17 May 1864 • Virginia City, Nev. Terr. (Unidentified newspaper clipping: CU-MARK, UCCL 00077)
Virginia City, Nevada Territory, midnight.—I don’t know the day of the month or of the week; consult the postmark.1explanatory note
My Dear Mother and Sister: I had rather die in Washoe than live in some countries. The old California motto is applicable here: “We have lived like paupers that we might give like princes.”2explanatory note Virginia is only a small town, about three times as large as Hannibal, and Gold Hill is about the same size as Hannibal. Silver City and Dayton are mere villages—but you ought to see them roll out the twenty dollar pieces when their blood is up. It makes no difference what the object is, if you just get them stirred up once they are bound to respond.
I think they like that Sanitary Fund because it affords them such a bully opportunity of giving away their money.3explanatory note They are slow until you move them, though. When Pamela wrote us to try and do something for the St. Louis Fair,4explanatory note I went after the President of the Storey ⒶemendationCounty Sanitary Commission, who is an old St. Louisian5explanatory note—I had never taken much interest in sanitary matters before.6explanatory note He went to work sending calls to the several counties to contribute, and I, being chief of our editorial corps, then, went to scribbling editorials. But we couldn’t make the riffle.7explanatory note
Paul got the ladies of Gold Hill to give a ball, and a silver brick worth $3,000 was the result, but that wouldn’t go far, you know.8explanatory note Then Ⓐemendationwe got up a meeting in Virginia, and only got $1,500 or $1,800, and that made us sick. We tried it again, and almost concluded to disband the audience without trying to do anything—but we went on, kept it up all the afternoon and raised $3,500, and had about concluded it was no use to try to get up a sanitary excitement.9explanatory note We began to think we were going to make a mighty poor show at the St. Louis Fair, when along came Ruel ⒶemendationGridley, (you remember him) whom I hadn’t seen for 15 years, and he brought help. He is a Copperhead, or as he Ⓐemendationcalls himself, Ⓐemendation“Union to the backbone, but a Copperhead in sympathies.”10explanatory note He Ⓐemendationlives in Austin, Reese river—a town half as big as Hannibal. He made an eccentric wager with a Republican named Hereford11explanatory note that if a Republican Mayor were elected there, he would give Hereford a 50-pound sack of flour, and carry it to him on his shoulder, a mile and a quarter, with a brass band at his heels playing “John Brown,” and if a Democrat were elected, Hereford was to carry the flour to the tune of “Dixie.” Ruel lost the bet,12explanatory note and carried the flour, with the band and the whole town at his heels. Hereford gave the flour, back to Ruel, and about that time one of Paul’s letters arrived, and Ruel put the flour up at auction and sold it for the benefit of the St. Louis Fair for five thousand three hundred dollars. The news came here, but it didn’t work on the people much. However, when Ruel got here yesterday, with his sack, on his way to the States,13explanatory note Paul thought we might make some use of it. We put it up at auction and it only brought five or six hundred dollars.14explanatory note He lives in Gold Hill, and he said he was so disgusted with Virginia that he would try his own town, and if she failed he would leave the country. This morning at eleven o’clock he had two open carriages—one for reporters and the other for the speakers—got a brass band and we started for Gold Hill. When we got there Ruel gave the history of the flour sack, and said that from what he could see people outside of Austin didn’t care much for flour. But they soon made him sing small. Gold Hill raised Austin out of her boots, and paid nearly seven thousand dollars in gold for the sack of flour. Ruel threw up the sponge!15explanatory note
Then we went down to little Silver City and sold it for $1,500 or $1,700. From there we went to the village of Dayton and sold it for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000. Carson is considerably larger than either of these three towns, but it has a lousy, lazy, worthless, poverty-stricken population, and the universal opinion was that we couldn’t Ⓐemendationraise $500 dollars Ⓐemendationthere. So we started home again about $10,000 better off than when we left in the morning.
We got to Gold Hill at 4 in the afternoon, and found the streets crowded, and they hailed us from all sides with “Virginia’s boomin’!” “Virginia’s mad!” “Virginia’s got her back up!” “You better go ’long to Virginia; they say they’ll be d—d if the whole Territory combined shall beat them!” and a hundred other such exclamations. Wherefore we journeyed into Virginia with a long procession at our heels, coming up to see the fun.16explanatory note We got to the meeting place after dark, and found the neighboring buildings illuminated and the adjacent streets completely blocked up Ⓐemendationwith people. Then the fun commenced, and I wished Pamela could have been there to see her own private project bringing forth its fruit and culminating in such a sweeping excitement away out here among barren mountains, while she herself, unconscious of what her hands had done, and unaware of the row she was kicking up, was probably sitting quietly at home and thinking it a dreary sort of a world, full of disappointments, and labors unrequited, and hopes unblessed with fruition. I speak of the row as hersⒶemendation, for if she had not written us, the St. Louis Fair would probably have never heard from Washoe. She has certainly secured $30,000 or $40,000 worth of greenbacks from us by her own efforts.17explanatory note
Well, the fun commenced, and the very first dash made Austin take a back seat, and strode half way up the Gold Hill. It was a bid for the sack of flour by the men employed in the Gould & Curry mine and mill, of three thousand five hundred dollars! They went ahead of Austin two hundred dollars. Then followed half a dozen bids of five hundred dollars each, and the thing was fairly under way. In two hours and a half Virginia cleaned out the Territory and paid nearly $13,000 for the sack of flour! How’s that? Nearly a dollar a head for every man, woman and child in the camp, in two hours and a half; and on four hours’ notice. New York couldn’t come up to that ratio in the Ⓐemendationsame length of time. And then the offices of all our big mines are located in San Francisco, and when that city makes a big dash for the Sanitary fund, the heaviest end of it comes always from those very offices.
