Walt Whitman's lectures on Abraham Lincoln

A ticket to one of Whitman's lectures

Walt Whitman gave a series of lectures on Abraham Lincoln from 1879 to 1890. They centered around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but also covered years leading up to and during the American Civil War and sometimes included readings of poems such as "O Captain! My Captain!". The lectures began as a benefit for Whitman and were generally popular and well received.

Whitman greatly admired Lincoln and was moved upon his assassination in 1865, writing several poems in the president's memory. The idea of Whitman giving lectures about the topic was first circulated by his friend John Burroughs in an 1878 letter. Whitman, who had long aspired to be a lecturer, gave his first lecture in New York City on April 14 the following year. Over the course of the next eleven years he gave the lecture at least five more times, and possibly as many as twenty. A retelling of the lecture in 1887 at Madison Square Theatre is considered to have been the most successful lecture and had many prominent members of society in the audience. Whitman considered the lecture "the culminating hour of his life". He gave the lecture for the last time in Philadelphia in 1890, two years before his death.

The lecture series were described by Whitman's biographer Justin Kaplan in 1980 as the closest he came to "social eminence on a large scale."^[1]

Background[]

Walt Whitman established his reputation as a poet in the late 1850s to early 1860s with the 1855 release of Leaves of Grass.^[2][3] The brief volume, first released in 1855, was considered controversial by some,^[4] with critics particularly objecting to Whitman's blunt depictions of sexuality and the poem's "homoerotic overtones".^[5] At the start of the American Civil War, Whitman moved from New York to Washington, D.C., where he held a series of government jobs—first with the Army Paymaster's Office and later with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.^[6][7] He volunteered in the army hospitals as a nurse.^[8]

Although they never met, Whitman saw Abraham Lincoln several times between 1861 and 1865, sometimes in close quarters. The first time was when Lincoln stopped in New York City in 1861 on his way to Washington.^[9][10] He greatly admired the President, writing in October 1863, "I love the President personally."^[11] Whitman later declared that "Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else."^[9][10] Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865, greatly moved Whitman and the nation. Shortly after Lincoln's death, hundreds of poems were written on the topic. The historian Stephen B. Oates noted that "never had the nation mourned so over a fallen leader".^[12][9][10] Whitman himself wrote several poems in tribute to the fallen President. "O Captain! My Captain!", "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day", and "This Dust Was Once the Man" were all written on Lincoln's death. While poems do not specifically mention Lincoln, they turn the assassination of the President into a sort of martyrdom.^[9][10]

Whitman had long aspired to be a lecturer, and had given several in the 1850s and 1860s.^[13] In 1875 Whitman had published Memoranda During the War, which included a narrative of Lincoln's death.^[14] The following year he published an article on Lincoln's death in The New York Sun^[15] and he considered writing a book on Lincoln, but never did.^[16]

Deliveries[]

The idea of Whitman giving lectures on Lincoln's death was first suggested by his friend John Burroughs in a letter dated February 3, 1878, who told him that Richard Watson Gilder wanted him to deliver a lecture on the anniversary of Lincoln's assassination. Nothing happened in 1878 as Whitman was in poor health.^[17][18][19] The following year a group, including Gilder, set up a lecture on Lincoln's death to be given by Whitman.^[16] Whitman worked his New York Sun article into a readable format and was given a chair so that he could sit throughout the lecture.^[17]

The first lecture was given in Steck Hall, New York City, to between 60 and 80 people on April 14, 1879.^[20][21] Whitman initially struggled to find further bookings for lectures and did not give another lecture until April 15, 1880, in Association Hall, Philadelphia. He revised the lecture's content slightly for the second reading; it would stay in largely the same form for the remainder of his lectures.^[22] Whitman promoted the lecture heavily, sending copies to several newspapers. An 1881 lecture in Boston was attended by over one hundred people, including William Dean Howells, and earned him $135.^[23]

Whitman's April 15, 1887 lecture at Madison Square Theatre is considered the most successful of the lectures.^[24] David S. Reynolds wrote in 1995 that the lecture was a "Barnumesque event on a high scale."^[25] It was organized by Robert Pearsall Smith and several other friends of Whitman.^[26] Attendees included James Russell Lowell, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Andrew Carnegie, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Wilson Barrett, Mark Twain, Frank Stockton, Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, William T. Sherman and John Hay.^[27][28] At the end of the lecture, Stedman's granddaughter brought Whitman lilacs and he read the "O Captain! My Captain!". A reception at Whitman's hotel suite was held after the lecture; several hundred people attended.^[29] Whitman later described the lecture and its aftermath as "the culminating hour" of his life;^[1] he earned $600 from the event, of which $350 was from Carnegie.^[30] However, he also told his friend Horace Traubel that he considered the event "too much the New York Jamboree".^[30] The last time he gave the lecture was on April 14, 1890, in Philadelphia, just two years before his death.^[16][31] Money made from lectures constituted a major source of income for Whitman in the years leading to his death.^[32]

