Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Prints a Whitman prose manuscript about the need for "immodesty.

Folsom, Ed

"TILL THE SIMPLE RELIGIOUS IDEA": 
AN UNPUBLISHED WHITMAN MANUSCRIPT 
FRAGMENT 
ED FOLSOM 
AN UNPUBUSHED WHITMAN MANUSCRIPT FRAGMENT-On a torn, discol-
ored, and fragile piece of paper-recently entered the Kendall Reed 
Collection. The manuscript was accompanied by a photograph of 
Whitman (the 1872 photo by G. Frank Pearsall, numbered 1870s #3 in 
the WWQR "Whitman Photographs" issue [FalllWinter 1986-1987]), 
on the back of which is a handwritten notation by Horace Traubel: 
"This portrait of W. W. I send you from papers given to me by him. 
H.T." The manuscript fragment reads as follows: 
till the simplest simple religious idea, becomes part of the living live tissue of men and 
women, and not an)' longcr lncrc no longer merely a respectable garment, proof not of 
modesty but of immodesty, that then all rcligions forms rites will be idle and the same, 
and neither no one either better nor or worse than another, or better or worse than 
none-
This manuscript is intriguing because it does not clearly correspond 
to any published passages in Whitman's writing, though it echoes or 
anticipates various passages in "Song of Myself' ("There was never any 
more inception than there is now, I ... Nor any more heaven or hell 
than there is now" [LG, 30]; "Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan 
the son, I Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, I . .. 
No more modest than immodest" [LG 52]; "My faith is the greatest of 
faiths and the least of faiths, I Enclosing worship ancient and modern 
and all between ancient and modern" [LG, 78]). Twice in his prose, 
Whitman uses the phrase "religious idea," once in Specimen Days, when 
he celebrates nakedness ("Probably the whole curriculum of first-class 
philosophy, beauty, heroism, form, illustrated by the old Hellenic race-
the highest height and deepest depth known to dvilization in those de-
partments-came from their natural and religious idea of Nakedness" 
[pW, 152]), and once in a notebook entry ("A main idea is to be that a 
brave heroic thought or religious idea, faithfully pursued, justifies itself 
in time, not perhaps in its own way but often in grander ways" [NUPM, 
929]). 
63 
The passage also relates to part of the preface to the 1855 Leaves of 
Grass, where Whitman does talk about the necessity to cut through the 
traditional arguments about religion and God in order to see the divin-
ity in the flesh of men and women: "The depths are fathomless and 
therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are resumed .... they are 
neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of the special and su-
pernatural and all that was twined with it or educed out of it departs as 
a dream. [ ... ] It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to 
admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than 
men and women" (LG 1855, vii-viii). It is remarkable how often the 
"religious idea" in Whitman is "twined" with the idea of nakedness and 
the idea of the divinity of men and women and of human sexuality. This 
newly found manuscript, then, may be one of Whitman's early formula-
tions of this convergence, finding the "religious idea" in the very "live 
tissue of men and women" and urging that the "garment" of religious 
respectability be removed to reveal the full power and spirituality of the 
present physical moment. 
The University of Iowa 
64 
Manuscript Fragment: "till the simple religious idea." Kendall Reed 
Collection. 


English

"till the simple religious idea": An Unpublished Whitman Manuscript Fragment

Prints a previously uncollected piece of Whitman journalism about Whitman's brother's Union regiment and argues for its authenticity

