Harper's Weekly Magazine

Whitman wrote one of his most popular poems, “Beat! Beat! Drums!," shortly after the first battle of Bull Run in July 1861. The piece, often called a “mobilization poem” because of its call to arms, was first published in Harper’s Weekly. The "Journal of Civilization," as the masthead proclaimed, was established in 1857 and became famous for its coverage of the Civil War, especially its lavish illustrations. In some of his letters to his mother, Whitman occasionally included copies of the Weekly so that she could enjoy illustrations of Abraham Lincoln or the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. But Harper's Weekly also published literature and readers enjoyed the works of a variety of British and American writers, including Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, Henry James, Williams Dean Howells, and John Greenleaf Whittier. In the late 1880s, Whitman wrote a number of short poems, frequently about public occasions or events, which he hoped to sell to magazines and newspapers in order to earn extra income. When former president and war hero Ulysses S. Grant was dying, Whitman was invited by the editors of Harper’s Weekly to submit a poem about him. Whitman sent "As One by One Withdraw the Lofty Actors," a poem about Grant and others who were important to the Civil War, and received $30.00 in payment. Whitman's other poem published in the Weekly, "Bravo, Paris Exposition," was rejected first by both the New York Herald and New York World. This poem, for which Whitman received $10.00, commemorates the Paris Exposition, which ran from May 6 through November 6, 1889.

Poems

"Beat! Beat! Drums!" Harper's Weekly 5 (28 September 1861): 623. Although dated 28 September 1861, the issue of Harper's Weekly featuring Whitman's "Beat! Beat! Drums!" actually appeared one week earlier, on 21 September 1861. (See Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett, ed., Leaves of Grass: A Norton Critical Edition [New York: W. W. Norton, 1973] and Ted Genoways, Walt Whitman and the Civil War: America's Poet During the Lost Years of 1860–1862 [Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming].) The poem appeared on the same day in the weekly newspaper the New York Leader, also dated 28 September 1861. The poem was reprinted in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 23 September 1861 and the Boston Daily Evening Transcript on 24 September 1861. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle printing includes the attribution, "From Harper's Weekly." In the following weeks, the poem appeared in numerous other newspapers throughout the United States. Whitman included the poem, with slight revision, in Drum-Taps (1865).

"As One by One Withdraw the Lofty Actors." Harper's Weekly 29 (16 May 1885): 310. Reprinted as "Grant" in Critic 7 (15 August 1885): 80; and revised as "Death of General Grant" in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).

"Bravo, Paris Exposition!" Harper's Weekly 33 (28 September 1889): 774. Reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891).

Bibliography

Blodgett, Harold W., and Sculley Bradley, eds. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition. New York: New York University Press, 1965.

Loving, Jerome. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, 1850–1865. Vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1938.

Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

Whitman, Walt. The Correspondence. Ed. Edwin Haviland Miller. Vol. 2. The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman. New York: New York University Press, 1961.

Whitman, Walt. Daybooks and Notebooks. Ed. William White. Vol. 2. The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman. New York: New York University Press, 1978.