The process which may turn our republic into a monarchy—We have the twoⒶtextual note Roman conditions: stupendous wealth, and the corn and oil pensions—that is to say, vote bribes—The amazing additions to the pension list commented upon; also, letter from “A Union Veteran.”
The human race was always interesting, and we know, by its past, that it will always continue so. Monotonously. It is always the same; it never changes. ItsⒶtextual note circumstances change from time to time, for better or worse, but the race’s character Ⓐtextual note is permanent, and never changes. In the course of the ages it has built up several great and worshipful civilizations, and has seen unlooked-forⒶtextual note circumstances slyly emerge,Ⓐtextual note bearing deadly gifts [begin page 371] which looked like benefits,Ⓐtextual note and were welcomed—Ⓐtextual notewhereupon the decay and destruction of each of these stately civilizations has followed. It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible. Whenever man makes a large stride in material prosperity and progress, he is sure to think that he has progressed, whereas he has not advanced an inch; nothing has progressed but his circumstances. He Ⓐtextual note stands where he stood before. He knows more than his forebears knew, but his intellect is no better than theirs, and never will be. He is richer than his forebears, but his character is no improvement upon theirs. Riches and education are not a permanent possession; they will pass away, as in the case of Rome, and Greece, and Egypt, and Babylon; and a moral and mental midnight will follow—with a dull long sleep and a slow re-awakening.Ⓐtextual note From time to time he makes what looks like a change in his character, but it isⒶtextual note not a real change; and it is only transitory, anyway. HeⒶtextual note cannot evenⒶtextual note invent a religion and keep it intact;Ⓐtextual note circumstances are stronger than he and all his works; circumstancesⒶtextual note and conditions are always changing, and they always compel him to modify his religions to harmonize with the new situation.
For twenty-five or thirty years I have squandered a deal of my time—too much of it perhaps—in trying to guess what is going to be the process which will turn our republic into a monarchyⒺexplanatory note, and how far off that event might be. Every man is a master and also a servant, a vassal. There is always some one who looks up to him and admires and envies him; there is always some one to whom he looks up and admires and envies. This is his nature; this is his character; and it is unchangeable, indestructible; therefore republics and democracies are not for such as he; they cannot satisfy the requirements of his nature. The inspirations of his character will always breed circumstances and conditions which must in time furnish him a king and an aristocracy to look up to and worship. In a democracy he will try, and honestly, to keep the crown away, but Circumstance is a powerful master, and will eventually defeat him.
Republics have lived long, but monarchy lives forever. By our teaching, we learnⒶtextual note that vast material prosperity alwaysⒶtextual note brings in its train conditions which debase the morals and enervate the manhood of a nation—Ⓐtextual notethen the country’s liberties come into the market andⒶtextual note are bought, sold, squandered, thrown away, and a popular idol is carried to the throne upon the shields or shoulders of the worshiping people,Ⓐtextual note and planted there in permanency. We are always being taught—no, formerly we were always being taught—to look at Rome,Ⓐtextual note and beware. The teacher pointed to Rome’s stern virtue, incorruptibility, love of liberty, and all-sacrificing patriotism—this when she was young and poor; then he pointed to her later days, when her sun-burstsⒶtextual note of material prosperity and spreading dominion came,Ⓐtextual note and were exultingly welcomed by the people, they not suspecting that these were not fortunate glories, happy benefits, but were a disease, and freighted with death. The teacher reminded us that Rome’s liberties were not auctioned offⒶtextual note in a day, but were bought slowly, gradually, furtively,Ⓐtextual note little by little; first with a little corn and oil for the exceedingly poor and wretched; later with corn and oil for voters who were not quite so poor; later still with corn and oil for pretty much every man that had a vote to sell—exactly our own history over again. At first we granted deserved pensions, righteously, [begin page 372] and with a clean and honorable motive, to the disabled soldiers of the Civil WarⒶtextual note. The clean Ⓐtextual note motive began and ended there. We have made many and amazing additions to the pension list, but with a motive which dishonors the uniform and the Congresses which have voted the additions—the sole purpose back of the additions being the purchase of votes. It is corn and oil over again, and promises to do its full share in the eventual subversion of the republic and the substitution of monarchy in its place. The monarchy would come, anyhow, without this, but this has a peculiar interest for us, in that it prodigiously hastens the day. We have the two Roman conditions: stupendous wealth, with its inevitable corruptions and moral blight, and the corn and oil pensions—that is to say, vote-bribesⒶtextual note, which have taken away the pride of thousands of tempted men and turned them into willing alms-receiversⒶtextual note and unashamed.
