Cohoctah, Michigan,
March 10, 1863
Mr. Whitman
Dear Sir
I1 am seated in an easy chair pen in hand trying to scribble a few lines to you. I expect it will take me all day to write this for I cant sit up but a few moments at a time. I was taken down with chills & fever when I got to Pittsburg. I stayed there from Saturday night until Monday morning before any train left I dont think I ever was so sick in my life as I was in Pittsburg I about gave up there that I never should get home alive, but there was a Dr there he gave me some medison he said that would take me home & it did.
We was behind time at most every place we changed cars so we had to wait I expected to have got home in three days at the outside but instead of three I was six.
It dont look much like winter here there is not a parrticle of snow on the ground & its about such weather as it was in Washington although its not quite so muddy There hasnt been any sleighing here this winter & there wont be now its to late in the season
They are making maple sugar in this part of the world now when I get well I will eat some for you but I suppose you think that wont do you much good.
I tell you I am glad I am out of that Hospital & when I get into another to stay I will let you know it.
Oh how are you getting along with your office I am in hopes you have recd it before this time I begun to think that your office & my discharge had gone to the same place now I have got my papers I think you had ought to receive yours
I cant write any more this time my hand trembles so I can hardly write but I will try & do better next time give my best respects to Mr & Mrs O Connor.2 Yours &c.
PS Write soon
Notes
- 1. Justus F. Boyd was a
soldier in the 6th Michigan Cavalry. Whitman wrote the following entry on Boyd
in a notebook that he kept shortly after his appointment to the Christian
Commission, January 20, 1863 ("Walt Whitman Soldier's," Thomas Biggs Harned
Collection of Walt Whitman, The Library of Congress, Notebook #99, sheets
1098–1133): "Corp. Justus F. Boyd bed 22 co. D 6th Michigan cavalry been
in five months, four sick, affection of kidneys and pleurisy—wants some
paper and envelope and something to read gave him 12 sheets paper, & 12
envelopes & three of them franked by Sumner." [back]
- 2. For a time Whitman lived
with William D. and Ellen M. O'Connor, who, with Charles W. Eldridge and later
John Burroughs, were to be his close associates during the early Washington
years. William D. O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of Harrington, an abolition novel published by Thayer & Eldridge in
1860. He had been an assistant editor of the Saturday Evening
Post before he went to Washington. O'Connor was an intelligent man who
deserved something better than the various governmental clerical posts he was to
hold until his death. The humdrum of clerkship, however, was relieved by the
presence of Whitman whom he was to love and venerate—and defend with a
single-minded fanaticism and an outpouring of vituperation and eulogy that have
seldom been equaled, most notably in his pamphlet, "The Good Gray Poet." He was
the first, and in many ways the most important, of the adulators who divided
people arbitrarily into two categories: those who were for and those who were
against Walt Whitman. The poet praised O'Connor in the preface to a posthumous
collection of his tales: "He was a born sample here in the 19th century of the
flower and symbol of olden time first-class knighthood. Thrice blessed be his
memory!" (Complete Prose Works [New York, D. Appleton,
1910] pp. 513). For more on Whitman's relationship with the O'Connors see O'Connor, William Douglas [1832–1889]. Of the O'Connors, Thomas
Jefferson Whitman wrote on June 13, 1863: "I am
real glad, my dear Walt, that you are among such good people. I hope it will be
in the power of some of our family to return their kindness some day. I'm sure
twould be done with a heartfelt gratitude. Tis pleasant, too, to think, that
there are still people of that kind left." [back]