He was in his seventeenth year, had now learnt his trade, and had begun to write for the weekly papers; among others, contributing occasionally to the handsome and aristocratic pages of the Mirror, perhaps the best of its class.[56] He lived in that journalistic atmosphere which encourages expression and turns many a clever lad into a prig. Walt was self-sufficient, but there was nothing of the prig[57] in him. Limited as his schooling1 had been, he was naturally receptive and thoughtful, and his education went steadily2 forward; he made friends with older men, and with men of education from whom he learnt much. And now he became a teacher.
He was a healthy boy, but had somewhat overgrown his strength, and perhaps this was among the causes of his leaving the city in May, and going up Long Island into the country. He joined his family for awhile, who were living at Norwich;[58] and subsequently settled for the winter as a country teacher at Babylon, boarding round, as was the custom, in the homes of his various pupils.
Another picture of Walt's birthplace from a different point of view, 1904.
WHITMAN’S BIRTHPLACE FROM THE FARM-YARD, 1904
The little town of Babylon stands on the swampy3 inner shores of the Great South Bay, which is a spacious4 lagoon5 separated from the Atlantic by a narrow beach[Pg 29] or line of sand hills. This outer beach bears here and there a ridge6 of pine forest or a lighthouse; but for the rest, it is abandoned to sea-birds and grass, to the winds and a few sand-flowers scattered8 among the wind markings which are stencilled9 in purple upon the sand in some delicate aerial deposit. Outside, even upon quiet days, the surf beats ponderously10 with ominous11 sound, the will and weight of the ocean in its swing. Within, across the wide unruffled waters of the lagoon, populous12 with sails, is the far-away fringe of the Babylon woods, and over them, pale and blue, the hill-range above Huntington.
The bay itself is a glorious mirror for the over-glow of the sky at sunset or sunrise. Standing13 upon its inner rim14 at Babylon, as the colour begins to die into the dusk, you may see mysterious sails moving by hidden waterways among fields still merry with the chirrup of innumerable crickets; while beyond the rattle15 of cords and pulleys and the liquid murmur16 of the moving boats, beyond their lights that pierce the darkening water like jewelled spears, glimmers17 a star on Fire Island beach to greet the great liners as they pass by. In summer it is a field of many harvests; famous for its blue-fish, its clams18 and oysters19; and neither the lads of Babylon nor their young master were behind-hand in spearing eels20, catching21 crabs22 and gathering23 birds’ eggs.[59] In a hard winter it is frozen over for months together.
For the greater part of the next four or five years, Walt remained in the country, moving about from place to place, and paying occasional visits to New York. He is said to have been a good and popular teacher;[60] and if his equipment was not great, it was sufficient; he liked boys and had the gift of imparting knowledge. He took his work seriously, was always master in the schoolroom, and knew whatever passed there. He followed methods of his own; breaking loose from text-[Pg 30]books, to expound24 his knowledge and impart his own interests to his scholars. The element of personality told throughout his teaching; already it was notable as the power behind all that he did. An impression of himself, of his universal kindliness25, of the sympathetic quality of his whole person, his voice and look and manner, and of a certain distinction and dignity inseparable from him, was retained by his pupils in after years.
His favourite method of punishment is worth recording26, as characteristic of his power and of his theory of pedagogics. An admirable story-teller, he would chastise27 any scholar who had behaved dishonourably, by describing his conduct to the whole school, and without the mention of a name, the guilty boy or girl was sufficiently28 self-condemned and punished in his own shame. Graver offences were made more public.
In recess29 and away from school, Walt was a sheer boy, heartily30 joining in the most boisterous31 games and sharing every kind of recreation consistent with his kindly32 spirit. “Gunning” was never included.
