TEACHER AND JOURNALIST
The spring of 1836 found Whitman in New York.[55]
He was in his seventeenth year, had now learnt his trade, and had begun
to write for the weekly papers; among others, contributing occasionally
to the handsome and aristocratic pages of the _Mirror_, perhaps the
best of its class.[56] He lived in that journalistic atmosphere which
encourages expression and turns many a clever lad into a prig. Walt was
self-sufficient, but there was nothing of the prig[57] in him. Limited
as his schooling had been, he was naturally receptive and thoughtful,
and his education went steadily forward; he made friends with older
men, and with men of education from whom he learnt much. And now he
became a teacher.
He was a healthy boy, but had somewhat overgrown his strength, and
perhaps this was among the causes of his leaving the city in May, and
going up Long Island into the country. He joined his family for awhile,
who were living at Norwich;[58] and subsequently settled for the winter
as a country teacher at Babylon, boarding round, as was the custom, in
the homes of his various pupils.
* * * * *
[Illustration: WHITMAN'S BIRTHPLACE FROM THE FARM-YARD, 1904]
The little town of Babylon stands on the swampy inner shores of the
Great South Bay, which is a spacious lagoon separated from the Atlantic
by a narrow beach or line of sand hills. This outer beach bears
here and there a ridge of pine forest or a lighthouse; but for the
rest, it is abandoned to sea-birds and grass, to the winds and a few
sand-flowers scattered among the wind markings which are stencilled
in purple upon the sand in some delicate aerial deposit. Outside,
even upon quiet days, the surf beats ponderously with ominous sound,
the will and weight of the ocean in its swing. Within, across the
wide unruffled waters of the lagoon, populous with sails, is the
far-away fringe of the Babylon woods, and over them, pale and blue, the
hill-range above Huntington.
The bay itself is a glorious mirror for the over-glow of the sky at
sunset or sunrise. Standing upon its inner rim at Babylon, as the
colour begins to die into the dusk, you may see mysterious sails
moving by hidden waterways among fields still merry with the chirrup
of innumerable crickets; while beyond the rattle of cords and pulleys
and the liquid murmur of the moving boats, beyond their lights that
pierce the darkening water like jewelled spears, glimmers a star on
Fire Island beach to greet the great liners as they pass by. In summer
it is a field of many harvests; famous for its blue-fish, its clams
and oysters; and neither the lads of Babylon nor their young master
were behind-hand in spearing eels, catching crabs and gathering birds'
eggs.[59] In a hard winter it is frozen over for months together.
* * * * *
For the greater part of the next four or five years, Walt remained in
the country, moving about from place to place, and paying occasional
visits to New York. He is said to have been a good and popular
teacher;[60] and if his equipment was not great, it was sufficient;
he liked boys and had the gift of imparting knowledge. He took his
work seriously, was always master in the schoolroom, and knew whatever
passed there. He followed methods of his own; breaking loose from
text-books, to expound his knowledge and impart his own interests to
his scholars. The element of personality told throughout his teaching;
already it was notable as the power behind all that he did. An
impression of himself, of his universal kindliness, of the sympathetic
quality of his whole person, his voice and look and manner, and of a
certain distinction and dignity inseparable from him, was retained by
his pupils in after years.
His favourite method of punishment is worth recording, as
characteristic of his power and of his theory of pedagogics. An
admirable story-teller, he would chastise any scholar who had behaved
dishonourably, by describing his conduct to the whole school, and
without the mention of a name, the guilty boy or girl was sufficiently
self-condemned and punished in his own shame. Graver offences were made
more public.
In recess and away from school, Walt was a sheer boy, heartily joining
in the most boisterous games and sharing every kind of recreation
consistent with his kindly spirit. "Gunning" was never included.
