There is an account of Lincoln reading Whitman's
Leaves of Grass poetry collection in his office, and another of the president saying "Well, he looks like a man!" upon seeing Whitman in Washington, D.C., but these accounts may be fictitious.
Lincoln's assassination in mid-April 1865 greatly moved Whitman, who wrote several poems in tribute to the fallen president. "
O Captain! My Captain!", "
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", "
Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day", and "This Dust Was Once the Man" were all written as sequels to Whitman's collection of poetry
Drum-Taps. The poems do not specifically mention Lincoln, although they turn the assassination of the president into a sort of
martyrdom.