Among the scholars there must often have been those of his own years, and the fact that he could preserve his status as a teacher while living on terms of frank comradeship with his scholars, declares him born to the office. They were mixed schools which he taught, and towards the girls his attitude was one of honest equanimity33. He was the same with them as with the boys, betraying neither a sentimental34 preference nor a masculine disdain35. Perhaps American girls with their friendly ways and comparative lack of self-consciousness, call for less fortitude36 on the young teacher’s part than some others; but Walt’s own temperament37 stood him in good stead. It seems improbable that he was ever subject either to green-sickness or calf-love, and he was no sentimentalist.[61]
Perhaps the idleness of which Mr. Spooner retained so lively a recollection, might have hindered his becom[Pg 31]ing an ideal dominie. His thoughts must sometimes have been far afield, his pupils and their tasks forgotten. It was not, as I have already suggested, that he was lazy; he worked hard and fast when his mind was upon his work, and best of all perhaps as a teacher in contact with human beings; but he was never so busy that he could refuse to pursue an idea, never so occupied that he could miss a new fact or emotion.
Like other young teachers, Walt probably learnt at least as much as he taught, if not from his pupils, then from their parents. Boarding with them, he came to know and to love his own people, the peasant-yeomanry of the island.[62]
He was a favourite with the friendly Long Island youths and girls of his own years, but his closer friendships seem to have been with older people: the well-balanced, but strongly marked fathers and mothers of families. He loved the country too, and all the occupations and amusements of the open-air, into which he had been initiated38 as a child. Thus he learned his island by heart, wandering over it on foot, by day and night; sailing its coasts and out into the waters beyond, in pilot and fishing boats, to taste for himself the brave sea life of those old salts, Williamses and Kossabones, his mother’s ancestors.
In the spring of 1838, we find him again at Huntington; and here, in June,[63] he founded a weekly journal, the Long Islander, which is still published. Full of interests, self-sufficient and ready with his pen, and in close touch with his readers, he conducted the paper for a while with success. He was nineteen and an enthusiast39; and he was both printer, editor and publisher.
Like others of the time, his paper was probably a humble40 sheet of four small pages, and his task was not so heavy as it may sound. He thoroughly41 enjoyed the work, as well he might: the new responsibility and[Pg 32] independence were admirably suited to his years and temper. He purchased a press and type, and his printing house was in the upper story of what is now a stable, which stood on the main street of the town.
There he did most of the work himself, but I have talked with an old man who shared his task at times. And not his task only; for the printing room was, we may be sure, the scene of much beside labour. Walt loved companionship, and was an excellent story-teller; he loved games, especially whist, which he would play—and generally win—for a pumpkin42 pie. But when he worked, he “worked like the mischief,” as the saying is;[64] and when he said so his companions knew that they must go. They must have recognised, if they thought about him at all in that way, that while he made no display of his knowledge he knew far more than they, and while he was an excellent comrade, it would not do to treat Walt with too great familiarity.
As to his talk, it was clean and wholesome43 and self-respecting. He was too much of a man already to resort to the mannish tricks of many youths. He had, moreover, at this time, a tinge44 of Puritanism, which did him no harm: he neither smoked nor drank nor swore. He contemned45 practical jokes. Maybe there was less of Puritanism about him than of personal pride. He was himself from the beginning, belonged to no set, and went his own ways. He seemed to be everywhere and to observe everything without obtruding46 himself anywhere. And having purchased a horse, he carried the papers round to the doors of his readers in the surrounding townships. Often, afterwards, he recalled those long romantic drives along the glimmering47 roads, through the still fields and the dark oak woods under the half-luminous starry48 sky, broken by friendly faces and kind greetings.
But before the year was out the appearance of the Long Islander became more and more irregular, till the patience of its owner and subscribers was exhausted49.[Pg 33] In the spring it ceased for a time, and when it reappeared it was numbered as a fresh venture under new management.
Walt had gone back to school teaching at Babylon.[65] He continued this work for two years more, wandering from place to place, now at the Jamaica Academy, now at Woodbury, now at Whitestone. He was, at this time, a keen debater and politician, an Abolitionist, a Washingtonian teetotaler, and ardently51 opposed to capital punishment. He took an active share in the stump52 oratory53 of 1840, when Van Buren of New York was for the second time the Democratic nominee55 for President. The fact, with the knowledge he always showed of the art of oratory, and the plans for lecturing which he afterwards drafted, seems to testify to a native capacity for public speaking, as well as a genuine and serious interest in the affairs of the nation.