Among the scholars there must often have been those of his own years,
and the fact that he could preserve his status as a teacher while
living on terms of frank comradeship with his scholars, declares him
born to the office. They were mixed schools which he taught, and
towards the girls his attitude was one of honest equanimity. He was
the same with them as with the boys, betraying neither a sentimental
preference nor a masculine disdain. Perhaps American girls with their
friendly ways and comparative lack of self-consciousness, call for less
fortitude on the young teacher's part than some others; but Walt's
own temperament stood him in good stead. It seems improbable that he
was ever subject either to green-sickness or calf-love, and he was no
sentimentalist.[61]
Perhaps the idleness of which Mr. Spooner retained so lively a
recollection, might have hindered his becoming an ideal dominie. His
thoughts must sometimes have been far afield, his pupils and their
tasks forgotten. It was not, as I have already suggested, that he was
lazy; he worked hard and fast when his mind was upon his work, and best
of all perhaps as a teacher in contact with human beings; but he was
never so busy that he could refuse to pursue an idea, never so occupied
that he could miss a new fact or emotion.
Like other young teachers, Walt probably learnt at least as much as he
taught, if not from his pupils, then from their parents. Boarding with
them, he came to know and to love his own people, the peasant-yeomanry
of the island.[62]
He was a favourite with the friendly Long Island youths and girls of
his own years, but his closer friendships seem to have been with older
people: the well-balanced, but strongly marked fathers and mothers
of families. He loved the country too, and all the occupations and
amusements of the open-air, into which he had been initiated as a
child. Thus he learned his island by heart, wandering over it on foot,
by day and night; sailing its coasts and out into the waters beyond,
in pilot and fishing boats, to taste for himself the brave sea life of
those old salts, Williamses and Kossabones, his mother's ancestors.
* * * * *
In the spring of 1838, we find him again at Huntington; and here, in
June,[63] he founded a weekly journal, the _Long Islander_, which is
still published. Full of interests, self-sufficient and ready with his
pen, and in close touch with his readers, he conducted the paper for a
while with success. He was nineteen and an enthusiast; and he was both
printer, editor and publisher.
Like others of the time, his paper was probably a humble sheet of
four small pages, and his task was not so heavy as it may sound. He
thoroughly enjoyed the work, as well he might: the new responsibility
and independence were admirably suited to his years and temper. He
purchased a press and type, and his printing house was in the upper
story of what is now a stable, which stood on the main street of the
town.
There he did most of the work himself, but I have talked with an old
man who shared his task at times. And not his task only; for the
printing room was, we may be sure, the scene of much beside labour.
Walt loved companionship, and was an excellent story-teller; he loved
games, especially whist, which he would play--and generally win--for a
pumpkin pie. But when he worked, he "worked like the mischief," as the
saying is;[64] and when he said so his companions knew that they must
go. They must have recognised, if they thought about him at all in that
way, that while he made no display of his knowledge he knew far more
than they, and while he was an excellent comrade, it would not do to
treat Walt with too great familiarity.
As to his talk, it was clean and wholesome and self-respecting. He
was too much of a man already to resort to the mannish tricks of many
youths. He had, moreover, at this time, a tinge of Puritanism, which
did him no harm: he neither smoked nor drank nor swore. He contemned
practical jokes. Maybe there was less of Puritanism about him than
of personal pride. He was himself from the beginning, belonged to no
set, and went his own ways. He seemed to be everywhere and to observe
everything without obtruding himself anywhere. And having purchased
a horse, he carried the papers round to the doors of his readers in
the surrounding townships. Often, afterwards, he recalled those long
romantic drives along the glimmering roads, through the still fields
and the dark oak woods under the half-luminous starry sky, broken by
friendly faces and kind greetings.
But before the year was out the appearance of the _Long Islander_
became more and more irregular, till the patience of its owner and
subscribers was exhausted. In the spring it ceased for a time, and
when it reappeared it was numbered as a fresh venture under new
management.
Walt had gone back to school teaching at Babylon.[65] He continued this
work for two years more, wandering from place to place, now at the
Jamaica Academy, now at Woodbury, now at Whitestone. He was, at this
time, a keen debater and politician, an Abolitionist, a Washingtonian
teetotaler, and ardently opposed to capital punishment. He took an
active share in the stump oratory of 1840, when Van Buren of New York
was for the second time the Democratic nominee for President. The fact,
with the knowledge he always showed of the art of oratory, and the
plans for lecturing which he afterwards drafted, seems to testify to a
native capacity for public speaking, as well as a genuine and serious
interest in the affairs of the nation.
