Whitman did little in terms of employment from the 1850 to 1855. He subsequently edited numerous papers for short periods over the next fourteen years, including the New York Aurora and the Brooklyn Eagle, and published poems and short stories in various periodicals. In addition to teaching, Whitman started his own newspaper, the Long Islander. Unable to find work, he rejoined his family on Long Island in 1836 and taught at several schools.

Although his family moved back to Long Island in 1834, Whitman stayed in Brooklyn and then New York City to become a compositor. At age eleven he left school to work as an office boy in a law office and then as a typesetterвЂ™s apprentice at a number of print shops. In 1823 the Whitmans moved to Brooklyn, where Whitman attended public school. The second of nine children, Whitman was born in 1819 on Long Island, New York, to Quaker parents. The Captain (Lincoln), the speakerвЂ™s father figure and leader, is indeed dead, and what should have been a time of great rejoicing at the end of the Civil War has been turned into a time of national grief and mourning. However, the last line, in repeating the refrain вЂњFallen cold and dead,вЂќ lends a sense of finality to the poem and leaves no doubt in the readerвЂ™s mind. While he knows his Captain is dead, he hopes that he is dreaming, that he is somehow mistaken. The speakerвЂ™s difficulty in coming to grips with the death of his Captain is the subject of the poem. The fallen Captain of the poem is an allusion to Abraham Lincoln, and the ship is a metaphor for the ship of state, or more precisely, the United States of America. While engaging fixed patterns of rhyme and meter, the poem manages to communicate WhitmanвЂ™s heroic vision of Lincoln, the great Union leader of the Civil War, as well as the horror, shock,ДЄnd dismay Whitman felt at learning of LincolnвЂ™s assassination. Nevertheless, вЂњO Captain! My Captain!вЂќ does attest to WhitmanвЂ™s versatility as a poet. I say that if IвЂ™d written a whole volume of My Captains IвЂ™d deserve to be spanked and sent to bed with the worldвЂ™s compliments-which would be generous treatment, considering what a lame duck book such a book would have been!вЂќ At the heart of this statement is WhitmanвЂ™s recognition that the reading audience of his day still preferred conventionally rhymed and metered poems over more experimental free-verse forms that he himself favored. He is noted to have said: вЂњIвЂ™m almost sorry I ever wrote that poem. Yet Whitman thought the praise the poem garnered was unwarranted. вЂњO Captain! My Captain!вЂќ became an instant classic, and children were taught to recite its verses in school. While вЂњWhen Lilacs Last in the Dooryard BloomвЂ™dвЂќ has become one of WhitmanвЂ™s most critically acclaimed poems, вЂњO Captain! My Captain!,вЂќ which incorporates more conventional rhyme and meter, was by far the most popular of WhitmanвЂ™s poems during his lifetime. Written on the occasion Abraham LincolnвЂ™s assassination, вЂњO Captain! My Captain!вЂќ was first published in the New York Saturday Press (November 1865) and was later included, along with вЂњWhen Lilacs Last in the Dooryard BloomвЂ™d,вЂќ in a group of poems titled вЂњSequelвЂќ to Drum Taps (1865).

The prize meaning o captin my captain