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Our "Sick Man"

About This Item

  • Title: Our "Sick Man"
  • Date: 18 December 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00854
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 18 December 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Samantha Gilmore Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Our "Sick Man"." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00854.xml (TEI)
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OUR "SICK MAN."

Perhaps there is no more perplexing question on the political tapis than the one concerning the condition of Mexico. The intelligence that Spain has formally declared war against that weak republic still more complicates the matter, and will demand the most careful consideration and decisive action on the part of our Government.

The President’s1 Message, referring to our proposition towards Spain and the condition of Mexico, indicated much of perplexity in his own mind. He does not seem to have any well defined idea of what should be the course of the United States in the premises, but midst all the halting timidity of his suggestions, he strongly recommends the establishment of a protectorate over our distracted neighbor. It is apparent that Mexico is utterly incapable of taking care of herself. The plain question will now be presented, who is to take care of her? We must do it ourselves or leave it to be done by some one of the European powers. Mexico is our “sick man.”2 We have a mortgage upon her which has already run its full time. We have also an old grudge against Spain, which has not been improved by the recent acts of insolence and outrage on the part of her officials towards citizens of the United States.

The signs in the Gulf of Mexico and all along shore down to the impertinent little governments of South America, begin to assume a warlike appearance, and Congress will have something else to do during this session than mere President-making, and the government will be kept too busy with these menaces of wars with foreign powers, to devote all its time to our domestic wars. So much the better.

Notes:

1. James Buchanan (1791–1868) was the fifteenth President of the United States (1857–1861). Late in life Whitman still considered Buchanan "perhaps the weakest of the President tribe—the very unablest" (With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, November 5, 1888). For more information on Whitman and his disdain for Buchanon, see also Bernard Hirschorn, ""To a President" (1860)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]

2. The "sick man" is a reference to the growing dissolution and weakness of the Ottoman state known as "The Sick Man of Europe." [back]

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