Murray, Martin

W ALTWHITMAN ON BROTHER GEORGE AND 
HIS FIFTY-FIRST NEWYORKVOLUNTEERS: 
AN UNCOLLECTED NEW YORK TIMES 
ARTICLE 
MARTIN G. MURRAY 
WALT WHITMAN'S CML WAR journalism falls neatly into two categories: 
brother George, and everything else. While the latter category encom-
passes a potpourri of topics, from hospital visits to Lincoln's inaugura-
tion to the weather in Washington, D.C., the former category focuses 
tightly on the military valor of George Washington Whitman and his 
Fifty-first New York Volunteers. To date, scholars have collected five 
such newspaper articles pertaining to George's regiment, beginning with 
the January 5, 1863, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and ending with the August 
5, 1865, Brooklyn Daily Union. l To these can be added a sixth, un-
signed article published on January 24, 1865, in the New York Times. A 
transcription of the article follows, along with supporting documenta-
tion of Whitman's authorship. ' 
The Fifty-first New-York Volunteers. 
Since the capture of this veteran regiment last September at the battle of Poplar 
Grove Church, below Petersburgh, the friends of the officers and men had lost all trace 
of them-no letters being received, and much anxiety beginning to be felt about them. 
But within the current week an exchanged Union Chaplain, Rev. Mr. EMERSON, 
returned from confinement at Danville, Va., brings word of the Fifty-first officers at the 
latter place. Maj. WRIGHT, Capt. G. W. WHITMAN, Lieuts. POOLEY and' 
ATKINSON, and some eight or ten more officers, are there, or, rather, were, toward 
the last of November. They were kept in a large tobacco warehouse, and were doing as 
well as men could do under such circumstances. Mr. EMERSON, after leaving Danville 
to be paroled, was detained over a month in Richmond. He is now at Annapolis. He 
brought a number of those significant slips of paper, of all textures, colors and degrees 
of legibility, known so well to persons familiar with the Southern prisons and with the 
returned Union prisoners-deaths, memoranda, messages, &c. Among these slips is 
one written by Capt. WHITMAN, of the Fifty-first, dated at Danville, Nov. 23, and 
simply addressed to his mother in Brooklyn, with the indorsement, "Well and hearty." 
In our former sketch of the Fifty-first we should have mentioned a gallant officer, 
Capt. DANIEL E. JENKINS, shot and instantly killed while leading his men in the 
hottest of the Wilderness fight last May. We also omitted to mention Lieut.-Col. 
65 
MITCHELL, a valuable officer, who served his three years, and was honorably mus-
tered out. Several company officers and brave soldiers might also have been properly 
mentioned. Then we are told that the Fifty-first esteems, as part of its regimental his-
tory, the making of such militaires as EDWARD FERRERO, now Major-General by 
brevet, and ROBERT B. POTTER, also Major-General by brevet, both of this city, 
and who were the two first commissioned Colonels of the Fifty-first; and, as they say, 
two braver soldiers or better officers, while they were in command of the Fifty-first, no 
regiment could ever possess, whatever must be said of subsequent matters. 
The rank and file of the Fifty-first, consisting of some 350 men, captured at Poplar 
Grove Church, we have no intelligence of. They are distributed somewhere in the South-
ern prisons. The remnant, some 50 to 60 men, are still in their old camp, in the Ninth 
Corps. Of the rumor that Gov. SEYMOUR, just before he left office, had been induced 
to appoint a Capt. MCKIBBEN to the Colonelcy of the Fifty-first, thus taking advan-
tage of the absence by captivity of the old officers, we are glad to be able to state it is an 
error. As indeed no honorable soldier would procure advancement by a trick upon 
brave men in misfortune, nor accept promotion only belonging to them, promotions 
that should be waiting for them when they return with their regiment from captivity. 
The unsigned article clearly bears Whitman's imprint, as shown by 
comparison with extant manuscripts and collected journalism. To be-
gin, the opening paragraph corresponds closely to an entry made by 
Whitman in his journal a few days prior to the article's publication date. 
As transcribed by Edward Grier, the manuscript reads: 
Brooklyn, Jan 19 & 20, 1865 
We have just heard from George after a blank of four months. He is in the Confeder-
ate Military Prison at Danville, Va., (or rather was on Nov 27, for his letter has been 
nearly two months getting here.) When captured, he & the other officers were taken to 
Libby Prison in Richmond, from there to Salisbury, N.C. & from -there to Danville, 
where they are kept (on com meal, a little bacon, &c.) in a tobacco warehouse. There 
are 350 officers in confinement. Every thing is very miserable, starvation, rags, &c. 
We first received one of those significant slips of paper (of which I have seen so many 
bushels one time & another, brought up by exchanged prisoners, dingy, soiled, half-
legible, records of death, home addresses, of prisoners, &c.) written by his own hand, 
with mother's name on, & dated at Danville, Va. November 23d, 1864 and the words, 
"well & hearty." This slip came through after long delay by an exchanged chaplain.2 
