What is Man? And Other Essays A Scrap of Curious History
by Mark Twain
Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri--a village;
time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France --a village; time, the end of June,
1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I am in the other now. These
times and places are sufficiently wide apart, yet today I have the strange sense
of being thrust back into that Missourian village and of reliving certain
stirring days that I lived there so long ago.
Last Saturday night the life of the President of the French Republic was
taken by an Italian assassin. Last night a mob surrounded our hotel, shouting,
howling, singing the "Marseillaise," and pelting our windows with sticks and
stones; for we have Italian waiters, and the mob demanded that they be turned
out of the house instantly--to be drubbed, and then driven out of the village.
Everybody in the hotel remained up until far into the night, and experienced the
several kinds of terror which one reads about in books which tell of night
attacks by Italians and by French mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd;
the arrival, with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to
rearrange plans--followed by a silence ominous, threatening, and harder to bear
than even the active siege and the noise. The landlord and the two village
policemen stood their ground, and at last the mob was persuaded to go away and
leave our Italians in peace. Today four of the ringleaders have been sentenced
to heavy punishment of a public sort--and are become local heroes, by
consequence.
That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian village
half a century ago. The mistake was repeated and repeated--just as France is
doing in these later months.
In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, our Vaillants; and in a
humble way our Cesario--I hope I have spelled this name wrong. Fifty years ago
we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been passing through
during the past two or three years, in the matter of periodical frights,
horrors, and shudderings.
In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In that day, for a man
to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery was simply to
proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming against the holiest thing
known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right mind. For a man to proclaim
himself an anarchist in France, three years ago, was to proclaim himself a
madman--he could not be in his right mind.
Now the original first blasphemer against any institution profoundly
venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers and
imitators may be humbugs and self- seekers, but he himself is sincere--his heart
is in his protest.
Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONIST--awful name! He was a journeyman
cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great pork-packing
establishment which was Marion City's chief pride and sole source of prosperity.
He was a New- Englander, a stranger. And, being a stranger, he was of course
regarded as an inferior person--for that has been human nature from Adam
down--and of course, also, he was made to feel unwelcome, for this is the
ancient law with man and the other animals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a
bachelor; pale, given to reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to
prefer the isolation which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side
remarks by his fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was
a coward.
All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist-- straight out and
publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. For a moment the
town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a fury of rage and
swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But the Methodist minister made a
powerful speech to them and stayed their hands. He proved to them that Hardy was
insane and not responsible for his words; that no man COULD be sane and utter
such words.
So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. He was
found to be good entertainment. Several nights running he made abolition
speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and laugh. He
implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity on the poor slaves,
and take measurements for the restoration of their stolen rights, or in no long
time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers of blood!
It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A slave
came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and was about to
escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull twilight of the
approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him. Hardy happened along and
tried to rescue the negro; there was a struggle, and the constable did not come
out of it alive. Hardly crossed the river with the negro, and then came back to
give himself up. All this took time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook,
like the Seine, the Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly
a mile wide. The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist preacher
and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of order; so Hardy
was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village calaboose in
spite of all the effort of the mob to get hold of him. The reader will have
begun to perceive that this Methodist minister was a prompt man; a prompt man,
with active hands and a good headpiece. Williams was his name--Damon Williams;
Damon Williams in public, Damnation Williams in private, because he was so
powerful on that theme and so frequent.
The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who had ever
been killed in the town. The event was by long odds the most imposing in the
town's history. It lifted the humble village into sudden importance; its name
was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around. And so was the name of Robert
Hardy--Robert Hardy, the stranger, the despised. In a day he was become the
person of most consequence in the region, the only person talked about. As to
those other coopers, they found their position curiously changed--they were
important people, or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how
small had been their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or three who
had really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves objects
of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their shopmates.
The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man was an
enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. He issued an extra.
Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole paper to matters connected
with the great event--there would be a full and intensely interesting biography
of the murderer, and even a portrait of him. He was as good as his word. He
carved the portrait himself, on the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was
to look at. It made a great commotion, for this was the first time the village
paper had ever contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of
the paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy was
sold.
When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from
Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could hold only
a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The trial was published in
the village paper, with fresh and still more trying pictures of the accused.
Hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. People came from miles around to
see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women and children, and
made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest crowd the village had ever seen.
The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples, for everybody
wanted a memento of the memorable event.
Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. Within one week
afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves
abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert; everybody
laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The four swaggered around
with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and hinted darkly at awful
possibilities. The people were troubled and afraid, and showed it. And they were
stunned, too; they could not understand it. "Abolitionist" had always been a
term of shame and horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not
ashamed to bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men
they were, too--of good families, and brought up in the church. Ed Smith, the
printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been the head Sunday-school boy, and had
once recited three thousand Bible verses without making a break. Dick Savage,
twenty, the baker's apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two, journeyman blacksmith;
and Henry Taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer--were the other three. They were
all of a sentimental cast; they were all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry,
such as it was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been
suspected of having anything bad in them.
They withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and dreadful.
They presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by names from the
pulpit--which made an immense stir! This was grandeur, this was fame. They were
envied by all the other young fellows now. This was natural. Their company
grew--grew alarmingly. They took a name. It was a secret name, and was divulged
to no outsider; publicly they were simply the abolitionists. They had
pass-words, grips, and signs; they had secret meetings; their initiations were
conducted with gloomy pomps and ceremonies, at midnight.
They always spoke of Hardy as "the Martyr," and every little while they moved
through the principal street in procession--at midnight, black-robed, masked, to
the measured tap of the solemn drum--on pilgrimage to the Martyr's grave, where
they went through with some majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his
murderers. They gave previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and
warned everybody to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and
leave the road empty. These warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull and
crossbones at the top of the poster.
When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite natural
thing happened. A few men of character and grit woke up out of the nightmare of
fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and began to discharge scorn and
scoffings at themselves and the community for enduring this child's-play; and at
the same time they proposed to end it straightway. Everybody felt an uplift;
life was breathed into their dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to
feel like men again. This was on a Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and
strengthened; it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it.
Midnight saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly
defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. The best organizer and
strongest and bitterest talker on that great Saturday was the Presbyterian
clergyman who had denounced the original four from his pulpit--Rev. Hiram
Fletcher--and he promised to use his pulpit in the public interest again now. On
the morrow he had revelations to make, he said--secrets of the dreadful society.
But the revelations were never made. At half past two in the morning the dead
silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and the town patrol
saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling fragments into the sky.
The preacher was killed, together with a negro woman, his only slave and
servant.
The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggle against a visible
enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who stand always
ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible one--an invisible
one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the dark and leaves no trace--that
is another matter. That is a thing to make the bravest tremble and hold back.
The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. The man who was to have
had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common enemy had but a
handful to see him buried. The coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of "death
by the visitation of God," for no witness came forward; if any existed they
prudently kept out of the way. Nobody seemed sorry. Nobody wanted to see the
terrible secret society provoked into the commission of further outrages.
Everybody wanted the tragedy hushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible.
And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will Joyce, the
blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the assassin! Plainly
he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made his proclamation, and stuck
to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon a trial. Here was an ominous thing; here
was a new and peculiarly formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which
society could not hope to deal with successfully--VANITY, thirst for notoriety.
If men were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of
newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible invention of
man could discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort of panic; it did not
know what to do.
However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--it had no choice. It
brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the county court. The
trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the principal witness for the
prosecution. He gave a full account of the assassination; he furnished even the
minutest particulars: how he deposited his keg of powder and laid his
train--from the house to such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart
came along just then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart's cigar and fired the train
with it, shouting, "Down with all slave-tyrants!" and how Hart and Ronalds made
no effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward to testify
yet.
But they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful it was to see how
reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowded house listened to Joyce's
fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a deep hush which
was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding, with a roaring
repetition of his "Death to all slave-tyrants!"--which came so unexpectedly and
so startlingly that it made everyone present catch his breath and gasp.
The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with other
slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond imagination.
The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast
crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a dollar
apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity. Joyce recited a
furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the scaffold which had imposing
passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and gave him a reputation on the spot as
an orator, and his name, later, in the society's records, of the "Martyr
Orator." He went to his death breathing slaughter and charging his society to
"avenge his murder." If he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty
of young fellows present in that great crowd he was a grand hero--and enviably
situated.
He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from his death the society
which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them earnest, determined
men. They did not court distinction in the same way, but they celebrated his
martyrdom. The crime which had been obscure and despised had become lofty and
glorified.
Such things were happening all over the country. Wild- brained martyrdom was
succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order, followed riot,
insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It was bound to come, and
it would naturally come in that way. It has been the manner of reform since the
beginning of the world.