Jump to Content

Add to My Citations To the Staff of the Hartford Courant
19 October 1875 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS: Daley, UCCL 01271)
Click to add citation to My Citations.

Oct. 19.

Gentlemen:

Please mail to me Gen. Armstrong’s & any other letters you have received relating to the fraud Geo. Vaughan. I want to write a screed about him.1

Ys Truly

S. L. Clemens

Explanatory Notes

Add to My Citations

Click to add citation to My Citations.
1 Samuel Chapman Armstrong (1839–93) was born in the Sandwich Islands of missionary parents. A graduate of Williams College, he was colonel of a black regiment during the Civil War, becoming a brigadier general in 1865. After the war he worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau, and in 1868 founded the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute for the education of former slaves (Peabody, 55–101, 221). The Courant staff replied to Clemens’s request by forwarding two letters that Vaughan had submitted for publication, and possibly some from his references as well, but it is not known if a letter from Armstrong was among them. Although Clemens transcribed Vaughan’s letters in full in his “screed” (22? Oct 75 to the editor of the Courant), he made no mention of Armstrong. He did report, however, that James F. B. Marshall, Armstrong’s associate at Hampton, had denied any knowledge of Vaughan.



glyphglyphSource text(s):glyph
MS facsimile. The editors have not seen the MS, which was owned in 1976 by Robert Daley, who provided a photocopy to the Mark Twain Papers.

glyphglyphPrevious publication:glyph L6, 561; City Book Auction 1944, lot 68.