Content:
One of a number of manuscripts in which Whitman records and develops
ideas for a poem that never emerged about the Crusades. In this
particular manuscript, Whitman lists figures such as "Peter the Hermit"
and "The Popes." While Whitman mentions the Crusades specifically
in both his prose works
Specimen Days & Collect
(1882–1883) and
Democratic Vistas
(1871), a direct link between
these manuscript notes and any of his published works is unclear. Other dated
materials containing notes on the Crusades suggest this manuscript was
likely composed around 1869. The
verso contains part of a cancelled letter between Charles Francis Adams,
Minister to England during the Civil War, and Earl Russell, British
Foreign Minister, regarding the Confederate steamer
Georgia
, which Whitman
would have had to copy from another published document.