Walt Whitman was becoming recognised as a young man of ability: in spite of his nonchalant and friendly unassuming ways, he had pride and ambition. He felt in himself that he was capable of great things, and that it was time to begin them. Not very clear as to what his proper work might be, he took the turning of his inclination56, and early in the summer of 1841 entered the office of the New World, as a compositor,[66] to become for the next twenty years one of the fraternity of New York pressmen.
His first success was achieved in the August number of the Democratic Review, one of the first American periodicals of the day, which counted among its contributors such writers as Bryant, Whittier, Hawthorne and Longfellow. His “Death in the Schoolroom,”[67] appearing over the initials of “W. W.,” caught the public fancy, and was widely copied by the provincial57 press. It is the study of a gruesome incident in Long Island country life; by turns sentimental and violent in its horror, and evidently intended as an argument against school flog[Pg 34]ging. It has a sort of crude power and its subject matter would have appealed to Hawthorne. It is by no means discreditable; but to us it seems verbose58, and it is clumsy in its exaggerated style. Lugare is shown to us at one moment standing as though transfixed by a basilisk—and at another, “every limb quivers like the tongue of a snake”.
Whatever its faults, they did not offend the taste of the hour: the Review welcomed his contributions, and some study from his pen appeared in its pages each alternate month throughout the next year, some being signed “Walter Whitman” in full. To the New World he had meanwhile been contributing conventional and very mediocre59 verses in praise of Death and of compassionate60 Pity.[68]
The remorse61 of a young murderer; an angel’s compassionate excuses for evil-doers; the headstrong revolt of youth against parental62 injustice63, and the ensuing tragic64 fate; the half-insane repulsion of a father toward his son, prompting him to send the lad to a madhouse and thus wrecking65 his mind; the refusal of a young poet to sell his genius; the pining of a lover after the death of his beloved; the lonely misery66 of a deaf and dumb girl, who has been seduced67 and deserted68; the reform of a profligate69 by a child; the sobering of a drunkard at his little sister’s death-bed; and an old widow’s strewing70 of flowers on every grave because her husband’s remains71 unknown: such are the subjects with which he dealt.[69] His wanderings in Long Island had supplied him with incidents upon which to exercise his imagination. Those which he selected have always some pathetic interest, while several have an obviously didactic purpose.
Whitman’s moral consciousness was still predominant: he was an advocate of “causes”. But his morality sprang out of a real passion for humanity, which took the form of sentiment; a sentiment which was[Pg 35] thoroughly genuine at bottom, but which in its expression at this time, became false and stilted73 enough to bear the reproach of sentimentality. In view of their author’s subsequent optimism, it is interesting to note that all these studies are of figures or incidents, more or less tragic.
Whitman was puzzling over the ultimate questions: the problem of evil, as seen in the sufferings inflicted74 by tyrannical power, and by callous75 or lustful76 selfishness, upon innocent victims; on the inscrutable tragedies of disease and insanity77; and again, upon the power of innocence78, of sorrow and of love to evoke79 the good which he saw everywhere latent in human nature, and which a blind and heavy-handed legalitarian justice would destroy with the evil inseparable from it. The more he thought over these problems, the more he recognised the futility80 of condemnation81, and the effectiveness of understanding love.
The New World, upon which he was working, published the first American versions of some of the principal novels of the day; it reprinted several of the new poems of Tennyson from English sources and contained long notices of such works as Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-worship. In November, 1842, it issued as an extra number Dickens’s American Notes, the sensation of the hour—the author having been fêted at the Park Theatre in February—and announced Lytton Bulwer’s Last of the Barons82 to follow. On the 23rd of the month, in the same fashion, appeared Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate83, a tale of the times, by Walter Whitman. It was advertised as a thrilling romance by “one of the best novelists in this country”; and the proprietors84 of the magazine expressed their hope that the well-told incidents of the plot and the excellence85 of the moral would commend the book to general circulation. Nor were they disappointed. It is said that twenty thousand copies were sold. The book, then, achieved a tolerable success, and its author profited to the extent of some forty pounds.