It is curious—curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. A year or two ago a veteran of the Civil WarⒶtextual note asked me if I did not sometimes have a longing to attend the annual great Convention of the Grand Army of the RepublicⒺexplanatory note and make a speech. I was obliged to confess that I wouldn’t have the necessary moral courage for the venture, for I would want to reproach the old soldiers for not rising up in indignant protest againstⒶtextual note our Government’s vote-purchasing additions to the pension list, whichⒶtextual note is making of the remnant of their brave lives one long blush. I might try to say the words, but would lack the grit and would fail. It would be one tottering moral coward trying to rebuke a housefull of like breed—men merely as timid as himself, but not any more so.Ⓐtextual note
Well, there it is—I am a moral coward, like the rest; and yet it is amazing to me that out of theⒶtextual note hundreds and thousands of physically dauntless men who faced death without a quiver of the nerves on a hundred bloody fields, not one solitary individual of them all has had courage enough to rise up and bravely curse the Congresses which have degraded him to the level of the bounty-jumper and the bastards of the same. Everybody laughs at the grotesque additions to the pension fund; everybody laughs at the grotesquestⒶtextual note of them all, the most shameless of them all, the most transparent of them all, the only frankly lawless one of them all—Ⓐtextual note the immortal Executive Order 78Ⓔexplanatory note. Everybody laughs—privately;Ⓐtextual note everybody scoffs—privately;Ⓐtextual note everybody is indignant—privately;Ⓐtextual note everybody is ashamedⒶtextual note to look a real soldier in the face;Ⓐtextual note but none of them exposes his feelings publicly. This is perfectly natural, and wholly inevitable, for it is the nature of man to hate to say the disagreeable thing. It is his character;Ⓐtextual note it has always been so; his character cannot change; while he continues to exist it will never change by a shade.
I have been moved to these uncomfortable reflections by a communication in this morning’s Sun signed “A Union Veteran.”Ⓔexplanatory note It begins with this remark:
I see that the Senate has passed the service pension billⒺexplanatory note with no opposing votes. And I suppose that’s all right.
Passed it unanimously—and doubtless with enthusiasm.Ⓐtextual note Evidently some one has invented a new excuse to bilkⒶtextual note the Treasury, and at the same time further degrade the [begin page 373] honorable calling of the real soldier. This veteran thinks it’s all right. It is a pity that he could say that, for the rest of his letter shows that he once had worthier notions, and that the pension plagueⒶtextual note has undermined them and brought them low. He says:
Personally I don’t believe in service pensions. I think that if a man incurred any disability in the service he ought to get whatever pension is due him to the last cent. He is entitled to that by the contract; but a service pension strikes me differently.
No one will doubt the soundness and sanity and fairness of his view.Ⓐtextual note He continues:
When Uncle Sam settled with me at the end of my term of service I felt that that closed our accounts definitely and finally. I had agreed on my part to serve for so much a month and a bounty of $100 when I was mustered out;Ⓐtextual note and I got it all, and I considered that that was the end of it.
