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however, present less a confusion than an individual and particular approach to the
issues of the day. Unlike solidified partisans like Brewster and Walsh, Whitman’s
approach to reformist issues was probably as individual as most workers or citizens
in a republic where the noisy fringes of the political spectrum hardly represent the
individual positions of the middling masses. In these years. Whitman’s politics
represent his opinions on particular issues rather than a specific program.
Whitman’s piecemeal approach continued into the mid- to late-1840s and the
arguments remained elementally the same. Whitman’s novel, Franklin Evans
(1842), written while he worked as a printer in Manhattan, was a temperance novel
overwhelm ingly in support o f the nominally conservative W ashingtonian
movement. However, he also published a poem (1847) while editor on the Brooklyn
Daily Eagle, which echoed radical reformist sentiments:
When earth produces, free and fair.
The golden waving com;
When fragrant fruits perfume the air;
And fleecy flocks are shorn;
When thousand move with aching head
and sing this ceaseless song—
“We starve, we die, o, give us bread...”
When wealth is wrought as reasons roll.
When luxury from pole to pole
Reaps fmit of human toil
When from a thousand, one alone
in plenty rolls along;
There must be something wrong.
Also written during his tenure at the Eagle is a piece called “The Laborer”
which echoed conservative reformers of the day:
If tme unto thyself though wast.
What were the proud one’s scorn to thee?
A feather, which though mightiest cast
Aside, as idle as the blast
The light leaf from a tree.
No: uncurb’d passions-low desiresAbsence of noble self-respectDeath in the breast’s consuming fire
To that high nature which aspires
For ever, till tis checked.