Enclosure with 8–10 March 1869 To John Russell Young • Hartford, Conn.
(New York Tribune galley proof)

THE WHITE HOUSE FUNERAL.

A LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN.1

To the Editor of The Tribune.

Sir: I can truly say that this has been the most melancholy day of my life. When I arose this morning [&] reflected that on this day it was to be given me to see that noble band of patriots, the President & his Cabinet, delivered over to the cold charities of a thankless nation, my heart was ready to break.2 My brain was flooded with tender memories of blessings brought to me by this paternal administration that was now dying—memories of clerkships which I had held & salaries I had received for work which was never required of me; memories of the franking privilege enjoyed by me, along with all the cooks, & barbers, & Congressmen, & correspondents in Washington;3 of building-stone which I had been allowed to sell from the Capitol grounds & pocket the money, owing to my acquaintance with certain officials of the Senate; of sums I had clandestinely amassed by procuring & selling to the Associated Press the President’s several Messages before they were transmitted to Congress4—these, & a thousand touching recollections of a like nature came thronging in sad procession down the corridors of my memory, & I bowed my head & wept.

I proceeded to [the White] House at 10 o’clock to be present at the closing Cabinet meeting of Mr. Johnson’s administration, but was stopped by one McKeever,5 who would not let me in until I had satisfied him that I had been Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, & consequently was an ex-officio member of the Cabinet.6 I did not know what ex-officio meant, & neither did he; & so he had no recourse but to give me the benefit of the doubt & permit me to enter. Mr. Seward was upon the floor, about to make his farewell remarks. He & all the others were in tears. Mr. Seward said:

“Brethren, it is a sad day for us all. It is a sad day for the country. We are about to retire from the exalted stations which we have held so long & be lost for all time in the nothingness of utter obscurity. Within the short compass of a single day we shall be forgotten—we shall be as the dead. At such a time as this, nothing can have power to make glad our heavy hearts. All we need attempt to do will be to seek a balm that shall relieve, in some degree, the griefs that burden them. I can point you to only one medicine that may accomplish this, & that is the recalling to your [memories] the services you have conferred upon your country, the noble deeds you have done in her behalf, the inspired efforts you have made to build up her glory, & the amounts you have collected for it. It is good to me to look back upon my own labors in these regards. I have nothing to regret. I have always done my duty by my country when it seemed best. I have always been consistent. I have always stood by the party in power. I was always the first to desert it when it lost its prestige.7 I would have been ready to join hands with this new Administration, in accordance with my custom, & weep upon its neck, but that that notorious & underhanded reticence which distinguishes it rendered it impossible for me to find out what its politics were going to be. Wherefore this bitter day, a broken-hearted old man, I totter into my political grave, unhonored & unsung. No drop of Logan’s blood will flow in the veins of a solitary official of this new race, for behold my son dies with me.8 Woe is me! But I have a record. I have a record that shall be my comfort & my solace. With Mr. Lincoln I stood by the Republicans with unswerving tenacity, & with Mr. Johnson I have stood by the Democrats. I have been always ready & willing to embrace Christianity, infidelity, or paganism, according to which held the most trumps. I have been always ready to eat horse with the Frenchmen, dog with the Hawaiians, or missionary with the Fejees, on the same general basis.9 I have always been ready to blow hot, or blow cold, or not blow at all, just as my best official interests seemed to dictate. I have usually smelt pretty loud in the people’s nostrils, but I never have cared how I smelt, so long as my fragrance emanated from an office. My record is satisfactory to me. I have done some things for my country which will not be soon forgotten. I have filled the foreign world with a Falstaffian army of the jack-leggedest consuls that ever flaunted ignorance & imbecility on foreign soil since the world began—vagrants, & pot-house politicians, & poor relations of Congress-men, & village doctors who don’t know a purge from a poultice, & country lawyers who made a living God knows how on this side the water, & make it now on the other side by acting as fences to foreign shopkeepers & peddling gimcracks to traveling Americans on commission—a scurvy lot, I can tell you. Government pays them just exactly enough to keep them from starving to death, so as to keep out respectable men; & when there is anything over, Government seizes it—when it can.10 And I set a spy on the elegant Mr. Motley, & the first time his precious affectation of originality betrayed him into exploiting an opinion which was not furnished him in his instructions, I suggested to him that it was time for him to pack his carpet-sack & come home. The good people raved somewhat over this indignity offered to a great historian they seemed to be foolishly proud of, but they put up with it, you know, because they had to.11 And it was I that added to America’s list of foreign Ministers that great & inscrutable diplomat, Reverdy Johnson—that man who has so exalted us in the eyes of Great Britain—that noble heart whose loving instincts fondle all the world; whose charitable tears fall upon the just & the unjust alike, involving pirates & princes in one common deluge of forgiveness; who taketh his meals out, & saveth his salary. I sent that noble son of Maryland there, & mark my words, he will settle this Alabama matter forever & forever, when he has finished his dinner.12 And moreover, [gentlemen], during my term as Secretary of Real Estate, I have bought all the icebergs & volcanoes that were for sale on earth, & I would have bought all the outside universe if the money had held out. Brethren, bless you, bless you all. I have done. Let us mingle our tears together. I now resign all pomp & state of office forever, & retire to my country seats which I provided in the day of my prosperity for my refuge in the hour of adversity. Henceforth I shall Summer in Alaska & Winter in St. Thomas.13 Adieu, my brethren.”

