LITR 4232: American Renaissance
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Index to Student Research Projects

Deterrean Gamble
American Renaissance
Academic Essay
Spring 2003 

The Only Song Worth Singing:

Walt Whitman and American Exceptionalism

               The political concept of the nation-state calls for the artists’ allegiance to the land and its people. Often this allegiance takes the form of mythologizing the history of the nation.  Homer’s epics or Virgil’s verses are examples of such mythology.  The epics recall the divine origins and special destinies of the peoples of these poems.  These poets had the luxury of reflecting back on centuries of tradition before recording their storied lines.  American history is too brief for such reflection.  Any homage to America requires a conceptual shift from the Greco-Roman traditions of citing the glories of battle and conquest to a new paradigm involving the exultant radiant poetic transmission of the ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  The given poet must rejoice in the America of the mind rather than the America of storied history.  Walt Whitman, the self-selected American bard, does not love America.  He does not embrace America.  Such language is too mundane to describe Whitman’s emotions for his native land.  Quite simply, Whitman sings America. 

            Whitman’s song is that of American exceptionalism.  Whitman through his verse sees America as the indispensable nation.  The United States is both the ultimate result and prime mover of human history.  The America of Whitman’s estimation redeems mankind and makes the world whole.  The melody of Whitman’s song is forever rising; its tempo is ever quickening; its volume is ever widening.  For Whitman, America is the only song worth singing.  As he states in his preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem” (Whitman 2850). 

            Whitman does not interpret American exceptionalism through the prism of its leaders.  Though his elegy to Lincoln, “When Lilacs Lat in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, elevates a “great” man to mythic status, Whitman sees the farm laborer and the mechanic as the atoms of American greatness.  As Whitman writes, “Other [nation] states indicate themselves in their deputies…. but the genius of the United States is not best or most in the executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, not even in its newspapers or inventors… but always most in the common people” (Whitman 2850).  The philosophical underpinnings of Whitman’s belief in the collective “genius” of average people are likely French in origin.  Whitman scholar Gay Wilson Allen credits the inspiration on the works of French historian Jules Michelet.  Allen writes that Michelet’s The People “contains every major idea of Whitman’s philosophy of Democracy, religion and art” (Richardson 158).  In his book Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance, Robert D. Richardson, Jr. comments, “Michelet was deeply anti-Christian, preaching instead the worship of la patrie, of France, of the common man, and of the Revolution itself” (Richardson 159).  That Whitman would adopt such a philosophy is not surprising when considering his background and career.  Indeed Whitman saw close at hand the labors of his parents; he worked in manual labor positions as well.   In the antebellum period, America was hardly equitable in its distribution of political and social power and access.  Still for a free man like Whitman, the American franchise of representative republicanism and popular sovereignty could well have enhanced the feeling of connection to other free men and reverence for collective action. Whitman’s opening stanza in One’s Self I Sing makes plain his psychic attachment to common men: “One’s-self I sing, a single separate person/Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse” (Whitman 1-2).

            Whitman’s democratic communitarianism serves as his basis for transcendentalism.  Such seems to upend the traditional Emersonian construct of “the antibureaucratic, antisystematic, and ultimately antigovernmental Self that discovers its strength in its capacity to represent itself as ‘other’ from all the conventional determinations (institutions) that threaten it” (Rowe 4).  Whitman, unlike Emerson, loses his “Selfness” and finds transcendence in the ideality of America and its people.  Whitman does not retire from the world of men; he envelops the sweat and tears and sickness and blood of the world of action. The human pageant translated through the American ideal lifts Whitman’s poetics.   Whitman sees the America of mythic dimension, transcendent of space and time. As Whitman writes, “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature” (Whitman 2850).   Whitman interprets all of human history through the American mind.  For Whitman, every human possessed of the desire to live in freedom is an American.

            Whitman’s concept of “America universal” takes the idea of American exceptionalism to its broadest degree.  America becomes the transnational archetype; America is the apex of human possibility.  In his poem Salut au Monde, he sees “the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of them” (Grass 121).  Much like the French revolutionary document The Declaration of the Rights of Man, Whitman appeals to the universal brotherhood of mankind. He writes “each of us is inevitable/Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth/Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth/Each of us here as divinely as any is here”(Whitman 322-326).  Whitman adds, “Some divine rapport has equalized me with them”(Whitman 350).   Whitman concludes the poem: “Toward you all, in America’s name/ I raise high the perpendicular hand, I make the signal/ To remain after me in sight forever/For all the haunts and homes of men” (Whitman 365-368).  Throughout much of the poem, Whitman serves as the ambassador poet to the nations of the world.  He regards the peoples of the world as equal members of the family of man.  At the conclusion, he does not merely salute the family of man; he inducts them.  With this act of oath taking, Whitman folds all humanity into the American mantle.

            While Whitman’s motives are humane, he shows a surprising callousness toward the national identities and aspirations of other peoples.  In Whitman’s mind, America’s exceptionalism exempts the nation from the consequences of its own actions or the harsher judgments of history.  The doctrine of “manifest destiny” was used to absolve the nation of the difficulties of its continental designs.  As America began its westward expansion, native peoples were moved from their lands.  Whitman never fully draws out the implications of the practice of his political philosophy.   In the case of the Mexican War, the US displaced the territorial holdings of a sovereign nation to advance the cause of westward expansion.  Whitman becomes an unabashed supporter of the war.  In 1846, Whitman pens a pro-war editorial in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in which he expresses his absolute belief in America’s manifest destiny:

”We love to indulge in thoughts of the future extent and power

of this Republic-because with its increase is the increase of human happiness and liberty….What has miserable, inefficient Mexico-

with her superstition, her burlesque upon freedom, her actual

tyranny by the few of the many-what has she to do with the great

mission of peopling the New World with a noble race? Be it ours, to

achieve that mission! Be it ours to roll down all of the upstart leaven

of old despotism, that comes our way!” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 1)

            Some of Whitman’s contemporaries were not as certain about the aims and purposes of the Mexican War. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a veteran of the Mexican War, commented, “The act of sending a armed force among the Mexicans was unnecessary, inasmuch as Mexico was in no way molesting or menacing the United States or the people thereof” (Bailey 268).  With hindsight as a guide, current historians have debated the aims of the Mexican War. Whitman appears never to have such ambivalence about this conflict.

