principal personages of the

Whitman Archive Title: principal personages of the
Whitman Archive ID: loc.07417
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Library of Congress
Box: 6
Folder: Lincoln Material Poetry Manuscripts "The Crusades" [1869?]
Series: Lincoln Material
Date: Around 1869
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: One of a number of manuscripts in which Whitman records and develops ideas for a poem that never emerged about the Crusades. In this particular manuscript, Whitman lists figures such as "Peter the Hermit" and "The Popes." While Whitman mentions the Crusades specifically in both his prose works Specimen Days & Collect (1882–1883) and Democratic Vistas (1871), a direct link between these manuscript notes and any of his published works is unclear. Other dated materials containing notes on the Crusades suggest this manuscript was likely composed around 1869. The verso contains part of a cancelled letter between Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England during the Civil War, and Earl Russell, British Foreign Minister, regarding the Confederate steamer Georgia , which Whitman would have had to copy from another published document.