Ed Simon: Why we will need Walt Whitman in 2020

When Walt Whitman arrived in Washington at the end of 1862 to take up residence in the city and serve as a hospital volunteer, the construction of the Capitol dome was not yet complete. In a dispatch published in the Oct. 4, 1863, edition of The New York Times, Whitman described this “vast eggshell, built of iron and glass, this dome — a beauteous bubble” that “emerges calm and aloft from the hill, out of a dense mass of trees.” The poet recounted how a “few d