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To
William H. Clagett
8 and 9 March 1862
• Carson City, Nev. Terr.
(MS: ViU, UCCL
00039)
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Carson City, March 8th 1862.
Dear Billy:
As a good opportunity offers, I have embraced it to send you
some legal and letter paper, and a copy of the laws.1 I send the pencils, pens, &c., because I don’t
know whether you have run out of such things or not. If you have got plenty of
stationery, maybe Sam and Tom2 have not. I also send you some more envelops. The Colonel3 proposes to start [to-morrow ]or next day.
I hunted up Fall, but he would not sell me his ground for
Sam. Then I told him he had better go to Unionville and [“nurse” ]a good thing while he had it. He said he would.
John Kinney has gone to the States, via San Francisco.
Your Father has purchased the Keokuk
“Journal,”—so he will hardly come out here this
year—hey?4
I have heard from several reliable sources that Sewall will
be here shortly, and has sworn to whip me on sight. Now what would you advise a
fellow to do?—take a thrashing [
fo from ]the son-of-a-bitch, or bind him over to keep the peace? I don’t
see why he should dislike me. He is a
yankee,—and I [naturaly ]love a yankee.5
I stole a bully dog the other day—but he escaped
again. Look out for one. That other dog, over whose fate
a dark mystery hangs, has not revisited the glimpses of the moon yet, in this
vicinity, although he has been seen in a certain locality—whereof it
would be Treason to speak. D—n the beast—does he intend to
haunt us like a nightmare for the balance of his days?
The Governor’s Cavalcade left for California the
other day. Some of the retainers I will name: the Governor and Gov. Roop,
Boundary-line Commissioners; accompanied by Mr. Gillson, Mr. Kinkead and
others—and followed by Bob Howland, Chief Valet de Chambre to His
Excellency, and Bob Haslan, Principal Second Assistant ditto ditto.6 What do [you [make of] that], for instance? There were quite a number in the Cavalcade, and Haslan
brought up the rear on a mule. Bob Howland expects to sell some ground in San
Francisco.
You say the “Annie Moffett Company”—isn’t that the name of the
ledge, too? I hope so.
I would like to write you some news, Billy, but
unfortunately, I haven’t got any to write. I couldn’t
write it, though, if I had, for I am in a bad humor, and am only writing anyhow,
because I hate to lose the opportunity. You see I have been playing cards with
Bunker, and the d—d old Puritan wouldn’t play
fairly—and I made injurious remarks and jumped the game.
I send a St. Louis Republican for Tom. There is something in
it from “Ethan Spike.”7
Enclosed please find Mr. Cox’s Speech.8
If you and Dad intend coming down, Billy, with the wagon,
don’t fail to write and say about what time you will be here. I leave
for Esmeralda next week some time, with Major General BBBunker, L.L.D.,
Esq—provided “nothing happens.” But [this do
]happen in this country, constantly. In fact, it is about the
d—est country in the world for things to happen in. My calculations never come out right. However, as I said before, We
May be Happy Yet.
Remember me kindly to the boys—not forgetting
“the old man,” of course. I have labored hard to get a
copy of “Fannie Hill”9 for him to read, but I have failed sadly.
Sunday.—I intended to finish this letter
to-day, but I went to church—and busted! For a man who can listen for
an hour to Mr. White, the whining, nasal, Whangdoodle preacher, and then sit
down and write, without shedding melancholy from his pen as [
a ducks water slides ]from a duck’s back, is more than mortal. Or less. I fear I
shall not feel cheerful again until the beans I had for dinner begin to
operate.10
Which reminds me of that afternoon in Sacramento
cañon,11 when I gained such a brilliant victory [
of over ]Oliver and Mr. [Tillou
w
], and drove them in confusion and dismay from behind my batteries.
We have not heard from home for some time, and I have only
written two letters to St Louis since I arrived here.
John D. Winters has sold out his interest in the Ophir for a
hundred thousand dollars.12
J. L. G. and his father13 are still flourishing in Chinatown. Mr. Bunker saw them there the other
day.
Tom Nye is down at Fort Churchill. Write, at your
earlies[t] convenience.
Your sincere friend
Sam L.
Clemens
Wm. H. Clagett, Esq. |Unionville,
|Humboldt Co. |N.T. [no postage stamp]
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1
Laws of the Territory of Nevada, Passed at the First
Regular Session of the Legislative Assembly (San Francisco:
Valentine and Company, 1862).
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2
Sam Montgomery and Tom Smith (or Messersmith).
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3
John B. Onstine.
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4
The Keokuk
Journal ceased publication in November
1861 and reappeared the following month as the Keokuk
Constitution (
Winifred Gregory, 176). The
Constitution, edited for many years by Judge Thomas W.
Clagett, had a fiery history during the Civil War. Clagett,
“aristocrat, capitalist, lawyer, politician, . . . published
scurrilous articles that reflected on the bravery of the northern
soldiers and the Union cause.” Finally, on 19 February 1863,
a group of soldiers enraged at Clagett’s editorials marched
on the newspaper office, dismantled the presses and type cases, and
threw them into the Mississippi River. “Eventually the
presses were fished out, and the
Constitution
resumed publication, its sentiments cooled for the duration of the
war” (
Writers’ Program, 61).
