O Captain! My Captain! | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: O Captain! My Captain!
Whitman Archive ID: pml.00002
Repository ID: MA 1212
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
Date: 27 April 1890
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: "O Captain! My Captain!" was written in response to the death of Abraham Lincoln and first published on November 4, 1865 in the New-York Saturday Press . It would later be reprinted in Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865) and then again, with slight revisions, in Passage to India (1871) and Leaves of Grass (1881-82). This particular manuscript was written out by Whitman for Dr. S. Weir Mitchell (a prominent author and doctor) at the request of Horace Howard Furness, for the amount of one-hundred dollars. A note on the back of the manuscript in Mitchell's hand says, "To give Walt a little money I offered for a gentleman 100$ for an autograph copy of My Captain—I pin it to Furness note April 1890." This manuscript differs slightly from the first printing, but agrees with that in Leaves of Grass , 1881-82, with one exception: In the penultimate line, Whitman has probably mistakenly written "dead" instead of "deck."