And indeed it was the end of it, so far as cleanliness goes. After that,Ⓐtextual note the vote-buyingⒶtextual note began. It continues to-day; it will continue to continue until the remains of every cat, withⒶtextual note her descendants, that hasⒶtextual note been owned by a sutler or a soldier, from BunkerⒺexplanatory note till the monarchyⒶtextual note comes in, shall have been added to the pension list. Then there will be more pensioners than population, and we shall be ready for the monarchy as a relief, a refuge, a savior from our vote-buying, mendicant-creating politicians. He continues:
A few years after the war Congress gave to all veteran soldiers an additional bounty of Ⓔexplanatory note$100. Why it did this, I don’t know; politics, maybe; but it passed out $100 apiece all ’round—
Then he adds: “and I took mine, though I didn’t feel I was entitled to it.” It was there that the undermining of his manhood began; it was a thing calculated to undermine any one’s manhood to whose not too plenty bread and butter a hundred dollars was an important matter. You would have taken it. I would have taken it. We should have felt ashamed;Ⓐtextual note but we could have taken it next time, and afterward, with less and less sense of shame, and by and by we would begin to ask for it; then beg for it; then demand it, and insist upon it. By that time we should have irrevocably lost an inestimably valuable jewel from our character, and the Government would be to blame for it, not us.
Hear him again—see his moral disintegration going on; notice his character decay and crumble under the temptations devised for it by a treacherous Government:
But now comes the service pension. As I feel about it now I shall not take it. But you can’t tell. I took that $100 additional bounty, and I may take the service pension, but I don’t think so.
He doesn’t think so, and it is to his credit, after the assaults which have been made in these twenty or thirty years upon his self-respectⒶtextual note by a conscienceless Government—but [begin page 374] when the new bribe comes,Ⓐtextual note in the form of visible cash, he will fall again, just as you and I would; and again the Government will be to blame for it. Hear him once more:
My service in the army never did me any harm. On the contrary it helped me in many ways and I am prouder of it than of anything else I ever did or ever could do. . . . . I have served in the army in my country’s defence in time of war, and I feel that by that service I have been raised to the highest rank of citizenship; and with that honor I am satisfied.
Isn’t it a pity to degrade and demoralize a man with a character like that! What punishment can expiate such a crime committed by the Government and condoned—by silence—by the nation? Perhaps there will be no adequate punishment except the monarchy which it is inviting, and for which it is preparing the way in the sure and effective Roman fashion.
I would never venture to talk like this if I were alive. It is only by keeping steadily in my mind that my Autobiography is not to be published until I am dead, that I am enabled to force myself to say the things I think,Ⓐtextual note instead of merely saying the things which I wish the reader to think I think—which is the live man’s way, and is a part of every man’s character, and cannot be changed while he is alive.
The veteran whom I have been quoting makes a suggestion. It is that the pensions be now extended to the Confederate soldiersⒺexplanatory note. The Government will be grateful for that idea: it will now proceed to dicker for the South’s vote—and its manhood.Ⓐtextual note
title Tuesday, January 15, 1907] 370 title Tuesday, January 15, 1907] This dictation follows a gap of five days. On at least two of these days, however, Clemens evidently did prepare dictations. In her journal on Thursday, 10 January, Isabel Lyon noted that he had dictated that morning on the subject of railroad accidents—a topic he had already touched on in his dictation of 6 January. And on Sunday, 13 January, she noted that he was planning to read “Friday’s dictation which Hobby should have sent yesterday & didn’t” (Lyon 1907). Nothing further is known of the 10 and 11 January dictations.
process which will turn our republic into a monarchy] Clemens addresses the question of the “coming American monarchy” in his discussion of Elihu Root’s speech in the Autobiographical Dictation of 13 December 1906.
