The Wilmot Proviso was attached to a bill in 1846 during the Mexican War as an amendment that provided President Polk with two million dollars. This bill (with the stipulations of the Wilmot Proviso attached) proposed that “None of the territory acquired in the Mexican War should be open to slavery” (Infoplease.com). Although the bill was denied by the Senate, it nonetheless brought forth the crucial issue of slavery and presented America with its countless complications.
Whitman, who was a strong advocate of unity and tolerance, was plausibly aware not only of the amendment, but of the many complexities that arose with it as well. In The Leaves of Grass Whitman harbors a runaway slave for a week, in which he cleans his wounds and says, “I had him sit next to me at table” thus demonstrating his desire to bridge the gap between black and white, between acceptance and dissent.
In the core of Whitman’s philosophy according to “Song of Myself” he expresses an innate desire to embrace what is natural and raw, as an attempt to further himself from indulging in a dependent relationship with society. He notes the importance of being able to “[Grow] among black folks as among white” and gives no preference to either, seeing as they are equal in the eyes of nature and therefore in the eyes of himself. To deny an individual a natural right such as equality, is to deny them the right to smell their own perfumes and rejoice in the beauty of their own existence.
Whitman understood what most Americans took hundreds of years to even begin to fathom. He understood that freedom and the right to simply ‘be’ is an organic quality no man may give to another, but is a conundrum that man must actualize and conquer within himself.
Excellent!
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