Readers of Whitman’s poetry have long celebrated his radical portrayal of crossing racial boundaries. Yet, as recent scholars have documented, Whitman “erased” almost all of his references to black Am..
Readers of Whitman’s poetry have long celebrated his radical portrayal of crossing racial boundaries. Yet, as recent scholars have documented, Whitman “erased” almost all of his references to black Americans in his Reconstruction-era writings. This article argues against the standard interpretation of this erasure, contending that it was a product of a rhetorical shift, rather than of Whitman’s increasing personal prejudice toward black Americans. By tracing Whitman’s rhetorical strategy from pre– to post–Civil War periods, I show that Whitman maintained a public commitment to a racially heterogeneous democracy. What changed, I argue, was his rhetorical approach. While Whitman’s prewar poetic experimentation was addressed to Americans more generally, his postwar writings were tailored to court the Americans who were least open to his democratic project—white Southerners. I conclude by examining the limitations of both rhetorical approaches, arguing that they point toward the need for a pluralist approach to social criticism.
