“I Sit and Look Out” did not appear in the first two editions of Leaves of Grass. It did not make an appearance until the third edition, which was published in 1860, a year before the start of the Civil War. The 1860 edition added 146 poems to the volume of poetry. The first two books were much slimmer editions: The first edition had 12 poems, and the second edition had 32 poems. This growth of Leaves of Grass showed Whitman’s desire to fashion his work into an American epic, capable of holding the diversity and robustness of American society.

“I Sit and Look Out” was published in a cluster of 24 numbered poems in the 1860 volume, showing Whitman’s interest in experimenting with arranging his growing epic into thematic groupings in the style of other Romantic works such as Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience and Longfellow’s The Seaside and the Fireside. “I Sit and Look Out” is number 17 in the cluster. (Later editions would disperse the 1860 cluster.)

In the 1840s, Emerson called for an American poet who could speak to the great beauty, ambition, diversity, and promise of America. But in 1860, the great promise of America was in jeopardy.