O Captain! My Captain!

On February 9, 1888, Walt Whitman penned a note to the publishers of The Riverside Literature Series No. 32 calling attention to mistakes in their recently printed version of his poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" "Somehow you have got a couple of bad perversions in 'O Captain,'" he wrote, "I send you a corrected sheet."

Letter and Corrected Reprint
of Walt Whitman's
"O Captain! My Captain!", February 9, 1888.
Words and Deeds in American History

Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain!" in response to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. He revised the poem in 1866 and again in 1871. Apparently, the Riverside editors picked up an earlier version of the poem. Whitman's February 9 letter to the publishers details changes for punctuation and entire lines of text.

Published to immediate acclaim in the Saturday Press, "O Captain! My Captain!" was the only poem from Whitman's compendium, Leaves of Grass, widely reprinted and anthologized during his lifetime. Whitman rarely used rhymed, rhythmically regular verse, but here it creates a somber, yet exalted, effect.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

By the 1880s, Whitman was asked to recite the poem so often he said, "I'm almost sorry I ever wrote [it]," though it had "certain emotional immediate reasons for being."

Abraham Lincoln,
Douglas Volk, artist,
photograph of a painting,
circa 1908-1912.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Walt Whitman,
John White Alexander, artist,
photograph of a painting,
circa 1900-1920.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

An outpouring of communal grief and numerous efforts to memorialize the fallen leader followed Lincoln's death. In May 1865, African-American citizens of the District of Columbia organized the National Lincoln Monument Association for the purpose of erecting a national monument to Lincoln. African American Perspectives, 1818-1907 contains the complete text of the group's constitution as well as the eloquent tribute Frederick Douglass made to Lincoln at the 1876 unveiling of the Lincoln Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, D. C.

• "We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!": Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana includes more than two hundred sheet-music compositions that represent Lincoln and the war as reflected in popular music. The collection spans the years from Lincoln's presidential campaign in 1859 through the 1909 centennial of Lincoln's birth. The compiler, Alfred Whital Stern (1881-1960), is considered the greatest private collector of materials relating to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. Search the collection on death to find plaintive tunes like "Rest, Noble Chieftain" in which the composer extolles, "Rest noble Chieftain, sweet be thy sleep And over thy grave a Nation shall weep;."
• For more on Abraham Lincoln, visit Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library. Highlighting the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln Assasination, it presents the wealth of Lincoln materials held at the Library of Congress.
• The Library of Congress holds the world's largest Walt Whitman manuscript collection, numbering 20,000 items, including many original notebooks. Four of Whitman's notebooks are available in Walt Whitman Notebooks, 1847-1860s. Also explore a pedagogical view of the Walt Whitman collection presented by the Collection Connections section of the Learning Page.
• Whitman wrote another elegy for Lincoln entitled "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd." This poem is just one of a number of many published in the various editions of Leaves of Grass now available online.

Songs of Loss and Mourning

"Rest, Spirit, Rest"
by E. Hoffman,
1865

"President Lincoln's Funeral Dirge"
by Rose Rynder,
1866.

"Abraham Lincoln's Funeral March"
by C.H. Bach,
1865.

"We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!"
Sheet Music From the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana