Whitman and the Irish

2. Time Line

2 T I M E L I N E 1819 Whitman born (May 31) on Long Island, N.Y.; family moves to Brooklyn, N.Y., four years later 1823–1830 Whitman and family live in various places in Brooklyn, including the vicinity of the Brooklyn Navy Yard located very near the heaviest concentration of Irish in Brooklyn 1840s In Ireland, the Young Ireland revolutionary movement flourishes; one of its writers is “Speranza,” Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, mother of Oscar Wilde 1841 Address from the People of Ireland to their Countrymen and Countrywomen in America is issued by Irish and American abolitionists calling on Irish to support abolitionism; Whitman begins working for the New York New World and becomes active in the Democratic Party, political home to most of the city’s Irish; he publishes for the first time in John O’Sullivan’s United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1842 Whitman becomes editor of the Aurora, a New York daily, and writes editorials attacking New York’s Irish and Bishop John Hughes 1844–45 The great Irish famine migration begins, bringing Irish in record numbers to the United States 1847 Whitman, now editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, adopts the Free Soil position supported by Irish workers; Whitman recommends books by William Carleton to Eagle readers and editorializes on problems of Irish laborers and their attempts to unionize 1848 Whitman writes sketch of Irish drayman for the New Orleans Daily Crescent; back in New York later this year Whitman has his head “read” by a phrenologist and becomes an advocate of this pseudoscience, which contributed to notions of national characteristics c. 1850 Whitman writes an unpublished account of the plight of Irish women seeking new positions as servants through an emigrant agency 1854 Whitman may have written “Poem of Apparitions in Boston,” later known as “A Boston Ballad,” in this year at the time of the trial in Boston of fugitive slave Anthony Burns; an attempt by abolitionists to rescue Burns leads to the death of Irishman James Batchelder 1855 Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass; this and succeeding editions of Leaves contain references to the Irish and to New York employment, activities, and events that included many Irish 1858 The Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish American revolutionary society, is founded in the United States 1859–1860 At Pfaff’s, a New York restaurant, Whitman is friendly with Fitz-James O’Brien, writer of short stories 1860 In Boston for the publication of a new edition of Leaves, Whitman meets William Douglas O’Connor 1861 Whitman publishes “Old Ireland” in the New York Leader; firing on Fort Sumter begins the Civil War; New York’s all-Irish Sixty-ninth Regiment enters the war 1862 Whitman goes to Washington, D.C., and takes a government position while volunteering as a hospital visitor to Civil War wounded; renews friendship with William Douglas O’Connor 1863 Conscription Act brings four days of rioting in New York City in which Irish play a major role t i m e l i n e { 13 } 1865 Whitman meets Irish-born Peter Doyle in Washington, D.C., beginning a long and intimate relationship 1866 William Douglas O’Connor publishes The Good Gray Poet defending Whitman, who has been dismissed from a government position 1869 The Fenians invade Canada for a second time (the first was in 1866); John Boyle O’Reilly, just escaped from an English prison, accompanies invasion as a reporter for the Boston Pilot 1871 In July Whitman writes letters to Peter Doyle and William Douglas O’Connor describing the riot that occurred in New York City on Boyne Day; Edward Dowden publishes “The Poetry of Democracy: Walt Whitman”; Yeats, at first an admirer of Whitman, later challenges Dowden’s views and rejects Whitman as a model for a national poet 1879 National Land League formed in Ireland 1880 American Land League founded; Charles Stewart Parnell arrives in New York 1881 In Boston to deliver his Lincoln lecture, Whitman meets John Boyle O’Reilly, now editor of the Boston Pilot; Whitman grants permission for Russian translation of Leaves to John Fitzgerald Lee, a student at Trinity College, Dublin, and to Thomas W. H. Rolleston for a German translation 1882 Oscar Wilde visits Whitman in Camden, New Jersey; murder of government officials in Dublin’s Phoenix Park; Leaves of Grass is suppressed in Boston and in the library of Trinity College, Dublin 1884 Whitman...