The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William C. and Francis P. Church, 19 May 1871
Date: May 19, 1871
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01707
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Notes for this letter were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Kenneth M. Price, Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, and Nicole Gray
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Department of Justice
Washington.
May 19, 1871.
Messrs. Church,1
My friends,
If convenient, please remit to me, here, a check for $25 in pay for "O Star of France".
Yours truly
Walt Whitman
Notes:
1. William Conant Church (1836–1917), journalist and publisher, was a correspondent for several New York newspapers until he founded The Army and Navy Journal in 1863. With his brother Francis Pharcellus (1839–1906), he established the Galaxy in 1866. Financial control of the Galaxy passed to Sheldon and Company in 1868, and it was absorbed by the Atlantic Monthly in 1878. W. C. published a biography of his life-long friend U.S. Grant in 1897, and F. P. wrote for the New York Sun the unsigned piece "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." See E. F. Grier, "Walt Whitman, the Galaxy, and Democratic Vistas," American Literature, 23 (1951–1952), 332–350; D. N. Bigelow, William Conant Church & "The Army and Navy Journal" (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952); J. R. Pearson, Jr., "Story of a Magazine: New York's Galaxy, 1866–1878," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 61 (1957), 217–237, 281–302. [back]