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Words and Deeds in American History


Letter and corrected reprint of Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain" with comments by author, 9 February 1888.
(Walt Whitman Collection)

Title

Inspired by the death of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote his famous dirge "O Captain! My Captain!" in 1865. A rare example of his rhymed, rhythmically regular verse, the poem was published in the Saturday Press to immediate acclaim and was included in the poet's Sequel to Drum-Taps also published that year. Whitman revised the poem in 1866 and again in 1871. It quickly became his single most popular poem, much to his consternation, and it was the only one of his poems in his compendium Leaves of Grass to be widely reprinted and anthologized during his lifetime.

In one such anthology, Riverside Literature Series No. 32, Whitman spotted some errors, and sent the publishers this corrected sheet with the following note written on the verso, dated 9 February 1888, from Camden, New Jersey. "Thank you for the little books, No. 32 "Riverside Literature Series"--Somehow you have got a couple of bad perversions in "O Captain," & I send you a corrected sheet." The editors apparently erred by picking up earlier versions of punctuation and whole lines, which the poet had revised in 1871 and now repudiated: "Leave you not the little spot" in the first stanza was supposed to be "O the bleeding drops of red." In the second stanza, Whitman corrects "This arm I push beneath you" to "This arm beneath your head." In the final stanza, the editors quoted, "But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage safe and done" whereas it should have read, "The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done."

Whitman's lecture on Lincoln was much in demand during the poet's old age, and in the 1880s he usually included a recitation of "O Captain." He gave the lecture and recitation almost annually in the 1880s--four times in 1886. He once told his friend Horace Traubel (1858-1919), "Damn My Captain . . . I'm almost sorry I ever wrote the poem" though it did have "certain emotional immediate reasons for being." One of these was the centrality of the Civil War to Whitman's personal and poetic life and his perception of the war as a reflection of the nation on trial. Whitman also once envisioned Lincoln as an archangel captain and reportedly dreamed the night before the assassination about a ship entering a harbor under full sail.

Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division


For Additional Information
For additional information on the Walt Whitman Collection, you can leave this site and read a summary catalog record for the collection.

Reproduction Number:
A83 (color slide of letter); A84 (color slide of poem reprint); LC-MSS-77909-1 (B&W negative of poem reprint)

Related Terms:
Assassinations | Civil War, 1861-1865 | Leaves of Grass | Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865) | Literature | "O Captain, My Captain!" (Poem) | Poems | Poets | Presidents | Riverside Literature Series | Traubel, Horace (1858-1919) | Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)


Arts and Literature | Arts and Literature Items List | The Presidency | Presidential Items List | Chronological List | Words and Deeds

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