Walt Whitman to Thomas P. Sawyer, 20 (?) November 1863 a machine readable transcription Walt Whitman Edwin Haviland Miller Ted Genoways Transcription and encoding Elizabeth Lorang Tim Jackson Vanessa Steinroetter Alyssa Olson Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln University of Iowa National Historical Publications and Records Commission 2008 The Walt Whitman Archive
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 nyp.00186 Walt Whitman Edwin Haviland Miller The Correspondence New York New York University Press 1961–1977 1 185-186 Walt Whitman Walt Whitman to Thomas P. Sawyer, 20 (?) November 1863 November 20, 1863 Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library Walt Whitman Thomas P. Sawyer added schematron declaration converted to P5 proofread and modified added main TEI markup added TEI header structure w/o IDs and titles; added minimal TEI markup pulled transcription from Primary Source Media Dear brother,

I am here in Brooklyn, New York, spending a few weeks home at my mother's. I left Washington Nov 2d, & shall return there next week. I wrote to you six or seven weeks ago, the last time. I am well & fat, eat my rations regular, & weigh about 200—so you see I am not very delicate. Here in Brooklyn & New York where I was raised, I have so many friends, I believe, now I am here they will kill me with kindness, I go around too much, & I think it would be policy for me to put back to Washington. I have a brother here, very sick, I do not think he can recover, he has been in the army—I have another brother in the 9th Army Corps, has been out 26 months. But the greatest patriot in the family is my old mother. She always wants to hear about the soldiers, & would give her last dime to any soldier that needed it.

Every thing looks on the rush here in these great cities, more people, more business, more prosperity, & more of every thing to eat & wear, than ever. Tom, I was home in time to vote. The elections went bully. How are you copperheads? I think these last elections will be a settler for all traitors north, & they are the worst.

I shall be back in Washington next Tuesday. My room is 456 Sixth street. But my letters are still addrest care of Major Hapgood, paymaster U S A, Washington D C.

Well, comrade, I must close. I do not know why you do not write to me. Do you wish to shake me off? That I cannot believe, for I have the same love for you that I exprest in my letters last spring, & I am confident you have the same for me. Anyhow I go on my own gait, & wherever I am in this world, while I have a meal, or a dollar, or if I should have some shanty of my own, no living man will ever be more welcome there than Tom Sawyer. So good by, dear comrade, & God bless you, & if fortune should keep you from me here, in this world, it must not hereafter.