Today in History

History & Celebrations Today – February 9

Celebrations Today – February 9

Holidays and observances

Celebrations Today – USA: February 9

National Bagel Day (Formerly Bagel and Lox Day)
National Pizza Day
National Toothache Day
National Bagel Day
National Develop Alternative Vices Day
National Pizza Pie Day
National Read in the Bathtub Day

Today in US History: February 9

O Captain! My Captain!

On February 9, 1888, Walt Whitman penned a note to the publishers of The Riverside Literature Series No. 32 calling attention to mistakes in their recently printed version of his poem, “O Captain! My Captain!” “Somehow you have got a couple of bad perversions in ‘O Captain,'” he wrote. “I send you a corrected sheet.”


Letter and Corrected Reprint
of Walt Whitman’s
“O Captain! My Captain!”, February 9, 1888.
Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Years

Whitman wrote “O Captain! My Captain!” in response to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. He revised the poem in 1866 and again in 1871. Apparently, the Riverside editors published an earlier version of the poem. Whitman’s February 9 letter to the publishers details his changes for punctuation and entire lines of text.

Published to immediate acclaim in the Saturday Press, “O Captain! My Captain!” was the only poem from Whitman’s compendium, Leaves of Grass, widely reprinted and anthologized during his lifetime. Whitman rarely used rhymed, rhythmically regular verse, but here it creates a somber, yet exalted, effect.

O CAPTAIN! my captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red!
Where on the deck my captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

By the 1880s, Whitman was asked to recite the poem so often he said, “I’m almost sorry I ever wrote [it],” though it had “certain emotional immediate reasons for being.”


Abraham Lincoln,
Douglas Volk, artist,
photograph of a painting,
circa 1908-12.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920


Walt Whitman,
John White Alexander, artist,
photograph of a painting,
circa 1900-20.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920

An outpouring of communal grief and numerous efforts to memorialize the fallen leader followed Lincoln’s death. In May 1865, African-American citizens of the District of Columbia organized the Educational Monument Associationto the Memory of Abraham Lincoln for the purpose of erecting a national monument to Lincoln. African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907 contains the complete text of the group’s constitution as well as the eloquent tribute that Frederick Douglass made to Lincoln at the 1876 unveiling of the Lincoln Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, D. C.

Songs of Loss and Mourning


Rest, Spirit, Rest,”
by E. Hoffman,
1865.


President Lincoln’s Funeral Dirge,
by Rose Rynder,
1866.


Abraham Lincoln’s Funeral March,
by C.H. Bach,
1865.

The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana

Today in History – February 9-External Links

Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia

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