Walt Whitman led a pretty eccentric life style living between jobs and his dreams, but always managed to take care of him and others, while pursuing his dreams in journalism. Walter Whitman's life had a dramatic influence on his writings and publications.
Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. Whitman was one of nine children and little is known about his youth except that two of his siblings were illiterate, imbeciles (Lieye). Growing up, Whitman attended grammar school in Brooklyn (Pooley, 413). Whitman's parents were mostly poor and illiterate. His father was a carpenter, while his mother was a devout Quaker. (Lieye) Whitman held a good relationship with his parents, while providing and taking care of them (Pooley, 413).
In 1830, at the age eleven, Whitman worked as an office boy for a lawyer, where he had started to learn the printing trade (Lieye). Then at the age twelve, Whitman had learned the printers trade, and fell in love with the written word. In 1836, at the age of seventeen, Whitman began his career as a teacher in the one room schoolhouse of Long Island (Otfinosk, 24). Whitman still pursued his interest in newspapers. Then in 1838, he founded a weekly newspaper in Huntington, The Long Islander (Babusci, 231). Whitman continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full time career (Otfinosk, 24). Thus Whitman returned to New York to work on his writings (Abel, 456). Whitman then partially took up carpentry and house building while he edited newspapers. (Folsom).
In 1846 Whitman became the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, an influential liberal newspaper (Abel, 458). In 1848, in New Orleans, Whitman wrote for the Crescent (Drabble, 1064). Then in 1850 Whitman wrote the "Tribune" and had it published in "Horace Greeley's Abolitionist." The "Tribune" was a poem attacking those in the North who connived the slave power (Abel, 459).
