Walt (Walter) Whitman (1819–1892) was born in Huntington, Long Island, in New York, and grew up in financially straitened circumstances; he left school at eleven years of age to work in a law office and then in a printer’s shop. He began publishing his poetry while still in his teens and drifted in and out of teaching and editorial positions until 1855, when he published Leaves of Grass, his first major volume of poetry. It gave Whitman both instant fame and notoriety: some, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, considered it masterful poetry, while others objected to what they saw as sexual content. When the Civil War broke out, Whitman was a strong Unionist, even though he did not enlist in the U.S. army. In 1862, moved by the wounded and convalescent soldiers he encountered, he volunteered as a nurse and wound dresser, serving at or near the front lines of combat.