Calling Cards With Your Picture On Them
The original photo was taken by Matthew Brady in 1862. It was created as a carte de visite, a photograph mounted on a piece of cardboard, which could be used as a calling card. The original is sepia toned, while this colorized version modernizes Whitman as he looks like he is wearing a modern, crisply ironed white shirt. The photo was taken around the time that he went to Washington to tend to the injured soldiers during the Civil War.
By this point, Whitman had already established his reputation as poet, winning significant praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, as his work broke with traditional poetry. Whitman had also become the poet of the common man, and he recognized the importance of the common man in the establishment of America.
Source: (openculture.com).
The original photo was taken by Matthew Brady in 1862. It was created as a carte de visite, a photograph mounted on a piece of cardboard, which could be used as a calling card. The colorized version modernizes Whitman as he looks like he is wearing a modern, crisply ironed white shirt. The photo was taken around the time that he went to Washington to tend to the injured soldiers during the Civil War.
Whitman’s formal education ended by the time he was 11, when he began working as an office boy for a law office. After this first job, he began working as an apprentice printer at a newspaper. In his late teens he worked as a schoolteacher and in 1838, at the age of 19, he founded his own newspaper, for which he reported, wrote stories, printed, and delivered the paper. In the 1840s he had broken into professional journalism, and in 1842, he wrote the temperance novel, Franklin Evans, which he later denounced as “rot.”
From Newspapers To Poetry
Image from the frontispiece of Leaves of Grass. Source: (Wikipedia),
He continued to write for newspapers in the 1850s, but his focus had really shifted to poetry, as he wrote about city life around him. In 1855, he published the first edition of
Leaves of Grass, a collection of 12 untitled poems. The picture of him which was included as the frontispiece to
Leaves of Grass was an image of him at the age of 35, dressed to look like a common worker, which seemed designed to promote his desired image as the poet of the common man. The image is a steel engraving which was taken from a daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison. Unfortunately, the original daguerreotype has been lost. He also included a lengthy preface, in which he introduced himself as the “American bard.” The following year, he produced a second edition, which included 20 additional poems. By the time the 1860 edition was released by Thayer and Eldridge, it contained more than 400 pages of poetry.
Whitman's Involvement In The War
The original carte de visite, which includes Matthew Brady's mark at the bottom. Source: (Library of Congress).
In 1861, Whitman’s brother George enlisted in a New York infantry regiment. When Whitman read his brother’s name published in the New York Herald’s list of the wounded in the Battle of Fredericksburg, he traveled to Washington. After searching in vain for George for several days, he obtained a military pass to visit the Union camp in Falmouth, Virginia, where he found George, who had only sustained a minor wound. After his visit, he was so moved by the sight of the wounded, he started to volunteer in military hospitals. His first visit was to Lacy House in Falmouth, where he witnessed amputated body parts. Whitman remained with his brother for two weeks, and when he left, he was asked to help transport the wounded to Washington hospitals. After journeying with the wounded, he continued to minister to the wounded, visiting those he had traveled with, and chronicling from the bedside to provide new insight. These experiences inspired poetry, and as he wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "I desire and intend to write a little book out of this phase of America, her masculine young manhood, its conduct under most trying of and highest of all exigency, which she, as by lifting a corner in a curtain, has vouchsafed me to see America, already brought to Hospital in her fair youth—brought and deposited here in this great, whited sepulchre of Washington itself." Throughout his time in Washington, he published pieces in
The New York Times and
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle to help support the small income he received from a job copying reports in the Paymaster’s Office.
His Experience Inspired More Poetry
He estimated that he visited the soldiers over 600 times; during these visits, he performed small tasks such as writing letters home, satisfying a sweet-tooth, or playing games like 20 questions. One afternoon, he distributed ice cream throughout the wards of Carver Hospital. Of all of the hospitals he visited, he went to Armory Square most often, as it housed the worst cases. Eventually he collected his poems from the experiences in a book called Drum- Taps.
He left Washington on June 23, 1864, as he had grown ill from all of the work he had been doing in the hospitals. Once he had recovered, he returned to his work in Washington, but he faced a new obstacle: getting a publisher for Drum-Taps. Many publishers did not want to touch his poetry as his previous works had been controversial.
Whitman's Final Publications
Whitman attended Lincoln’s inauguration, and published an essay in The New York Times on Sunday March 12, 1865. In it, he noted the presence of a cloud right above Lincoln, which Whitman took as an omen. After Lincoln’s death, he composed “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” which does not mention Lincoln or the circumstances of his death, although it was written in reaction to his death. Because of the poem’s popularity, Whitman was able to find a publisher for Drum-Taps. This collection includes poems that were later incorporated into the 4th edition of Leaves of Grass, including “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Whitman’s time working with the soldiers also led to the eventual publication of a memoir about his time caring for the soldiers, Specimen Days.
At the end of the Civil War, Whitman began working as a clerk in a government office in Washington. However, he lost his job when his identity as the author of Leaves of Grass became known. He managed to secure a transfer to the office of the Attorney General, where one of his responsibilities was interviewing Confederate soldiers for presidential pardons. In 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke which caused him to leave Washington and move to Camden, NJ, where his brother George lived. There, he bought his first house. He remained in Camden until his death on March 26, 1892. The year before his death, he prepared the final edition of Leaves of Grass.
