At the beginning of the Civil War, Whitman earned a living as a free-lance journalist, and during 1861–1862, he published twenty-five historical and nostalgic articles describing life in Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Standard. The Brooklyn Standard was established by James R. Del Vecchio as a weekly newspaper in January 1860 and merged with the Brooklyn Union in 1887. Whitmans poem "After All, Not to Create Only" was commissioned for the opening ceremony of the fortieth National Industrial Exposition of the American Institute and was widely reprinted, appearing in three New York area newspapers, including the Brooklyn Standard, on the same day. Copies of the Brooklyn Standard are extremely rare, and the Walt Whitman Archive currently has no transcription or page images for the poem that appeared in this periodical.
Holloway, Emory. "Walt Whitman's History of Brooklyn Just Found." New York Times, 17 September 1916, SM14.
Loving, Jerome. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.
Reynolds, David. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition. Edited by Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
"[After All, Not to Create Only]." Brooklyn Standard, 7 September 1871