Whitman's youth: Long Island and Brooklyn
In 1819, Walter Whitman is born on May 31 in West Hills, Long
Island. In 1823 Whitman's father relocates the family to Brooklyn
where the father hopes to succeed as a builder of small houses. In
1824, Whitman's father purchases a lot on Johnson Street in
Brooklyn, but he loses the lot the same year. In 1825, Whitman's
father tries again, purchasing a lot on Tillary and Adams in Brooklyn,
and Whitman begins attending Brooklyn District School No. 1, the first
public school in Brooklyn.
When he is ten, in1829, Whitman witnesses the public funeral
of a Navy officer who was killed in an explosion which killed twenty-four
seamen; and at 11 (nearly 12), Whitman leaves school and begins work
to help with family finances, starting as an office boy for lawyers
James B. Clarke and his son Edward. The next year, 1831, Whitman
is apprenticed to Samuel E. Clements, editor of Long Island Patriot,
Democratic, and the foreman printer teaches Whitman the process
of setting type by hand. In 1832 Whitman, now 13 years old,
begins working for Erastus Worthington, a Brooklyn printer. Economic
troubles force the Whitman family to move back to West Hills in Long
Island in spring, while Whitman remains in Brooklyn, now working as
a compositor for the Whig weekly Long-Island Star.
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Whitman in New York and Brooklyn: printer, writer, editor and itinerant
teacher.
In 1835, Whitman, now 16, moves to New York City, and works
as a compositor. He returns the next year to Long Island where he
begins teaching school. In the winter of 1836, Whitman moves to West
Babylon, Long Island to join his family and he begins teaching at
the Babylon school. At 18, Whitman leaves home for a teaching post
in Long Swamp, Long Island. Whitman relocates to Smithtown in Suffolk
County, Long Island, to teach for three terms, lasting through the
spring of 1838. He joins a local debating society in Smithtown,
serves as secretary, and debates against slavery, endorses foreign
emigration, and condemns capital punishment.
In 1838, Whitman moves to Huntington, Long Island, where,
although he is only 19 years old, he founds a weekly newspaper, the
Long-Islander, serving as publisher, editor, compositor, pressman,
and distributor. The next year, Whitman sells the newspaper and visits
with his family in West Babylon. He moves to Jamaica, Long Island,
working on the Long Island Democrat as a typesetter and boarding
with James J. Brenton, the editor of the paper. Whitman resigns from
the paper and returns to schoolteaching at Jamaica Academy in Flushing
Hill, but continues writing articles for the Democrat.
In the fall of 1840, Whitman serves as Democratic electioneer
for Queens County and enters into debates with political candidates.
Whitman's family moves to Dix Hills, and Whitman resumes teaching
in Woodbury. The next year, Whitman abruptly abondons teaching at
Woodbury, and moves to Whitestone where he teaches for one month.
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Whitman in New York: newspaper writer and editor, and novelist.
In May 1841, Whitman moves to New York City and begins writing
for the Democratic Review. In the fall, he becomes a compositor
for the weekly magazine, New World. In 1842, Whitman
edits the New York Aurora, but he is later fired for alleged
laziness. He writes a bulletin of murders for New York Evening
Tattler, and then works for the Daily Plebeian, a Democratic
Party paper where he becomes a penny-a-liner. Whitman publishes Franklin
Evans, a temperance novel, as a part of a weekly shilling-novel
series.
In 1843, Whitman begins editing New York Statesman,
a semiweekly Democratic paper, and in 1844, he briefly writes
for the New York Mirror, a popular weekly. In July, Whitman
begins editing the New York Democrat, a daily morning paper.
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Back in Brooklyn: Whitman writes, takes odd jobs, and publishes
the first edition of Leaves of Grass.
In 1845, Whitman's family returns to Brooklyn, and in August,
now 26 years old, Whitman leaves Manhattan to settle near his family
in Brooklyn. In the fall, Whitman begins editing stories for the Long
Island Star. In March of 1846, Whitman starts at the Brooklyn
Daily Eagle, a conservative Democratic paper. He hears Orson Fowler
lecture on phrenology, and George Bush lecture on Swedenborgian religious
philosophy. A year later, in March of 1848, Whitman is fired
from the Eagle, apparently for his support of the Wilmot Proviso,
a bill that called for the exclusion of slavery from all newly acquired
territories. Whitman travels to New Orleans with his younger brother,
Thomas Jefferson (Jeff) Whitman, and when he returns four months later
he is selected as one of fifteen delegates from Brooklyn representing
Kings County at a convention introducing the Free-Soil Party. At the
convention, Whitman hears speeches by Frederick Douglass, Charles
Redmond, and Henry Garnet.
In September of 1848, Whitman establishes the Brooklyn
Daily Freeman, a newspaper that sympathizes with the Free-Soil
cause. After the first edition appears, a fire destroys the office
of the newspaper at Orange Street, and the newspaper is taken over
by Democrats as part of an effort to stifle the Free-Soil cause. In
October, Whitman purchases a lot at 106 Myrtle Avenue, and makes plans
to have a house built for himself and his family.
