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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
And so Missouri has fallen, that great State! Certain of her children have joined the lynchers, and the smirch is upon the rest of us. That handful of her children have given us a character and labeled us with a name; and to the dwellers in the four quarters of the earth we are “lynchers,” now, and ever shall be. For the world will not stop and think – it never does, it is not its way; its way is to generalize from a single sample. It will not say “Those Missourians have been busy eighty years in building an honorable good name for themselves; these hundred lynchers down in the corner of the State are not real Missourians, they are bastards.” No, that truth will not enter its mind; it will generalize from the one or two misleading samples and say “The Missourians are lynchers.” It has no reflection, no logic, no sense of proportion. With it, figures go for nothing; to it, figures reveal nothing, it cannot reason upon them rationally; it is Brother J. J. infinitely multiplied; it would say, with him, that China is being swiftly and surely Christianized, since 9 Chinese Christians are being made every day; and it would fail, with him, to notice that the fact that 33,000 pagans are born there every day, damages the argument. It would J-J Missouri, and say “There are a hundred lynchers there, therefore the Missourians are lynchers;” the considerable fact that there are two and a half million Missourians who are not lynchers would not affect their verdict any more than it would affect Bro. J. J.'s.
1.11 eighty years] Clemens was exactly correct. He knew that Missouri had been admitted to statehood in 1821.
1.17 Brother J. J.] The manuscript identifies this person as the Reverend Judson Smith. As corresponding secretary, Smith was spokesman for the American Board of Foreign Missions in publicly defending the missionaries' treatment of Chinese during the Boxer Rebellion. His foremost adversary was Twain, who had criticized him and his organization in print several times during the early months of 1901, most tellingly in “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” Since Smith apparently did not have a middle name, the “J.” likely represents a “jay,” slang for a stupid, inexperienced person, or a person who was an easy victim or dupe.
1.19 9 Chinese Christians] Later in the essay, Clemens cites Morrison, George Ernest's An Australian in China (London: Cox, 1895)Google Scholar. Morrison, a physician by training, notes that in 1893 the missionaries converted 3,127 Chinese, or about nine a day on average (5). In “The Dervish and the Offensive Stranger,” composed the year after “Lyncherdom,” Clemens states that the missionaries had made 100,000 Chinese converts in 80 years. This is up from his estimate of October 1895: “Since the beginning of the world there have been 225,000,000,000 savages born and damned and 28,000 saved by missionary effort” (Twain, Mark, Mark Twain's Notebook, prepared for publication with comment by Albert Bigelow Paine [New York: Harper, 1935], 252)Google Scholar.
1.20–21 33,000 pagans are born] Morrison gives 33,000 as the daily death rate, not birth rate (Australian in China, 70). Twain repeated the error later in this essay (6.22) and again in his working notes for “The Refuge of the Derelicts” (1905–6) (Twain, Mark, Mark Twain's Fables of Man, ed. Tuckey, John S. [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972], 463)Google Scholar.
1.23–24 two and a half million] The census of 1900 gave the population of Missouri as 3,100,000.
2.5–6 Alfreds the Great] Legendary king of the West Saxons, 871–79.
2.6 Chamberlains] Clemens, like many others, believed that Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary for the Colonies, was primarily responsible for leading Great Britain into the Boer War, for which he, too, was criticized in “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.”
2.6 Saints Louis] Louis IX, a pious and pacific king of France (1226–70) who came to be known as “Saint Louis.”
2.7 Melines] Felix Jules Méline, Prime Minister of France from 1896 to 1898, had refused to approve a rehearing of the Dreyfus case in 1897. He is mockingly identified in “The Stupendous Procession” (Mark Twain's Fables, 407), which Clemens had written a few months earlier in 1901.
2.7 Odells] Benjamin Barker Odell, Republican governor of New York, was acclaimed by reformers as an honest administrator who had broken with the New York City political “machine,” Tammany Hall.
2.8 Crokers] Richard Croker from 1885 to 1901 was the leader of the Tammany Hall Democrats.
2.8 all but three of our States] Some states were long enmeshed in litigation over bonds they had issued during the Civil War and Reconstruction. More than three states were guilty of Clemens's accusation — Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, and Minnesota (see Ratchford, Benjamin Ulysses, American State Debts [Durham: Duke University Press, 1941], 195, 230–41Google Scholar).