* * * * *
Walt Whitman was becoming recognised as a young man of ability: in
spite of his nonchalant and friendly unassuming ways, he had pride
and ambition. He felt in himself that he was capable of great things,
and that it was time to begin them. Not very clear as to what his
proper work might be, he took the turning of his inclination, and
early in the summer of 1841 entered the office of the _New World_,
as a compositor,[66] to become for the next twenty years one of the
fraternity of New York pressmen.
His first success was achieved in the August number of the _Democratic
Review_, one of the first American periodicals of the day, which
counted among its contributors such writers as Bryant, Whittier,
Hawthorne and Longfellow. His "Death in the Schoolroom,"[67] appearing
over the initials of "W. W.," caught the public fancy, and was widely
copied by the provincial press. It is the study of a gruesome incident
in Long Island country life; by turns sentimental and violent in its
horror, and evidently intended as an argument against school flogging.
It has a sort of crude power and its subject matter would have appealed
to Hawthorne. It is by no means discreditable; but to us it seems
verbose, and it is clumsy in its exaggerated style. Lugare is shown to
us at one moment standing as though transfixed by a basilisk--and at
another, "every limb quivers like the tongue of a snake".
Whatever its faults, they did not offend the taste of the hour: the
Review welcomed his contributions, and some study from his pen appeared
in its pages each alternate month throughout the next year, some being
signed "Walter Whitman" in full. To the _New World_ he had meanwhile
been contributing conventional and very mediocre verses in praise of
Death and of compassionate Pity.[68]
The remorse of a young murderer; an angel's compassionate excuses for
evil-doers; the headstrong revolt of youth against parental injustice,
and the ensuing tragic fate; the half-insane repulsion of a father
toward his son, prompting him to send the lad to a madhouse and thus
wrecking his mind; the refusal of a young poet to sell his genius; the
pining of a lover after the death of his beloved; the lonely misery of
a deaf and dumb girl, who has been seduced and deserted; the reform
of a profligate by a child; the sobering of a drunkard at his little
sister's death-bed; and an old widow's strewing of flowers on every
grave because her husband's remains unknown: such are the subjects
with which he dealt.[69] His wanderings in Long Island had supplied
him with incidents upon which to exercise his imagination. Those which
he selected have always some pathetic interest, while several have an
obviously didactic purpose.
Whitman's moral consciousness was still predominant: he was an
advocate of "causes". But his morality sprang out of a real passion
for humanity, which took the form of sentiment; a sentiment which was
thoroughly genuine at bottom, but which in its expression at this time,
became false and stilted enough to bear the reproach of sentimentality.
In view of their author's subsequent optimism, it is interesting to
note that all these studies are of figures or incidents, more or less
tragic.
Whitman was puzzling over the ultimate questions: the problem of evil,
as seen in the sufferings inflicted by tyrannical power, and by callous
or lustful selfishness, upon innocent victims; on the inscrutable
tragedies of disease and insanity; and again, upon the power of
innocence, of sorrow and of love to evoke the good which he saw
everywhere latent in human nature, and which a blind and heavy-handed
legalitarian justice would destroy with the evil inseparable from it.
The more he thought over these problems, the more he recognised the
futility of condemnation, and the effectiveness of understanding love.
* * * * *
The _New World_, upon which he was working, published the first
American versions of some of the principal novels of the day; it
reprinted several of the new poems of Tennyson from English sources
and contained long notices of such works as Carlyle's _Heroes and
Hero-worship_. In November, 1842, it issued as an extra number
Dickens's _American Notes_, the sensation of the hour--the author
having been _fêted_ at the Park Theatre in February--and announced
Lytton Bulwer's _Last of the Barons_ to follow. On the 23rd of
the month, in the same fashion, appeared _Franklin Evans, or The
Inebriate_, a tale of the times, by Walter Whitman. It was advertised
as a thrilling romance by "one of the best novelists in this country";
and the proprietors of the magazine expressed their hope that the
well-told incidents of the plot and the excellence of the moral would
commend the book to general circulation. Nor were they disappointed. It
is said that twenty thousand copies were sold. The book, then, achieved
a tolerable success, and its author profited to the extent of some
forty pounds.
Copies of _Franklin Evans_ are now excessively rare, and one may
say with confidence they will remain so. For the tale will never be
reprinted. It claims to be written for the people and not for the
critics, and even the people are unlikely to read it a second time.