we granted deserved pensions . . . Grand Army of the Republic] Initially, only Union army veterans who had suffered disabilities as a result of the Civil War were granted pensions. By the terms of the Disability Pension Act of 1890, however, any Union soldier who had served for ninety days and was incapacitated for any reason was entitled to a pension, regardless of income. Furthermore, any veteran’s widow, even if born and married after the war, was likewise eligible. The Grand Army of the Republic, a politically powerful fraternal organization of Union veterans, was formed in 1866, and at its peak in 1890 had more than 400,000 members. One of its chief purposes was to campaign for pension benefits, and the Republicans in Congress who passed the 1890 Disability Pension Act were assured of the G.A.R.’s votes. In addition, special pension bills were routinely passed by the “vote-hunters in Congress,” according to the Louisville Courier-Journal, which claimed in 1900 that the practice had become “the most gigantic machine for robbing the government that ever existed under a so-called free republic” (“The Pension Roll,” Washington Post, 14 Aug 1900, 4, reprinting the Louisville Courier-Journal; Glasson 1918, 219–21, 233–38; for additional remarks on generous pensions see the ADs of 28 Jan and 11 Feb 1907).
the immortal Executive Order 78] This military pension order, issued by President Theodore Roosevelt, had gone into effect on 13 April 1904. It broadened the terms of the Disability Pension Act of 1890 (see the note at 371.42–372.15) by adding advanced age as a pensionable disability: any Union veteran who had served for ninety days and reached the age of sixty-two was entitled to $6 a month and increasing amounts thereafter. The cost of Executive Order 78 was estimated to be as high as $15 million annually; it was seen by Roosevelt’s critics as his “bid for the pension vote” in an election year, and as a typical instance of his “transcending the constitutional limits of Executive authority.” The order’s addition of advanced age as a disability was incorporated into law by congressional acts of 24 April 1906 and 4 March 1907 (“Mr. Roosevelt’s Pension Order,” New York Times, 18 Sept 1904, 6; Glasson 1918, 246–49; see also AD, 29 May 1907, where Clemens lists “illegal Order 78” in his roster of Roosevelt’s sins).
communication in this morning’s Sun signed “A Union Veteran.”] This letter to the editor of the New York Sun was published on 15 January under the heading “Service Pensions.” Clemens redacts and quotes about half of it in this dictation.
I see that the Senate has passed the service pension bill] “Union Veteran” responded to the New York Sun’s 12 January 1907 report of a bill passed the previous day. It awarded pensions ranging from $12 a month at age sixty-two to $15 at age seventy—amounts significantly higher than stipulated in Executive Order 78. Identical pensions were also authorized for veterans of the Mexican War. The unanimous vote came after some debate on whether the war between the states was a rebellion or a civil war. The latter was agreed upon (“Was Civil War a Rebellion?” New York Sun, 12 Jan 1907, 4; “No Rebellion in ’61, Declares the Senate,” New York Times, 12 Jan 1907, 2; Glasson 1918, 249–50).
from Bunker] The Battle of Bunker Hill, on 17 June 1775.
A few years after the war Congress gave to all veteran soldiers an additional bounty of $100] In the years following the Civil War bounties of various amounts were paid to Union army veterans, according to when they joined up and how long they served. Soldiers who had enlisted between 12 April 1861 (the start of the Civil War) and 24 December 1863, and served honorably for three years, received a bounty of $100. A congressional act passed on 28 July 1866 paid them an additional bounty of $100 (Lamphere 1881, 112).
The veteran . . . pensions be now extended to the Confederate soldiers] “Union Veteran” wrote, “The war is over and the country reunited in bonds growing stronger and stronger and knitting us more closely daily. Why not finish the business at a stroke by having Union and Confederate veterans share alike in the benefits of the service pension?” (“Service Pensions,” New York Sun, 15 Jan 1907, 6). Confederate veterans were never eligible for pensions from the federal government, but they did receive some benefits from the Southern states.
Source document.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 1640–49, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.Parts of a newspaper article (“Service Pensions,” New York Sun, 15 January 1907, 6) are excerpted at 372.37–374.7. Judging by Hobby’s fidelity to the accidentals of the newspaper printing, it seems she copied from a clipping; but it had probably been marked by Clemens, as there are some abridgments and one small change of wording. Not knowing exactly what kind of copy Hobby was provided with, our text is based on TS1.