But the next day, Gan 20, '65,) we received through the mail quite a letter, dated 
November 27, written in good spirits, putting the best face on his imprisonment, & 
claiming to be in good health. He mentioned the other officers of the regiment, Major 
Wright, Lieut Pooley, &c. The prison is in charge of Lieut. Col. Robert C. Smith, 
Confederate Army.3 
The opening paragraph of the Times article also corresponds closely to 
parts of a January 19, 1865, Brooklyn Daily Union article attributed to 
Whitman by Jerome Loving: 
The friends of Capt. George W. Whitman, of this city, captUred last September in 
battle near Petersburgh, Va., will be glad to learn that he has just been heard from, 
though for the first time since his capture. 
66 
OIi September 30th, at the battle of Poplar Grove Church, Capt. Whitman was among 
those cut off on the extreme left at nightfall and captured .... Since then his relatives 
here have had no word or knowledge of him until yesterday they received by the hands 
of an exchanged prisoner a small slip of paper written in pencil by Capt. Whitman's 
hand stating that he was at Danville, Va., and doing well. The slip is dated November 
23, 1864. 4 
Furthermore, the second paragraph of the January 1865 Times ar-
ticle declares itself a sequel; its apparent predecessor is an October 29, 
1864, Times article attributed to Whitman by Emory Holloway.s With a 
very similar title of "Fifty-first New-York City Veterans," the October 
1864 piece recounts in considerable detail the exploits of George 
Whitman's regiment, from its first muster in October 1861, through its 
capture virtually en-masse at Poplar Grove Church, Virginia, in Sep-
tember 1864. Significantly, the galleys for this October 1864 article, in 
the collection of Yale University's Beinecke Library, contain substantial 
marginalia in Whitman's hand which seemingly were intended for use 
in a follow-up article. Most did not find their way into the subsequent 
January 1865 Times piece. However, one notation-"Capt. D. E. Tenkins 
... killed in the Wilderness Campaign"6 -apparently was the genesis 
for the opening sentence in the second paragraph, which states, "In our 
former sketch of the Fifty-first we should have mentioned a gallant of-
ficer, Capt. DANIEL E. JENKINS, shot and instantly killed while lead-
ing his men in the hottest of the Wilderness fight last May." 
The last sentence of paragraph two praises the regiment's first two 
commanders, Edward Ferrero and Robert Potter, but obliquely criti-
cizes their successor, Colonel Charles W. LeGendre. In his notes of a 
December 1864, interview with the Fifty-first's Lieutenant Colonel R. 
Charlton Mitchell, Whitman recorded a far blunter assessment of the 
Colonel's capabilities: "LeGendre was an incompetent officer in every 
respect" (NUPM, 2:702). In a xenophobic pique, Whitman had earlier 
deplored the 1863 appointment of the French-born and educated sol-
dier: "LeGendre is now Col. of the 51 st-it's a pity if we havn't Ameri-
cans enough to put over our old war regiments-(I think less and less of 
c' . tho ) "7 10relgners, m IS war . . . . 
Finally, the closing paragraph of the January 24, 1865, Times ar-
ticle corresponds to an additional Whitman manuscript written three 
days before. As transcribed by Grier, it states: 
Jan 21> 1865, New York. 
Had an interview to-day with E F Shepard of Wall Street, New York. He told me that 
Capt McKibbern had been commissioned Colonel of 51 st, by special application of 
General Potter. Taking further advantage of the captivity the regular officers, an ap-
pointment had also been made of Lieut Colonel of the 51 st; but the gentleman assigned 
67 
to the latter post, promptly declined, as he considered it unfair to be foisted over the 
heads of the regular officers, in this manner. The Governor (Seymour,) then made still 
another appointment of an outsider to the Lieutenant Colonelcy, of the 51 st, but he also 
declined, for same. reasons. 
A remark was made, by a person present at the interview I speak of, that this trick, 
taking advantage of the misfortune & absence by accident of war, of the veteran officers 
of the 5pt, to foist outsiders, over their heads, & prevent the well/earn'd promotion of 
those in regular line, was a trick worthy of the New York ward politicians & one which 
no honorable General officer would ever initiate, nor would any honorable soldier how-
ever ambitious, ever accept promotion through its means.8 
The position of Colonel of the Fifty-first New York Infantry had opened 
up with the discharge on October 4, 1864, of both Colonel LeGendre 
and Lt. Colonel Mitchell, the fonner for disability from wounds re-
ceived at the battle of the Wilderness, and the latter after completion of 
his three-:-years' enlistment. Gilbert H. McKibbin, Assistant Adjutant 
General with the rank of Captain in the U.S. Volunteers, was commis-
sioried Colonel of the Fifty-first on December 9, 1864. However, 
McKibbin declined the appointment and was never mustered in.9 Simi-
larly, Samuel N. Benjamin was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel on 
the same day but also was never mustered in.10 
Whitman obviously learned of McKibbin's refusal to accept lead-