For a few minutes no sound disturbed the solemn stillness save the melancholy drip, drip, dripping of the tears, & the suppressed snuffling of the mourners. Then Gideon, that noble old tar, arose, & took his quid out of his mouth & laid it on the table; & took his trowsers by the waistband, & gave them a brisk hitch upward, lifting his right leg at the same time; then he shied his tarpaulin gaily across the room, & making a speaking trumpet of his hands, he shouted in a voice that seemed to come out of the midst of stormy winds & lashing seas:

“Shipmets, ahoy! Shiver my timbers, but—”

Here the tears came again, his lips twitched convulsively, & he broke down. Presently he was able to go on, but with only a broken & feeble articulation:

“Shipmets, it ain’t any use. It is a sorrowful day for us all. The good old craft we’ve sailed so long has changed owners & shipped another crew. When it was ‘bout ship with us or take the breakers, I thought it was all right with Seymour at the hellum & Blair to stand by to hand the tacks & sheets. But Lord bless you, when it was time to luff & bring her to the wind, Seymour was asleep, & when he did fetch her to it by-&-bye, she was all quivering & ready to fall off, that there Blair was making trouble with the watch below with his eternal gab,14 & so she missed stays & broached to & shipped a sea that washed her clean as a capstan-bar from rudder-pintel to flyingjiboom. It wasn’t no use to bother, then. The weather-braces came home by the run, the lee-scuppers fouled the futtock shrouds, & the r’yals & skys’ls split to ribbons, the maintogallans’l parted & shook the reefs out of the dead-lights, & douse my glim if the clew-garnets of the starboard galley didn’t fetch away, & carry the gaskets of the poop-deck & the whole cussed top-hamper of the booby-hatch with them! Awful? It’s no name for it, messmets. Well, well, it’s all over—& I’m sure I never done anything. I stood my watch regular, & there ain’t any man that can point to anything that ever I done. It’s sad times for us, boys, it’s sad times—because it’s all up with us. Well, well, well—our cable’s hove short, & we’ll stand by to cat the anchor—yo-o-heave-yo!

And then the weather-beaten old son of the ocean hitched up his trowsers & put his quid in his mouth again, & sat down. And very, very soon his rollicking jollity (which was really only a fitful reminiscence, as it were, of his old devil-may-care sailor life on the Erie Canal),16 faded & fainted from his face & his voice, & again the unbidden tears welled from his eyes & rippled softly through the tufts of hair upon his nose.

The other members of the Cabinet then gave in their experience, with the exception of Gen. Schofield & myself;17 & presently Andrew Johnson, that grand old second Washington, that resurrected Moses, rose & said:

