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I say that Democracy

About This Item

  • Title: I say that Democracy
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1856
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.05314
  • Source: The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1842–1937, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 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: The writing at the top of this manuscript bears some resemblance to this sentence from the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass: "Great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances" (1855, p. ix). The language and topic also resemble those of Whitman's self-authored review of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, "Walt Whitman and His Poems," which was published in The United States Review in September, 1855. It was also one of several reviews printed separately and included in some copies of the 1855 edition. Edward Grier, in Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, notes that "the small writing suggests a date in the 1850s" (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:361.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I say that Democracy." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.05314.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto] I say that Democracy offers 
  higher and more athletic 
  ideals, Persons.—Let all They yet 
  sleep.—Who of all these 
  swarms in the East & West, of writers and speakers 
  courageously steps up to 
  own the ^celebrate the savage and free genius of These 
  States?—I know not one.— Days, years, pass, pass away?pass byon   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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