ership of the Fifty-first before he published the Times article, since he 
corrects the misimpression held by Eliot F. Shepardll and others. But 
he uses the opportunity to condemn the promotion of outsiders over 
the heads of the regiment's own leaders, most of whom had, like 
Whitman's brother George, worked their way up the ranks through 
meritorious service. Whitman believed strongly in meritocracy as the 
guiding principle for "a new Army organization fit for America," whose 
lifeblood was "an exhaustless, intelligent, brave and reliable rank and 
file."12 The partisan·Whitman placed the blame for the attempted foist-
ing of outsiders on the outgoing Democratic governor of New York, 
Horatio Seymour, whom Whitman would later damn . as "a Copper-
head ... of the ~ankest kind" (Corr., 2: 36). As a leader of the opposi-
tion party, Seymour had played the role of hete noir to the saintly (in 
Whitman's eyes) Abraham Lincoln, opposing the President on emanci-
pation, the draft, arid military arrests. 13 Governor Seymour campaigned 
actively for Presidential candidate George B. McClellan in 1864 and 
lost his own bid for re-election when Lincoln's coattails swept Republi-
can Reuben E. Fenton into the governor's mansion in Albany. 
As Whitman had urged, promotions did indeed await the captive 
officers of the Fifty-first New York Infantry. Upon release from Con-
federate prison, Major John Wright was promoted to Lt. Colonel and 
Colonel in tum, Captain George Whitman became Major, and First 
Lieutenants Samuel M. Pooley and William T. Ackerson were made 
Captain.14 By keeping faith with its own "exhaustless, intelligent, brave 
68 
and reliable rank and file," the Fifty-first New York Volunteers had 
proven itself the exemplar of Whitman's "new Army organization fit for 
America." 
The Washington Friends of Walt Whitman 
NOTES 
The three additional articles in the "George" series include an October 29, 1864, 
New York Times; a January 19, 1865, Brooklyn Daily Union; and a March 16, 1865, 
Brooklyn Daily Union. 
2 The exchanged chaplain was Joseph C. Emerson of the Seventh New Hampshire 
Infantry. A resident of Fisherville, New Hampshire, Emerson was commissioned Chap-
lain on October 17, 1861. Captured during the Petersburg campaign at New Market 
Heights, Virginia, on September 29, 1864, he was imprisoned successively at Salisbury, 
North Carolina, Danville, Virginia, and Richmond's Libby prison. He was returned 
on January 14, 1865, and mustered out of service on January 20, 1865. (Compiled 
Military Service Record for Joseph C. Emerson~ Seventh New Hampshire Infantry, Na-
tional Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Adjutant General's Of-
fice, Record Group 94.) 
3 Walt Whitman, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward Grier 
(New York: New York University Press, 1984),2:747-748 (hereafter abbreviated 
NUPM). I have not included Grier's transcription of Whitman's emendations. The 
manuscript is at Yale University, Beinecke Library, Walt Whitman Collection, Box 
152. 
4 Jerome M. Loving, "'A Brooklyn Soldier, and a Noble One': A Brooklyn Daily 
Union Article by Whitman," Walt Whitman Review 20 (March 1974), 27-30. 
5 Walt Whitman, The Uncollected Poetry and Prose, ed. Emory Holloway (New York: 
Peter Smith, 1932), 2:37-41. 
6 Yale University, Beinecke Library, Walt Whitman Collection, Box 149. Whitman's 
marginalia are not included in NUPM. 
7 Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New 
York University Press, 1961), 1:88 (hereafter abbreviated Corr.). 
8 NUPM, 2:706-707. I have not included Grier's transcription of Whitman's emen-
dations. The manuscript is at Yale University, Beinecke Library, Walt Whitman Col-
lection, Box 149. 
9 Gilbert H. McKibbin (correct spelling) was not a complete interloper, as he had 
formerly served with the Fifty-first New York Infantry as Lieutenant from October 9, 
1861, through November 12, 1862. He was discharged to accept appointment as As-
sistant Adjutant-General, U.S. Volunteers. Captain McKibbin was brevetted Major, 
Lt. Colonel, Colonel, and Brigadier General on December 2, 1864, and was mustered 
out of the U.S. Volunteers on September 19, 1865. See Frederick Phisterer, New York 
in the War of the Rebellion~ 1861 to 1865 (Albany: 1. B. Lyon Company, 1912), 1 :407, 
3:2408, 5:4294. Curiously, George Whitman described McKibbin in a July 2, 1864, 
letter to his family as "one of Walt's acquaintances." See George Washington Whitman, 
Civil War Letters, ed. Jerome M. Loving (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1975), 
124. 
69 
10 Phisterer, 3:2399, 3:2401. 
11 During the Civil War, Elliot F. Shepard served as aide-de-camp on the military 
staff of New York Governor Edwin D. Morgan, who was also a major-general of vol-
unteers. Shepard was the namesake and former Colonel of the Shepard Rifles, one of 
three militia units from which the Fifty-first New York Volunteers was formed in 
1861. See entry on Shepard in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. 
12 Walt Whitman, Memoranda During the War (Camden, 1876),31. 
13 See entry on Seymour in Dictionary of American Biography. 
14 Phisterer, 3:2395, 3:2400, 3:2410, 3:2413-2414. Whitman misidentified Ackerson 
as "Atkinson" in the Times article. 
70 