            Whitman’s devotion to the idea of manifest destiny appears in his elegy to the assassinated Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”.   The entire poem moves westward along with the orb, the thrush and the coffin.  Whitman’s verse in the tenth section describes his recommendation for the most fitting tribute to Lincoln’s life and memory:

            “Sea-winds blown from east and west/Blown from the Eastern

             sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies

             meeting,/These and with these and the breath of my chant/

             I’ll perfume the grave of him I love” (Whitman 74-78).

Whitman calls on the nation to complete the continental plan as the fulfillment of its destiny and as a final homage to its fallen leader.

Whitman’s insistence on manifest destiny seems unusually rigid for a man so embracing of all humanity.  He seems to ignore the plights of the native peoples affected by American westward expansion.  Such blithe disregard seems especially out of character since Whitman so often stands with the disenfranchised.  Whitman envisions himself as the ”hounded slave” in search of succor and safety and he becomes a proto-feminist in his expressions of gender equality (Whitman 835).   Whitman’s ideological bearings shade his interpretation of the effects of his political philosophy.  While the benefits of a continental nation are self-evident, the costs must be reconciled.  Whitman sees little cost; his westward glance fills him with purpose and song. 

In fact, Whitman’s beliefs in American exceptionalism exhibit more nuances when he attempts to reconcile the calamity of the Civil War.  In the poem The Wound-Dresser, his first thought is “to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war/But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself/To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead” (Whitman 5-10).  Whitman nurses his own war-scarred brother as a wound-dresser.  Likely the sight of his ailing brother gives pause to the exultant militancy Whitman displays in his support for the Mexican War.

            Despite Whitman’s failure to reconcile his beliefs with reality, his basic concept of American exceptionalism becomes a universally adopted political construct.  Politicians of all ideological stripes use Whitman’s rhetoric to communicate devotion to the nation.  In life, Whitman was dismissed from a government post in the Interior Department.  Secretary of the Treasury James Harlan, morally offended by Whitman’s poetry, dismissed Whitman for “moral turpitude” (Heath 2848).

            In almost cosmic irony, moral conservative Ronald Reagan quotes Whitman when interpreting the Republican landslide of 1984:           

“A new movement was stirring. And in the 1960's Young Americans

for Freedom is born; National Review gains readership and prestige

in the intellectual community; Human Events becomes a major voice

on the cutting edge. In the '70s the anti-tax movement begins.

 Actually,

it was much more than an anti-tax movement, just as the Boston Tea Party was much more than an anti-tax initiative. In the late '70s Proposition 13 and the Sagebrush Rebellion; in 1980, for the first time in 28 years, a Republican Senate is elected; so, may I say, is a conservative President. In 1984that conservative administration is reselected in a 49-state sweep. And the day the votes came in, I thought of Walt Whitman: ‘I hear America singing.’”(Reagan 1)

            The political left is swayed by Whitman’s beliefs as well.  Presidential scholar Benjamin Barber considers the Clinton presidency in the light of Whitman.  Barber compares Clinton to Whitman in “his bottomless, sometimes debilitating desire to transcend all divisions, political and personal”. Barber goes on to add, “He was many, embracing the North and the South, the East and the West. And almost making it work.” (Brownstein 1) 

            As these politicians might attest, Whitman has become the lyricist of the American song.  Whitman, in considering the role of the American poet in his society, says, “The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other continents arrive as contributions . . . he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country's spirit” (Whitman 2851).  While Whitman’s views on manifest destiny might be considered tenuous by contemporary standards, his psychic immersion into the nation and its people is remarkable.  Whitman’s unfettered belief in American exceptionalism still finds resonance in the current generation of Americans.  American politicians and American citizens of all persuasions mimic his views. Whitman waited through most of his career to achieve some public acclaim.  His poetry is now firmly in the American canon. At long last, America sings Whitman. 

Works Cited

Bailey, Thomas A. and David M. Kennedy. The American Pageant.  Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1983. 268.  4 April 2003. http://home.att.net/~coachbb/02mainfest.htm

Brownstein, Ronald. “State of the Debate: Recent Books on the Clinton Legacy.” The American Prospect. 25 Feb 2002.  4 April 2003. http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/4/brownstein-f.html

Erkkila, Betsy. “Walt Whitman 1819-1892.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 2846-2849.

Reagan, Ronald. “Creators of the Future.” Junto Society.  8 March 1985. 4 April 1985. http://www.juntosociety.com/hist_speeches/rrcoftf. html

Richardson, Jr., Robert D. Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Rowe, John Carlos. At Emerson’s Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Whitman, Walt. Editorial. Brooklyn Daily Eagle,1846. 4 April 2003. http://home.att.net/~coachbb/02manifest.htm

Whitman, Walt. “One’s-Self I Sing.” Leaves of Grass. Ed. Peter Davison. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. 1.

Whitman, Walt. “Preface to the 1855 Edition.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 2849-2863.

Whitman, Walt. “Salut Au Monde.”  Leaves of Grass. Ed. Peter Davison. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. 115-124.

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 2863-2914.

Whitman, Walt. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”  The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 2941-2948.