The Long Island Democrat

Established in May 1835 by James J. Brenton, the weekly Long Island Democrat was published in Jamaica, New York. Brenton had reprinted two of Whitman's early prose pieces and a poem, "Our Future Lot," Whitman's first known poem, from the Long-Islander. He hired Whitman as a typesetter in August 1839, and Whitman boarded in the Brenton home. But by the late fall, Whitman returned to work as a school teacher, a career that he pursued intermittently during the late 1830s. Nonetheless, Whitman continued to write occasionally for the Long Island Democrat through 1841, publishing several poems, as well as a series of short articles, "Sun-Down Papers from the Desk of a School-Master," which were also published in other newspapers. Brenton admired Whitman's ability as a writer and included him in a book, Voices from the Press: A Collection of Sketches, Essays, and Poems, by Practical Printers, which he published in 1850.

The Whitman Archive has not yet been able to arrange for digital scans of the Long Island Democrat, but we have completed transcriptions for the poems from photocopies of the microfilm of the original newspaper pages.