To Jerome B. Stillson
6–29 May 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(Hartford Courant, 5 May 74,
and New York World, 31 May 74, UCCL 12261)

To the Editor of the World:

Sir: I find the following in the editorial columns of the Hartford Courant.

So the Fisher heirs have come again. I wrote a full account of the performances of these insatiable blood-suckers, [&] published it in the Galaxy magazine in 1870—August of that year, I think. My facts were drawn from official sources, that is to say, from printed documents of the House [&] Senate—[documents] which the favorably-reporting Military Committee can see at any moment if they are really ignorant of the fact that the Fisher claim is a vile swindle upon the Government. The committee need only send to the Document Department of the Capitol for H. R. Ex. Doc., No. 21, 36th Congress, 2d session, & for S. Ex. Doc., No. 106, 41st Congress, 2d session, if they really do not know the history of the Fisher pirates.2

These Fishers are the only people who ever did me the high honor to try to bribe me. I call it a high honor, because it seemed to suggest that I was worth bribing. After the Galaxy article appeared they sent a former Californian Congressman3 all the way to Buffalo to intimate to me that I could make it very profitable to myself if I would promise to be silent about the Fisher claim in future. That was all. I was only to keep still & let the Fishers alone. I was really so much flattered by this attention that I did not destroy the messenger. I said I would keep perfectly still without charge, until the Fishers moved upon Congress again, & then I would say all I could against them, even if it did no sort of good. So I want to keep my promise now. There are people whose words can be effective, whether mine are or not, & I beg General Hawley or Sunset Cox or Mr. Beck to do a plain duty to the country & extinguish these importunate vampires.4

If your readers are not acquainted with the Fisher conspiracy let me state the facts in brief. Sixty years ago, the Creek war being then in progress in Florida,5 the crops, herds, & houses of a Mr. George Fisher were destroyed by the said Creek Indians. George Fisher seems to have known that he could not collect damages from the Government for destruction done by Indians; so to the day of his death he does not appear to have made any application for damages. Fisher died, & his widow married again. The new husband, nearly twenty years after the Indian raid, petitioned for damages & tried to prove that some of the destruction was done by the troops that pursued the Indians.6 The Congress of that day smiled a bland smile at that ingenuous idea & decidedly declined to see it.

The Fishers waited another sixteen years & then petitioned again. They got $8,873, being half of the whole damage originally sustained. The auditor said the testimony showed that at least half the destruction was done by the Indians “before the troops started in pursuit.”

The Fishers came once more the same year. This time they got interest on the $8,873 for sixteen years, the same amounting to $8,997.94.

Next year they came again, & got interest on the original award dating back to 1813, the date of the raid, said interest amounting to $10,004.89.

The Fishers lay quiet for five years, & came again in 1854, but James Guthrie, an honest man, was chief of the Treasury then, & he sent them about their business, with the pointed remark that they had “been paid too much already.”7

The Fishers rested till 1858—four years—& came back famishing. They got their claim removed from the Treasury to the War Office, where a man of their own sort was in authority—John B. Floyd, of peculiar renown.8 Floyd figured at it & decided that nearly three-fourths of the damage was done by the United States troops—on what evidence, God knows. So he paid the Fishers a fraction under $40,000, & so appeased them for a little while. The (originally) worthless Fisher farm had now yielded the heirs nearly $67,000 in cash.

The Fishers kept away just two years & then swarmed in upon Floyd once more. They brought their same old, musty documents, but largely improved with erasures & interlineations (which forgeries were known to Floyd) whereby the values of many of the articles in the list of the destroyed property were doubled; & by the help of the said forgeries, & by the force of his own foul genius, & by attributing all the destruction to the soldiers this time & none to the Indians, Mr. Floyd discovered that the nation still owed the Fishers sixty-six thousand, five hundred & nineteen dollars & eighty-five cents, “which,” Mr. Floyd sweetly remarks, “will be paid, accordingly, to the administrator of the estate of George Fisher, deceased, or to his attorney in fact.”

But it wasn’t. A new President9 came in just at this time, & the first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the resolution of June 1, 1860, under which Floyd had been ciphering.

The Florida Fishers survived the war & came back in July, 1870, to beg for that sixty-six thousand odd. Mr. Garret Davis was their noble champion,10 & I would greatly like to know the name of their present cat’s-paw in Congress—not that I take any more interest in him than in any other individual of his kidney who has wandered into Congress when he ought to be serving his country in the chain-gang—but just for curiosity’s sake.11

The above are the facts; & as they are all taken from Congressional documents, how is it that the Committee on Military Affairs have been induced to look favorably upon this most infamous swindle once more?

