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What was Walt Whitman doing on a slave ship in 1856? /Thread 
Whitman had recently published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Reviews were mixed. He was struggling financially. He returned to journalism in New York. /2
Whitman accepted a commission from Life Illustrated to report on a ship named the Braman. This vessel had been about to sail to Africa before U.S. authorities, suspecting it was a slave ship, impounded it at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn (the slave trade was illegal since 1808) /3
