In 1865 Walt Whitman was dismissed from his clerkship in the Department of the Interior because Secretary James Harlan judged Leaves of Grass indecent, unfit to be read aloud "by the evening lamp." Most eloquent among Whitman's defenders was William Douglas O'Connor, whose pamphlet The Good Gray Poet, a panegyric to Whitman and an attack on literary censorship in general and Harlan in particular, was the first of his many heroic if sometimes excessive efforts on Whitman's behalf.

In 1864 the poet, Walt Whitman, was terminated from his job as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior. The reason was that the incoming Secretary of the Department read 'Leaves of Grass' and decided that Whitman was a publisher of vulgar literature. William Douglas O'Connor was a close friend and published this book to defend Whitman and 'Leaves of Grass' by stating that a lot of classic literature is filled with profanity and obscenity and that the book was one of them.

Walt Whitman worked at three government jobs in his time in Washington. In 1865, he was fired as a clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs by Secretary of the Interior James Harlan, who found Leaves of Grass to be indecent. Whitman's great friend William Douglas O'Connor responded twofold. He arranged for a new job for Whitman in the Attorney General's Office, and he published The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication. The pamphlet defended the poet, put a positive spin on his notoriety, and successfully created a whole new benevolent image for Whitman.Walt Whitman met William Douglas O'Connor in 1860 at the short-lived firm of Thayer and Eldridge, which that year published Whitman's third edition of Leaves of Grass and O'Connor's only novel, Harrington: A Story of True Love. Two years later their paths crossed again when Whitman traveled to Washington, D.C., to search its military hospitals for his brother George, who had been wounded in the Battle of Fredericksburg. O'Connor welcomed Whitman into his home and quickly became Whitman's friend and an ardent defender of Whitman's poetry. Since their first meeting, O'Connor had turned from his artistic pursuits as a daguerreotypist, poet, and short-story writer, novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor (at the Saturday Evening Post in Philadelphia) to the more steady position of a clerk in the Treasury Department.

In March 1888 Horace Traubel, Whitman's loyal and hardworking assistant, began to record his almost daily conversations with the most famous resident of Camden. The result: more than 1,900,000 words that were eventually published between 1906 and 1996 in nine volumes. Titled With Walt Whitman in Camden, these volumes contain much that is mundane and repetitive, but they also include many passages crucial for a full and humane understanding of America's first great national poet. In Intimate with Walt Gary Schmidgall has condensed Traubel's nearly 5,000 pages into one manageable volume featuring the many self-revealing, humorous, nostalgic, and often curmudgeonly words of the Good Gray Poet. The book is divided into five sections, each consisting of several chapters: the first, presenting Walt on himself, his family, and his daily life and visitors at the only home he ever owned; the second, on his artistic credos, the literary life, and a large array of comments on the writing, publication of, and critical reaction to Leaves of Grass; the third, focusing on his friends, admirers, idols, and lovers; the fourth and longest, presenting his no-holds-barred views on a variety of topics, including the American scene, race, religion, music, and even alcohol; and finally, a gathering of passages revealing Whitman's struggles with his infirmities, his poignant final days, and Traubel's observations on Whitman's deathbed scene and burial rites. Whitman was the great poet of autobiography, and with this volume we gain entry into a most remarkable life in his own words. Whimsical and highly entertaining, poignant and moving, illuminating and candid, Intimate with Walt makes accessible the most amazing oral history project in all of American letters.