If there is one poet besides Henry Thoreau who didn't care about the knives of society stabbing at him, it would be Walt Whitman. Whitman was considered a rebel in his day, because his poetry, journals, and personal notes were the often unspoken and “uncomfortable” things most in society didn't have the courage to say. Whitman, born May 31, 1819, was the second of nine children of a Long Island, New York Quaker family. Walter, his father, a farmland owner and his wife, Louisa, were very well off before the many children, but his father started to struggle by the time Whitman was born. He worked hard as a farmer, carpenter, and real estate spectator to keep what land they had left. Despite the fact that Whitman moved away from government and society in his later life, as a child he loved America and it’s democracy for his parents were well advocates of involved citizens. He spent the time he had in school to wring as much knowledge out from books as he could, but when he was 11 his father pulled him out of school to help support the family. At this time the family had already moved to Brooklyn in the city for an attempt to seek new opportunities. Although it seemed there wasn’t too much hope at an opportunity for his father being that he was quite the alcoholic, but ironically enough he wasn’t an obstructive one. When Whitman was 17 he found he was fond of teaching, and got his first job as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Long Island. His teaching only lasted so long before he turned to Journalism in establishing a small newspaper in Long island, which lead him to move back to the city to pursue journalism at larger firms. He became an editor of the Brooklyn Daily Edge in 1846, but was known as a volatile editor for his opinions and thoughts because he defended equal rights and promoted the ideas of civil rights to all people. Which at the time seemed unacceptable for he was white. He later moved to New Orleans to continue his journalism, and that’s when Whitman really got a taste of the cruelty of slavery and the slave trade. He grew angry and published his own newspaper about Slavery, later making his own small book about his observations, thoughts