Peter Doyle

Peter Doyle was a good friend of Whitmans.  The two developed their relationship into something erotic or romantic, which is celebrated in the "Calamus" poems Whitman published in 1860.  Over the long course of their friendship, the two also exchanged letters that are considered to be "invaluable reference points for the student seeking to understand Whitman's emotional and sexual nature".  Although Doyle was born in Limerick Ireland in 1843, he came to the American South and became a Confederate soldier but despite joining the Confederacy, there is the possibility that Doyle was for abolishing slavery seeing as how he was very influenced by Whitman on a very personal level.  After Whitman's death, Peter Doyle gave the letters to Richard Maurice Bucke who edited and published it in 1897.

Specimen Days---Down At The Front

In this entry Whitman gives an eye witness account of his visit to the "camp hospitals in the army of the Potomac" where he observed the casualties of war.  It's a very morbidly dark scene, " I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, a full load for a one-horse cart".  I wonder what motivated him to visit these American soldiers if only to offer any help he could give them, which he does.  I'm guessing, even though he doesn't mention it, that he did know people who fought in the Civil War and who probably ended up as casualties.  I for one have to admire his courage to visit these soldiers under such devastating conditions.  It takes somebody with a big heart and a strong stomach to endure and withstand seeing suffering to this degree.  Compassion is the necessary virtue to possess when one must confront suffering, and Whitman delivers compassion even to a wounded Mississippian Captain who was badly wounded in the leg, and who asked Whitman for papers to which he gave him.  In his eyes in this particular circumstance North and South are indiscriminate, and Whitman, being from New York, makes this distinction.      

Martin F Tupper

Martin F Tupper was an English writer, poet, and author of Proverbial Philosophy.   Tupper's humane instincts prompted him to espouse many reforming movements; he was an early supporter of the Student Volunteer Movement, and did much to promote good relations between Britain and America. He tried to encourage African literature and was also a mechanical inventor in a small way. Critic Kwame Anthony Appiah, however, has used a quote from Martin Tupper's ballad "The Anglo-Saxon Race" 1850 as an example of the predominant understanding of "race" in the nineteenth century. Tupper's ballad appeared in the journal The Anglo-Saxon containing the lines: "Break forth and spread over every place/The world is a world for the Anglo Saxon race!"

At the end of his life he vanished into obscurity and nowadays his work is forgotten.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Farquhar_Tupper

Some excerpts from Proverbial Philosophy:

"The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation."

Contend not in wisdom with a fool, for thy sense maketh much of his conceit;

And some errors never would have thriven, had it not been for learned refutation.

http://www.notable-quotes.com/t/tupper_martin_farquhar.html

This guy would have been a really successful fortune cookie adviser or whatever they're called.  I couldn't really find anything substantial or comprehensive about Martin on the internet.  However, I did come across some of his poetry and it reflects some of the same elements that Whitman utilizes in Leaves of Grass.  For example, free verse is incorporated and is a major theme/idea of the poem is centered around the proverb, which, generally speaking, is wisdom.  Proverbs are found all over the world in different cultures and religious writings.  

Walt Whitman and Mass Media

From the top of my head I can recall the "Leaves of Grass" movie starring Edward Norton that came out in 2009.  I've only seen it once a while ago, so I don't remember all the little details.  Roughly it's about this university professor, Edward Norton, who is hornswoggled into returning to Oklahoma to help out his pot dealing twin brother in a scheme to stop a drug lord.  It compares to "The Big Lebowski" in more than one way not just the pot references.

March 9, 2005 - In his 30-year career, musician Fred Hersch has performed in solo, duo, trio and quintet settings. In 2003 he received the prestigious Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, which he used to work on his latest project, Leaves of Grass. For it, Hersch leads a 10-piece ensemble, which includes vocalists singing the words of Walt Whitman set to compositions by Hersch. He is touring the ensemble this month.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4528191&ps=rs

Fanny Wright

Fanny Wright was born on September 6, 1795.  Both her parents died when she was just three years old and she was brought up by her relatives including James Milne, a "progressive philosopher, who encouraged Fanny to question conventional ideas".  She spent time in the United States beginning in 1818 and after returning to England she wrote and published a book titled Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) in which she praised the value of American democracy.  The most significant accomplishment of her life was in 1825 when she purchased 2000 acres of land and populated the land with slaves whom she bought, liberated them and granted them land.  Wright's experimental community raised controversy because it went against the conventional norms of the time.  She encouraged sexual freedom, in her view marriage was a discriminatory institution with the solution being free love, she articulated her own dress code for women including "bodices, ankle length pantaloons, and a dress cut to above the knee".  In 1828 after her communal experiment failed, Wright and Robert Dale Owen planned for the "former slaves to be sent to the black republic of Haiti".  She later became involved in the Workingmen's Party in New York.

Whitman drew influence from Wright's teachings as seen in his own writings.  Her radical ideas involving free love, women's rights, stance on abolishing slavery, experiment in utopian community, and the workforce must have had some profound meaning for Whitman.  And growing up in New York, he was constantly being exposed to the political radicalism and religious fanaticism of that period.  Let's face it, Leaves of Grass is a radical text that touches upon all sorts of aspects of life in America and nature.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REwright.htm