastily added "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day".
Whitman, by then in failing health, presented himself as neglected, unfairly criticized, and deserving of pity in the form of financial aid.
[63] Novelist Bram Stoker gave at least one lecture on Lincoln and discussed the deceased president with Whitman in November 1886.
Robert J. Havlik in the Walt Whitman Quarterly wrote that their "mutual respect for Lincoln" was a foundation of their relationship.
[75] His lectures helped to raise the perception of the poems around the nation, and by the late 1870s "My Captain" was often listed with James Russell Lowell's "Commemoration Ode" as some of the best poetry honoring Lincoln.
had established Whitman as the poet "who sings the American nation" and that his Lincoln poems represented "the heart of America in tears".
[84] The scholar of American literature Charles M. Oliver wrote in 2006 that Whitman's works on Lincoln represent him at his most eloquent.
[85] Terrible, cleansing, and restorative for the nation, the Civil War became the central imaginative event of Whitman's middle life and Lincoln his personal agent of redemption, a symbolic figure who transcended politics, leadership, and victory.
Historian Stephen B. Oates wrote that the American public had never mourned the death of a head of state so deeply.
[70] Whitman was ready and willing to write poetry on the topic,[88] seizing the opportunity to present himself as an "interpreter of Lincoln" to increase the readership of Leaves of Grass while honoring a man he admired.
[88] The work of poets like Whitman and Lowell helped to establish Lincoln as the "first American", epitomizing the newly reunited America.
[90] Whitman portrayed Lincoln by using metaphors such as the captain of the ship of state and made his assassination into a monumental event.
[88] The historian Merrill D. Peterson wrote to a similar effect, noting that Whitman's poetry placed Lincoln's assassination firmly in the American consciousness.
[95] The Chilean critic Armando Donoso [es] wrote that Lincoln's death allowed Whitman to find significance in his feelings surrounding the Civil War.
[97][98] For Whitman, Lincoln's death was the culmination of all the tragedies the Civil War had brought, according to scholar Betsy Erlikka.
[100] Ed Folsom argues that, although Whitman may have struggled with his success coming from work uncharacteristic of his other poetry, he decided that acceptance was "preferable to exclusion and rejection".
[103][104] The English professor Peter J. Bellis wrote that "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day", as Whitman's first elegy to Lincoln, aimed to encapsulate the nation's grief and provide closure, like a funeral.
Instead of describing Lincoln's burial as an endpoint, "Lilacs" follows his funeral train through "a process of renewal and return" and grapples with grief and death.
[55] Critics have noted stylistic differences among poems in the cluster; historian Daniel Mark Epstein felt it "may seem hard to believe" that the same writer wrote both "Lilacs" and "O Captain!
[110] The critic Joann P. Krieg argues that the cluster succeeds "by narrowing the scale of emotion to the grief of one individual whose pain reflects that of the nation".
