Context: The banning of Leaves of Grass

For the first four edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman did not use a publisher at all. He distributed his book through a firm called Fowler and Wells. It wasn’t until 1881 when Whitman agreed to sign a contract with the publisher James Osgood based in Boston, that the banning of Leaves of Grass became a much larger issue involving high officials (Green 2004). Up until that point, his book was mostly attacked by local ministers and critics. With the 1881 edition, after Osgood had agreed to publish Leaves did it become evident that the District Attorney of Boston had taken action to censor Whitman’s literary work. The D.A. ordered Osgood to convince Whitman to remove sections of the book deemed too obscene for public consumption (Hebb 1927).

On March 1 1882, James Osgood received a letter from Oliver Stevens, the District Attorney of Boston claiming that the edition of Leaves of Green that was about to be published is obscene literature. Whitman received a letter from Osgood on March 4 stating they were contacted by the District Attorney and did not want to proceed with publishing the book because of concerns of legal repercussions. They asked Whitman to submit a new revision of Leaves with the “obnoxious features” removed from the manuscript. 

After further correspondence it became clear to Whitman that the changes requested of him encompassed much more than a few lines here and there and they DA was demanding significant portions of the book changed. At that point Whitman refused to make the changes and came to a disagreement with Osgood and demanded that plates for printing be given to him and his commission of $100 be paid out. Whitman also accused the DA of having a hidden figure behind all the intrigue and that someone else was behind the changes to Leaves.

Many years later, it was discovered that the DA had never read the copy of Leaves that they were trying to censor and all the changes an demands were coming from an inside informer who happe to be the Reverend Fredrick Baylies Allen who was a pastor of the great Trinity church (Hebb 1927).