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on the abolitionists. In his poem called "Wounded in the House of Friends", he called the abolitionists "doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity." Note also the following lines from this poem:

"Vaunters of the Free
Why do you strain your lungs off southward?
Why be going to Alabama?
Sweep first before your own door;......
Look well to your own eye, Massachusetts---
Yours, New York and Pennsylvania;
I would say yours too, Michigan.
Virginia, mother of greatness,
Blush not for being also the mother of slaves."

During the Civil War, when many Union soldiers, including his brother George, were held as prisoners of war by the secessionists, Whitman revealed his indifference to the fate of Negro Union prisoners. He sharply criticized the Secretary of War for insisting that no discrimination against Negro soldiers be shown in the exchange of prisoners. (See Charles I. Glicksberg, "Walt Whitman and the Civil War", pp. 178-80.) "Leaves of Grass" was Whitman's show-piece, and, unfortunately, is the only one of his works that the average readers sees. But to get a true picture of Whitman one has to read his writings that are not included in "Leaves of Grass."

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On November 9, 1857, the people of Oregon adopted a constitution which barred Negroes from the state. In the "*Brooklyn Daily Eagle*" for May 8, 1858, Whitman praised the new constitution of Oregon in which he saw virtue in its provisions barring Negroes from the state because they would not then be in a position to compete with white labor. He says: "Who believes that whites and blacks can ever amalgamate in America? Or who wishes it to happen? Nature has set an impassable seal against it. Besides, is not America for the whites? And is it not better so?" So that prohibitions like that in the new constitution of Oregon are not to be dismissed at first as arbitrary."

In an earlier editorial of the "*Brooklyn Daily Eagle*" (July 17, 1857), Whitman had said that Negroes were far better off as slaves on the American plantations than they would have been in their own country, and he saw nothing objectionable to the prevalent use of their labor in the South. "It is also to be remembered," he said, "that no race ever can remain slaves if they have it in them to become free. Why do slave ships go to Africa only?"

Even as late as 1860, when Whitman went to Boston to supervise the publication of the third edition of "*Leaves of Grass*", he was surprised at their being intelligent, progressive Negroes there who were not handicapped because of their color, and he was shocked to observe that they were not segregated in public places. "The blacks here," he says, "are certainly of superior order--quite as good to have in contact with you as the average of our own color." (See C. J. Furness, "*Walt Whitman Workshop*," p. 259.)

Whitman was more interested in preventing the spread of slavery to the new territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War than in interfering with it in the southern states: "With the present slave states," he said, "no human being has the least shadow of a right to

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During the Civil War, when many Union soldiers, including his brother George, were held as prisoners of war by the secessionists, Whitman revealed his indifference to the fate of Negro Union prisoners. He sharply criticized the Secretary of War for insisting that no discrimination against Negro soldiers be shown in the exchange of prisoners. (See Charles I. Clicksberg, "Walt Whitman and the Civil War", pp. 178-80.) "Leaves of Grass" was Whitman's show-piece, and, unfortunately, is the only one of his works that the average readers sees. But to get a true picture of Whitman one has to read his writings that are not included in "Leaves of Grass."

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