2.10 Dr. Lazears] Jesse William Lazear, a Baltimore physician, had recently died in Cuba while conducting successful research into the spread of yellow fever by mosquitoes.
2.13 Quays] Matthew S. Quay, Republican boss of Pennsylvania, was returned to the U.S. Senate in 1901 despite a clouded reputation. “The Secret History of Eddypus, the World-Empire,” which Clemens had begun in February–March of 1901, mentions “one Quay” who purchases the legislature of Pennsylvania “at an auction” (Mark Twain's Fables, 327).
2.18 tragedy] In addition to the Weekly Post editorial, other New York City newspapers also made clear that the Pierce City lynch mob's first victim was innocent of the assault on the young woman. See the New York Herald (August 21, 1901, 6), for example. The New York Times (August 23, 1901, 3) and the New York Tribune (August 23, 1901, 8) added later details. As this fact was widely known, in his essay Clemens focuses on lynch-mob outlawry in the United States and how such lawlessness would be judged in the court of world opinion.
2.30 Keller case in a Jersey court] “One of the most sensational and absorbing trials of recent years” (New York Times, 06 22, 1901, 1Google Scholar), the case hinged on the judge's excluding evidence that might sway a jury to acquit an attempted murderer on the basis of an “unwritten law” that allowed individual acts of revenge.
3.5 “the usual crime”] The Weekly Post account of the Pierce City episode does not even hint that rape was used to justify the lynching; instead, it strongly suggests homicide, which, indeed, was the “usual crime” given for lynching rather than rape (for national data for the years 1896–1900, see figures gathered by Janet Smith [Twain, Mark, Mark Twain on the Damned Human Race, ed. Smith, Janet (New York: Hill, 1962), 254 n. 19Google Scholar]). Data compiled by Tuskegee Institute list homicide as the leading pretext for lynching throughout the entire period during which records were kept (1882–1962), including the 1899–1901 period (Reference Library of Black America, ed. Ploski, Harry A. and Williams, James, 5 vols. [Detroit: Gale, 1990], 2: 366–67Google Scholar).
3.10–11 followed by imitations] One of Clemens, 's entrenched opinions, seen best in “A Scrap of Curious History” (Harper's Monthly, 1914Google Scholar; reprinted in Twain, Mark, What Is Man? and Other Essays [New York: Harper, 1917]Google Scholar). He applied it to lynching again soon, in a letter to Twichell, September 10, 1901 (Letters, 2: 713–16).
3.32 Colorado] The New York Tribune reported lynchings in Colorado (November 17, 1900, 1).
3.32 California] The New York Times carried a story headed “Five Lynched in California” (June 1, 1901, 2).
4.9 Moral Cowardice] An overriding concern in Clemens's later years. As applied to lynching in particular, Clara remembered her father's exclaiming in 1900–1901 that lynchings showed “fantastic cowardice — shameful cowardice” (My Husband Gabrilowitsch [New York: Harper, 1938], 13–14)Google Scholar. Clemens made a set of notes headed “Moral Cowardice” (DV 128 [13], Mark Twain Papers) scorning chauvinistic patriotism in a manner similar to the critical, but constructively critical, attitude he took toward the United States in his “Lyncherdom” essay.
4.10 9,999 men in the 10,000] These numbers concur in general with figures Clemens recorded elsewhere showing his settled opinion about the rarity of moral courage. A manuscript (DV 22, Mark Twain Papers) asserts that there are ten fair persons in a hundred thousand. A penciled note in another manuscript (DV 128 [11]) declares that nine-tenths of mankind are cowards.
4.24–5 enjoy the spectacle] “The Chronicle of Young Satan” (1897–1900) stresses the idea that the majority of a crowd that stoned a witch were torn by pity but took part because they feared losing their neighbors' esteem (Twain, , Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 152–54Google Scholar).
4.32 Moral Sense] Clemens derides the Moral Sense in numerous writings, fictional and nonfictional, throughout his career. For example, during his later period he mocks it in the “The Chronicle of Young Satan,” where he defines it as the faculty, lacking in animals, that makes man gain pleasure by inflicting pain on others (Twain, , Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, 72–74Google Scholar).
4.39–40 “mere … suffering.”] Presumably from a newspaper editorial, unlocated.
