The New York Evening Post

Whitman had a long association with the New York Evening Post, beginning in the early 1840s, when he once mentioned the Post as the best newspaper in New York in an article in the New York Aurora. Founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, the New York Evening Post was edited by the poet William Cullen Bryant from 1829 until his death in 1878. Under his direction, the newspaper advocated the anti-slavery movement, free speech, and free soil. The paper was also well known for the high quality of its writing and Bryant employed correspondents across the United States and in Europe for coverage of news and events. Bryant and Whitman met when Whitman was editing the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the two became friends. Bryant published Whitman's prose sketches, "Letters from Paumanok," in the Post in the 1851. Whitman's first poem to appear in the Post was "Song for Certain Congressmen," signed "Paumanok." The poem castigated politicians who constantly shift their positions as "dough-faced." His other two poems in the Post appeared in the 1870s and were written for specific occasions. "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. "The Song of the Universal," a commentary on the one hundred years of American independence, was written for the commencement exercises of Tufts College.

Poems

"Song for Certain Congressmen." The New York Evening Post 2 March 1850. [2]. Revised as "Dough-Face Song" in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–83).

"After All, Not to Create Only." The New York Evening Post 7 September 1871. [2]. This poem was printed on the same day in the Brooklyn Standard and New York Commercial Advertiser 7 September 1871: [3]. It was reprinted in several newspapers and as a pamphlet, After All, Not to Create Only (1871); as "Song of the Exposition" in Two Rivulets (1876); and with some revisions in Leaves of Grass (1881–82).

"The Song of the Universal." The New York Evening Post 17 June 1874: [2]. This poem was printed on the same day in the New York Daily Graphic , 17 June 1874. Reprinted in Two Rivulets (1876).

Bibliography

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

Blake, David. Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Douglas, George H. The Golden Age of the Newspaper. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999.

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

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism a History: 1690-1960. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan Company, 1995.

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

Widner, Ted. "New York Evening Post." Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia. Ed. J. R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings. New York: Garland, 1998.