the very fact of their being sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character, ignorance, and depravity... The sins for which the cities of the plain were overthrown still linger in some of these wooden-walled Gomorrahs of the deep.
— Herman Melville, Redburn & White-Jacket
Here comes one among the well beloved stonecutters... and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are how no solid forms.
— Walt Whitman, 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass
among the characteristics of this man of brawn and stature was a feminine sensibility
— Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol 22, 505
He gave us passions... in order that we might seek after those things which we need, and which we had a right to experience and know... under the influence of brotherly love, [moralists] would be willing to say... “mind thy own business... Do not mind me; I am not to be thy teacher”
— Elias Hicks, “Let Brotherly Love Continue” (1824)
You may possess “the origin of all poems” by exploring the “long foreground” — prior to the Civil War — to Leaves Of Grass: the sailors, lovers, and Quakers who built New York City into the nation's mightiest seaport... and who established the “Spirit of Tolerance” expressed in Walt Whitman's poetry.