Lincoln Dont fail to note | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: Lincoln Dont fail to note
Whitman Archive ID: loc.07042
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Library of Congress
Box: 6
Folder: "Death of Abraham Lincoln," notes and early drafts, [1875]
Series: Lincoln Material
Date: 1876-1879
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: Handwritten notes about Abraham Lincoln, most likely intended for use in Whitman's lecture, "Death of Abraham Lincoln." The page numbers refer to Samuel Penniman Bates' book, The Battle of Gettysburg (Philadelphia: T.H. Davis & Co., 1875). Bates had quoted a letter from Lincoln to General Joseph Hooker, making note of Lincoln's characteristic "homely but pointed similes" (13–14). Whitman also notes pages reproducing the Gettysburgh Address, as well as Edward Everett's remark to Lincoln about the power of his twenty lines (213–15). Whitman delivered his lecture about Lincoln in New York in 1879 and would deliver it at least eight other times over the succeeding years. Whitman would later publish a version of the lecture as "Death of Abraham Lincoln" in Specimen Days (1882–1883), which was retained in Complete Prose Works (1892).