He noted a bunch of random thoughts and lines, maybe poetry. His handwriting looks like mine - pretty messy. There are some sketches, most probably of himself. They are both realistic and like caricatures. There are also some random objects and signs. The writing and drawings seem to be influenced by his environment. There's many versions of a sketch. The content seems to be a lot about appearance and observations. Mainly I see addresses, locations, notes that seem like lines of poetry and sketches of himself or places. I think these are notes about things he wants to talk about in his poems and reveals that he is someone who takes inspiration from his surroundings.
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His addresses and names were those of people he knew and places he probably came to visit. His notes were actually part of a conversation with Abraham Lincoln. The content spans from religion, war, freedom, many themes that should be prevalent around the war time. It's cool that he realized "the future of world history was bound up in the success or failure of America's democratic experiment" before even Lincoln did. It shows how aware he was of the situation and world he existed in. None of the doodles are by him but they are of him. He loved to have his portrait taken and these doodles are probably by one of his drinking buddies. What we read about that shows how he was not the only one who liked to carry a notebook around and socializing actually involved artists, poets, journalists, and playwrights getting together to pass ideas around. The last page still doesn't make that much sense though it suggests that it's an allegory for America as I first thought.
"The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people." - Walt Whitman
