Mark Twain’s Engagement.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 28, 16 August 1887, Page 3

Mark Twain’s Engagement.

At a banquet of Union veterans in Baltimore, Mark Twain gave his war history as follows : —When your secretary invited me to this reunion of the Union veterans of Maryland be requested me to come prepared to clear up a matter which ne said had lone been a subject of dispute and bad blood in war circles in the country—to wit, the true dimensions of my military services in the Civil War, and the effect which they had upon the general result. I recognise the importance of this thing to history, and I have come prepared. Here are the details. I was in the civil war two weeks. In that brief time I rose from private to second lieutenant. The monumental feature of my campaign was the one battle which my command fought—it was in the summer of ’6l, If Ido say it, it was the bloodiest battle ever fought in human history ; there is nothing approaching it for destruction of human life in the field, if you take into consideration the forces engaged and the proportion of death to survival. And yet you do not even know the name of that battle. Neither do I. It had a name, but I have forgotten it. It is no use keeping private information which you can't show off. Now look at the way history does. It takes the battle of Boonville, fought near by, about the date of our slaughter, and shouts its teeth loose over it, and yet never mentions ours—dosen’t even call it' an “affair,” doesn't call it anything at all, never even heard of it. Whereas, what are the facts? Why, these i In the battle of Boonville there were 2000 men engaged on the Union side, and about as many engaged on the other —supposed to be. The casualities, all told, were two men killed, and not all of these were killed outright, but only half of them, for the other man died in the hospital next day. 1 know that, because his great-uncle was second cousin to my grandfather, who spoke three languages and was perfectly honourable and upright, though he had warts all over him, and used to—but never mind about that, the facts are just as I say, and I can prove it. Two men killed in that battle of Boonville, that’s the whole result. All the others got away—on both sides. Now, then, in our battle there was just fifteen men engaged, on our side—all Brigadier-Generals but me, and I was a second lieutenant. On the other side there was one man. He was a stranger. We killed him. It was night, and w r e thought he was an army of observation—in fact, he was trying to surround us, and. some thought -he was going to turn our position, and so we shot him. It was a sorrowful circumstance, but he took the chances of war, and he drew the wrong card; he overestimated his fighting strength, and he suffered the likely result; but he fell as the brave should fall—with his face to the front and his feet to the field—so we buried him with the honours of war, and took his things. So began and ended the only battle in the history of the world where the opposing force were utterly exterminated, swept from the face of the earth—to the last man. And yet, you don’t know the name of the battle ; you don’t even knew the name of that man. Now, then, for the argument. Suppose I had continned in the war, and gone on as I began, and exterminated the opposing force' every time —every two weeks—where would your war have been ? Why, you see yourself, the conflict would have been too one-sided. 1 here was but one honourable course for me to pursue, and I pursued it. I withdrew to private life, and gave the Union a chance. There, now, you have the whole thing in a nutshell; it was not my presence in the civil war that determined that tremendous contest — it was my retirement from it that brought the crash.