ABSTRACT
IN THE 1880s WHITMAN SAID, “LINCOLN is PARTICULARLY MY MAN —PARTICULARLY belongs to me; yes, and by the same token, I am Lincoln’s man: I guess I particularly belong to him; we are afloat on the same stream—we are rooted in the same ground.” 1 Both opposed the expansion of slavery, but they were not abolitionists. Both were committed to free labor and territorial expansion, but the preservation of the Union was more important than either. Both revered the heroes of the American Revolution, particularly Washington; neither adhered to any religious sect. They shared working-class origins, and each adopted the rhetoric of Jacksonian populism. Their literary styles were both influenced by the Bible, Shakespeare, Thomas Paine, and Robert Burns; both also tapped the vitality of American vernacular speech, political oratory, and drama. Lincoln even seems an incarnation of the poet-redeemer described in the 1855 preface to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Whitman himself would later imply that they were comparable types: “Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else.” 2 At the root of Whitman’s development and transformation is his relationship to the tumultuous political culture of the United States before and during the Civil War.