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5
Clemens and G. T. Sewall presumably became acquainted while Clemens was
prospecting in Humboldt County in December 1861 and January 1862, but
the precise cause of their antagonism is unknown. Sewall had lived in
the area for approximately eight years, was active in mining, and had
been appointed county judge by Governor Nye in December 1861. In 1861
Sewall was briefly associated with two of Nevada’s three
newspapers. According to Orion Clemens, writing in August of that year,
the Silver City
Washoe Times was
“recently purchased by G. T. Sewall, who is now in
partnership with Mr.
[John C.
] Lewis of the
[Carson
City
] ‘Silver Age,’ in both papers, of which
they will be editors” (OC to Elisha Whittlesey, 21 Aug 61,
NvU-NSP). Lewis and Sewall were
commissioned, with Orion Clemens’s endorsement, to print the
journals and laws of the first Territorial Legislature. Then in November
1861, in the middle of the legislative session, they acrimoniously
dissolved their partnership, aborting their printing contract and
causing considerable embarrassment and aggravation to Orion (see
25
June 62 to OC, n. 2). It is possible that his brother then
took up the cudgels in his behalf. A remark in Clemens’s 9
July 1862 letter to Orion suggests that he was irritated at Lewis as
well as Sewall. Whatever the cause of the dispute, within a few months
Clemens revenged himself by ridiculing Sewall in “Petrified
Man” in the Virginia City
Territorial
Enterprise (see
21 Oct 62 to OC and MEC).
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6
Governor Nye was on his way to Sacramento to confer with the California
legislature in an effort to settle the dispute over Nevada’s
western boundary. His cavalcade included: Isaac N. Roop
(1822–69), head of the provisional government of Nevada
Territory during 1859 and 1860 and currently a member of the territorial
Council; George Gillson, Nye’s special assistant for Indian
affairs; John H. Kinkead (1826–1904), a Carson City merchant
with numerous mining, milling, and real-estate interests, who was
appointed territorial treasurer by Nye in February 1862, later served in
the state constitutional conventions, and became Nevada’s
third governor (1879–82); Clemens’s Aurora cohort
Robert M. Howland, who enjoyed Nye’s patronage as a result of
their mutual friendship with Secretary of State William H. Seward; and
Robert T. Haslan, page of the territorial House. Nye’s
mission was a failure. California refused to make concessions, and the
boundary conflict continued (
Andrew J. Marsh, 27, 666 n. 13, 690 n. 253;
Mack 1936, 394–97;
Mack 1961, 30;
Kelly 1862, 11).
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7
The Ethan Spike letters, a series of humorous dialect sketches that
repeatedly condemned slavery and its supporters, were published in the
Portland (Maine)
Transcript between 1846 and 1863
and were widely reprinted in newspapers across the country. They were
written by Matthew F. Whittier (1812–83), younger brother of
John Greenleaf Whittier. His creation, Ethan Spike, was a New England
backwoodsman whose letters, like the writings of Artemus Ward and
Petroleum V. Nasby, were marked by cacography and malapropisms (
Griffin, 646–63). On 3
February 1862 the St. Louis
Missouri Republican
(4) printed the following excerpt:
A DOWN EAST JURYMAN.
[“Ethan Spike”
contributes to the Portland Transcript a sketch of his experience as
a juryman. The first cases he was called to try were capital
ones—the criminals being a German and a
“nigger” respectively.”
“Hev you formed any opinion for or
agin the prisoners?” said the judge.
“Not perticular agin the
Jermin,” says I, “but I hate niggers as a
general principle, and shall go for hanging this here old white
wooled cuss, whether he killed Mr. Cooper or not,” says
I.
“Do you know the nature of an
oath?” the clark axed me.
“I orter,” says I.
“I’ve used enough of’em. I begun to
swear when I was only about—”
“That’ll do,”
says the clark. “You kin go bum,” says he,
“you won’t be wanted in this ere
case,” says the clark, says he.
“What?” says I,
“aint I to try this nigger at all?”
“No,” says the clark.
“But I’m a
jewryman,” says I, “and you can’t
hang the nigger onless I’ve sot on him,” says
I.
“Pass on,” says the clark,
speaking rather cross.
“But,” says I,
“you mister, you don’t mean as you say;
I’m a regular jewryman, you know. Drawed aout of the box
by the seelick man,” says I. “I’ve
ollers had a hankering to hang a nigger, and now, when a merciful
dispensatory seems to have provided one for me, you say I
shan’t sit on him! Ar this your free institutions? Is
this the nineteenth centry? And is this our
boasted”— Here somebody hollored
“Silence in Court.”
“The Court
be—!” I didn’t finish the remark
fore a couple of constables had holt of me, and in the twinkling of
a bed post I was hustled down stairs into the street.
