Essays

"That I could look ... on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning": Walt Whitman's Anti-Gallows Writing and the Appeal to Christian Sympathy

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Abstract

Traces “Whitman’s involvement in the anti-capital punishment movement . . . from his impassioned anti-gallows editorials for various periodicals to his transference of these expressions” into Leaves of Grass, “especially in terms of his arguments for sympathy for condemned criminals and his use of the rhetoric of ‘Christian sympathy,’ a rhetoric very common in antebellum anti-gallows arguments.”

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How to Cite: Jones, P. C. (2009) “"That I could look ... on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning": Walt Whitman's Anti-Gallows Writing and the Appeal to Christian Sympathy”, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 27(1/2). doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2153-3695.1900