Whitman had a long association with the New York Evening Post, beginning in the early 1840s, when he once mentioned the Post as the best newspaper in New York in an article in the New York Aurora. Founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, the New York Evening Post was edited by the poet William Cullen Bryant from 1829 until his death in 1878. Under his direction, the newspaper advocated the anti-slavery movement, free speech, and free soil. The paper was also well known for the high quality of its writing and Bryant employed correspondents across the United States and in Europe for coverage of news and events. Bryant and Whitman met when Whitman was editing the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the two became friends. Bryant published Whitman's prose sketches, "Letters from Paumanok," in the Post in the 1851. Whitman's first poem to appear in the Post was "Song for Certain Congressmen," signed "Paumanok." The poem castigated politicians who constantly shift their positions as "dough-faced." His other two poems in the Post appeared in the 1870s and were written for specific occasions. "After All, Not to Create Only" was commissioned for the opening ceremony of the fortieth National Industrial Exposition of the American Institute and was widely reprinted. "The Song of the Universal," a commentary on the one hundred years of American independence, was written for the commencement exercises of Tufts College.
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Widner, Ted. "New York Evening Post." In Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, edited by J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.