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Why was Walt Whitman fired from the Department of the Interior in 1865?

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“Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos” — Walt Whitman American poet Walt Whitman, photograph by Mathew Brady.

In June 1865, Walt Whitman was dismissed from his position as a clerk at the Department of the Interior because the secretary of the Interior deemed his poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, to be indecent.12

Although the work is now considered a landmark in American literature, it was frequently censured and suppressed during Whitman's lifetime due to its unconventional language and controversial subject matter, which included frank celebrations of the human body and sexual passion. Following his dismissal, Whitman secured a new position in the attorney general’s office with the assistance of his friend, the journalist William O’Connor.321