In January of 1849, Whitman rents space in Brooklyn's Granada
Hall, selling pens, pencils, paper, inkstands, musical instruments,
and other miscellaneous items. With his family he moves into the newly
built house on Myrtle Street in April, transferring his store to a
first floor room in the house. He writes a series of articles for
the Sunday Dispatch, describing outings to east end of Long
Island, and in July, he travels to Clinton Hall to have his head read
by phrenologist. He works a brief stint as an editor of a new paper,
the New York Daily News, which shuts down in February due to
financial failure.
In 1850, Whitman publishes four poems, and in 1851,
he issues a guidebook from his print shop entitled The Salesman
and Traveller's Directory for Long Island, but quits publishing
it after a few issues. He turns to writing Long Island sketches under
the title of "Letters from Paumanok" in Bryant's Evening Post;
he begins spending time in the studios of artists and sculptors residing
in Brooklyn; and he is elected president of the Brooklyn Art Union,
an organization that lasted only a short time.
In 1852, Whitman tries his hand at his father's carpentry
business: he sells the Myrtle Street property, and builds two three-story
frame houses on Cumberland Street. In September, he moves into one
of the houses on Cumberland Street, and rents out the other. Next
spring, he sells both houses, moves into a smaller house nearby, and
his family moves to a house he built on Skillman Street.
In 1855,Whitman has the first edition of Leaves of Grass
printed at a Brooklyn printing shop. About 800 copies are initially
printed, and the first 295 copies are advertised for sale at $2.00
a copy. Emerson praises Leaves of Grass in a letter to Whitman,
and the next set are printed with less gold stamping and sell for
$1.00 a copy. In November the last set of copies are issued, at .75¢
a copy. Whitman's father also dies this year.
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Still in Brooklyn: Further editions of Leaves of Grass
In 1856, Whitman and his family move to Classon Avenue, and
the second edition, with new poems and revisions, is published by
Fowlers and Wells in New York, priced at $1.00 per copy. Bronson Alcott,
Henry David Thoreau, and Sarah Tyndale visit Whitman and his family.
In the spring of 1857, Whitman begins editing the Brooklyn
Daily Times, where he reviews books, writes editorials, and selects
the fiction to be printed. His editorials focus on urban life, condemning
high crime rates and poor public sanitation.
In 1859, Whitman's brother, Jeff, marries and moves in to
the Whitman household, and the whole family moves to a house on Portland
Avenue in Brooklyn. In June, Whitman is dismissed from the Brooklyn
Daily Times, after publishing two editorials calling for the legalization
of prostitution and more liberal attitudes towards pre-marital sex
for men and for women. On February 10, 1860, Whitman receives
a letter from publishers Thalyer and Eldridge of Boston, who offer
to publish a third edition of Leaves of Grass, with a 10% royalty
on all copies sold, and on March 5, 1860, Whitman arrives in
Boston to supervise the publishing.
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Whitman in New York and Washington, D.C.:the War and after
On February 19, 1861, when Lincoln passes through Manhattan
on his twelve-day journey from Springfield to Washington, D.C. for
his inauguration, Whitman watches Lincoln from the top of an omnibus.
Around midnight on April 13, while walking down Broadway after seeing
a Verdi opera, Whitman hears the newsboys announcing the attack on
Fort Sumter. Whitman writes a recruiting poem, "Beat! Beat! Drums,"
and he supports himself as a freelance journalist, writing a series
of articles about Brooklyn life and a few about Manhattan, including
descriptions of the saloons and dance halls of the Bowery, and accounts
of the suffering of the wounded and sick in New-York Hospital, including
a few stage-driver friends of his.
In 1862, Whitman visits hospitals in Brooklyn to help those
wounded in the Civil War, and he goes to Washington D.C. and Fredericksburg,
Virginia, to find his wounded brother, George. In Washington, Whitman
works part-time as a copyist in the Army Paymaster's office, and he
regularly visits wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals. At the
end of the war, in 1865, Whitman publishes Drum-Taps.
He watches the victory parade in May, writing to his mother that it
was "too much & too impressive to be described. Whitman gets work
as a clerk in the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs,
but when a new Secretary of the Interior takes office, Leaves of
Grass is found indecent and Whitman is fired.
Whitman secures an appointment in the Attorney General's office,
and between 1866 and 1872 Whitman lives in D.C. and
visits his family in Brooklyn often. In 1871, and again in
1872, Leaves of Grass, the fifth edition, is published.
Democratic Vistas is also published. In 1872, Whitman
travels to Hanover, New Hampshire for the Dartmouth University commencement
where he reads As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, which is published
later that year.
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Whitman in Camden, New Jersy: illness, travel, and the death-bed
edition
On January 23, 1873 Whitman suffers a stroke. A few months
later his mother dies, and Whitman leaves Washington for Camden, New
Jersey, never returning to Washington, D.C. In 1876, Whitman
publishes another edition of Leaves of Grass, and also Memoranda
During the War and Two Rivulets.
In 1879 Whitman makes a western trip, visiting St. Louis,
Topeka, and Denver, and in 1880 he summers with Richard Maurice
Bucke in London, Ontario.
In 1881 - 1882 Leaves of Grass, sixth edition,
is published, and Whitman lectures on Lincoln before the St. Botolph
Club in Boston. In 1884 Whitman buys a house, 328 Mickle Street,
in Camden, New Jersey. In June of 1888 Whitman suffers a paralytic
stoke, and Whitman dies on March 26, 1892. The "death-bed"
edition of Leaves of Grass is published in 1891 and
1892 by David McKay in Philadelphia.