List of known deliveries[]

Whitman said that he gave the lecture a total of thirteen times,^[33] but later authors give varying numbers—estimates range from five^[34] to twenty.^[a][14] For instance, in 1963 the scholar Roy S. Azarnoff wrote that Whitman had given his lecture six times by May 1886,^[33] while Larry D. Griffin write that he delivered it four times in 1886 alone.^[31] At least ten specific lectures have been identified:

Content and reception[]

An announcement of the lecture at Madison Square Theatre

Whitman was described as not being an orator "either in manner or appearance". He spoke in a low voice^[16] and generally began by "downplaying his ability to handle the emotionally challenging task that lay before him."^[40] He then moved into describing the rise in tensions leading up to the 1860 presidential election^[41] and America during the Civil War era. Next he would describe Lincoln's death, which was the lecture's "main event". He retold the assassination as though he was there, identifying the assassination as a force that would "condense—A nationality."^[b][40] He often ended by reading "O Captain! My Captain!",^[16] and at times read some of his other poems such as "Proud Music of the Storm" and "To the Man-of-War-Bird", but also occasionally read other poems from Leaves of Grass and even works of other poets such as "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe, poems by William Collins, and a translation of Anacreon's Ode XXXIII by Thomas Moore called "The Midnight Visitor."^[31][34]

The lectures were popular and well received.^[16] Historian Daniel Mark Epstein wrote that "the speech was always a success, and in major cities it seldom failed to reap columns of publicity in the newspapers."^[43] Many audience members reported being moved to tears.^[31] José Martí, who was also present at one of the lectures, described the crowd as listening "in religious silence, for its sudden grace notes, vibrant tones, hymnlike progress, and Olympian familiarity seemed at times the whispering of the stars." Stedman wrote that "Something of Lincoln himself seemed to pass into this man who loved and studied him."^[44] The poet Stuart Merrill said that Whitman's telling of the assassination convinced him that "I was there, the very thing happened to me. And this recital was as gripping as the messengers' reports in Aeschylus."^[45]

Whitman's biographer Justin Kaplan wrote in 1980 that Whitman's 1887 lecture in New York City and its after-party marked the closest he came to "social eminence on a large scale."^[1] David S. Reynolds considered Whitman's lectures to have made him a household name.^[46] In 1988 the professor Kerry C. Larson wrote that the "hackneyed" sentimentality of Whitman's lectures indicated a decline in his creativity.^[47] In 2015 the scholar Michael C. Cohen called Whitman's lecture his "most popular text". Cohen argued that Whitman had used the lectures to frame the Civil War and Lincoln's death as factors that could unify the United States.^[48]

Notes[]

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Barton, William E (1965). Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press. ISBN 9780804600187. OCLC 1145780794.
• Callow, Philip (1992). From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 1566631335. OCLC 644050069.
• Cohen, Michael C. (2015). The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4708-4. JSTOR j.ctt15hvz5p.
• Cushman, Stephen (2014). Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-1877-7. OCLC 875742493.
• Epstein, Daniel Mark (2004). Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington (1st ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-45799-4. OCLC 52980509.
• Glicksberg, Charles I., ed. (1933). Walt Whitman and the Civil War: A Collection of Original Articles and Manuscripts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-1-5128-0167-5. JSTOR j.ctv51338s.
• Kaplan, Justin (1980). Walt Whitman, a Life. New York City: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-22542-1. OCLC 6305249.
• Larson, Kerry C. (November 21, 1988). Whitman's Drama of Consensus. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-46908-9.
• Levin, Joanna; Whitley, Edward (May 31, 2018). Walt Whitman in Context. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-31447-3.
• Loving, Jerome (1999). Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21427-7. OCLC 39313629.
• Miller, James E. (1962). Walt Whitman. New York City: Twayne Publishers. OCLC 875382711.
• Pannapacker, William (2004). Revised Lives: Whitman, Religion, and Constructions of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Culture. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-92451-5.
• Peck, Garrett (2015). Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.: The Civil War and America's Great Poet. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press. ISBN 9781626199736.
• Peterson, Merrill D. (June 1, 1995). Lincoln in American Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-802304-3.
• Reynolds, David S. (1995). Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography (1st ed.). New York City: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-58023-0. OCLC 30547827.

External links[]

• Daniel Mark Epstein on Walt Whitman's "The Death of Lincoln"