Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions Read Online Free PDF Page B

lines “man who wandered with me, there, for love of me, / Day by day, and night by night, we were together.” “Man” was changed to “woman” in the final draft of the poem; see Whitman’s Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass (1860), edited by Fredson Bowers, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955, p. 64. In “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing,” the poet describes breaking off a twig of a particularly stately and solitary tree: “Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love” (p. 287). The emotional release of “coming out” might well explain the spectacular openness and provocative energy of Leaves of Grass ; additionally, Whitman’s identification of his “outsider status” could have helped spark his empathy for women, Native Americans, and other marginalized groups that are celebrated in the 1855 poems.
    Whitman’s personal transformations, as well as America’s political upheaval, characterized the 1840s and early 1850s. His growing political awareness was no doubt inspired by the unprecedented corruption of the day: Vote buying, wire-pulling, and patronage existed on all levels of state and national government. In New York, Fernando Wood was elected mayor in 1854 as a result of vote fraud: In the “Bloody Sixth” ward, there were actually 4,000 more votes than there were voters. And three of the most corrupt presidencies in America’s history-Millard Fillmore (1850-1853), Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), and James Buchanan (1857-1861)—were certain to catch the attention of an aspiring young journalist. “Our topmost warning and shame,” Whitman wrote of the three incompetent leaders, who exhibited especially poor judgment on the issue of slavery.
    The debate over slavery divided the country in the decades before the Civil War; even within regions, the answers were not as clear-cut as they would seem once sides were drawn in 1861. According to one estimate in 1847, two-thirds of Northerners disapproved of slavery, but only 5 percent declared themselves Abolitionists. Immediate emancipation, it was feared, would flood the North with cheap labor and racial disharmonies. The word “compromise,” with all its political and moral ambiguities, was a favorite with politicians. Fillmore was responsible for the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California to the Union as a free state but also lifted legal restrictions on slavery in Utah and New Mexico; to satisfy the South, he instituted a stringent Fugitive Slave Law at the same time. In 1854 Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing settlers of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves the issue of slavery. The result was “Bleeding Kansas,” the 1854 congressional election that was decided by 1,700 Missourians crossing the border and casting illegal votes for the proslavery candidate. Additionally, in this crucial year before the first publication of Leaves of Grass, fugitive slave Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston, put on trial, and shipped back to Virginia. At a huge rally in Framingham, Massachusetts, William Lloyd Garrison burned copies of the Declaration of Independence, and Henry David Thoreau delivered the powerful address “Slavery in Massachusetts.”
    Whitman, too, was incited to protest. Through the 1840s and 1850s, he watched with increasing anger as the Whig Party collapsed, and as the Democratic Party gave itself over to proslavery forces. His editorials throughout this period indicate that his political understanding and stance was becoming more concrete, less forgiving. And in 1850, a series of four political poems appeared, indicating that Whitman had finally stepped away from imitative verse and started investing his poetry with a more personal, immediate voice and message. “Song for Certain Congressmen,” first published in the New York Evening Post of March 2, 1850, mocks Americans for considering compromise of any sort—particularly compromise of human rights (before the Compromise of