Walt Whitman on Brother George and His Fifty-First New York Volunteers: An Uncollected New York Times Article

Announcements, Spring 2000

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Spring 2000

French, R. W

Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 [review]

Discovers two variants of line 1118 of the 1855 poem eventually entitled "Song of Myself," indicating that Whitman interrupted the printing of the first edition of Leaves of Grass to make a significant revision

Schmidgall, Gary

1855: A STOP-PRESS REVISION 
GARY SCHMIDGAll.. 
As IS WElL KNOWN, Walt Whitman claimed to have been present at the 
printer's shop of the brothers Andrew and James Rome, at Cranberry 
and Fulton Streets in Brooklyn, when the first edition of Leaves of Grass 
was set in type-and even to have set some type himself. Responding to 
a query from unidentified "Dear Sirs" in a letter dated March 31, 1885, 
Whitman stated: "The first Leaves of Grass was printed in 1855 in Brook-
lyn New York-Small quarto 9 by 12 inches, 95 pages-in the type 
called 'English' -was not stereotyped-800 copies were struck off on a 
hand press by Andrew Rome, in whose office the work was all done-
the author himself setting some of the type" (Corr. 6:30). A surviving 
invoice by the edition's Brooklyn binder, Charles Jenkins, corroborates 
this, giving a total of 795 copies in various bindings.! 
Until now, no variants involving changed wording have been dis-
covered among extant copies of the 1855 Leaves from the print run of 
795 copies, though instances of discrepancies involving broken type have 
been noted. And Joel Myerson, in his Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bib-
liography, did observe that, "due to mis-inking," the pronoun "I" is miss-
ing in the tenth line on page 15 in some copies.2 However, in the course 
of proof-reading for my St. Martin's Press edition, Walt Whitman: Se-
lected Poems 1855-1892 (1999), what 1 believe to be the first known sub-
stantial change in wording-and thus the first known revision from the 
thousands Whitman was to make in Leaves of Grass over the following 
thirty-seven years-came to light. 
The St. Martin's Press proofreader worked from my Chandler Pub-
lishing Company 1968 paperback facsimile of a copy of the first edition 
in the Library of the University of Cali fomi a at Berkeley, and 1 checked 
the proofs against an original copy in the New York Public Library 
(NYPL). While comparing notes, we became aware of the following 
two versions of the second line on page 49 (i.e., line 1118 of the untitled 
poem beginning "I celebrate myself' -which was finally titled "Song of 
Myself'): 
And the night is for you and me and all, [Berkeley copy] 
And the day and night are for you and me and all, [NYPL copy] 
73 
Clearly, Whitman stopped the press and either ordered the change or 
made it himself. One reason the discrepancy may not have come to light 
hitherto is that Whitman suppressed the entire line after the third edi-
tion of Leaves (1860). 
Several Whitman scholars have confirmed that this is a first discov-
ery of its kind. The implications are significant, not least the likely con-
firmation of Whitman's personal presence during the printing process. 
This also raises a question about the collation, if any, of copies of the 
first edition by the editors of the variorum edition of Leaves. 3 Indeed, I 
am unaware of a complete census of extant copies of the 1855 edition. 
Curious about the state of other copies, I found that all of the nearly 
dozen 1855 Leaves in the New York Public Library's Oscar Lion and 
Berg Collections contain the longer line. The 1939 Facsimile Text So-
ciety edition and the 1992 Collectors Reprints facsimile were based on 
NYPL copies, and the 1966 Eakins Press facsimile-reproduced from a 
copy in Yale University's Beinecke Library-also has the longer ver-
sion.4 Of the three copies in the Columbia University Rare Books col-
lection, one (the Lamont copy) has the shorter line, the other two the 
longer. The Huntington Library is fortunate to have both versions rep-
