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Something Like a Fight!

About This Item

  • Title: Something Like a Fight!
  • Date: 3 June 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00908
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 3 June 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 Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Something Like a Fight!." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00908.xml (TEI)
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SOMETHING LIKE A FLIGHT!

If there be any truth in the following dispatch from the South, something like a fight has very probably happened at last:

AUGUSTA, Ga., Wednesday, June 2.

An American vessel has been fired into by a British cruiser off Pensacola, Fla., and one man killed. The name of neither vessel is given. The U.S. Steamer Fulton1 was in chase of the vessel which committed the outrage, no other vessel being in company.

Our telegraphic dispatch this afternoon, (3d page,) will probably afford something more definite—either a confirmation of the rumor, or a denial of it.

We must say we are puzzled to understand the motives at the bottom of these late outrages by the British cruisers, down south. Though small, they are among the most flagrant of any ever committed upon our pride and rights. If the nation went to war, on account of such things, forty-five years ago, when it was a second or third class power, what will it be likely to do now, when it considers itself second to no power upon earth?

Notes:

1. The U.S.S. Fulton was a U.S. Navy steamer.. During the Civil War, it would be captured by the Confederate forces in Pensacola, Florida. [back]

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