In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Mark Twain’s Civil War
  • Vernon Burton
Mark Twain’s Civil War. Edited by David Rachels. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8131-2474-2. Illustrations. Notes. Sources. Pp. 220. $30.00.

If you like Mark Twain, and I do; if you like Civil War stories, especially those about the fighting men, and I do; if you like to wrestle with the idea that fiction can be true and that memoirs can be fiction, and I do; then you will agree with me that this book is both fun and a worthwhile endeavor.

Rachels has not done a biography but has collected articles and excerpts by Twain, writings that pertain specifically to Civil War themes. He divides the writings between fiction and non-fiction, but is straightforward about recognizing that this distinction is open to confusion. As Twain wrote in 1864, as part of a fictional piece, “It can be relied upon as true in every particular, inasmuch as the facts it contains were compiled from the official records in the War Department at Washington” (p. 137). Truth versus fiction [End Page 955] might begin with Twain himself, a persona created by Samuel Clemens, a figment of his imagination.

In “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (1885) Twain wrote about his militia experience in Missouri at the outbreak of the Civil War. Since that 1861 experience, Twain tweaked his story over the course of re-tellings and re-writings, as any good writer does—to tell a better story. Accuracy is not a criterion of a good story. At the same time, by inserting a death that did not happen into the otherwise comical ramblings of the Missouri militia group, maybe Twain was increasing the level of verisimilitude. Rachels gives an extended explanation of this addition and its significance for Twain and for the scholarship of the Civil War. Clemens did not experience the horror of war, but he could not allow his final story to ignore that horror. War is killing after all.

When Twain concludes his story of the Missouri militia escapades, looking back from 1877, he writes, ““We couldn’t really tell which side we were on” (p. 5). Rachels does not say so, but Twain knew. Nevertheless, confusion reigned for many of the young men eager to fight when South Carolina first seceded and Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers. Sam Clemens, then twenty-six years old, joined a volunteer militia group called the Marion Rangers. Rachels’ introduction tells the story of Missouri’s initial reaction to the Civil War as succinctly and in as lively a fashion as anyone has. He elicits the confusion that was very real for the young men who wanted to fight but had never wrestled with the meaning of freedom. Their allegiance was divided between local loyalty to family, friends, and community, and the more far-off state of Missouri and even farther off United States of America. Twain spoke for many when he wrote, “It was hard for us to get our bearings” (p. 5). Twain’s telling of the tale is, naturally, humorous. He describes how their new commander, Colonel Ralls, made the boys “swear to uphold the flag and the constitution of the United States, and to destroy any other military organization that we caught doing the same thing” (p. 4). Clemens and his friends wanted to be soldiers but were unaware of the political issues or rationale for war.

After his two-week stint bivouacking and retreating, Clemens quit. Any Civil War historian has to contend with the phenomenon of desertion, which ran rampant on both sides. Deserter is still a bad word, and Rachels defends Clemens’ war record: “technically” he was never a member of the Confederate army. Rachels agrees with the Hannibal Daily Messenger (June 23, 1861), which reported that the young men were “duped and misguided” (p. 8). In later speeches, that is to say humorous lectures, Twain gave various reasons for his short time in the war, for one because he was “incapacitated by fatigue” through persistent retreating (p. 12). Clemens did not see combat. If some thought he quit the war because he was a...

pdf

Share