Walt Whitman: “The American Poet of Democracy”

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a poet in 1855, through the publication of his collection of poems Leaves of Grass (1855). The famous American writer, philosopher and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson reviewed the work of Whitman as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed". (Killingsworth 5 ff.)
However, not only American writers celebrated Whitman's work, but also authors from overseas like the Scottish-born Australian poet William Gay. Shortly after Whitman's death in 1893, Gay published in form of a pamphlet the study called Walt Whitman, The Poet of Democracy (1893). Gay describes Whitman's work as "the first clear and lusty note of a new, living poetry [...]" which is "[t]he poetry of the free, individual man, the equal and lover of his fellows, and co-heir with them of the universe". (Gay 48) But in how far is Gay's statement of Whitman being the "The Poet of Democracy" justified?
Already in his childhood Whitman was raised with the "Revolutionary-era ...

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