“My children, when I came before the American people four years ago to deliver my inaugural, I was too full for utterance. [{Emphatic assenting sobs from the Cabinet.}] 18 My emotions at this moment are no less profound, albeit they may be in some sense different in their nature. In quitting my high office, I am able to look back upon my administration of its duties without regret. By diligently violating my oath; by stultifying myself upon every occasion; by being stubborn in the wrong, & feeble & faithless toward the right; by obstructing the laws; by nursing anarchy & rebellion, & by deliberate treachery to the party that made me & trusted me, I have wiped away the contempt in which, because of my obscure origin & humble occupation, my own loved section of the country did formerly hold me, & brought it to regard me with reverence & honor.19 My great deeds speak for themselves. I vetoed the Reconstruction acts; I vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau; I vetoed civil liberty; I vetoed Stanton; I vetoed everything & everybody that the malignant Northern hordes approved; I hugged traitors to my bosom; I pardoned them by regiments & brigades; I was the friend & protector of assassins & perjurers; I smiled upon the Ku-Klux; I delivered the Union men of the South & their belongings over to murder, robbery, & arson; I filled the Government offices all over this whole land with the vilest scum that could be scraped from the political gutters & the ranks of the Union-haters; I gave the collection of the Nation’s revenues into the hands of convicted thieves, & when they were convicted again, I gave them free pardon. I hanged a woman for complicity in a crime, & let men more guilty than she, go unwhipped of [justice;] I have made the name of office-holder equivalent to that of rogue; born & reared ‘poor white trash,’ I have clung to my native instincts, & done every small, mean thing my eager hands could find to do. And when my term began to draw to a close, & I saw that but little time remained wherein to defeat justice, to further exasperate the people, & to complete my unique & unprecedented record, I fell to & gathered up the odds & ends, & made it perfect—swept it clean; for I pardoned Jeff Davis; I pardoned every creature that had ever lifted his hand against the hated flag of the Union; I appointed the historian of the Confederacy to office in the Customs; I resurrected Wirtz; I rescued the bones of the patriot martyr, Booth, from the mystery & oblivion to which malignity had consigned them, & gave them sepulchre where I & many a generation of sorrowing worshipers may go & do honor to the brave heart that did not fear to strike a tyrant, even when his back was turned; I have swept the floors clean; my work is done; I die [content.”] 20

There was not a dry eye in the house; neither was there a sore heart. These inspiring words had driven all grief away. It was now after 12 o’clock. No time must be lost. Gideon produced a deck of cards, & we played seven-up for the furniture. Gideon won the deal. [{He previously knew where the Jack was.}] A. J. won the jug. McCullough won the desks & chairs. Other members won the carpets & pictures. Browning won the stove, & a relative carried it out while it was still hot. Randall didn’t win anything at all, except a map of Washington that had all the roads represented as leading out of the city & none leading in. However, it fitted his requirements to a dot. Seward won everything worth having, because, being an old hand at State craft, he carried the thing they call a cold deck.

About this time we heard music, & beheld the Usurper Grant & his minions approaching. Then, bedewed with tears, & loaded with furniture, we went forth from the pleasant shelter of the White House forever.

Washington, March 4, 1869. Mark Twain.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Since Clemens formally submitted this letter as an article, he may well have supplied the title and even the subtitle.

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2 The members of Andrew Johnson’s cabinet, three of whom had also served under Lincoln, were: William H. Seward (1801–72), secretary of state since 1861; Hugh McCulloch (1808–95), secretary of the treasury since 1865; John M. Schofield (1831–1906), secretary of war since 1868; William M. Evarts (1818–1901), attorney general since 1868; Alexander W. Randall (1819–72), postmaster general since 1866; Gideon Welles (1802–78), secretary of the navy since 1861; and Orville H. Browning (1806–81), secretary of the interior since 1866 (White’s Conspectus, 5–11).

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3 Between 25 November and 2 December 1867, while serving as private secretary to Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada, Clemens evidently also was, at least informally, clerk to one of the four Senate committees Stewart served on: Judiciary, Public Lands, Pacific Railroad, and Mines and Mining. In 1891, Stewart recalled: “I made him a clerk to my committee in the Senate, which paid him six dollars per day, then I hired a man for $100 per month to do the work” (“Mark Twain’s Revenge,” New York Recorder, 5 Apr 91, no page, clipping enclosed in Robert W. Carl to SLC, 5 Apr 91, CU-MARK; see also L2, 78, 109 n. 2, 112–13, 139 n. 4). Although Clemens criticized the “franking privilege,” he did “enjoy” it himself, more than once using Stewart’s signature to post his own mail (see L2, 128–29, 152).

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4 Clemens had remarked at length upon such “dreadful leaks somewhere in the old Ship of State” in a 17 December 1867 letter from Washington to the San Francisco Alta California (SLC 1868 [MT00608]).

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5 Johnson’s cabinet met for the last time on Tuesday, 2 March 1869 (“Dispatches to the Associated Press,” New York Times, 3 Mar 69, 1). McKeever has not been identified.

