Walt Whitman Influences

Walt Whitman is regarded as one of the greatest American writers in history. His work during the Civil War influenced almost every writer that came after him. Despite Whitman being one of the most influential writers in American history, he himself was greatly influenced by his surroundings and experiences, the most influential of which was his experience in the Civil War, another big influence was his feelings and relationship with Abraham Lincoln, as well as his childhood which bought his openness to frowned upon ideas and topics.
Something that greatly influenced Walt Whitman was his childhood as well as the way that he was raised and this can be seen all over in his writing by the openness he as to any topic. Walt Whitman was born on May …show more content…
One report claims that Lincoln had picked up a copy of Leaves of Grass in his office in Springfield and fell so deeply in love with it that he read it aloud to all his staff for thirty minutes (Reynolds David ). One of the reasons that Whitman was so entranced by Lincoln was because he felt that the American political system was quite corrupt and that a so called “slave power” exited in the whitehouse that allowed wealthy plantation owners to control politics (Reynolds David ). Whitman actually called for a so called “Redeemer President of These States” someone from the real common man that could take charge and get rid of the corruption in politics (Reynolds David ). When Abraham Lincoln came to be president a short time after later, Whitman was overjoyed and felt that Lincoln was the ideal man that could get rid of slavery as well as reunite the already crumbling Union (Reynolds David ). Despite both Whitman and Lincoln being against slavery the thing that ironically united both of them was the idea of Unionism and that the most important part of the war was to preserve the Union as a whole with both North and South united together (Reynolds David ). The relationship between Lincoln and Whitman had a definite effect on what Whitman wrote in his poems mostly Leaves of Grass and Drum Taps (Reynolds David ). These series of poems exemplified the ideals of Lincoln of a unified America a country that did things as one. After Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 Whitman held off the publication of Drum Taps so he could add two poems about Lincoln’s death and in both of these poems did another unorthodox thing he removed himself almost entirely from the writing(Reynolds David ). Instead he made the main focus of the poem Lincoln and made it something that Lincoln himself would agree with (Reynolds David ). This wonderful