22 December 1875 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00397)
P. S. to letter written to Ma this afternoon.1explanatory note
It will be well to try your CongressmanⒶemendation 2explanatory note on Sammy’s behalf. I have tried everybody but the President, & all to no purpose.3explanatory note I cannot write the Secretary of the Navy without saying insulting things to him for his delay & silence—& these are words which I prefer to say to his face. I cannot hope to get a chance to go to Washington for months.
Upon second thought I have just written the Secretary asking information. Send me the letter which this snob of a Secretary wrote me a year ago, if you have it.4explanatory note
Now lost.
Walter L. Sessions (see 28 Aug 74 to Belknap, n. 2click to open link).
Clemens had approached the secretaries of war, the navy, and the treasury, as well as the postmaster general, and apparently considered approaching the president, for assistance in securing an appointment to the naval academy for Samuel Moffett (28 Aug 74click to open link, 5 Sept 74click to open link, and 24 Sept 74 to Belknapclick to open link; 25 Apr 75 to JLC and PAMclick to open link; 25 June 75 to Howells, n. 7click to open link; 23 July 75 to PAM, n. 5click to open link).
In September 1874, Secretary of the Navy George Robeson had seemed helpful when Clemens wrote to him for assistance, but had subsequently been unable or unwilling to help effect Moffett’s appointment. None of the Clemens-Robeson correspondence has been found. Moffett never attended the naval academy. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley in 1881 and 1882, then finished his undergraduate education at Columbia University, which later awarded him A.M. and Ph.D. degrees. He became a respected journalist, and was an editor at Collier’s magazine when he died of a stroke in 1908 (“Editor Moffett Dies, Struggling in Surf,” New York Times, 2 Aug 1908, sec. 1:3; “Samuel E. Moffett,” Collier’s 41 [15 Aug 1908]: 23).
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries (NPV).
L6 , 603; MTBus , 134.
see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.