I wrote you several days ago asking you to tell me whether $100 was
your lowest price. I think I said also that if you charged lower than that price I
could sell a great many more articles for you than I could at these rates. I enclose
a check for $60, which is payment for the article according to your own estimate of
3,000 words, at the rate of $20 a thousand, which is the very highest rate they
pay.1 I had to decide within ten minutes whether I
would accept it or not, as Mr. Ferris, who is in charce of the syndicate, was just about to start for Mount McGregor. I told him,
however, that if you refused to sell the article for less I should loc.03287.002_large.jpg consider myself
responsible for the balance and expect payment for it either from him or from Mr.
Rice.2
So my dear old friend I have protected your interests to the best of my judgement and if you want me to follow orders and break owners in future let me know and I will do it. The great problem that the universe is asking you this moment is whether I am to regard this check as payment in full or payment on account. I also would like you to answer my letters. I have no interest whatever in the syndicate to which I sold the manuscript.
Ever yours truly Jas RedpathCorrespondent:
James Redpath (1833–1891),
an antislavery activist, journalist, and longtime friend of Whitman, was the
author of The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (Boston:
Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), a correspondent for the New York
Tribune during the war, and the originator of the "Lyceum" lectures. He
met Whitman in Boston in 1860, and he remained an enthusiastic admirer; see
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, January 4, 1889. He concluded his first letter to Whitman on
June 25, 1860: "I love you, Walt! A conquering
Brigade will ere long march to the music of your barbaric jawp." Redpath became
managing editor of The North American Review in 1886. See
also Charles F. Horner, The Life of James Redpath and the
Development of the Modern Lyceum, (New York: Barse & Hopkins,
1926); John R. McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath
and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2008); and J.R. LeMaster, "Redpath, James [1833–1891]," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).