The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: steamboats and vaccination
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Before or early in 1855
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00888
Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: This manuscript includes words and ideas similar to those that appear in the Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. The date of the manuscript is therefore probably before or early in 1855.
Related item: On the back of this manuscript is another prose manuscript that relates to the poem that would become "Song of Myself." See duk.00293.
Contributors to digital file: Robert LaCosse, Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, Nicole Gray, Kevin McMullen, Kenneth M. Price, and Brett Barney
[begin leaf 1 recto] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/duk.00293.002.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/duk.00293.002.jpg)
[begin hashmark section]
4
steamboats and vaccination, gunpow[der?] and spinning-jennies; but are our people half as peaceable and happy as ^were the Peruvians and Mexicans, ere the Spanish navigators introduced among to them the blessings of civilization artificial science and ^of the true faith?—
It is out of this mass of folly, wickedness, and injustice,—and its influence,—that an individual a man is required to lift himself, as the very first step toward his being a perfect. man He must have a very high faculty of independence.—The mere authority of law, custom, or precedent, must be nothing, absolutely nothing at all, with him.—High,
[end hashmark section]
[begin leaf 1 verso] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/duk.00293.001.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/duk.00293.001.jpg)