This is a rough draft of a letter eventually published as letters to several newspaper editors urging a speedy exchange of Civil War prisoners. This topic was personal for Whitman. His brother, George Whitman, a soldier in the Union army, was captured in 1864 by the Confederates.
On 22 December 1894, a military court-martial convicted Alfred Dreyfus for treason and sentenced him to indefinite deportation. Since October, accusations circulated that Dreyfus had sold military secrets to the Germans, France’s sworn enemies since the disastrous 1870 Franco-Prussian war. Though the reliability of the court’s verdict was challenged, due to its shaky evidence such as penmanship and unpublished secret reports, the military stuck to its story.
The news magazine L’Illustration recorded the solemnity of the courtroom. Dreyfus turns to face a three-person panel seated beneath a painting of Christ crucified—a clear parallel to Dreyfus’s martyrdom by a military determined to preserve its honor. In its crisp lines and careful attention to detail, L’Illustration represented the trial in a calmly factual style without the sensationalism and excitement that characterized most newspaper reports of the Affair.
Abraham Lincoln was seen by many in his party as the most electable of the potential Republican presidential candidates, in part because of his earlier strong showing in his debates against Stephen Douglas. The Republican platform sought to unite a broad range of voters, including anti-immigrant Know Nothings, former Whigs, Radical Republicans, and abolitionists. Its key plank asserted that freedom should be established nationally, refuting that either Congress or the territorial legislatures had the power to make slavery legal in new states. Despite not even being on the ballot in the majority of the southern states, Lincoln won the presidency decisively by carrying a strong majority in the more populous northern states and thus securing a majority in the Electoral College. He carried only 40 percent of the popular vote.