The other day the Daily Union gave $200, and I gave $300, under instructions from the proprietors always to “go them a hundred better.” To-night the Union bid $100, and I bid $150 for the Enterprise Ⓐemendation. I had to go to the office to make up my report, and the Union fellows came back and bid another $100. It was provoking, because I had orders to run our bid up to $1,000, if necessary, and I only struck the Union lightly to draw them on. But I guess we’ll make them hunt their holes yet, before we are done with them.18explanatory note
If I have time to-morrow, I will send a dispatch, by request, to the St. Louis Republican.19explanatory note
I stated in the paper once that Virginia could raise half a ton of pure silver in six hours for the St. Louis Fair, if they could get her mad—she went over that weight to-night in two hours and a half. If all our bars for the St. Louis Fair had no gold in them, their weight would not fall far short of a ton.
Clemens’s account in this letter of events of 15 and 16 May 1864 establishes that the date was Tuesday, 17 May. The St. Louis newspaper that published the letter gave it the following introduction: “A lady of this city put the ball in motion which rolled on and raised for our Sanitary Fair the gold bricks and silver bars from Nevada. The following interesting letter gives the modus operandi of ‘raising the wind’ in Washoe. It is very readable both for its style and its facts.” The “lady of this city” was Pamela A. Moffett, who clearly was also responsible for publication of her brother’s letter.
Unidentified.
Two major “sanitary” organizations were established in 1861 to raise funds for the relief of sick and wounded Union soldiers: the United States Sanitary Commission, headed by the Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows; and the Western Sanitary Commission, headed by James E. Yeatman and based in St. Louis, whose relief operations extended only to the armies of the Western Department. By January 1866, the combined organizations had raised about $5.7 million in cash and an estimated $18.5 million worth of supplies. California’s and Nevada’s cash contributions were $1,234,000 and $108,000, respectively (Scharf, 1:542, 549; Stillé, 69, 546, 548–49).
In February 1864 a group of St. Louis citizens, with the backing of Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William S. Rosecrans, laid plans for a Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair to raise funds for the Western Sanitary Commission. With the strong support of leading merchants, bankers, and local chapters of the Ladies’ Union Aid Society and the Ladies’ Loyal League, the fair opened in St. Louis on 17 May 1864, ran for about a month, and realized approximately $600,000 (Scharf, 1:553–55).
Almarin B. Paul, who had lived in St. Louis from 1833 to 1845 and was a graduate of St. Louis University (Irvine, 2:671). On 23 March 1864, Paul had distributed a circular issued by the officers of the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair, which Pamela Moffett doubtless had forwarded to Clemens. In it the fair’s officers appealed for contributions of money and goods of all kinds. Paul accompanied the circular with his own appeal to all of Nevada, which included this promise: “The citizens of Storey county, whose liberal outpourings have netted about $45,000 to the New York Commission, intend sending a contribution of silver bars to this St. Louis Fair” (Paul 1864, 2). Paul’s efforts were officially recognized on 27 April with his appointment by the fair’s honorary president, General William S. Rosecrans, as “a Special Agent . . . to solicit donations from auxiliary societies, and co-operate generally for the benefit of said Fair” (Rosecrans, 3). Throughout April the Virginia City Evening Bulletin and the Union publicized the fair and appealed for donations. The Enterprise very likely did the same, although this cannot be verified since no complete files survive for this period.
Clemens had evidently given little notice in print to sanitary-fund activities. His surviving remarks, all supportive, appeared in the Territorial Enterprise on 10 January and 10 November 1863 and 28 April 1864, and in the San Francisco Morning Call on 3 September 1863 (see: ET&S1 , 183–87, 284–87, 400; SLC 1863, 2:110; and SLC 1864, 3:144). He was about to become embroiled in controversy as a result of sanitary-fund commentaries he published in the Enterprise on the day of this letter and the day following it.
“To make the riffle” was “to cross a riffle or rapid, to succeed in an undertaking.” The expression also had mining associations since a riffle could be “a bar, slat, or other obstruction placed across the bottom of a sluice box or other gold-washing apparatus to arrest particles of gold” (Mathews, 2:1395).
The Gold Hill ball was held on Wednesday night, 20 April, and took in $3,080 after expenses (Virginia City Union: “Concert and Ball To-night,” 20 Apr 64, 3; “Sanitary Society at Gold Hill,” 27 Apr 64, 3).