It is an ill-told rambling story of a Long Island lad who, going to
the metropolis and taking to drink, falls through various stages of
respectability till he becomes a bar-tender. He marries and reforms,
but presently gives way again to his habit; his wife then dies, and he
falls lower. Eventually he is rescued from gaol, and signs the "old"
pledge against ardent spirits. Then he goes to Virginia, where he
succeeds in fuddling his wits with wine, and marries a handsome Creole
slave. Forthwith he becomes entangled with a white woman who drives his
wife to the verge of madness, until a tragic fate releases him from
them both, and the story concludes with his signature to the pledge of
total abstinence. The author recommends it to his readers, and breaks
out into praises of the Washingtonian crusade, foretelling its imminent
and complete victory over the "armies of drink".
The pages are diversified by Indian and other narratives impertinent to
the plot, and by invectives against the scornful attitude of the pious
and respectable toward those who are struggling in the nets of vice.
The whole book is loosely graphic and frankly didactic, its author
declaring his wish to be improving, though he will keep the amusement
of his readers in view. He opines that in this temperance story he has
found a novel and a noble use for fiction, and if his first venture be
successful, be assured it will be followed by a second.
It is difficult to treat _Franklin Evans_ seriously. That Whitman
was at the time a sincere advocate of the more extreme doctrines of
temperance reform can hardly be doubted. But in after years--the whole
incident having become a matter of amusement to its author, not wholly
unmingled with irritation when, as sometimes, it was thrust upon him
anew by reformers as ardent as he had once been--he would laugh and
say with a droll deliberation that the story was written against time
one hot autumn in a Broadway beer-cellar, his dull thoughts encouraged
by bubbling libations. One suspects a humorous malice in the anecdote,
belonging rather to his later than his earlier years. It may be noted,
however, that while Whitman commended the pledge, he also commended
a positive policy of "counter attraction" to all the young men who
scanned his pages, to wit, an early marriage and a home, though he
himself remained a bachelor.
_Franklin Evans_ was honest enough. Young Whitman was serving
the adorable Lady Temperance with fervour, if not with absolute
consistency. He knew her cause to be a good one; but he found that, in
this form, it was not quite his own, and he was too natural not to be
inconsistent. He had not yet come to his own cause, nor for that matter
to himself. And thus his essay became a _tour de force_; as he did not
repeat it, we may suppose he was as little satisfied as those who now
waste an hour upon this "thrilling romance".
He was now in the full stream of journalistic activity. He wrote for
the _New York Sun_, and appears for a few months to have acted as
editor in succession of the _Aurora_ and the _Tattler_.[70] In 1843 he
filled the same post on the _Statesman_, and the year after upon the
_Democrat_; while contributing also to the _Columbian Magazine_, the
_American Review_, and Poe's _Broadway Journal_.[71]
Probably none of these contributions are worthy of recollection.
Anomalous as it may sound, from twenty-three to thirty-five Whitman was
better fitted for an editor than for an essayist. He was clever without
being brilliant; he had capacity but no special and definite line of
his own. His strength lay in his judgment; and upon this both friends
and family learnt to rely.
Several of the papers for which he wrote were party organs; it may have
been that his political services in 1840 won him an introduction to the
editors of the _Democratic Review_, and helped him on his further way.
In any case, it is certain that he frequented the party's headquarters
in the city. Tammany Hall was named after an Indian brave,[72]
presumably to indicate the wholly indigenous character of its
interests. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, it seems to have
become the seat of a society of old Knickerbockers, gathered partly
for mutual protection against certain groups of foreign immigrants
who had shown a hostile disposition, and partly in opposition to the
aristocratic Cincinnati Society presided over by Washington. During
Jefferson's Presidency it became a political centre, and was identified
with the Democratic party from the time of its re-organisation under
Jackson in New York State.
The Democrats failed to elect Van Buren, and were in opposition from
1840 to 1844. During the electoral struggle, a Baltimore journal had
spoken slightingly of the humble character of Harrison, the Whig
candidate:[73] better fitted, it pronounced, for a Western log-cabin
and a small pension than for the White House. Harrison, like Andrew
Jackson, was an old soldier: he had beaten the Indians long ago in a
fight at Tippecanoe; and that, together with the simplicity of this
Cincinnatus--the imaginary log-cabin, the coon-skins and hard cider,
which made him the impersonation of the frontiersman to whom America
owed so much, being all artfully exaggerated by party managers--caught
the fancy of the whole country, which rang for months together with the
refrain of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too". Harrison died immediately after
his inauguration and Vice-president Tyler took his place.