Copies of Franklin Evans are now excessively rare,[Pg 36] and one may say with confidence they will remain so. For the tale will never be reprinted. It claims to be written for the people and not for the critics, and even the people are unlikely to read it a second time.
It is an ill-told rambling86 story of a Long Island lad who, going to the metropolis87 and taking to drink, falls through various stages of respectability till he becomes a bar-tender. He marries and reforms, but presently gives way again to his habit; his wife then dies, and he falls lower. Eventually he is rescued from gaol88, and signs the “old” pledge against ardent50 spirits. Then he goes to Virginia, where he succeeds in fuddling his wits with wine, and marries a handsome Creole slave. Forthwith he becomes entangled90 with a white woman who drives his wife to the verge91 of madness, until a tragic fate releases him from them both, and the story concludes with his signature to the pledge of total abstinence. The author recommends it to his readers, and breaks out into praises of the Washingtonian crusade, foretelling92 its imminent93 and complete victory over the “armies of drink”.
The pages are diversified94 by Indian and other narratives95 impertinent to the plot, and by invectives against the scornful attitude of the pious96 and respectable toward those who are struggling in the nets of vice97. The whole book is loosely graphic98 and frankly99 didactic, its author declaring his wish to be improving, though he will keep the amusement of his readers in view. He opines that in this temperance story he has found a novel and a noble use for fiction, and if his first venture be successful, be assured it will be followed by a second.
It is difficult to treat Franklin Evans seriously. That Whitman was at the time a sincere advocate of the more extreme doctrines101 of temperance reform can hardly be doubted. But in after years—the whole incident having become a matter of amusement to its author, not wholly unmingled with irritation102 when, as sometimes, it was thrust upon him anew by reformers as ardent as he had once been—he would laugh and say with a droll103 deliberation that the story was written against[Pg 37] time one hot autumn in a Broadway beer-cellar, his dull thoughts encouraged by bubbling libations. One suspects a humorous malice104 in the anecdote105, belonging rather to his later than his earlier years. It may be noted106, however, that while Whitman commended the pledge, he also commended a positive policy of “counter attraction” to all the young men who scanned his pages, to wit, an early marriage and a home, though he himself remained a bachelor.
Franklin Evans was honest enough. Young Whitman was serving the adorable Lady Temperance with fervour, if not with absolute consistency107. He knew her cause to be a good one; but he found that, in this form, it was not quite his own, and he was too natural not to be inconsistent. He had not yet come to his own cause, nor for that matter to himself. And thus his essay became a tour de force; as he did not repeat it, we may suppose he was as little satisfied as those who now waste an hour upon this “thrilling romance”.
He was now in the full stream of journalistic activity. He wrote for the New York Sun, and appears for a few months to have acted as editor in succession of the Aurora108 and the Tattler.[70] In 1843 he filled the same post on the Statesman, and the year after upon the Democrat54; while contributing also to the Columbian Magazine, the American Review, and Poe’s Broadway Journal.[71]
Probably none of these contributions are worthy109 of recollection. Anomalous110 as it may sound, from twenty-three to thirty-five Whitman was better fitted for an editor than for an essayist. He was clever without being brilliant; he had capacity but no special and definite line of his own. His strength lay in his judgment111; and upon this both friends and family learnt to rely.
Several of the papers for which he wrote were party organs; it may have been that his political services in 1840 won him an introduction to the editors of the[Pg 38] Democratic Review, and helped him on his further way. In any case, it is certain that he frequented the party’s headquarters in the city. Tammany Hall was named after an Indian brave,[72] presumably to indicate the wholly indigenous112 character of its interests. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, it seems to have become the seat of a society of old Knickerbockers, gathered partly for mutual113 protection against certain groups of foreign immigrants who had shown a hostile disposition114, and partly in opposition115 to the aristocratic Cincinnati Society presided over by Washington. During Jefferson’s Presidency116 it became a political centre, and was identified with the Democratic party from the time of its re-organisation under Jackson in New York State.
