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Whitman Archive Title: Slavery
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Whitman Archive ID: duk.00149
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
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Repository Title: Slavery—the Slaveholders—The Constitution
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Date: Between 1850 and 1860
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Genre: prose
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Physical Description: 20 leaves, handwritten
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Content:
References to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 indicate that parts of this manuscript were likely written in the early 1850s. Edward Grier writes that it "seems to be a composite manuscript assembled, in characteristic Whitman fashion, from fragments large and small, with several discontinuities" which were "combined into one essay or speech about 1856 and revised in minor detail . . . in 1858 or later" (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 6:2171–2172). Grier explains the discontinuities in more detail in his headnote to the transcription of this manuscript. In that headnote he also speculates about the significance of the mathematical calculations found on the versos of several of the leaves. Grier notes that Whitman's "emphasis, especially in the early pages, on the Constitution as a contract reflects his reading of at least parts of
The Social Contract
" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (6:2171). In theme, tone, and some of the wording, this manuscript bears a strong resemblance to "The Eighteenth Presidency!" an unpublished political essay that Whitman wrote in or around 1856. For more on that essay, see David Haven Blake, "'Eighteenth Presidency!, The' (1928)," in
Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia,
ed. J. R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 201–203. The leaves of this manuscript have been numbered, possibly by Whitman himself.
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