The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to the Editors of the New York Times, October 1864
Date: October 1864
Whitman Archive ID: yal.00453
Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library. 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 created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Ted Genoways (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004), vol. 7, and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Vanessa Steinroetter, and Nicole Gray
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(Private) when a great general dies, you print his obituary, & his record, by its inspiration sometimes does as much good as his deeds.—I think the 51st New York Veterans, lately captured almost entire, while bravely fighting, deserves some such mention. The statements in the abstract I send are all facts. You will see I have avoided any thing like puffing, but given an abstract only.1
Notes:
1. This letter is a draft and apparently a letter of transmittal for Whitman's "Fifty-First New York City Veterans," published in the New York Times, October 29, 1864. It is written on the back of a series of notes by Whitman that have been crossed out. [back]