WALT WHITMAN LITERARY FILE PROSE "A Gap Now of Over a Year," AMs, n.d. Box 1 Folder 12 (LC Catalog #284) A gap now of over a Year. -- I suppose [that] you understand, Reader dear, that [this is no] I do not propose to give any detail of the War, or its events as they transpired -- only some transcripts from my Memoranda. Accordingly I here skip even dry allusions to the checkered events of the next sixteen or seventeen months -- with their [lig] lights as we [K]now know them, and the dark shades [p??] [&] heavy & threatening enough at the time. I will only mention that two [Few] points without which there can be no realization of the last of 1861 [and '63] and all of '62 , appear to be since forgotten although they are pervaded those [two] years, & deeply tinged [them by their] everything in them: One, that the Secession movement had a powerful and determined affiliation in a minority -- at the North, as slavery had -- the Other, that for a long while the success of the National cause [was] seemed (at the time) [no more than chance] (at the time) quite problematical. Whitman From "Specimen Days" 75- pyat 445 Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.