John D. Rockefeller Library
April 1 – June 15, 2008
Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln never met in life, but Whitman has played an instrumental role in the way Americans think about Lincoln and his work as President since the assassination in April 1865. This exhibition, drawn from the McLellan Lincoln Collection and the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays at the John Hay Library, explores Whitman’s various memorials to Lincoln and their influence on generations of Americans, both those contemporaries who knew and remembered Lincoln, and those since who have had to imagine and re-imagine him for themselves.