Walt Whiman's Life

Walter Whitman was born May 31, 1819 in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island during the Civil War time. He and his family were anti-slavery. In his early career he worked at a printing press. He also worked at different schools until spring of 1838 and he did not like being a teacher.
After years of competing for the usual rewards he was determined to be a poet. In June of 1855 he printed his first edition of Leaves of Grass. He printed the Leaves of Grass in a local print shop during breaks between commercial jobs. A total of 795 copies were printed of the Leaves of Grass. A few days after he published the leaves of grass his father died at age sixty-five. In 1856 he added twenty more poems. Walt Whitman revised and added more poems to the Leaves of Grass thorough out his life time.
As the Civil war began he wrote a poem called “Beat! Beat! Drums! as a patriotic rally call for the North. His brother George had joined the Union. George heard his brother was dead so he went to get him. On the way there Walt lost his wallet so he had to walk day and night the rest of the way there. They made their way back to Washington on December 28, 1862.
In the early year of 1873, Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke, his mother died the same year. Walt died on March 26, 1892. Autopsy revealed his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their normal breathing capacity, result to bronchial pneumonia.