— Ch. 1 · Wartime Encounters And Observations —
Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln.
~4 min read · Ch. 1 of 5
On the 19th of February 1861, Abraham Lincoln traveled through New York City as president-elect. Walt Whitman stood among the crowd and watched this man who would lead the nation through civil war. Whitman noted Lincoln's striking appearance and unpretentious dignity in letters to his mother. He described the president's face as a Hoosier Michel Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful. The poet estimated he saw Lincoln about twenty to thirty times between 1861 and 1865. Sometimes they were in the same room at White House receptions following Lincoln's first inauguration. Whitman visited John Hay, Lincoln's private secretary, at the White House during one such visit. In August 1863, Whitman wrote in The New York Times that he saw the president almost every day. They shared similar views on slavery and the Union, though they never met personally. Whitman later said that Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else.
The Assassination And Immediate Response
Abraham Lincoln died on the morning of the 15th of April 1865 after being shot at Ford's Theatre on April 14. Walt Whitman was residing in Brooklyn while on break from his job at the Department of the Interior when he heard the news. His family did not eat breakfast that day and not a word was spoken all day. On the 19th of April 1865, the day of Lincoln's funeral in Washington, Whitman dated his poem Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day. He halted further distribution of Drum-Taps and stopped publication on May 1 primarily to develop his Lincoln poems. Within months he wrote two more elegies: O Captain! My Captain! and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Both appeared in his collection Sequel to Drum-Taps later that year. English professor Amanda Gailey described Whitman's decision to publish My Captain in The Saturday Press as a teaser for Sequel. Copies were not ready for distribution until December despite Sequel having been published in early October.