July 4

In literary history

• 1855Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass on Independence Day, listing no name, only an engraving of himself in work clothes and a jaunty hat. Seventeen days later, Emerson wrote to call it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America had yet contributed.

Writers born on July 4

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804)

The Daily Canon for July 4

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (1849).