Newly found documents of Walt Whitman unveiled
The National Archives unveiled a trove of newly found documents in its files Tuesday that were penned by Walt Whitman when the poet worked as a government clerk during and after the Civil War.
Whitman came to Washington from Brooklyn, where he lived, in 1862 after his brother, George, was wounded in the Battle of Fredricksburg. The poet stayed on in the capital after his brother recovered, working part time in the paymaster’s office and visiting wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals. He returned to Brooklyn in June 1864 because of poor health, but then came back to Washington in January 1865 and served as a clerk in the Interior Department and the attorney general’s office.
The archives said a Whitman scholar, Kenneth Price of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, discovered some 3,000 documents in Whitman’s handwriting during research at the archives in 2008 and 2009....
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Whitman came to Washington from Brooklyn, where he lived, in 1862 after his brother, George, was wounded in the Battle of Fredricksburg. The poet stayed on in the capital after his brother recovered, working part time in the paymaster’s office and visiting wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals. He returned to Brooklyn in June 1864 because of poor health, but then came back to Washington in January 1865 and served as a clerk in the Interior Department and the attorney general’s office.
The archives said a Whitman scholar, Kenneth Price of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, discovered some 3,000 documents in Whitman’s handwriting during research at the archives in 2008 and 2009....