Mark Twain's Unpublished Works: Politics, Censorship, and Legacy

On the night Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born — the 30th of November 1835 — Halley's comet was blazing spectacularly across the autumn sky. Although he was born two months prematurely, a frail little runt, and his mother said, "I could see no promise in him," she nonetheless expressed hope that Halley's comet was a "bright omen" for her baby boy. Her wish came true in a sensational way. Little could Jane Lampton Clemens have known that her sickly newborn would become a blazing superstar sensation in his own right — a literary luminary and the unchallenged supernova of American society, the likes of which had never been seen, and may never be witnessed on this planet again.

Samuel Clemens fashioned his own creative — and often chaotic — cosmos wherever he went, and he saw all things as connected in some ironic, humorous, or even sinister sense, including his own mortality. In 1909, at age 74, and a year before his death, knowing full well that Halley's comet returned to light up the night roughly every 76 years, he said:

"I came in with Halley's comet in 1835 . . . and expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" (Burns, 2001)

And sure enough, just like clockwork, when the 75-year-old Clemens died at 6:22 in the evening of April 21, 1910, Halley's comet was just barely visible on the horizon — clearly out there to see. It was a fitting celestial conclusion to the extraordinary life of a slave owner's son who hated expansionist wars, loved a good cigar, mingled with presidents and kings, knew poverty and wealth, and made his mighty mark on the literary map as Mark Twain, America's most beloved author.

Since most Americans are familiar with Twain's most famous works — Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and others — his passion for the Mississippi River and the reverence with which he held riverboat pilots is well documented. This paper, however, will address some of Twain's lesser-known interests — anti-imperialism, travel, and politics — as well as personal struggles that have perhaps not received the same attention as his legendary books and public presentations.

How loved and how famous had Mark Twain become late in his life? The New York Times, after his passing, wrote that Twain had been "quoted in common conversation oftener, perhaps, than any of his fellow-countrymen, including Benjamin Franklin and [Abraham] Lincoln." Another American cultural icon of the era, Thomas Edison, remarked on the death of Twain: "An American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain." Twain's passing was prominently eulogized and memorialized in nearly every newspaper in America and throughout much of the Western world. He was remembered as a literary giant, the conscience of a generation, an astute social critic, an entertaining humorist, and a fellow who smoked up to 40 cigars a day. It was said that in the early 1900s, the only man in America more popular than Mark Twain was Teddy Roosevelt.

But all that fame and notoriety did not impress the editors of Harper's Bazaar five years prior to Twain's death, during the Philippine-American War, when Twain submitted — and had rejected — a bitterly satirical piece called "The War Prayer." This was not the first rejection Twain had received, but "The War Prayer" — starkly satirical yet boldly political — fell under the heading of "unpublished" because Twain had an exclusive contract with Harper's and could not market the piece elsewhere.

Note: the phrase "unpublished works" can be somewhat misleading; it alludes to the fact that the work was not published during Twain's era, though it was later published in one of several anthologies cataloging his life and portfolio.

Before examining "The War Prayer," it is instructive to note that Mark Twain was very openly and emphatically opposed to the Philippine-American conflict and to other wars in which the United States appeared to him to be acting in an "imperial" fashion — that is, empire-building rather than genuinely defending the homeland. He made his views known in numerous writings, finding contemptible those who "hid behind patriotism" and the flag to justify aggression against other nations. The phrase "My country right or wrong" caused, figuratively speaking, smoke to belch from his ears and flames from his mouth. And when Twain roared, though not everyone agreed with his arguments, people listened.

"There are two kinds of patriotism — monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism," Twain wrote in his notebook a few years prior to his death, as published by editor Jim Zwick in 1992. He continued:

"In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: 'The King can do no wrong.' We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: 'Our country, right or wrong!'" (Zwick, 1992)

In the critically acclaimed PBS film Mark Twain by Ken Burns, and the companion book by Burns and two co-authors, Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography, the authors (p. 174) discuss Twain's view of colonialism. Twain was on a worldwide lecture tour in 1895 and had spent considerable time in South Africa. Of this period, the authors write:

"Everywhere in Africa, European colonial powers were brazenly extending their empires. Taking someone else's land was nothing new in the world, Twain noted. But this modern imperialism cloaked itself in a hypocritical self-righteousness that he found particularly disgraceful. 'Christian governments,' he wrote, 'are as frank to-day, as open and above-board, in discussing projects for raiding each other's clothes-lines as ever they were before the Golden Rule came smiling into this inhospitable world and couldn't get a night's lodging anywhere.'" (Ward, Duncan, Burns, 2001)

One wonders how Twain would feel about the intense tide of patriotism — bordering on nationalism in some instances — that rose after September 11, 2001. It might be conjectured that Twain would have had no objection to targeting those directly responsible for an attack on American soil. But would he have viewed the drive to invade Iraq as "imperialism"? How would Twain have responded to Vice President Cheney's campaign rhetoric prior to the fall 2002 elections — when Cheney stated that failing to support the president's desire for war with Iraq was unpatriotic? (Twain himself served as vice president of the Anti-Imperialism League from 1900 to 1907.) The following excerpt from Twain's unpublished "The War Prayer" strikes at the heart of his rejection of expansionism. Written in the midst of America's war in the Philippines, it blends his trademark satire with stark moral indictment:

"Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sport of the sun-flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!" (Zwick, 1992)

Beyond his antipathy toward America's war in the Philippines, it is worth noting that while Twain also railed against England's colonial aggression in Africa and Asia, he did not oppose all wars. He supported the Spanish-American War because he believed it would "free Cuba" — though he later raged about the final settlement of the conflict, which in effect transferred Spain's colonies to the United States.

It needs to be noted that there are well-documented instances of serious censorship of Twain's work — including, incredibly, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, among other literature — and most particularly his later political writing. "Censorship of Twain's work was so pervasive," writes Twain researcher Jim Zwick (Zwick, 2002), "it is safe to assume that even most people who think they are thoroughly familiar with Twain's political writings have actually never read the complete, uncensored texts."