[Mark Twain].

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 It seems likely that Clemens pasted a clipping of this editorial, from the Courant of 5 May (2), into his manuscript letter. The Courant printing is therefore simulated in a line-by-line resetting. Allowing time for the Courant to have reached him in Elmira, Clemens could have written the letter as early as 6 May; but he might have written it as late as 29 May, two days before its publication in the New York World.

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2 “The Facts in the Case of George Fisher, Deceased” was part of Clemens’s “Memoranda” in the Galaxy magazine for January 1871 and cited these same congressional documents. Clemens did not have the Galaxy version on hand. Instead he used a reprint to supply the facts and figures in the present letter. His most likely source was the 1872 Routledge collection Mark Twain’s Sketches, which he had recently used for the text of another article (see 1 May 74 to Seaver, n. 2). The George Fisher article was also reprinted in The Choice Humorous Works of Mark Twain, issued in London by Chatto and Windus in early April 1874. Clemens used both books in 1875 to assemble the printer’s copy for Sketches, New and Old (SLC: 1871, 152–55; 1872, 76–85; 1874, 421–25; 1875, 109–16; ET&S1, 607, 635–40).

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3 Unidentified.

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4 Hawley and Cox were personal friends of Clemens’s. No similar acquaintance with James B. Beck (1822–90), a Democratic congressman from Kentucky, has been documented.

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5 The 1813–14 war in which United States forces defeated Indians of the Creek Confederacy. As a result, the Creeks ceded 23 million acres of land, comprising more than half of Alabama and part of southern Georgia.

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6 According to the history of the Fisher claims presented to the United States Senate on 5 July 1870 by Garret Davis (see note 10), it was George Fisher himself who first petitioned Congress for compensation, in 1832 (Congressional Globe, 5201).

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7 Guthrie (1792–1869), of Kentucky, was secretary of the treasury (1853–57) during Franklin Pierce’s administration. Notable as a reformer, he revised regulations, weeded out incompetence, and reduced the national debt.

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8 Floyd (1806–63), of Virginia, was secretary of war (1857–60) in the cabinet of James Buchanan. His reputation was tarnished in 1860 by allegations, not clearly proven, that he was involved in the misappropriation of Indian trust bonds from the Interior Department and that he helped arm the South in anticipation of the Civil War. Although not initially a proponent of secession, he joined the Confederate army when war broke out and rose to the rank of major general.

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9 Abraham Lincoln.

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10 Garret (or Garrett) Davis (1801–72), a Whig and Democratic senator from Kentucky (1860–72), was an early supporter of the Union who later became extreme in his opposition to Lincoln and to radical Reconstruction. In 1870 the Committee on Indian Affairs assigned him to investigate the Fisher claim. During his attempts to gather evidence, he made a speech to the Senate on 5 July of that year in which he pronounced the claim “the most extraordinary” in his experience, and his audience understood him to be “engaged in a good cause, . . . to ferret out a wrong against the government” (Congressional Globe, 5201–2). No evidence has been found that Davis acted as the Fishers’ “champion.”

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11 The Fisher claimants had at least two congressional sympathizers at this time. On 19 January 1874, Stevenson Archer (1827–98), a Democratic representative from Maryland, introduced the legislation that Clemens and the Hartford Courant objected to—“a bill (H. R. No. 1253) for the relief of the heirs of George Fisher.” On 27 March, Eppa Hunton (1822–1908), a Democratic representative from Virginia, reported it back favorably from the Committee on Military Affairs. It was then referred to the Committee of the Whole, where it apparently died. Hunton introduced a new bill (H. R. No. 1116) for the relief of the Fisher heirs on 17 January 1876. It was referred to the Committee on Military Affairs, which adversely reported on it on 3 March 1877 (Congressional Record: 1874, 761, 2532; 1876, 441; 1877, 2252).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

“Those Imperishable Fishers Again,” New York World, 31 May 74, 2, is the source for Clemens’s portion of the letter. Copy-text is a microfilm edition of the newspaper in the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (NN). Since Clemens evidently pasted a clipping of an untitled item in the Hartford Courant for 5 May 74 (2) into his MS, that newspaper is the source for ‘The . . . Fishers.’ (131.4–24). Copy-text is a microfilm edition of the newspaper in the Newspaper and Microcopy Division, University of California, Berkeley (CU-NEWS).

Previous publication: L6, 131–135; “Cormorants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5 June 74, 2.

Emendations and textual notes:

& • and [here and hereafter, except at 131.29 and 133.20 (see below)]

& • and [also at 133.20 (twice)]

documents • documents

Mark Twain • Mark Twain