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Whitman Archive Title: Russian serfs
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Whitman Archive ID: duk.00685
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Repository ID: Box II-5B 103
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
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Date: 1855-1856
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Genre: prose
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content:
Grouped with a collection of notes about Africa and Asia, this fragment notes that Russia "has 40 million of serfs, (or slaves)." With the paper suggesting a date of 1855 or 1856, this scrap may have been the impetus for Whitman's inclusion of "You Russian serf!" in his catalog of downtrodden peoples in "Poem of Salutation" in 1856; the poem would later be entitled "Salut Au Monde!" The reference to the "Russian serf" was dropped from the poem after the 1860 edition.
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