Autobiography of Mark Twain (160 page)

401.30–34 John Garth . . . Helen Kercheval . . . John’s tomb] John H. Garth (1837–99), one of Clemens’s close childhood friends, was the younger son of John Garth (1784–?1857), a tobacco and grain merchant, and his wife, Emily Houston Garth (d. 1844?). He attended the University of Missouri, then returned to Hannibal to work in the family tobacco business. In 1860 he married Helen Kercheval (1838–1923), and in 1862 they moved to New York City, where he worked alongside his brother David J. Garth (1822–1912) at the newly established Garth, Son and Company, a nationwide chain of tobacco warehouses. In the early 1870s he returned to Hannibal, where he became one of the town’s most prominent and prosperous citizens (
Portrait
1895, 776–77;
Inds
, 320). Helen V. Kercheval (1838–1923) was the daughter of Anna M. and William E. Kercheval, manager of a Hannibal dry goods firm called the “People’s Store” (“‘The People’s Store’ Once More,” Hannibal
Courier
, 15 Apr 1852, unknown page;
Inds
, 328). In May 1882, while visiting old friends in Hannibal, Clemens stayed with the Garths at “Woodside,” their six-hundred-acre estate: “It has been a moving time. I spent my nights with John & Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their spacious & beautiful house. They were children with me, & afterwards school-mates” (17 May 1882 to OLC, CU-MARK, in
MTL
, 1:419). John Garth died of Bright’s disease; Clemens saw his tomb at Mount Olivet cemetery when Helen Garth and her daughter took him there during his 1902 visit to Hannibal. In his working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill,” Clemens planned characters named Jack Stillson and Fanny Brewster modeled on John and Helen, but only Jack Stillson appears in the unfinished manuscript (31 May 1902 to OLC, CU-MARK, in
LLMT
, 338; Hagood and Hagood 1985, 29).

401.36–402.2 Mr. Kercheval, had an apprentice . . . and he had also a slave woman . . . I was saved again] The apprentice has not been identified. The “slave woman,” who must have been about forty-four years old when she rescued Clemens, is identified only by Kercheval’s name in the 1850 census, which describes her as a female mulatto (
Marion Census
1850 [“Slave Inhabitants”], 615).

402.2–4 I was drowned seven times . . . once in Bear Creek and six times in the Mississippi] Clemens elsewhere claimed that he had survived drowning nine times: “As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a ⅔ drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, & was considered to be a cat in disguise” (2 Jan 1895 to Rogers, CU-MARK, in
HHR
, 115; see also SLC 1899a).

402.8–12 Another schoolmate was John Meredith . . . devastations and sheddings of blood] John D. Meredith (1837–70) was one of five children of the Clemens family’s old friend and doctor, Hugh Meredith, and his wife, Anna D. Meredith (b. 1813?) (see “Something about Doctors,” note at 188.19–20). John worked as a printer at the Hannibal
Messenger
office in 1859. Despite Clemens’s memory of John as a Confederate guerrilla, official records show that Hugh, John, and his younger brother, Henry H. Meredith (b. 1840), all served in the Union army. Hugh served as a captain surgeon in 1861 and 1862 in the Twenty-second Regiment Infantry Volunteers; between 1863 and 1865 John served as a captain in the Fifty-third Regiment of the Enrolled Missouri Militia, then in the Second Regiment of the Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia, and finally in the Thirty-ninth Regiment Infantry Volunteers. Henry, who enlisted in 1861, served in 1864 under his brother John in the Enrolled Missouri Militia (
Marion Census
1850, 326;
Marion Census
1860, unknown page;
Marion Census
1870, 690; Fotheringham 1859, 41;
Marion Veterans Census
1890, 1; Missouri Digital Heritage 2009b, reels s794, s817, s852, s863, s895;
Inds
, 310, 335; Wecter 1952, 55).

