Like many of Johnson’s letters to Whitman, this one features references to a number of Whitmanian concepts and works. The texts that follow seem most clearly signaled as sources of Johnson’s dialogue with the poet.

The letter’s speaker makes reference to the “Average Man” and the “Modern Man.” “Average man” is a term used in a number of places in Whitman’s poetry. “I Was Looking a Long While” (from the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass) is a typical example:
 

I WAS looking a long while for the history of the past 

for myself, and for these chants—and now I 

have found it;

It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them 

I neither accept nor reject;)

It is no more in the legends than in all else;

It is in the present—it is this earth to-day;

It is in Democracy—in this America—the old world 

also;

It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the 

average man of to-day;

It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts;

It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, ma-

chinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, 

and the interchange of nations,

All for the average man of to-day.[i]

Johnson may also be referring to Whitman’s use of the phrase in an important moment in “Democratic Vistas,” first published in full in 1871 and an essay to which Johnson makes reference in other letters:

Enough, that while the piled embroidered shoddy gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp and weft are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race, the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could also put it down.

The average man of a land at last only is important. He, in These States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving good uses, somehow, out of any sort of servant in office, even the basest; because, (certain universal requisites, and their settled regularity and protection, being first secured,) a Nation like ours, in a sort of geological formation state, trying continually new experiments, choosing new delegations, is not served by the best men only, but sometimes more by those that provoke it—by the combats they arouse. Thus national rage, fury, discussion, &c., better than content. Thus, also, the warning signals, invaluable for after times.[ii]

The “modern man” first appears in the 1871-72 edition of Leaves of Grass, in the poem “One’s-Self I Sing”:

ONE’S-SELF I sing—a simple, separate Person;

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.

Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;

Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for 

the muse—I say the Form complete is worthier 

far;

The Female equally with the male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful—for freest action form’d, under the laws di-

vine,

The Modern Man I sing.[iii]

The phrase “fresh and modern” first appears in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass; in the 1867 edition it appears in a cluster titled “Leaves of Grass,” in section 2 (“Myself and mine gymnastic ever”):
 

Let others finish specimens—I never finish speci-

mens;

I shower them by exhaustless laws, as nature does,

fresh and modern continually.[iv]

The references to the “fap” of the flag refer to “Song of the Banner at Daybreak,” with its depiction of the flag “Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping.” Whitman’s longest poem about the Civil War, it also resonates with the specific content of this letter because of its choral nature: three of the five speakers in the poem are the “Poet,” the “Child,” and the “Father.” In this letter’s case, we might say, instead of the pennant calling the child to battle to the father’s distress, the father calls the poet to battle through the child’s voice. In the end of the poem, perhaps resonant with Johnson’s desire for the rhetorical effect of his letter, the Child’s attraction to battle holds a lesson for the Poet:

I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d 

and blinded;

My sight, my hearing and tongue, are come to me, (a 

little child taught me;)

I hear from above, O pennant of war, your ironical call 

and demand;

Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O 

banner![v]

The mention of Walt Whitman Johnson’s “‘gymnastic’ mudder” may evoke Whitman’s frequent use of the term “gymnastic.” It appears prominently in the same cluster section in which “fresh and modern” does, earlier in “Leaves of Grass,” section 2 of the 1867 edition of Leaves:

MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever,

To stand the cold or heat—to take good aim with a 

gun—to sail a boat—to manage horses—to be-

get superb children,

To speak readily and clearly—to feel at home among 

common people,

And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land 

and sea.

Not for an embroiderer;

(There will always be plenty of embroiderers—I wel-

come them also;)

But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and 

Women.[vi]

Though the phrase is a cliché, it is possible that when the infant speaker of this letter asks Whitman how he would like to show him affection, insisting the poet “mus’ not be tongue-tied,” a specific verse from “Song of Myself” is being alluded to, particularly given both Johnson’s rhetorical ventriloquism and his implication that Whitman wrote abolitionist poetry only for financial reasons:

I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the

time while I wait for a boat;

It is you talking just as much as myself—I act as the

tongue of you;

Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.[vii]

[i] Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (New York: W.E. Chapin & Co., Printers, 1867), 312.

[ii] Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 30-31.

[iii] Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Washington, DC, 1871), 7.

[iv] Whitman, Leaves (1867), 162.

[v] Whitman, Leaves (1871), 356.

[vi] Whitman, Leaves (1867), 161.

[vii] Whitman, Leaves (1871), 91; this passage appeared with minor changes in all editions of Leaves of Grass.