In Tammany's back parlour, Walt made the acquaintance of many notables,
and not least, of an old Colonel Fellowes,[74] who loved to discuss Tom
Paine over a social glass, and to scatter to the four winds the legends
of inebriety which had gathered about his later years of poverty and
neglect. But that Whitman was a violent partisan even at this time,
seems to be disproved by the fact that in 1843 or 1844 he contributed
political verses to Horace Greeley's _Tribune_, a paper which had
grown out of the Whig election sheet.[75] And though, like his father,
he adhered now and always to the general political tradition of the
Democrats, was a free trader, jealous of the central power, and voted
with his party till it split in 1848, he was as good an Abolitionist
as Greeley himself. Indeed, both the _Tribune_ poems are inspired by
the theme of slavery, and as if in witness to the reality of their
inspiration, he breaks for the first time into the irregular metres he
was to make his own.[76]
A religious ardour breathes from these singular Scriptural utterances.
The first, "Blood-money," is a homily on the text, "Guilty of the body
and the blood of Christ". In the slave, whom he describes as "hunted
from the arrogant equality of the rest," he sees the new incarnation of
that "divine youth" whose body Iscariot sold and is still a-selling. It
is an admirable piece of pathos, fresh, direct and unmannered, and by
far the most individual and striking thing Whitman had done. And it was
the only one which could be regarded as prophetic of the work that was
to follow. Especially is this felt in such lines as
The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalked silently forward,
Since those ancient days; many a pouch enwrapping meanwhile
Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.
The piece was signed "Paumanok," as also was "A Dough-face Song," which
appeared in the _Evening Post_.
The second of the _Tribune_ poems, "Wounded in the House of
Friends,"[77] is inferior to the first in poetic merit, though adopting
a somewhat similar medium. It is a rather violent denunciation of those
intimates of freedom whose allegiance to her can be bought off--"a
dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing"--elderly "dough-faces"
whose hearts are in their purses. It was upon Northern traitors to
the cause rather than upon the people of the South, that Whitman
poured out his indignation: and this position he always maintained.
The _Tribune_ itself was at the time an ardent supporter of Clay's
candidature for the Presidency; but Clay subsequently trimmed upon this
very question, and this action, by alienating the anti-slavery party in
New York, resulted in his defeat at the polls.
Whitman's political poems suggest already that loosening of ties
which separated him a few years later from the main body of his
party; but in 1844, following the lead of advanced Democrats like
W. C. Bryant, he worked actively for Polk, the party candidate, who
became President.[78] We cannot too often remind ourselves that the
later Republicanism of the 'sixties was supported by men who had been
Free-soil Democrats as well as by certain of their Whig opponents.
Meanwhile, it was to the Radical wing of his party that young Whitman
belonged.
* * * * *
Though engaged in the political struggle, he was by no means absorbed
in it. His profession encouraged his natural interest in the affairs of
his country, but not in the political affairs alone. He shared in the
social functions of the city and its district. He frequented lectures
and races, churches and auction rooms, weddings and clam-bakes.[79] He
spent Saturday afternoons on the bare and then unfrequented sand ridge
of Coney Island, bathing, reading and declaiming aloud, uninterrupted
by a single one of the hundreds of thousands who now fill the island
with their more artificial holiday making and their noisier laughter.
In those days one did not require a costume to bathe on Coney Island
beach.
Nearer than Coney Island, Brooklyn Ferry was always one of his
favourite haunts.[80] Walt had always loved the boat as well as the
river; as a child he had seen the horses in the round-house give place
to the engine with its high "smoke-stack"; the captain and the hands
were old friends, and he never tired of watching the passengers. Who
does not feel the delight of such a ferry, the swing of the boat, the
windy gleam in the sky, the lights by day or night upon the water, the
sense of weariless and unceasing movement as of life itself? New York,
on its island, is richer than most cities in these river crossings,
which take you at once out of the closeness and cares of the streets
into the free broad roadways of wind and water, roadways which you
can scarcely traverse without some enlargement and liberation of the
city-pent soul in your breast.