The Democrats117 failed to elect Van Buren, and were in opposition from 1840 to 1844. During the electoral struggle, a Baltimore journal had spoken slightingly of the humble character of Harrison, the Whig candidate:[73] better fitted, it pronounced, for a Western log-cabin and a small pension than for the White House. Harrison, like Andrew Jackson, was an old soldier: he had beaten the Indians long ago in a fight at Tippecanoe; and that, together with the simplicity118 of this Cincinnatus—the imaginary log-cabin, the coon-skins and hard cider, which made him the impersonation of the frontiersman to whom America owed so much, being all artfully exaggerated by party managers—caught the fancy of the whole country, which rang for months together with the refrain of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”. Harrison died immediately after his inauguration120 and Vice-president Tyler took his place.
In Tammany’s back parlour, Walt made the acquaintance of many notables, and not least, of an old Colonel Fellowes,[74] who loved to discuss Tom Paine over a social glass, and to scatter7 to the four winds the legends of inebriety121 which had gathered about his later years of poverty and neglect. But that Whitman was a violent[Pg 39] partisan122 even at this time, seems to be disproved by the fact that in 1843 or 1844 he contributed political verses to Horace Greeley’s Tribune, a paper which had grown out of the Whig election sheet.[75] And though, like his father, he adhered now and always to the general political tradition of the Democrats, was a free trader, jealous of the central power, and voted with his party till it split in 1848, he was as good an Abolitionist as Greeley himself. Indeed, both the Tribune poems are inspired by the theme of slavery, and as if in witness to the reality of their inspiration, he breaks for the first time into the irregular metres he was to make his own.[76]
A religious ardour breathes from these singular Scriptural utterances123. The first, “Blood-money,” is a homily on the text, “Guilty of the body and the blood of Christ”. In the slave, whom he describes as “hunted from the arrogant124 equality of the rest,” he sees the new incarnation of that “divine youth” whose body Iscariot sold and is still a-selling. It is an admirable piece of pathos125, fresh, direct and unmannered, and by far the most individual and striking thing Whitman had done. And it was the only one which could be regarded as prophetic of the work that was to follow. Especially is this felt in such lines as
The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalked silently forward,
Since those ancient days; many a pouch126 enwrapping meanwhile
Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.
The piece was signed “Paumanok,” as also was “A Dough-face Song,” which appeared in the Evening Post.
The second of the Tribune poems, “Wounded in the House of Friends,”[77] is inferior to the first in poetic127 merit, though adopting a somewhat similar medium. It is a rather violent denunciation of those intimates of freedom whose allegiance to her can be bought off—“a dollar dearer to them than Christ’s blessing”—elderly “dough-faces” whose hearts are in their purses. It was upon Northern traitors128 to the cause rather than upon the people of the South, that Whit[Pg 40]man poured out his indignation: and this position he always maintained. The Tribune itself was at the time an ardent supporter of Clay’s candidature for the Presidency; but Clay subsequently trimmed upon this very question, and this action, by alienating129 the anti-slavery party in New York, resulted in his defeat at the polls.
Whitman’s political poems suggest already that loosening of ties which separated him a few years later from the main body of his party; but in 1844, following the lead of advanced Democrats like W. C. Bryant, he worked actively130 for Polk, the party candidate, who became President.[78] We cannot too often remind ourselves that the later Republicanism of the ’sixties was supported by men who had been Free-soil Democrats as well as by certain of their Whig opponents. Meanwhile, it was to the Radical131 wing of his party that young Whitman belonged.
Though engaged in the political struggle, he was by no means absorbed in it. His profession encouraged his natural interest in the affairs of his country, but not in the political affairs alone. He shared in the social functions of the city and its district. He frequented lectures and races, churches and auction132 rooms, weddings and clam-bakes.[79] He spent Saturday afternoons on the bare and then unfrequented sand ridge of Coney Island, bathing, reading and declaiming aloud, uninterrupted by a single one of the hundreds of thousands who now fill the island with their more artificial holiday making and their noisier laughter. In those days one did not require a costume to bathe on Coney Island beach.