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6 Clemens made the same facetious identification of his clerkship in “The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation,” in the New York Tribune of 27 December 1867 (SLC 1867 [MT00517]).

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7 Seward was a Whig stalwart from the 1830s until that party merged with the new Republican party in 1855. He served a Republican administration under Lincoln, then stayed on to play a central role under Johnson, a Democrat.

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8 Frederick W. Seward (1830–1915) was assistant secretary of state under his father. Mingo Indian chief Tahgahjute (1725?–80), known as James (sometimes John) Logan, was famous for remarks he reputedly made reproaching whites after a 1774 massacre in which members of his family were killed. The attributed statement, including the words “There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature,” was widely published in newspapers of the day. Quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Notes, on the State of Virginia (1800), it became a school declamation exercise.

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9 Allusions to controversial elements of Seward’s foreign policy during the 1860s, namely: his cautious dealings with France in regard to its support for the Confederacy and its incursions into Mexico; his efforts to extend American influence to the Hawaiian Islands, including an abortive reciprocity treaty that Clemens had supported in a 10 December 1867 letter from Washington to the Alta California (SLC 1868 [MT00605]); and his possible interest in the Fiji Islands, three of which were reportedly to be given to the United States as “compensation for American sailors eaten by the king’s subjects” (Van Deusen, 363, 368–69, 532–34).

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10 Clemens had previously criticized the consular service, and the “cheap pot-house politicians” its low salaries attracted, in a 14 December 1867 letter from Washington to the Alta California (SLC 1868 [MT00606]).

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11 Historian John Lothrop Motley (1814–77) was minister to Austria from 1861 until 1867, when he was forced to resign, more by Johnson than Seward, after allegations reached Washington that he had denounced the administration.

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12 Reverdy Johnson (1796–1876) was appointed minister to Great Britain in 1868. One of his chief assignments was to settle claims for damages done during the Civil War by the Alabama and other vessels built in Great Britain for the Confederacy. In February 1869, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations voted to reject the treaties he negotiated, however, and the Alabama matter remained unsettled until 1872. Johnson was personally criticized for servility and for fraternizing, particularly at public banquets, with enemies of the United States, among them John Laird, builder of the Alabama (Steiner, 243–45, 248–51).

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13 Seward purchased Alaska from Russia, for $7,200,000, in March 1867. In November 1867 he purchased the islands of St. Thomas and St. John, in the Danish West Indies, for $7,500,000, but the acquisition ultimately failed to win Senate approval. Clemens wrote scornfully of these “territorial speculations” in his 14 December 1867 Washington letter to the Alta California and in “Information Wanted” in the New York Tribune of 18 December 1867 (Van Deusen, 526–29, 540–49; New York Times: “Denmark,” 4 Nov 67, 1; “Our New Possessions,” 5 Nov 67, 4; SLC 1868 [MT00606], 1867 [MT00513]).

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14 Gideon Welles, a long-time Democrat before helping to found the Republican party, had supported Horatio Seymour (1810–86) and Francis Preston Blair (1821–75), Democratic candidates for president and vice-president, respectively, in their losing campaign against the Republican ticket of Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax. Seymour was a reluctant candidate who was unable to offset the damaging effects of Blair’s inflammatory rhetoric.

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15 The source, if any, for this chanty has not been identified. The preceding passage employs accurate nautical terminology throughout, but sometimes in intentionally nonsensical combination. For example, the “booby hatch,” an opening into a ship’s below deck area, has no “top hamper,” that is, the masts, sails, rigging, and all other above deck gear. Likewise, the galley has no “clew garnets,” which are ropes and tackle used to haul up main sails, and the “dead lights,” metal shutters over portholes, have no “reefs,” actually the folded portions of sails (Blackburn; Palmer). Despite these burlesque elements, however, Clemens effectively conveys an image of a foundering vessel.

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16 Welles—originally from Connecticut, and a former owner and editor of the Hartford Times and a founder of and political writer for the Hartford Evening Press—had never been a sailor on the Erie Canal or anywhere else. He had been chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing for the Navy (1846–49), however, and as navy secretary ran an efficent and even innovative department. Clemens had also poked fun at him, calling him a “staunch old salt,” in “Concerning Gideon’s Band,” published in the Washington Morning Chronicle on 27 February 1868 (SLC 1868 [MT00610]).