And in the city itself he had a thousand interests;[81] he went
wherever people met together for any purpose; he had a critic's
free pass to the theatres and was often at the opera and circus,
he frequented the public libraries too, and the collections of
antiquities; but most of all he loved to read in the open book of
Broadway. Up and down that amazing torrent of humanity he would ride,
breasting its flood, upon the box-seat of one of the stages, beside
the driver. From time to time he would make himself useful by giving
change to the fares within, when he was not already too fully occupied
declaiming the great passages from his favourite poets into the ears of
his friend.
The fulness of human life surging through the artery of that great
city exhilarated him like the west wind or the sound and presence of
the sea. The sheer contact with the crowd excited him. And though he
came to know New York in all its dark and sordid corners--and even
an American city before the war was not without its shame--he won an
inspiration from its multitudinous humanity distinct from any that the
country-side could afford. Every year he grew more conscious of his
membership in the living whole of human life; and the consciousness
which brought despair to Carlyle, brought faith and glory to Whitman.
He did not blink the ugly and sinister aspects of things, as many an
optimist has done; he saw clearly the brothel, the prison, and the
mortuary; his writing at this time, as we have seen, deals largely
with the tragedies of life; but humanity fascinated him--not an
abstract or ideal humanity, but the concrete actual humanity of New
York. For its own sake he loved it, body and soul, as a man should. It
was not philanthropy, it was the wholesome, native love of a man for
his own flesh and blood, for the incarnation of the Other in the same
substance as the Self.
Very little passed in the city without his knowledge. He was in the
crowd that welcomed Dickens in 1842;[82] and was doubtless among the
thousands who celebrated the introduction of the first water from the
Croton supply into New York, and hailed the pioneer locomotive arriving
over the new track from Buffalo. Among the public figures of the day,
he became familiar with the faces of great politicians like Webster and
Clay; among writers, he saw Fitz-Green Halleck and Fenimore Cooper,[83]
and made the acquaintance of Poe who was struggling against poverty in
New York, and who became at this time--1845--suddenly famous through
the publication of "The Raven";[84] and won the more lasting friendship
of Bryant, who was at that time the preeminent American poet, and held
besides the editorship of the _Evening Post_, to which Walt had been a
contributor.[85]
* * * * *
In February, 1846, Whitman was appointed editor of the _Brooklyn Daily
Eagle_,[86] a democratic journal of a single sheet. The office was
close to the Ferry, and he seems at this time to have lived with his
family on Myrtle Avenue, near Fort Greene, rather more than a mile
away. His editorials boasted no literary distinction, and were even
at times of doubtful grammar; but they were direct and vigorous, and
discussed all the topics of the hour.[87] When a New York Episcopal
Church was consecrated with much ceremony and display, he would
denounce the self-complacent attitude of the Churches; every instance
of lynching or of capital punishment would call forth his protest;
he was faithful in his support of the rights of domestic animals; he
approved of dancing within reasonable hours, and he advocated art in
the homes of the people. Largely owing to his persistent advocacy the
old battle-ground of Fort Greene was secured to Brooklyn as a park.
In dealing with the immediately critical question of relations with
Mexico, while he anticipated extension of territory without dismay,
he uttered his warning against the temper which prompts a nation to
aggressive acts. "We fear", he said,[88] "our unmatched strength may
make us insolent. We fear that we shall be too willing (holding the
game in our own hands) to revenge our injuries by war--the greatest
curse that can befall a people, and the bitterest obstacle to the
progress of all those high and true reforms that make the glory of this
age above the darkness of the ages past and gone."
The admission of Texas into the Union, in 1845, was soon followed
by a war with Mexico, which eventually completed the filibustering
work of Houston by the annexation of New Mexico and California. This
territorial expansion was pushed forward, as we noted before, by Polk
and the Democrats in the interests of the South;[89] but the fact that
it was Wilmot, a Free-soil Democrat, who introduced the celebrated
proviso to an appropriation of money for the war, proposing to exclude
slavery from all territory which might be acquired from Mexico, reminds
us of the division within the party which resulted in a split two years
later.
