Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Published Writings
  3. Periodicals
  4. Journalism
  5. per.01459

Correspondence about Sunday Cars

About This Item

  • Title: Correspondence about Sunday Cars
  • Date: 11 July 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01459
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 11 July 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: Samantha Gilmore Kevin McMullen Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Correspondence about Sunday Cars." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01459.xml (TEI)
image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT SUNDAY CARS.

The Sunday car discussion in this city was, while it lasted, as our readers are aware, productive of a vast mass of correspondence, as varying in tone as diverse in merit. It is not our intention to recur to these or any of them in detail; but we must be permitted to felicitate ourselves on being at last able to present the public with the very apex of the pyramid of epistolary curiosities which the subject has evolved. We infer from Mr. Hatch's attempt at the dead languages, that he conceives himself to have been "some pumpkins" (it will be perceived that our English is as classic as Mr. Hatch's Latin) in the Sunday car controversy.1 We are gratified, therefore, to assure the reverend gentlemen, that, even had he been utterly unknown in connection with the subject before, his name is indissolubly attached to it now, and he will enjoy an immortality as certain as the fame of the contest will be durable. And as for the forthcoming volume, we shall look for it with the deepest interest.2 It will no doubt take rank as the greatest epic ever produced. Homer's battle of the Frogs and Mice won't be a circumstance to it.

Notes:

1. Junius Loring Hatch (1825-1903) was a Congregationalist clergyman in Brooklyn. Hatch was a vocal opponent of the Sunday Laws and was later expelled from the church for his stance. Following his expulsion in New York, he spent some time in New England, in Boston and New Hampshire, before relocating to California in the 1870s.  [back]

2. Following this editorial, the Brooklyn Daily Times printed a letter from J. L. Hatch, dated July 6, in which Hatch discussed his plans to soon publish a "history of the late Sunday Car controversy." [back]

Back to top