Parts of the commentary in this site are adapted from my essay, "Lucifer and Ethiopia: Whitman, Race, and Poetics before the Civil War and After," in David Reynolds, ed., A Historical Approach to Walt Whitman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 45-95, and are used here with the permission of Oxford University Press.

Images in this site are from the Library of Congress, Washington DC, and the Alderman Library Special Collections, University of Virginia.

I am grateful to the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at The University of Iowa (Dr. Jay Semel, Director) for invaluable support during the construction of this site, and to the Obermann Center's media specialist, Karla Tonella, for her help in designing the site.

--Ed Folsom, University of Iowa

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