Nearer than Coney Island, Brooklyn Ferry was always one of his favourite haunts.[80] Walt had always loved the boat as well as the river; as a child he had seen the horses in the round-house give place to the engine with its high “smoke-stack”; the captain and the hands were old friends, and he never tired of watching[Pg 41] the passengers. Who does not feel the delight of such a ferry, the swing of the boat, the windy gleam in the sky, the lights by day or night upon the water, the sense of weariless and unceasing movement as of life itself? New York, on its island, is richer than most cities in these river crossings, which take you at once out of the closeness and cares of the streets into the free broad roadways of wind and water, roadways which you can scarcely traverse without some enlargement and liberation of the city-pent soul in your breast.
And in the city itself he had a thousand interests;[81] he went wherever people met together for any purpose; he had a critic’s free pass to the theatres and was often at the opera and circus, he frequented the public libraries too, and the collections of antiquities134; but most of all he loved to read in the open book of Broadway. Up and down that amazing torrent135 of humanity he would ride, breasting its flood, upon the box-seat of one of the stages, beside the driver. From time to time he would make himself useful by giving change to the fares within, when he was not already too fully119 occupied declaiming the great passages from his favourite poets into the ears of his friend.
The fulness of human life surging through the artery136 of that great city exhilarated him like the west wind or the sound and presence of the sea. The sheer contact with the crowd excited him. And though he came to know New York in all its dark and sordid137 corners—and even an American city before the war was not without its shame—he won an inspiration from its multitudinous humanity distinct from any that the country-side could afford. Every year he grew more conscious of his membership in the living whole of human life; and the consciousness which brought despair to Carlyle, brought faith and glory to Whitman. He did not blink the ugly and sinister138 aspects of things, as many an optimist139 has done; he saw clearly the brothel, the prison, and the mortuary; his writing at this time, as we have seen,[Pg 42] deals largely with the tragedies of life; but humanity fascinated him—not an abstract or ideal humanity, but the concrete actual humanity of New York. For its own sake he loved it, body and soul, as a man should. It was not philanthropy, it was the wholesome, native love of a man for his own flesh and blood, for the incarnation of the Other in the same substance as the Self.
Very little passed in the city without his knowledge. He was in the crowd that welcomed Dickens in 1842;[82] and was doubtless among the thousands who celebrated140 the introduction of the first water from the Croton supply into New York, and hailed the pioneer locomotive arriving over the new track from Buffalo141. Among the public figures of the day, he became familiar with the faces of great politicians like Webster and Clay; among writers, he saw Fitz-Green Halleck and Fenimore Cooper,[83] and made the acquaintance of Poe who was struggling against poverty in New York, and who became at this time—1845—suddenly famous through the publication of “The Raven”;[84] and won the more lasting142 friendship of Bryant, who was at that time the preeminent143 American poet, and held besides the editorship of the Evening Post, to which Walt had been a contributor.[85]
In February, 1846, Whitman was appointed editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle,[86] a democratic journal of a single sheet. The office was close to the Ferry, and he seems at this time to have lived with his family on Myrtle Avenue, near Fort Greene, rather more than a mile away. His editorials boasted no literary distinction, and were even at times of doubtful grammar; but they were direct and vigorous, and discussed all the topics of the hour.[87] When a New York Episcopal Church was consecrated144 with much ceremony and display, he would denounce the self-complacent attitude of the Churches; every instance of lynching or of capital punishment[Pg 43] would call forth89 his protest; he was faithful in his support of the rights of domestic animals; he approved of dancing within reasonable hours, and he advocated art in the homes of the people. Largely owing to his persistent145 advocacy the old battle-ground of Fort Greene was secured to Brooklyn as a park.
