When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, thousands of patriotic southerners rushed to enlist for the Confederate cause. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who grew up in the border state of Missouri in a slave-holding family, was among them. Clemens, who later achieved fame as the writer Mark Twain, served as second lieutenant in a Confederate militia, but only for two weeks, leading many to describe his loyalty to the Confederate cause as halfhearted at best. After all, Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and his numerous speeches celebrating Abraham...
When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, thousands of patriotic southerners rushed to enlist for the Confederate cause. Samuel L...
Threatened by a rival editor brandishing a double-barreled shotgun, young Samuel Clemens had his first taste of literary criticism. Clemens began his long writing career penning satirical articles for his brother's newspaper in Hannibal, Missouri. His humor delighted everyone except his targets, and it would not be the last time his writing provoked threats of -dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his head shot off.- Clemens adopted the name Mark Twain while living in the Nevada Territory, where his caustic comedy led to angry confrontations, a challenge to a duel, and a subsequent...
Threatened by a rival editor brandishing a double-barreled shotgun, young Samuel Clemens had his first taste of literary criticism. Clemens began his ...