The country at this time was in a condition of feverish irritation; and
the war spirit was only too easily aroused. In 1847, it threatened to
burst into flame over a territorial dispute with Great Britain. America
claimed the latitude of 54.40 as the northern boundary of Oregon, and
for awhile, under the jingo President, the country rang with the insane
alliterative cry of "fifty-four forty or fight".[90] A spirited foreign
policy is the universal panacea of the charlatan; it is his receipt
for every internal disorder, and it was continually being prescribed to
America during the next fifteen years. This was indeed the charlatan's
hour, when the official policy of the dominant Democratic party
oscillated between jingoism and what was afterwards known throughout
America as "squatter sovereignty". It was the repudiation of the Wilmot
proviso, and the adoption of the new doctrine which Douglas afterwards
made his own, that drove Whitman into revolt.
He was comfortably seated in his editorial chair, where he might have
remained for years had his Radical convictions permitted. Though
the owners of the _Eagle_ were orthodox party men, the editor's
anti-slavery attitude was not concealed,[91] and indeed could not be.
Their criticism of his editorials caused him immediately to throw up
his post. He would not compromise on the question, and he would not
brook interference. It was January, 1848, when he left the _Eagle_,[92]
and a few weeks later he was making his way south to New Orleans.
* * * * *
Whitman had joined the "Barnburners" or Van Buren men of New York
State, who now became Free-soil Democrats, making the Wilmot proviso
their platform,[93] in opposition to the "Hunkers," who denounced
it. As to the Whigs, they burked the whole matter, and contrived in
their nominating convention to silence the question by shouting. The
Democratic party found its real platform in the nostrum of "squatter
sovereignty," the specious doctrine that in each new State the citizens
should themselves decide upon their attitude towards slavery, deciding
for or against it when drawing up a Constitution. To this, Lewis Cass,
its candidate for the Presidency, subscribed. But the "Barnburners" put
forward Van Buren, a former President, and a Democrat of the school of
Jefferson and Jackson, who was also supported by the "anti-slavery"
party. His policy was to confine slavery within its actual limits: "no
more Slave states, no more slave territory". As a consequence of the
Democratic split in the Empire State, the thirty-six electoral votes of
New York were given to the Whig candidate, General Taylor, the Mexican
conqueror, and he became the next President.
A whole-hearted Free-soil Democrat, Whitman's position as editor of an
orthodox party journal had naturally become untenable.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] MSS. Harned.
[56] _Comp. Prose_, 187.
[57] _Whit. Fellowship_, '94 (Traubel).
[58] MSS. Harned.
[59] _Comp. Prose_, 7-9.
[60] _Whit. Fellowship_, '94 (C. A. Roe); Johnston, 114.
[61] _Whit. Fellowship_ (Roe); _In re_, 34.
[62] _Comp. Prose_, 10, 11, 521.
[63] _Ib._, 10, 11, 188; Thomson, 476; Burroughs (_a_), 28.
[64] _Whit. Fellowship_, '94 (Traubel).
[65] MSS. Harned.
[66] _Ibid._
[67] _Comp. Prose_, 336.
[68] _New World_, Nov. 20, Dec. 18, 1841.
[69] _Comp. Prose_, 340-370; _Democratic Review_, etc.
[70] MSS. Harned; _Comp. Prose_, 188.
[71] _Comp. Prose_, 12, 196.
[72] _New York Mirror_ (1833), 87. _Cf._ Larned.
[73] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 389.
[74] _Comp. Prose_, 90.
[75] _Mem. Hist._, iv., 157.
[76] _Comp. Prose_, 372.
[77] _Ib._, 273.
[78] Bucke, 23.
[79] _Ib._, 21.
[80] _Comp. Prose_, 11.
[81] _Comp. Prose_, 11-14, 426, 519.
[82] _Comp. Prose_, 11.
[83] _Ib._, 11, 12.
[84] _Alibone's Dict._
[85] _Comp. Prose_, 196.
[86] MSS. Harned.
[87] _Atlantic Monthly_, xcii., 679.
[88] _Atlantic Monthly_, xcii., 686.
[89] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 397, 398.
[90] _Ib._, 399.
[91] _Atlantic Monthly_, xcii., 683, 684.
[92] MSS. Harned.
[93] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 399; _Comp. Prose_, 188.