In dealing146 with the immediately critical question of relations with Mexico, while he anticipated extension of territory without dismay, he uttered his warning against the temper which prompts a nation to aggressive acts. “We fear”, he said,[88] “our unmatched strength may make us insolent147. We fear that we shall be too willing (holding the game in our own hands) to revenge our injuries by war—the greatest curse that can befall a people, and the bitterest obstacle to the progress of all those high and true reforms that make the glory of this age above the darkness of the ages past and gone.”
The admission of Texas into the union, in 1845, was soon followed by a war with Mexico, which eventually completed the filibustering148 work of Houston by the annexation149 of New Mexico and California. This territorial150 expansion was pushed forward, as we noted before, by Polk and the Democrats in the interests of the South;[89] but the fact that it was Wilmot, a Free-soil Democrat, who introduced the celebrated proviso to an appropriation151 of money for the war, proposing to exclude slavery from all territory which might be acquired from Mexico, reminds us of the division within the party which resulted in a split two years later.
The country at this time was in a condition of feverish152 irritation; and the war spirit was only too easily aroused. In 1847, it threatened to burst into flame over a territorial dispute with Great Britain. America claimed the latitude153 of 54.40 as the northern boundary of Oregon, and for awhile, under the jingo President, the country rang with the insane alliterative cry of “fifty-four forty or fight”.[90] A spirited foreign policy[Pg 44] is the universal panacea154 of the charlatan155; it is his receipt for every internal disorder156, and it was continually being prescribed to America during the next fifteen years. This was indeed the charlatan’s hour, when the official policy of the dominant72 Democratic party oscillated between jingoism157 and what was afterwards known throughout America as “squatter sovereignty”. It was the repudiation158 of the Wilmot proviso, and the adoption159 of the new doctrine100 which Douglas afterwards made his own, that drove Whitman into revolt.
He was comfortably seated in his editorial chair, where he might have remained for years had his Radical convictions permitted. Though the owners of the Eagle were orthodox party men, the editor’s anti-slavery attitude was not concealed,[91] and indeed could not be. Their criticism of his editorials caused him immediately to throw up his post. He would not compromise on the question, and he would not brook133 interference. It was January, 1848, when he left the Eagle,[92] and a few weeks later he was making his way south to New Orleans.
Whitman had joined the “Barnburners” or Van Buren men of New York State, who now became Free-soil Democrats, making the Wilmot proviso their platform,[93] in opposition to the “Hunkers,” who denounced it. As to the Whigs, they burked the whole matter, and contrived160 in their nominating convention to silence the question by shouting. The Democratic party found its real platform in the nostrum161 of “squatter sovereignty,” the specious162 doctrine that in each new State the citizens should themselves decide upon their attitude towards slavery, deciding for or against it when drawing up a Constitution. To this, Lewis Cass, its candidate for the Presidency, subscribed163. But the “Barnburners” put forward Van Buren, a former President, and a Democrat of the school of Jefferson[Pg 45] and Jackson, who was also supported by the “anti-slavery” party. His policy was to confine slavery within its actual limits: “no more Slave states, no more slave territory”. As a consequence of the Democratic split in the Empire State, the thirty-six electoral votes of New York were given to the Whig candidate, General Taylor, the Mexican conqueror164, and he became the next President.
A whole-hearted Free-soil Democrat, Whitman’s position as editor of an orthodox party journal had naturally become untenable.
