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What are We Coming to?

About This Item

  • Title: What are We Coming to?
  • Date: 5 August 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01026
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 5 August 1857: 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 Kevin McMullen Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "What are We Coming to?." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01026.xml (TEI)
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WHAT ARE WE COMING?

The query is a somewhat stale one. The newspapers have echoed and re-echoed the cry—the pulpit has taken it up—we have heard it repeated so often and in so many shapes that it palls on the ear. Men shrug their shoulders and grow hard and callous and indifferent.

And yet the question is one of vital importance. The frightful increase of demoralisation and crime in our midst, during the last few years, is enough to shake the confidence of the most hopeful of enthusiasts and awaken the most earnest and prayerful solicitude in the breasts of those who have the best interests of society at heart.

The morning newspaper is rapidly becoming a mere catalogue of horrors. From all over the country accounts come pouring in of crimes the most cold-blooded, of outrages the most unutterable. Justice seems asleep, and sin raises its unblushing face in bold defiance. Pervading all classes of society runs the poisonous virus of sneering disbelief, of law-defying, God-defying vice—of that worst form of practical atheism, which makes illicit pleasure the sole end of existence, and which scornfully ignores the safe traditions of a better, a purer and a wiser age.

Where shall we turn for evidences of a healthier state of things? Not, surely, to the young men and women who are growing up around us, soon to fill our places. How different are these pale, dissipated, “used-up” specimens of Young America from the high ideal of a true and vigorous manhood. How very far removed from the women of old times are these painted furbelowed animated balloons who are to be the future mothers of the Republic. A small comfort we have in such a survey.

A general laxity of morals—a general indifference to the old standards of right and wrong by which our fathers regulated their lives, pervades all classes. Apparently, all distinctions of the kind seem to be fading away. Our morals are French—our theology German. But in our fastness—in our manner of “rushing” these things we are thoroughly ourselves. Where shall we fetch up? What is to be the end of it? It is shocking to see in this young civilisation of ours so many of the evidences of corruption and decay.

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