The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Joseph C. Baldwin to Walt Whitman, 11 August 1877
Date: August 11, 1877
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04068
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.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray
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Elliottstown Effingham Co: Ills:—1
August 11th /77
Dear Walt
Thinking you would like to Here from me I would write you a few lines in as much as Im well and Hope this will find you the same2
Business is very dull Here now and crops is ruined for the want of rain. all of my worment of of mind and toil of body is of no avil Im feafuly in want now and when my crops is geathered it wont be much better as I see O I musent say Im in want Because I Have got plenty to eat and some close
But not much money now I dont nead as much
But the fuather looks dark But may come out Better than I amagn
I will Buy some Hogs on a credit and feed my unsailable corn to them and may come out all right in due time I received those papers many thanks)
yours truly
Jos. C. Baldwin
write soon
Notes:
1. Whitman wrote a series of notes about the Odyssey on the back of one of the pages of this letter. At the top of the notes are the words "for Abraham Lincoln." [back]
2. Joseph C. Baldwin was a young sharecropper living in Elliottstown, Illinois, who Whitman likely met in Camden in 1873. Baldwin is discussed in Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados, ed. Charley Shively (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987), 122–135. [back]