page_1150 < previous page page_1150 next page > Page 1150 Taps and Sequel (1865) commemorated the suffering and heroism of the common soldier. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," the finest threnody on the war, elegized Abraham Lincoln, the emblem of Whitman's idealized republic. Even before the war, he had been troubled by the money-mania of his fellow citizens and by signs of class polarization. In fact, Leaves can be read as Whitman's effort to stifle his apprehensions about America's future by creating a "Kosmos" in which national blemishes, if not denied, are overwhelmed by geographical space as much as by the energy and latent nobility of the people. The war severely tested that faith. Although the sundered Union coalesced, he could not expunge the memory of an entire nation seemingly "bandaged and bloody in hospital," and the sordidness of the Gilded Age further taxed his confidence. The hollowness of much of his later verse  rhetorical prophecies churned out for ceremonial occasions  contrasts with the buoyancy and audacity of "Song of Myself," Whitman's most remarkable poem. His prose, however, such as the explosive jeremiad Democratic Vistas (1871) or recollections of a happier past like Specimen Days (1882), retains the old freshness and vigor. Crippled by strokes, Whitman ended his days more honored abroad than at home. He acknowledged without bitterness "that I have not gain'd acceptance in my own times" and fell back "on fond dreams of the future  anticipations." They would be realized sooner than he supposed. Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life (1980); M. Wynn Thomas, The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry (1987). DANIEL AARON See also Literature. Whitney, Eli (17651825), inventor and manufacturer. Whitney exhibited mechanical skills and an entrepreneurial spirit at an early age. He mastered the use of the tools in the workshop on his father's farm in Westborough, Massachusetts, became a general mechanical handyman in the area, and organized a successful nail-making business. After graduating from Yale, he moved to Georgia where he had been hired as a tutor, but quickly found an opportunity that was more to his liking and promised great rewards. Learning that the tedious and time-consuming task of picking the seeds out of cotton lint blocked the commercial production of short-staple, green-seed cotton, he decided to create a machine that would do the job. He wrote to his father in September 1793 that in ten days he produced a prototype gin that allowed one man to do the work of fifty. He declined an offer of "a Hundred Guineas" for his invention and decided instead "to relinquish my school and turn my attention to perfecting the Machine." He quickly improved his model, secured a patent, and in 1794, with a partner supplying financial backing, began manufacturing his gin. "It is generally said by those who know anything about it, that I shall make a Fortune by it,'' he noted optimistically. Almost overnight the gin made cotton production economically feasible, breathing new life into a languishing slave system by providing the South with a new commercial crop and the world with relatively cheap, high-quality cotton. But Whitney did not benefit financially from his revolutionary invention. Others had succeeded in producing similar gins at about the same time, and Whitney's device was simple and easy to copy. When he decided to charge royalties for use of his gin, rather than to sell it outright, cotton planters bought competing gins or unauthorized copies of Whitney's. Whitney went to court to protect his patent and even managed to win a patent infringement suit, but rivals continued to produce and sell their machines. The competition, the legal costs, and finally, his inability to get his patent renewed deprived Whitney of most of his anticipated profits. In the meantime, however, Whitney found a new opportunity. In 1798, the federal government granted him a contract to produce ten thousand muskets using what he promised would be a new process to make the various parts of the weapons interchangeable. Once  < previous page page_1150 next page >