Title: Joseph C. Baldwin to Walt Whitman, 11 September 1877
Date: September 11, 1877
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04069
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados, ed. Charley Shively (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987), 134. 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
Elliottstown, Illinois,
September 11, 1877
Dear Walt
I am well now But I Have just got out of a bed of sickness.1 I Have Had the Intermiten fever and pretty Bad.
Walt a friend in need is a friend indeed. I will ask you wanst more to Help me a little if you could lend me ten Dollars for a short time say six weeks or two months until I can sell som corn. I will Have about 2000 Buishels But it wont be ripe for six weeks or two months and then I will send it Back to you with may thanks after I get things fixt up then I think I will pay you a visit and we will enjoy ourslves as of old
write just as soon as you get this,
yours truly,
Joseph C. Baldwin
1. 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]