4.40 Windsor Hotel] A fire at the Windsor Hotel in New York City that killed more than sixty people on March 17, 1899, attracted a large crowd and much publicity.
5.16 Savonarola] Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98), Italian monk and religious reformer, reputedly cowed a band of assassins sent to his jail cell and faced down several larger mobs.
5.17–18 no mob has any sand] Another idea entrenched with Clemens. Blair ascribes it in part to Carlyle's The French Revolution, one of Clemens's favorite books (Blair, Walter, Mark Twain & Huck Finn [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960], 312–14Google Scholar). See also “A Double-Barreled Detective Story” (particularly section 9), written a few days after “Lyncherdom” during the late summer of 1901.
5.21 When I was a boy] Probably the real-life William Owsley—Sam Smarr story from Clemens's boyhood in Hannibal (1845), vividly fictionalized as the famous Colonel Sherburn—Boggs episode in chapter 22 of Huckleberry Finn. Clemens's father tried the case (see Wecter, Dixon, Sam Clemens of Hannibal [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952], 106–9Google Scholar). Clemens discussed aspects of this event himself (Twain, Mark, Mark Twain's Autobiography, with an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine, 2 vols. [New York: Harper, 1924], 1: 131)Google Scholar.
5.23 in Nevada] A record of this incident has not been located, but it seems not to refer to Melanie, the man executed at Clemens's first witnessing of a hanging in Virginia City, Nevada, in 1868 (see Appendix to essay preceding the present “Lyncherdom” text).
5.26 half of a … a stage coach] An echo of an event described in an omitted passage of Life on the Mississippi (1883; “suppressed” passage printed in Willis Wager's edition [New York: Heritage, 1944], 415, and reprinted in James M. Cox's edition [New York: Penguin, 1984], 334). Also strongly similar to the jeer voiced by Colonel Sherburn in chapter 22 of Huckleberry Finn.
5.36 Hobson] A famous episode in the Spanish—American War of 1898 involved a daring plan to scuttle a ship in the channel of the harbor of Santiago de Cuba. The plan was (unsuccessfully) carried out by Lt. Richmond Pearson Hobson of the U.S. Navy, who describes the scramble among the men to volunteer for the mission and provides further details in The Sinking of the “Merrimac” (New York: Century, 1899)Google Scholar.
6.6 down South] Clemens considered Princeton to be “down South” too, since it was in the southwest corner of Indiana about 25 miles from Kentucky.
6.21 1511 of them] See Morrison, , Australian in China, 5Google Scholar.
6.43 the siege] During the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900, the foreign legations in Peking were besieged for several weeks.
7.16–30 114; add 88 … million persons present] The New York Weekly Post reprint of the Chicago Tribune editorial that Clemens read and pinned to his manuscript cited these numbers for the reported lynchings in 1900 and thus far in 1901. The figure of 115 for 1900 is corroborated by Reference Library of Black America (2: 366). Clemens's calculations are exactly accurate for the dimensions of the grotesque vision if reported lynchings in the United States for only one and a half years were combined: the line would stretch 24.99 miles and be witnessed by 1,015,000 spectators. For the arithmetic related to the number 114, Clemens seems to have intended “multiply” to mean “add to.” Since he had already named one, the reader must add only 114.
7.20 have the show] Twain, 's King Leopold's Soliloquy (1905)Google Scholar constructs a similar nightmarish panorama.
7.40 under tuition in China] The Boxer Rebellion entailed many attacks on missionaries.
7.42–43 add 60 lynchings] Clemens's estimate of adding 60 would make a total of 148 for 1901. The total of reported lynchings for 1901 was actually 130 (Reference Library of Black America, 2: 366).
8.3 follow the flag, let the Constitution] In 1900 anti-imperialists, resisting the treatment of new possessions of the United States as colonies, coined slogans insisting that wherever the flag went, the Constitution must follow; that is, natives of any acquired territories would have the full rights of U.S. citizenship (see Tompkins, Edwin Berkeley, Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate 1890–1920 [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970], 244–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Very importantly in the context of this essay, those “full rights” would include the guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), securing “due process of law” for all citizens, the amendment specifically providing “equal protection of law” for former slaves.
8.13 75,000,000] The 1900 census reported the population of the United States as 76,300,000.