“Naow, Mr. Editor, let me ask, what
are we comin’ to, when jewrymen—legal, lawful
jewrymen, kin be tossed about in this way? Talk about Cancers,
Mormons, Spiritualism, free love and panics—whar are they
in comparison? Here’s a principle upsot. As an
individual, perhaps, I’m of no great account;
t’an’t fur me to say; but when as an
enlightened jewryman, I was tuk and carried down stairs by profane
hands, just for assertin my right to sit on a nigger—why
it seems to me the pillows of society were shook; that in my sacred
person the hull State itself was, figgeratively speakin, kicked down
stairs! If thar’s law in the land I’ll have
this case brought under a writ of habeus Corpus or icksey
Dicksit.
The 3 February Republican,
presumably sent by Jane Clemens and Pamela Moffett, probably was
Clemens’s enclosure. It is conceivable that he enclosed a
weekly Republican containing both the Ethan Spike
excerpt and the speech discussed in note 8, but no copy of such a paper
has been located. In chapter 6 of Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1885), Clemens was to have the disreputable Pap Finn
deliver an antigovernment, antiblack harangue similar to Ethan
Spike’s.
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8
On 31 January 1862, Ohio Democrat Samuel S. Cox (1824–89)
delivered an address in the House of Representatives in defense of
General George B. McClellan’s handling of the war effort, and
in favor of a Northern accommodation with slavery. Cox’s
speech was a rebuttal to remarks made the day before by Congressman John
A. Gurley (1813–63), also of Ohio, who was a radical
Republican and abolitionist. In an attempt to discredit
Gurley’s pro-Union sympathies, Cox in part berated him for
“rehearsing again his contempt for the Union, which he
expressed in his printed speech made at Cleveland on the day of John
Brown’s obsequies, when he said that no purer spirit than
John Brown’s had ever entered Paradise for the past thousand
years; and that he would rend the Union to destroy slavery.”
Clemens probably enclosed the text of Cox’s speech that
filled more than four columns in the St. Louis
Missouri Republican of 5 February 1862 (“Ohio vs.
Ohio,” 2). The speech soon issued in pamphlet form (
Cox).
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9
The erotic novel by John Cleland. It appeared originally as
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749) and then,
abridged by the author, as
Memoirs of Fanny Hill
(1750).
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10
The Reverend A. F. White arrived in Carson City from Gilroy, California,
in September 1861 to act as pastor of the newly formed First
Presbyterian Church, of which Orion Clemens was a member. White secured
a series of political posts: chaplain of the territorial House of
Representatives during the October–November 1861 session;
superintendent of Ormsby County schools, 1862–63;
superintendent of public instruction for the territory and then the
state of Nevada, 1863–66; and later, state mineralogist
(
Andrew J. Marsh, 670–71
n. 46). His nomination to the post of chaplain of the legislative
Council in October 1861 sparked a comical controversy over the necessity
for his services (see
Roughing It, chapter 25,
and
Mack 1947, 89–90).
White was widely known for his series of sermons on the pecuniary
advantages of observing the gospel (for Clemens’s jibes at
White’s worldliness, see
SLC 1864 [MT00270], 4:3, and
SLC 1864
[MT00277], 3). No doubt Clemens associated
White’s pulpit style with that of the “Hard-shell
Baptist” preacher whose sermon, “Where the Lion
Roareth and the Wang-Doodle Mourneth,” was a staple of
frontier humor (see
N&J2, 362 n. 22). The “Whangdoodle,” a
“mysterious animal, like the
‘gyascutis’ of circus fame, has never been beheld
of man and its attributes and habits are entirely unknown”
(
Maitland, 300).
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11
Located in the West Humboldt mountain range not far from the Buena Vista
district, which Clemens had explored in December 1861 and January
1862.
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12
John D. Winters (1830–1900), a Carson City resident and a
member of the 1861 territorial House of Representatives, had gone from
Illinois to California in 1848 and then migrated to Nevada in 1857. He
was the only one of the original discoverers of the Comstock lode to
retain an interest after 1860. Winters owned quartz mills at Dayton and
Aurora and held a one-eighteenth interest in the Ophir Silver Mining
Company, which he had helped to organize (
Andrew J. Marsh, 667 n. 19;
Kelly 1862, 218;
Ratay, 293). The day before Clemens wrote this
letter, the Carson City
Silver Age reported
Winters’s sale of his Ophir stock for “the snug
sum of one hundred thousand dollars” (“Large
Sale,” San Francisco
Alta California,
13 Mar 62, 1, reprinting the
Silver Age of 7 Mar
62).
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13
Unidentified.
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Source text(s):
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia (
ViU).
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Previous publication:
L1, 169–174.
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Provenance:
deposited at ViU on 23 Apr 1960.
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Emendations and textual notes:
to-|morrow •
to-morrow
“nurse” •
[“]nurse” [dry pen]
fo from •
forom [‘r’ over ‘o’]
naturaly •
[sic]
you [make of] that •
you |that
this do
•
[Clemens may have
meant ‘things do’.]
a ducks water slides •
[‘water s’ over ‘a ducks’]
of over •
ofver [‘v’ over ‘f’]
Tillou
w
•
[‘u’ over ‘w’]