Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman

This book had its inception in the discovery of what seemed to be an utterly unknown lecture on Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman. Mr. Barton set forth to discover how it happened that Whitman prepared this lecture and through what stages of development of its evolution could be traced. Mr. Barton had already written the life-story of Lincoln, and he restrained himself from writing a biography of Whitman. He undertook to relate so much of Whitman's life-story as is connected with his writings on Lincoln, and this involved some consideration of the aim and spirit of his writings as a whole, and particularly his interpretation of the spirit of America, as he found it incarnate in Abraham Lincoln. Illustrated.