Eliza Leggett

Walt’s friend, relative of Elias Hicks’s wife, Jemima Seaman. Abolitionist, suffragist, civic reformer, literary socialite.

Elias Hicks

Highly influential radical Quaker theologian, interpreter of Inner Light.

Walter Senior

Walt’s progressive, troubled, struggling father.

Louisa Whitman

Walt’s simple, well-beloved mother.

Walt Whitman

Spokesbard for New York’s Sailors, Lovers, and Quakers.

Cornelius Heeney

Heeney, an Irish Catholic, amassed a fortune under Quaker mentorship alongside John Jacob Astor and became a vital Brooklyn philanthropist.

Augustus Leggett

Abolitionist, journalist, farmer, husband of Eliza. This portrait is based upon Augustus’s son Mortimer, who looked like the one blurry image we have of Gus.

Hicksite Resurrectionists

Phillip Leggett (composite character) and Samuel E. Clements (young Walt’s early employer; artist’s conception) disinterred Elias Hicks to take a death mask.

Naomi Bates

Based upon English visitors Ann Jones and Anna Braithwaite, as well as the American Elisha Bastes, Naomi is a sort of agent provocateur from London Yearly Meeting.

Lucretia Mott

Book One portrays Lucretia’s sentiments in the Hicksite Schism, and as an exponent of responsible sexuality in her Medical School Address.

Frances Wright

The original feminist, and among the bravest and greatest.

D. C. Broderick

Broderick is introduced, fictionally, as a young “runner,” along with Walt and George Wilkes, in the Great Fire of 1835. He later became US Senator from California.

George Wilkes

Flash journalist, fancy-man, blackmailer, political hack, and betrayer of Dave Broderick.

Robert Cooper

Bob, a room-mate of Fred’s, may have been the pharmacist mentioned in a New York directory of the era (artist’s conception).

W. C. Bryant

America’s favorite (American) poet and publisher of the New York Evening Post.

R. W. Emerson

Highly influential architect of Self Reliance and The Poet.

Fred Vaughan

The omnibus driver who inspired Calamus and Leaves of Grass (artist’s conception).

“Samantha” Cooper

Bob’s mother (artist’s conception; fictitious name).

Father Taylor

Father Taylor inspired Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman, in addition to a legion of sailors, sea captains, and the general public.

Peleg + Bildad

(Fictional) owners of the Barclay (also the Pequod).

S. P. Andrews

Free Love guru, associate of Henry Clapp, manager of the Unitary Home where (fictionally) Fred, Bob, and Samantha reside.

Henry Clapp

Free Love theoretician and Walt’s publicist.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

Established the long, oracular, unrhymed lines which catalyzed Leaves of Grass.

Frances Colvin

The young girl who finally became Fred Vaughan’s wife (artist’s conception).

Peter Doyle

Walt Whitman’s most famous lover, or ‘camerado.’

D. G. Brinton

Prominent ethnologist, and first president of the Walt Whitman Association.

Thomas Harned

Attorney, literary executor for Walt Whitman.