resented in its two copies. (A Huntington curator, Alan Jutzi, was espe-
cially delighted to learn of the discovery because it constituted an argu-
ment for not deaccessioning redundant copies of important titles.) The 
Library of America edition, incidentally, offers the shorter line, while 
the Variorum records only the longer line, as does Malcolm Cowley's 
familiar edition of the 1855 Leaves and as does Emory Holloway's early 
"variorum" edition. 5 
The predominance of copies with the longer line suggests that, ear-
lier rather than later in the print run, work was stopped and the shorter 
line was replaced. Whitman pared down the longer line to "Day and 
night are for you, me, all," for the 1856 edition, and it appeared as such 
in the 1860 edition. In his personal copy of that edition, in pencil, 
Whitman first considered adding "And that" to the beginning of the 
line. But then he crossed out the entire line, and it indeed vanished 
from all subsequent editions. 6 
In my introduction to the St. Martin's edition, I assert my convic-
tion that Whitman's substantial revisions are typically not improvements. 
In this view I find myself in the excellent company of the poet's devoted 
friends Anne Gi~christ, Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, and William 
O'Connor. They loudly decried Whitman's tendency to revise, and a 
case could be made against this seemingly innocuous first change. For 
if, by respectably adding "day" to the line, Whitman denatured in a 
fleeting way his boast elsewhere of being a "disorderly," "sensual," and 
"rough" poet/companion of the night, then this first known revision in 
the printed version of his chef d'oeuvre could be accounted contrary to 
the overwhelmingly subversive thrust of "Song of Myself'-and there-
74 
fore unfortunate. It would by no means be the last time Whitman was, 
to borrow a phrase of his own, stung by the respectability bee. 
Then again, Whitman may have felt, much earlier in the poem, he 
had made his credentials as a denizen of night-town Mannahatta suffi-
ciently clear with these lines: "Press close barebo-somed night! Press 
close magnetic nourishing night! ... Mad naked summer night!" 
City University of New York 
NOTES 
See William White, "The First (1855) 'Leaves of Grass': How Many Copies?," 
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 57 (1963), 352-354. 
2 Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 
1993), 19-20. 
3 Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, and William White, eds., 
Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 3 vols. (New York: New York 
University Press, 1980). 
4 New York: Columbia University Press for Facsimile Text Society, 1939; New York: 
Collectors Reprints, 1992; New York: Eakins Press, 1966. 
5 Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: 
. Literary Classics of the United States, 1982),78; Leaves of Grass, ed. Malcolm Cowley 
(New York: Viking, 1961), 76; Variorum, 70; Leaves of Grass: Inclusive Edition, ed. 
Emory Holloway (Garden City: Doubleday, 1926), 570. 
6 See Arthur Golden, ed., Walt Whitman's Blue Book (New York: New York Public 
Library, 1968), 1 :92; Variorum, 70. 
75 


1855: A Stop-Press Revision

Announcements, Summer/Fall 2000

Kummings, Donald D

Asselineau, Roger. The Evolution of Walt Whitman: An Expanded Edition [review]

Investigates the anecdote about Whitman being watched by the police at the 1853 Crystal Palace Exhibition, an anecdote that William Douglas O'Connor wrote out but then cancelled in a manuscript about Whitman that he prepared for Moncure Conway; argues that the anecdote is significant in what it reveals about Whitman's attitude toward and relationship with policemen, as well as what it reveals about the possible origins of Leaves of Grass in Whitman's reactions to Bertel Thorwaldsen's statues of "Christ and His Apostles," which were on display at the Crystal Palace

Benton, Paul

Whitman, Christ, and the Crystal Palace Police: A Manuscript Source Restored

Front Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 17, no. 3

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