“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” by Walt Whitman

 This poem appeared in the 1860 commercially published edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The book’s references to sex, and to same-sex relationships, drew harsh criticism and resulted in a ban from libraries across the United States. It also cost Whitman his federal job as a clerk in the Interior Department. Interior Secretary James Harlan passed an order to dismiss employees who “do not come within the rules of decorum & propriety prescribed by a Christian civilization.” Responding to Whitman’s supporters, Harlan pronounced, “If the President of the United States should order his reinstatement, I would resign sooner than I would put him back.” In 1881, following the publication of the sixth edition of Leaves of Grass, Boston District Attorney Oliver Stevens banned sales of the work unless amendments were made. Refusing, Whitman sought out another publisher in Philadelphia; the subsequent printing, advertised as “The Suppressed Book,” sold out on the first day.

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