Mark Twain's 'Private Campaign'

Dr. John Gerber is Professor of English at the State University of Iowa. An editorial consultant of Scott, Foresman, he has co-edited Better Reading, The College Anthology, and other college texts. Long a Twain enthusiast, his article adds to our knowledge of Twain as a human being and the Civil War. Mark Twain's 'Private Campaign' JOHN GERBER twain's "the private history of a campaign that failed" first appeared in the Century Magazine, December, 1885, and ever since has been a subject of some controversy. How much of it is fact, how much fancy? To make some attempt at an answer, we need first to piece together the bits of information, as well as we know them, about Twain's war experience. The chief primary sources of information, other than the 'Trivate History" itself, are these: 1.The 'letters" of Quintus Curtius Snodgrass.1 2.A speech given by Twain in October, 1877, before the Putnam Phalanx of Hartford, Connecticut, when it was entertaining the Boston Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.2 1 There is still some doubt about whether Mark Twain was the author of these since they are unsigned and he is never known to have acknowledged them as his. But most Twain scholars now believe that they are Twain's. The ten "letters" appeared in the New Orleans Crescent between January 21, 1861, and March 30, 1861. Claiming to be a "High Old Private of Louisiana Guard," Quintus Curtius Snodgrass, Esq. brags of the capture of the Federal garrison at Baton Rouge, tells of his adventures at a military ball (to his horror his lady friend insisted on drinking champagne instead of claret), parodies the Confederate Manual of Arms by offering many "hints" of his own to young campaigners, and pokes fun at Lincoln by dreaming up an occasion when he dines at the White House. The best arguments for Twain's authorship appear in Professor Ernest E. Leisy's introduction to The Letters of Quintus Curtius Snodgrass, Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1946. 2 This was published originally in the New York Times, Sunday, October 7, 1877, and has since appeared in The Twainian, March-April, 1954. The general outline of Twain's "campaign" as given in this speech follows rather closely that of the "Private History," but about half of the speech is given over to a detailing of Twain's difficulties with Ben Tupper, the Orderly Sergeant who refused to do anything that Twain, who was the Second Lieutenant, asked him to do. In the "Private History" Jo Bowers is Orderly Sergeant, and Tupper is not mentioned. Toward the close of his speech Twain says that "this is the first time that the deeds of those warriors [the outfit of which he was a memberl have been brought officially to the notice of humanity." 37 38JOHN GERBER 3.A speech given by Twain at a dinner of Union Veterans in Baltimore in 1885.3 4.An anonymous account of Twain's war record which appeared in the Keokuk, Iowa, Gate City, January 17, 1885.4 5.A speech given by Twain at a banquet of ex-Confederate and Union soldiers in New York City, October, 1890.5 6.The story of Absalom Grimes.6 7.The story of Annie Moffet, Twain's niece.7 3 "An Author's Soldiering," Masterpieces of American Eloquence, New York, The Christian Herald, 1900, pp. 438-440. Twain gives no complete account in this speech of his campaign but limits himself largely to the occasion when his company shot a stranger they took to be a Union soldier. He then compares the battle of Boonville, "fought nearby about the date of our slaughter" and the unrecorded battle in which he was engaged, fifteen men on one side and the stranger on the other. The point of his narrative is that his was the only battle in the history of the world in which "the opposing force WAS UTTERLY EXTERMINATED." He concludes, then, that it was a fortunate thing for the Union that he took his "shoulder out from under the Confederacy and let it come down," since the war would soon have been over had he gone...