Yesterday was the anniversary of Walt Whitman’s birth in 1819. It is celebrated because to many, he was America’s foremost poet, whose Leaves of Grass had a farther-reaching impact than any other book of American poetry. Despite his extensive career as a journalist, Whitman’s poetry attracts all the attention. That is unfortunate, given that his early efforts in journalism have been said to “foreshadow the later, enduring writings of the poet.”
For instance, the same commitment to individuality and freedom as he described in his poetry in A Backward Glance—”I have allowed the stress of my poems from beginning to end to bear upon American individuality and assist it”—already characterized his work as an editor at the New York Aurora, at age 22. Since the extent of individual freedom permitted depends on the role government plays, Whitman addressed that role. And his thoughts on that matter are worth revisiting, because what Leadie Clark called “...his belief in laissez-faire and the complete freedom of the individual,” reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson, was not only being widely abandoned when he was writing, but has become almost unrecognizably distant from the views held by most Americans today.
For instance, in the course of five Aurora editorials in March and April, 1842, Whitman made more sense about the role of government than what Americans read on any editorial page today.
from “The True Democratic Principle,” March 16, 1842
“’The best government is that which governs least.’...the true democratic principle, the genuine principle of the American system-teaches that the ‘best’ governing power is that which puts its power in play ‘least’...[We] desire our experiment of man’s capacity for self government, carried to its extreme verge...
“Every time that congress or a state legislature meddles in matters of finance, they only plunge the interests of the people deeper and deeper into difficulty....our law makers go through their farce of officious intermeddling-and invariably with results of more evil to the country at large than pressed upon us at the commencement of their session.
“It need that the machinery of government be simplified and narrowed-that a small circle be drawn, and that no stretching out thereof be permitted...the only certain shield lies in letting each state manage its own affairs as unto it may seem best. And better still would it be to let the smaller divisions, the local districts, the individual people, retain the rights and prerogatives of free men, in their own respective hands.”
from “Reform It Altogether,” March 22, 1842
“Few evils are greater in these blessed United States, than the officiousness of the law-making powers. They meddle with everything, and derange every thing—from our intercourse with foreign empires, down to the oyster trade... the great mass are gulled in these matters-they have an idea that the learned fathers in legislation can concoct a panacea for all evils. In plain truth, senators and representatives, and assembly men, are no more and no better than other men.”
from “The Latest and Grandest Humbug,” April 8, 1842
“What right has one man to expect that the fostering care of government may be given to him more than to his neighbor?...People do that, indirectly, which, were it done directly, would be scouted from one end of the land to the other.”
from “Old Land Marks,” April 18, 1842
“What is a legislature? A body of men, just like those we see about us...They are as liable to error, commit as ridiculous blunders of judgment, are swayed by their tempers, or with their selfish passions, or their personal whims-just like the common mass of society. Looking back through the history of the past, what has there been done by way of legislation to make us place much confidence in law, as consistent with justice? Government is at best but a necessary evil; and the less we have of it, the better.
“Let no man think, because we see in this country no throne and no titled nobles, we can have no oppression... a desire to raise one’s self above his peers, even trough infringing on the rights of those peers, will actuate individuals and portions of communities.
“There has always existed in the United States a faction professing to think that the main body of the people are unfit to govern...but the chilliness and narrowness of their doctrine ought ever to have damned them-and more especially so now, when experience has proved the fallaciousness of their premises.”
from “Legislation And Morality,” April 20, 1842
“Were communities so constituted that to prune their errors, the only thing necessary should be the passage of laws, the task of reform would be no task at all. Unfortunately, however...enactments are unable to supercede nature.
“...that government was at best but a necessary evil...might afford the motto for a new school of political economy...the old and monstrous, and miserable creed, than in order to make men good and happy, you must govern them, is in a pretty fair way to be exploded. We are beginning to feel, not in theory merely, (that has long been the case) but in reality, that every being with a rational soul is an independent man, and that one is as much a man as another, and that all sovereign rights reside within himself, and that it is a dangerous thing to delegate them to legislatures.
“As things are, it will admit of considerable discussion, whether governments (we except none) do not generate nearly as many evils as benefits. As things should be-ninety nine hundredths of legislative prerogatives lopped entirely away-people might enjoy all the benefits without the evils.
“We are no friends to the fearful caprice of mobs. But the iron arm of the thousand fingered law is as tyrannical-interferes as unjustly and oppresses as cruelly...
“You cannot legislate men into morality. The more lumbering and numerous become the tomes in a lawyer’s library, the longer and stronger grows the list of penalties for crime-the oftener the farce of the people ‘in legislative assembly convened’ is played-just so much more is popular crime fostered, and just so much more is the holy cause of human progress hampered.”
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Walt Whitman is celebrated as the poet of the common man. But that is an incomplete view of someone who said that “[poets] are the voice and exposition of liberty” and “More precious than all worldly riches is Freedom.”
As Leadie Clark put it, “If the freedom of the individual was to be attained, Whitman felt that someone had to point the way.” Therefore, “Whitman can best be used...to reawaken and revitalize the spirit of liberty if it ever shows signs of being extinguished.”
Given how much that describes modern America, Whitman is indeed of importance today. However, his importance is not just due to his path-breaking poetry, but to the ideas of individualism and liberty—expressed far earlier—that undergirded it. More on Whitman
