Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul. - Walt Whitman

Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864. The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The democratic republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her union should be broken, her future cut off, and that she should be compell'd to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great. There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember'd by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared. [...] Are we indignant? alarm'd? Do we feel jeopardized? No; help'd, braced, concentrated, rather. We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the old world.

My respiration and inspiration.... the beating of my
heart....
the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the
shore and
darkcolored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice....
words loosed to
the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses.... a few embraces.... a reaching
around of
arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the
supple boughs
wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or
along the fields
and hillsides,
The feeling of health.... the full-noon trill.... the song
of me
rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have
you reckoned
the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of
poems?

America must welcome all — -Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not — -all, all, without exceptions: become an asylum for all who choose to come. We may have drifted away from this principle temporarily but time will bring us back. … America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people — -the vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers. Dare we deny them a home — -close the doors in their face — — take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system — -convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure — -such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be.