Harper's Weekly Magazine

Whitman wrote one of his most popular poems, "Beat! Beat! Drums!," shortly after the first battle of Bull Run in July 1861. The piece, often called a "mobilization poem because of its call to arms, was first published in Harper’s Weekly. The "Journal of Civilization," as the masthead proclaimed, was established in 1857 and became famous for its coverage of the Civil War, especially its lavish illustrations. In some of his letters to his mother, Whitman occasionally included copies of the Weekly so that she could enjoy illustrations of Abraham Lincoln or the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. But Harper's Weekly also published literature and readers enjoyed the works of a variety of British and American writers, including Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, Henry James, Williams Dean Howells, and John Greenleaf Whittier. In the late 1880s, Whitman wrote a number of short poems, frequently about public occasions or events, which he hoped to sell to magazines and newspapers in order to earn extra income. When former president and war hero Ulysses S. Grant was dying, Whitman was invited by the editors of Harper’s Weekly to submit a poem about him. Whitman sent "As One by One Withdraw the Lofty Actors," a poem about Grant and others who were important to the Civil War, and received $30.00 in payment. Whitman's other poem published in the Weekly, "Bravo, Paris Exposition," was rejected first by both the New York Herald and New York World. This poem, for which Whitman received $10.00, commemorates the Paris Exposition, which ran from May 6 through November 6, 1889.