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Whitman Archive Title: Memoranda of a Year
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Whitman Archive ID: yal.00346
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
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Box: 3
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Folder: 143
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Date: 1863
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Genre: prose
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Physical Description: 9 leaves, handwritten; printed
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Content:
Draft of letter, heavily revised, to publisher James Redpath. Included with the letter, which pitches Whitman's idea for a book about his firsthand experiences among Civil War soldiers, are a title page mock-up, a draft publisher's announcement, the label that Whitman created for these items, and a blank envelope. The letter is written on the reverse of proofs of a circular for the United States Christian Commission, and the label, which dates the letter to October 21, 1863, is written on the clipped front of a United States Christian Commission envelope. Whitman was unable to get such a book published for over a decade.
Memoranda During the War
(1875–76) includes the short essay "A New Army Organization Fit for America Needed," which echoes specifically the ideas and language about military reform from the draft letter. This essay was later shortened to a single paragraph and republished in
Specimen Days & Collect
(1882–83), given the slightly altered title "A New Army Organization Fit for America." The same language from the letter draft might also have contributed to a note on the topic of military reform that Whitman added to
Democratic Vistas
(1871) when he created that book-length essay from several earlier pieces.
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