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17 An 1853 graduate of West Point, John M. Schofield achieved the rank of brevet major-general during the Civil War.

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18 Although drunk at his inauguration as Lincoln’s vice president on 4 March 1865, Johnson did speak, delivering a “harangue” that scandalized those in attendance, including members of the cabinet whose titles or names he forgot (Trefousse, 189–90).

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19 Johnson was born in 1808 in a log cabin in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father, Jacob, was illiterate and worked as a bank porter, constable, and town bell-ringer. His mother, the former Mary McDonough, was a seamstress and laundress. Possibly at the age of ten, but certainly by the age of thirteen, Johnson was apprenticed to a tailor. He practiced that trade successfully until the late 1830s (Trefousse, 18–40).

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20 Among Johnson’s “great deeds” were: vetoes of Reconstruction acts on 2 March, 23 March, and 19 July 1867, all of them immediately overridden by Congress; a 19 February 1866 veto of a bill extending the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau, sustained by Congress; a 27 March 1866 civil rights bill veto, overridden by Congress early that April; the 21 February 1867 dismissal of Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war (Johnson had suspended Stanton in August), essentially for insubordination and disloyalty, which precipitated impeachment proceedings against Johnson; the failure to stop the 7 July 1865 hanging of Mary Surratt, at whose Washington boardinghouse John Wilkes Booth had plotted Lincoln’s assassination, but who was not proved to be implicated in Booth’s crime; the pardoning on 11 February 1869 of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd (1833–83), convicted, evidently unjustly, of helping Booth escape; the pardoning on 2 March 1869 of Edward Spangler, also convicted of helping Booth escape, and Samuel Arnold, an accomplice in Booth’s prior plan to abduct Lincoln; the February 1869 release for private burial of Booth’s remains and those of Henry Wirz, former commander of the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia, who was executed in November 1865 for murder and conspiracy; proclamations of amnesty for former Southern rebels on 29 May 1865, 7 September 1867, 4 July 1868, and 25 December 1868, the last a general amnesty that included Confederate president Jefferson Davis; and the appointment in late 1868 of Edward A. Pollard (1831–72), editor of the Richmond (Va.) Examiner from 1861 to 1867 and author of numerous works supporting the Confederacy, to a clerkship in the New York Custom House, which, after public outcry, Pollard was forced to resign shortly before the end of the year (Castel, 25, 26, 34–35, 64–68, 70–71, 111, 115, 129–37, 150–77; Trefousse, 211, 216–17, 227, 287–88, 337, 346–47, 376; Mudd, 24, 318–20, 326; New York Times: “Mr. E. A. Pollard ...,” 6 Dec 68, 6; “Edward A. Pollard,” 9 Dec 68, 11; “The Amnesty Proclamation,” 19 Jan 69, 1; “E. A. Pollard and Collector Smythe,’ 28 Jan 69, 5; “E. A. Pollard,” “Collector Smythe and Mr. Pollard,” 29 Jan 69, 2, 4; “The Pardon of Dr. Mudd,” 12 Feb 69, 3; “John Wilkes Booth,” 17 Feb 69, 1; “The Remains of Henry Wirz,” 25 Feb 69, 1; “Spangler and Arnold Pardoned,” 4 Mar 69,1).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Galley proof for New York Tribune, 27 Mar 69, in the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).

Previous publication: L3, 458–466; none.

Provenance:see Mark Twain Papers, pp. 585–86.

Emendations and textual notes:

& • and [also at 458.7, 11, 13 (twice), 14, 15; 459.1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11 (twice), 12, 13, 17, 22, 25; 460.2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 11, 21, 22 (twice), 23 (twice), 24; 461.2, 4, 6, 9, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21 (twice), 24 (twice); 462.1, 4, 5, 6 (twice), 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19 (twice), 20 (twice), 21, 22, 23 (twice), 26 (twice), 27 (twice); 463.1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 14 (twice), 16, 17 (twice), 18, 20 (twice), 22; 464.6, 7, 8 (twice), 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16 (twice), 17, 18 (twice), 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29 (twice); 465.1 (three times), 6 (twice), 7, 8, 13; 466.3 (twice), 4, 6, 10 (twice), 11]

the White • ihe White

memories • memeries

gentlemen • gentleman

{Emphatic ... cabinet.} • [Emphatic ... cabinet.]

justice; • [possibly ‘justice:’]

content.” • content”

{He ... was.} • [He ... was.]