402.16–33 Will Bowen was another schoolmate, and so was his brother, Sam . . . Death came swiftly to both pilots] William Bowen (1836–93) and Samuel Adams Bowen, Jr. (1838?–78), were the two youngest boys of seven children born to Samuel Adams Bowen, Sr., and Amanda Stone Bowen (1802–81). Will and Sam (and their older brother Bart) became pilots on the Mississippi, operating on the same route as Clemens, between St. Louis and New Orleans. Clemens was Sam’s copilot on the
John H. Dickey
during the summer of 1858, and twice Will’s copilot on the
A.B. Chambers
and the
Alonzo Child
between 1859 and 1861 (
Inds
, 303–5). Clemens told the story of Sam’s marriage, using fictional names, in chapter 49
of Life on the Mississippi;
the character based on Sam was a “shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, good-hearted, full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing.” Clemens retold the story in “Villagers of 1840–3,” noting that Sam “slept with the rich baker’s daughter, telling the adoptive parents they were married,” and describing Sam’s character and death: “Sam no account and a pauper. Neglected his wife; she took up with another man. Sam a drinker. Dropped pretty low. Died of yellow fever and whisky on a little boat with Bill Kribben the defaulting secretary” (
Inds
, 97). William J. (Bill) Kribben (d. 1878), who had embezzled the Western Boatmen’s Benevolent Association Fund when he was secretary and treasurer during the Civil War, was Sam Bowen’s copilot on the
Molly Moore
when they caught yellow fever and died. “Island 82” was just above Greenville, Mississippi, and Columbia, Arkansas. In 1882, when Clemens revisited the Mississippi Valley, he noted that Bowen had been buried in Arkansas at “Jackson’s point” (or “Parker’s Bend”) at the head of Island 65. “The river has cut away the banks & Bowen is washed into the river.” Island 65 had completely disappeared by 1884 (
N&J2
, 527, 561; Bragg 1977, 105–9, 130; Clabaugh to SLC, 19 July 1890, CU-MARK;
Inds
, 328).

403.12–15 A tribe of Moros, dark skinned savages . . . bitter against us because we have been trying for eight years to take their liberties away . . . a menace] In December 1898, after
the battle of Manila in the Spanish–American War, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States. Rather than granting independence to the Filipinos as had been expected, the United States established military rule. What had been a war of independence against Spain soon became a war of independence against the United States, concentrated in the primarily Tagalog north. The Moros, a collection of thirteen cultural-linguistic groups sometimes at war with one another but united by their adherence to Islam, lived primarily in the south, in the Sulu Archipelago, where Jolo Island is located, and in the southern half of Mindanao (Byler 2005, 1–3). In 1899, in what was later admitted to be solely a “temporary expedient,” the American administrative authority signed a treaty with the sultan of Sulu promising governing autonomy in return for recognizing U.S. sovereignty. In the succeeding years it increasingly attempted to assert social and military control of the south, resulting in a series of battles with the Moros, whom the U.S. army many times overpowered in battle but did not defeat (Kho 2009, 1–5). In March 1904, President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Taft decided to abrogate the treaty, which “provided salaries for the Sultan and certain of his dattos and at the same time, it is said, sustained polygamy and slavery” on the grounds that it had simply been “a modus vivendi and an executive agreement” (“America Abrogates Treaty with Moros,” New York
Times
, 15 Mar 1904, 5). Although they soon reinstated payments to the sultan and his tribal chiefs, the war continued unabated. Before the present action, the Moros had retreated to their fortress in the bowl of the extinct volcano on Mount Dajo (“The Troops in Action,” New York
Tribune
, 10 Mar 1906, 3; Bacevich 2006).

403.15 Our commander, General Leonard Wood] Major General Leonard Wood (1860–1927) earned his medical degree at Harvard Medical School in 1883 and thereafter worked as an army contract surgeon, participating in the last battle against Geronimo in 1886. He served as personal physician to President William McKinley, and he became friends with McKinley’s assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1898, at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, he assumed command of the First Volunteer Cavalry—the Rough Riders—to Roosevelt’s second in command, and led his men at the battle of San Juan Hill. For the remainder of the war he led the Second Cavalry Brigade, and from 1900 to 1902 served as military governor of Cuba, instituting various reforms but also arousing controversy. In 1902 he became commander of the Philippines Division, and from 1903 to 1906, after President Roosevelt appointed him major general, he served as governor of Moro Province. After attempting to force reforms and impose taxes, he took charge of the military campaign against the Moros (Fort Leonard Wood 2009;
Boston Medical Journal
1899, 973). Wood was a controversial figure in his time and remains so. His career, considered stellar and full of well-deserved high honors by some contemporary chroniclers and modern historians, was seen very differently by others, including Clemens, who had watched Wood’s rise to high office, and had in December 1903 written a scathing essay, “Major General Wood, M.D.,” about his character and the machinations to appoint him major general (SLC 1903e; see AD, 14 Mar 1906, note at 409.1–17).

403.28 General Wood’s order was “Kill or capture the six hundred.”] The New York
Times
reported on 10 March that Wood “directed Col. Joseph W. Duncan to attack the Moros
in the crater and capture or kill them. This was accomplished after repeated demands to surrender” (“15 Americans, 600 Moros Slain in 2 Days’ Fight,” 10 Mar 1906, 1).

