Editing Walt Whitman (section)

===Slavery===
Like many in the [[Free Soil Party]] who were concerned about the threat slavery would pose to free white labor and northern businessmen exploiting the newly colonized western territories,<ref name="Klammer">{{cite book |last1=Klammer |first1=Martin |chapter=Free Soil Party |editor-last1=LeMaster |editor-first1=J. R. |editor-last2=Kummings |editor-first2=Donald D. |title=Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia| date=1998 |publisher=Garland Publishing |location=New York |url=https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_461.html |access-date=October 10, 2020}}</ref> Whitman opposed the extension of slavery in the United States and supported the [[Wilmot Proviso]].<ref name=Reynolds117>Reynolds, 117.</ref> At first he was opposed to [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionism]], believing the movement did more harm than good. In 1846, he wrote that the abolitionists had, in fact, slowed the advancement of their cause by their "[[wikt:ultraism|ultraism]] and officiousness".<ref>Loving, 110.</ref> His main concern was that their methods disrupted the democratic process, as did the refusal of the Southern states to put the interests of the nation as a whole above their own.<ref name=Reynolds117/> In 1856, in his unpublished ''The Eighteenth Presidency'', addressing the men of the South, he wrote "you are either to abolish slavery or it will abolish you". Whitman also subscribed to the widespread opinion that even free African-Americans should not vote<ref name=Reynolds473>Reynolds, 473.</ref> and was concerned at the increasing number of African-Americans in the legislature; as [[David S. Reynolds|David Reynolds]] notes, Whitman wrote in prejudiced terms of these new voters and politicians, calling them "blacks, with about as much intellect and calibre (in the mass) as so many baboons."<ref>Reynolds, 470.</ref> [[George B. Hutchinson|George Hutchinson]] and David Drews have written that "what little is known about the early development of Whitman's racial awareness suggests that he imbibed the prevailing white prejudices of his time and place, thinking of black people as servile, shiftless, ignorant, and given to stealing," but that despite his views remaining largely unchanged, "readers of the twentieth century, including black ones, imagined him as a fervent antiracist."<ref name="Racial Attitudes">{{cite book |last1=Hutchinson |first1=George |last2=Drews |first2=David |chapter=Racial Attitudes |editor-last1=LeMaster |editor-first1=J. R. |editor-last2=Kummings |editor-first2=Donald D. |title=Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia| date=1998 |publisher=Garland Publishing |location=New York |url=http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_44.html |access-date=October 10, 2020}}</ref>