Who was fired from the Interior Department in 1865 for having written "Leaves of Grass"?

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. was in New Orleans that he experienced firsthand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city.

In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of "Leaves of Grass", which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response.

Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals and stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of "Leaves of Grass", which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet.

Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. From time to time writers both in the states and in England sent him “purses” of money so that he could get by. after suffering a stroke, He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of "Leaves of Grass" (James R. Osgood) gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden. After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.