403.31–33 probably with brickbats . . . Heretofore the Moros have used knives and clubs mainly; also ineffectual trade-muskets when they had any] The New York
Times
reported that the “600 fanatical Moros” were armed with “rifles and knives and supported by native artillery” (“15 Americans, 600 Moros Slain in 2 Days’ Fight,” 10 Mar 1906, 1). The Moros’ “weapon of choice was the kris, a short sword with a wavy blade; the Americans toted Springfield rifles and field guns” (Bacevich 2006).

404.5–11 The official report quite . . . minutely and faithfully described the nature of the wounds . . . by cable, at one dollar and fifty cents a word] Wood’s cable named seven of the thirty-two wounded, including Coxswain Gilmore, “severely wounded in the elbow” (according to the New York
Globe and Commercial Advertiser
), and three with “slight” wounds in the thigh, right hand, and left eye (“15 Americans, 600 Moros Slain in Two-Day Fight,” 9 Mar 1906, 1). None of the accounts in the New York newspapers (
Herald, Globe and Commercial Advertiser, Evening Post, Evening Sun, Times, Tribune
, or
World
) specified a nose injury.

404.15–25 In one of the great battles of the Civil War . . . Waterloo . . . the pathetic comedy called the Cuban war . . . crippled on the field] Clemens may have had in mind the Appomattox campaign, in which the casualties equaled about 10 percent of the 163,000 men who fought on both sides. According to modern historians, most of the major battles in the Civil War had a far greater percentage of casualties (Home of the American Civil War 2009; American Civil War 2009b; Fox 1889). His estimate of the number of combatants at Waterloo (on 18 June 1815) is high. By one estimate, only about 141,000 men engaged in the battle; French casualties were about 54 percent, and Allied casualties about 33 percent. Troop strength and casualty figures for the Cuban battles of the Spanish-American War also differ, but Clemens’s statistics are substantially correct. A far greater number of Americans, perhaps 90 percent, died in hospitals of yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, and food poisoning than died in action (Veteran’s Museum and Memorial Center 2009; Library of Congress 2009). Clemens’s source for Spanish casualty figures is uncertain, but it is known that they also lost a greater number to tropical disease than to battle (Bollet 2005).

404.32–41 The splendid news appeared . . . on Friday morning . . . nobody said a word about the “battle.”] The dispatch from General Wood reporting the “severe action between troops,” dated Friday, 9 March, was first published or excerpted the same day in at least three New York newspapers, the
Evening Post, Evening Sun
, and the
Globe and Commercial Advertiser
, and the next day, the morning of Saturday, 10 March, in the
Times, Tribune, World
, and others. Only two, the New York
Evening Post
and the
World
, had an editorial comment. The
Post
wrote: “Congress would make no mistake if it should rigidly inquire into the latest ‘battle’ in the Philippines. . . . What possible military excuse was there for charging up a mountain cone, 2,100 feet high, to attack an almost impregnable fort? Was there no possibility of forcing these Moros to surrender by starving them out?” (“The Latest Moro Slaughter,” New York
Evening Post
, 10 Mar 1906, 4).

405.13–17 Washington . . . (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt] Roosevelt’s congratulatory cable
of 10 March was widely published on 11 March, with no direct commentary (“Special to the New York Times,” New York
Times
, 1; “President Congratulates Wood,” New York
Tribune
, 1; “President Congratulates Wood upon the Massacre,” New York
World
, 1).

405.28 WOMEN SLAIN IN MORO SLAUGHTER] This headline and the others quoted below through 406.22 were from the New York
Herald
of 11 March.

406.23 Lieutenant Johnson has pervaded the cablegrams] Lieutenant Gordon Johnston (1874–1934) was the son of Confederate General Robert Daniel Johnston and nephew of Joseph F. Johnston, governor of Alabama, 1896–1900. His injury was followed closely in the newspapers because of his connection to Roosevelt. (Many newspapers erroneously called him Johnson, the name Clemens uses.) On 10 March the New York
Tribune
published two stories, headlined “Lieutenant Johnston Formerly in Rough Riders” and “Lieut. Johnston Not Badly Hurt,” and the
Globe and Commercial Advertiser
published “Moro Fight Hero. Lieut. Johnson, Princeton Graduate, Is Badly Wounded in Leading a Charge.” On 11 March the
World
noted that his wounds “are severe, a slug having passed through his right shoulder. He performed a gallant deed when he scaled the wall of the Rio crater and was blown off the parapet by the force of exploding artillery” (“900 Moros Slain, It Is Now Said, in Fatal Crater,” 1). On 12 March, the New York
Times
reported Roosevelt’s telegram and Johnston’s answer in a story headlined, “Fine, Cables Johnston, Answering Roosevelt” (12 Mar 1906, 6; Arlington National Cemetery 2009).