Absalom Grimes (1834–1911) was a Mississippi steamboat pilot who early in the Civil War had served with Clemens in the Ralls County Rangers, a unit officially pledged to defend Missouri but Confederate in sympathy. He later became a Confederate mail runner and spy. Grimes presumably had recently written to Clemens, requesting copies of his books. In 1885 Clemens remembered Grimes in “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” his account of the Marion Rangers (as he called the Ralls County Rangers), describing him accurately as “an Upper Mississippi pilot, who afterwards became famous as a dare-devil rebel spy, whose career bristled with desperate adventures” (SLC 1885c; MTCW, 106). Beginning as early as 1876, Grimes gave several accurate accounts, in interviews, of his 1861 service with Clemens. In January 1877, for example, he reportedly said:

Grimes also described his service with Clemens in his memoirs, which were published after his death as Absalom Grimes: Confederate Mail Runner (AutoMT1, 527–28; Grimes 1926, 3–19.) Bliss complied with Clemens’s request: in a letter of 31 July 1886 to the editor of the St. Louis Republican, Grimes recalled what occurred after Clemens left the Ralls County Rangers: “I have never seen Mark since, although I would like to very much. I have had one or two short letters from him and also been kindly presented with his works, ‘Tom Sawyer’ and sketches” (MTCW, 30–33, 135, 151; see this work for further discussion of Clemens’s article and Grimes’s recollections).