American Poet Walt Whitman Photograph

Photographer Wiliam Kurtz; auctioned at Swann Galleries, New York.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), poet, editor, essayist best known for Leaves of Grass.

He founded a weekly newspaper, The Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent for three months. After witnessing the auctions of enslaved individuals in New Orleans, he returned to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848 and co-founded a “free soil” newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, which he edited through the next fall. For more info go to Poets.org

A snippet of Whitman's obituary, Trenton Evening Times (Trenton, N.J.), Mon., Mar. 28, 1892, p. 4: