History

Walt Whitman's American Vistas

A new collection of Whitman's writing is a fitting read for the United States' 250th birthday.

Anthony Comegna | From the August/September 2026 issue

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(Photo: Walt Whitman; George Collins Cox/Adam Cuerden/Library of Congress)

On Democracy, by Walt Whitman, introduction by David Bromwich, Library of America, 210 pages, $12.50

When Walt Whitman was born in 1819, traversing Long Island took days and was probably best done on foot. Brooklyn, still independent of New York City, was a farm-country alcove for Quakers, freethinkers, and country writers and educators. Whitman became a teacher while still a teenager (and included a student of color in his classes, a rare thing for teachers to accept at the time). His home was the sort of scene you might see on a gigantic puzzle today: old wooden fences, dirt roads, a few lonely wisps of chimney smoke out in the hilly distance.

Over the next two to three decades, New York City and the surrounding area experienced probably the most turbulent era in its history. First a transportation revolution extended roads, canals, and railroads across the east. Then a market revolution connected the economies of the coast, the hinterlands, and the globe. Finally, a communications revolution knit the young country together with telegraph lines. Everything changed during the formative period of Whitman's life. The city's politics reflected the constant flux of a new country launching itself forward in history. A good two centuries later, as we reach the country's 250th birthday, it's a fitting time to rediscover Whitman's political writings—especially Democratic Vistas, a long-form musing on the meaning of America and the American people. On Democracy, a new collection from the Library of America, offers a useful selection.

During this rapid development, New York became the country's population and economic center. It also became the focal point of the most significant challenge to mainstream politics: the Locofoco movement, represented electorally by New York's Equal Rights Party, then the Free Soil Party, and finally a critical faction within the early Republican Party. The Locofocos left a long legacy, and Whitman read their work voraciously during his youth. His politics was a young artist's locofocoism, and his master was the editor, poet, Navy man, and theater critic William Leggett.

Leggett was born in the Old West but moved east as a young man.........

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