The Star and Ourselves | Whitman Archive

About This Item

Title: The Star and Ourselves
Date: 24 April 1859
Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Whitman Archive ID: per.01409
Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 24 April 1859: 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 Francesca Boston Jason Stacy Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Star and Ourselves." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: per.01409.xml (TEI)

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THE STAR AND OURSELVES.

The publication in the TIMES of Mr. Underhill's¹ Oration in advance of its delivery is an event which has caused us more distress than anything which has yet occurred to us in our newspaper career, and but for a series of untoward circumstances, not necessary here t explain, it could not have occurred. Mr. U, as most of our readers must be aware, is a gentleman for whom we entertain the most unqualified regard and admiration, and hence we should as soon think of voluntarily inflicting an injury or a slight upon him as upon the dearest object of our heart. From the intimate relations between us he was led to entrust the manuscript of his oration to the TIMES for distribution; and the same cause would have rendered us unwilling, even if we had been capable of having acted disingenuously by any man, to select Mr. Underhill as the person. We printed no extra copies, nor strove to make extra profit from the occasion, but we admit that the circumstance, to explain which we should have to go further into personal and business matters than we care to do, has placed us at a disadvantage. And the cowardly, sneaking Star, thinking it had "caught us on the hip," takes occasion to charge us with habitual breach of faith—an imputation which we scornfully throw back in the toothless gums of the antiquated sham who utters it. The success and go-ahead propensities of the TIMES, which circulates more thousands of copies that the Star has ever been enabled to do hundreds, are the real causes of the chronic though impotent malignity which it exhibits towards us, and which was not at all mitigated by the honored gentleman who delivered the oration having entrusted us instead of the obscure Western District sheet with his MSS. If there has been anything disreputable in this celebration affair, it has not been in this quarter, nor related to the Oration—but rather the Star, and that "Ode" which was first palmed by it on the city, and then by it surreptitiously published days in advance of the celebration. The Star had better shift that load off its shoulders before it tries to pile anything of the kind on ours.

Notes:

1. Richard C. Underhill (1824–1871) was a district attorney of Kings County. He gave an oration at the celebration of the opening of the New York City waterworks. He became embroiled in a controversy between the Brooklyn Daily Times and the Brooklyn Evening Star in which the Brooklyn Daily Times was accused of breaking Underhill's trust by publishing the oration early. [back]