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The Wallabout Martyrs

About This Item

  • Title: The Wallabout Martyrs
  • Date: 16 March 1888
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00115
  • Source: New York Herald 16 March 1888: 4. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang April Lambert Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Wallabout Martyrs." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 24 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00115.xml (TEI)
per.00115.004per.00115.004_cropped

The Wallabout Martyrs.1

[In Brooklyn, in an old vault, marked by no special recognition, lie huddled at this moment the undoubtedly authentic remains of the stanchest and earliest revolutionary patriots from the British prison ships and prisons of the times 1776-83, in and around New York and from all over Long Island; originally buried—many thousands of them—in trenches in the Wallabout sands.] Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses, More, more by far to thee than the tomb of 
  Alexander, Those car loads of old charnel ashes, scales 
  and splints of mouldy bones, Once living men—once resolute courage, aspi- 
 ration, strength, The stepping stones to thee to-day and here 
  America. WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]

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