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steadily
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swampy
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spacious
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lagoon
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ridge
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scatter
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scattered
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stencilled
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ponderously
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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12
populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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13
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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14
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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15
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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16
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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17
glimmers
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| n.微光，闪光( glimmer的名词复数 )v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的第三人称单数 ) | |
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18
clams
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| n.蛤；蚌，蛤( clam的名词复数 )v.（在沙滩上）挖蛤( clam的第三人称单数 ) | |
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19
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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20
eels
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| abbr. 电子发射器定位系统（=electronic emitter location system） | |
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21
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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22
crabs
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| n.蟹( crab的名词复数 )；阴虱寄生病；蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) | |
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23
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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24
expound
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| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
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25
kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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26
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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27
chastise
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| vt.责骂，严惩 | |
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28
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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29
recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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30
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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31
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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32
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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33
equanimity
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| n.沉着，镇定 | |
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34
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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35
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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36
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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37
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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38
initiated
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|
| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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39
enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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40
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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41
thoroughly
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|
| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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42
pumpkin
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| n.南瓜 | |
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43
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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44
tinge
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|
| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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45
contemned
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| v.侮辱，蔑视( contemn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
obtruding
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| v.强行向前，强行，强迫( obtrude的现在分词 ) | |
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47
glimmering
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|
| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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48
starry
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| adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的 | |
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49
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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50
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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51
ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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52
stump
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|
| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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53
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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54
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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55
nominee
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| n.被提名者；被任命者；被推荐者 | |
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56
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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57
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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58
verbose
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| adj.用字多的；冗长的；累赘的 | |
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59
mediocre
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| adj.平常的，普通的 | |
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60
compassionate
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| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
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61
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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62
parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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63
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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64
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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65
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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66
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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67
seduced
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| 诱奸( seduce的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷 | |
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68
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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69
profligate
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| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
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70
strewing
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|
| v.撒在…上( strew的现在分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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71
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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72
dominant
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|
| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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73
stilted
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| adj.虚饰的；夸张的 | |
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74
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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75
callous
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|
| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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76
lustful
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| a.贪婪的；渴望的 | |
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77
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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78
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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79
evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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80
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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81
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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82
barons
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| 男爵( baron的名词复数 )； 巨头； 大王； 大亨 | |
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83
inebriate
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| v.使醉 | |
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84
proprietors
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| n.所有人，业主( proprietor的名词复数 ) | |
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85
excellence
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|
| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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86
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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87
metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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88
gaol
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|
| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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89
forth
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|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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90
entangled
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|
| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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91
verge
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|
| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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92
foretelling
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| v.预言，预示( foretell的现在分词 ) | |
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93
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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94
diversified
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|
| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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95
narratives
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| 记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分 | |
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96
pious
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|
| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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97
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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98
graphic
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| adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的 | |
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99
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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100
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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101
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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102
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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103
droll
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| adj.古怪的，好笑的 | |
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104
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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105
anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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106
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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107
consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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108
aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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109
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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110
anomalous
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| adj.反常的；不规则的 | |
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111
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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112
indigenous
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| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
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113
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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114
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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115
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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116
presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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117
democrats
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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118
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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119
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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120
inauguration
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| n.开幕、就职典礼 | |
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121
inebriety
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| n.醉，陶醉 | |
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122
partisan
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| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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123
utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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124
arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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125
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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126
pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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127
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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128
traitors
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| 卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 )； 叛徒； 背叛者； 背信弃义的人 | |
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129
alienating
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|
| v.使疏远( alienate的现在分词 )；使不友好；转让；让渡（财产等） | |
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130
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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131
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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132
auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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133
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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134
antiquities
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|
| n.古老( antiquity的名词复数 )；古迹；古人们；古代的风俗习惯 | |
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135
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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136
artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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137
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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138
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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139
optimist
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| n.乐观的人，乐观主义者 | |
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140
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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141
buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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143
preeminent
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的 | |
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consecrated
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| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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148
filibustering
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| v.阻碍或延宕国会或其他立法机构通过提案( filibuster的现在分词 )；掠夺 | |
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annexation
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| n.吞并，合并 | |
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territorial
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| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
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appropriation
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| n.拨款，批准支出 | |
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152
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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153
latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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panacea
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| n.万灵药；治百病的灵药 | |
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155
charlatan
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| n.骗子；江湖医生；假内行 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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157
jingoism
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| n.极端之爱国主义 | |
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158
repudiation
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| n.拒绝；否认；断绝关系；抛弃 | |
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adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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nostrum
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| n.秘方；妙策 | |
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162
specious
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| adj.似是而非的；adv.似是而非地 | |
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subscribed
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| v.捐助( subscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；签署，题词；订阅；同意 | |
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conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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