Walt Whitman gave a series of lectures on Abraham Lincoln from 1879 to 1890. They centered around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but also covered years leading up to and during the American Civil War and sometimes included readings of poems such as "O Captain! My Captain!". The lectures began as a benefit for Whitman and were generally popular and well received. The 1887 lecture was described by Whitman's biographer Justin Kaplan in 1980 as the closest Whitman came to "social eminence on a large scale".