Walt Whitman was born in eighteen nineteen in New York City. During his long life, he watched America grow from a young nation to the strongest industrial power in the world. Whitman was influenced by events around him. But his poetry speaks of the inner self. He celebrated great people like President Abraham Lincoln. He also celebrated common people. As a young man, Whitman worked as a school teacher, a printer and a newspaper reporter. He was thirty-six years old when his first book of poetry was published. He called it Leaves of Grass. It has only twelve poems. The poems are written in free verse. The lines do not follow any set form. Some lines are short and some are long. The words at the end of each line do not have a similar sound. They do not rhyme. One of America's greatest thinkers and writers immediately recognized the importance of Leaves of Grass. Ralph Waldo Emerson praised Whitman's work.  _  The America's Civil War began in eighteen sixty-one. During the war, Whitman worked without pay at army hospitals. He helped care for the wounded and dying soldiers. He sat beside these men for hours. He brought them food and wrote letters for them. After the Civil War, Whitman worked for government agencies. He watched the United States try to heal itself and increase democracy. To Walt Whitman, democracy was more than a political system or idea. It was a natural form of government for free people. Whitman believed democracy was meant to honor the rights of every person and the equality of all people. In eighteen seventy-three, Walt Whitman suffered a stroke. He spent the last few years of his life in Camden, New Jersey and wrote more poems. Whitman was poor and weak during the last few years of his life. He died in eighteen ninety-two. Leaves of Grass was published in   _  .
1855 1819 1861 1873