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The Prize Fight

About This Item

  • Title: The Prize Fight
  • Date: 22 October 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01126
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 22 October 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. "The Prize Fight." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01126.xml (TEI)
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THE PRIZE FIGHT.—

The German papers, without, so far as we have heard, a single exception, refused to publish accounts of the late prize fight, considering them demoralising and the fight itself disgraceful. The Tribune,1 in recording the affair this morning, accompanies its report with expressions of disgust at the task. Some few papers defend the practice of prize fighting, on the ground, that its encouragement would lead to the disuse of murderous weapons, but the fact is that besides the classes who share in or bet on prize fights, no one in the North carries concealed weapons. It is thought by some that these fights are promotive of bravery, but the fact is taht their tendency would be towards developing rowdy turbulence instead of calm courage.

Notes:

1. Horace Greeley's Tribune (founded in 1841) was a reform-minded New York newspaper that quickly became the most widely read papers in the country. For more information, see Susan Belasco, "The New York Daily Tribune," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]

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