At the first of these meetings, held in Maguire’s Opera House on 1 May, a small audience subscribed about $1,800. The speakers then were Almarin B. Paul and Thomas Fitch, the well-known lawyer, editor, and orator (see 11 Nov 64 to OC, n. 4click to open link). The second, larger gathering took place on 15 May, also in the opera house. The speakers were Fitch, William H. Clagett, and Emma Hardinge, an “Inspirational Speaker,” who was in Virginia City to lecture on “Spiritualism and Kindred Sciences” (“New To-day,” Virginia City Union, 15 May 64, 2). More than $3,700 in cash, mining stock, and a silver brick was raised (Virginia City Union: “Sanitary Meeting,” 3 May 64, 3; “The Sanitary Meeting Sunday Afternoon,” 17 May 64, 3).
Reuel Colt Gridley (1829–70), although older than Clemens, had been a schoolmate of his in Hannibal. (Clemens—or the compositor—misspelled “Reuel” throughout this letter.) In 1846 or 1847, Gridley had joined an infantry company and gone off to fight in the Mexican War. He was now a partner in the grocery firm of Gridley, Hobart and Jacobs in Austin, Lander County, Nevada (Angel, 268).
Actually Dr. H. S. Herrick, “Republican, a native of New York, then holding a Federal position in connection with the Internal Revenue Department, and subsequently Superintendent of Schools” for Lander County. Herrick had also been elected county assessor on 2 September 1863. Clemens may have confused him with A. P. Hereford, elected senator from Lander County on 19 January 1864 under the defeated state constitution (Angel, 268, 462–64).
On 19 April 1864, Charles Holbrook, the Republican candidate, defeated David E. Buel, a Democrat, in the Austin mayoral election (Angel, 268).
After auctioning the sack of flour repeatedly in Nevada and California, Gridley took it around the eastern states, spending more than a year on the road at his own expense. He supposedly raised $175,000 (also reported as $275,000), in the process “becoming from a positive secessionist an ardent Unionist. . . . Returning to Austin in poor health, he found his business much depressed and himself overwhelmed in debt” (Angel, 270). He died a poor man in Paradise, California (Elizabeth H. Smith, 11–18). Clemens included an account of Gridley’s wager and his efforts on behalf of the sanitary fund in chapter 45 of Roughing It and in an Autobiographical Dictation of 16 March 1906 (CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:216–18).
During the 15 May meeting in Virginia City (see note 9) Gridley arrived from Austin with the flour sack and put it up briefly for auction, bringing in $570 of the total amount raised.
In Austin, following the loss of his wager, Gridley had “performed the ceremony of delivering the sack, throwing up the sponge in token of surrender” (Angel, 269). He carried the same sponge with him to Gold Hill (SLC 1864, 5).
On 21 May, writing to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin under his pen name, “Cosmos,” Almarin B. Paul gave an extended account of the daylong procession of carriages, bands, horsemen, foot soldiers, and pedestrians which—like other news reports—corroborates Clemens’s present version. Paul credited Mark Twain, “a well known local reporter here,” with dubbing the money-raising caravan the “Army of the Lord” (Paul 1864, 1). For Clemens’s published contemporary accounts of the event, see SLC 1864, 5, and SLC 1864, 1.
By 6 June Storey County had sent almost $22,000 in gold and silver bars to the fair. The equivalent of approximately $39,000 in greenbacks, this was nearly two-thirds of Nevada Territory’s entire contribution to that date. The treasurer of the fair, Samuel Copp, responded gratefully: “Well done, Storey county! She stands ahead—next to St. Louis in her liberal gifts to the M.S.V. Fair” (Copp, 3; “Progress of the Great Fair,” St. Louis Missouri Democrat, 1 June 64, 4; Paul 1864, 3; Virginia City Union: “Shipment of Sanitary Bars,” 1 June 64, 3; “The Sanitary Bars,” 8 June 64, 3).
In response to the Union’s second bid of $100, Clemens published the following item in the Enterprise of 18 May:
How Is It?—While we had no representative at the mass meeting on Monday evening, the Union overbid us for the flour—or at least ex-Alderman Bolan bid for that paper, and said that he would be responsible for the extra hundred dollars. He may have an opportunity, as we are told that the Union (or its employés, whichever it is,) has repudiated the bid. We would like to know about this matter, if we may make so free. (SLC 1864, 2)
Clemens evidently did not fulfill this request: no dispatch likely to have been sent by him has been identified in the St. Louis Missouri Republican.
“History of the Gold and Silver Bars—How They Do Things in Washoe,” clipping from an unidentified newspaper in Scrapbook 1:59, Moffett Collection, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L1 , 281–287; MTEnt , 186–89.
see Moffett Collection, p. 462. References in the clipping to “a lady of this city” and “our Sanitary Fair” (p. 284, n. 1) establish that the story was written for and presumably published in a St. Louis newspaper. The copy-text clipping, however, could be of a reprint in a Nevada or other newspaper. A search of microfilms of the Missouri Democrat and the Missouri Republican failed to locate the article, but the typography of the clipping resembles that of the Democrat and not that of the Republican. No other St. Louis newspaper microfilm for the period could be located, and no other English-language newspaper for the period is listed in the files of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.