Whitman, Walt (1819–1892)

For many people, the name of Walt Whitman, arguably America's greatest poet, is virtually synonymous with social activism. They perhaps recall in his poetry some impassioned lines about slaves at auction, or lines grousing about puritanical attitudes toward sexuality, or a passage adamantly insisting on the principles of democracy. They may remember having learned that at certain stages of his long life, which extended from 1819 to 1892, Whitman associated with radicals of various persuasions, for example, Barnburners, Free-Soilers, abolitionists, women's rights advocates, proponents of free love, anarchists, socialists, and atheists, though he never unconditionally endorsed any of their causes. In his early writings, which included poems, short stories, a novel, and newspaper editorials, Whitman did indeed champion various reforms. In the last analysis, however, Whitman's political radicalism was more literary than social. It ended up being expressed in his poetry, in the egalitarian vision of Leaves of Grass, rather than in any particular campaign for social change.

Whitman's political activism was most overt, most public, during the 1840s and early 1850s. By 1845 he had become a prominent member of the New York City Democratic Party. His writings had begun to address many of the day's most hotly debated reform issues. He objected to the slave trade and to the extension of slavery, as is visible in such poems as “Song for Certain Congressmen” (later entitled “Dough-Face Song”), “Blood-Money,” “House of Friends,” and “Resurgemus” (later entitled “Europe, the 72d and 73d Years of These States”). He was quite critical of both corporal and capital punishment, as can be seen in such short stories as “Death in the School-Room (a Fact)” and “The Angel of Tears.” He deplored the country's heavy consumption of alcohol and advocated temperance, as can be observed in his stories “Reuben's Last Wish” and “The Child's Champion” and his novel Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate. A Tale of the Times. From 1846 to 1848, in the many editorials he wrote for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Whitman supported such causes as improved wages and working conditions for laborers, the rights of women, unrestricted immigration, prison reform, education reform, freedom of speech and of the press, free trade, and sexual liberty for both men and women.

With the publication in 1855 of the first edition of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, Whitman redirected or rechanneled his activist energies. Some critics, like Jerome Loving, believe that Whitman at this point essentially abandoned the political in favor of the poetical. Other critics, such as Betsy Erkkila and M. Wynn Thomas, believe that Whitman did not forsake his political opinions but continued them by other means.

From time to time, Whitman has been criticized for his failure to become a political activist; that is, someone out in the trenches fighting on behalf of the suffering, the exploited, the oppressed. But Whitman often indicated that he was discomfited by extremists or “ultraists.” Yes, he said, one should be radical, but not so radical as to bring about social disorder or as to undermine America's Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Whitman believed in agitation. He once said to his friend Horace Traubel, “I think agitation is the most important factor of all—the most deeply important. To stir, to question, to suspect, to examine, to denounce!” On the other hand, he also said that he feared agitators. Whitman did in fact often contradict himself, as he famously claimed in “Song of Myself.”

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