University of Virginia Library

THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION.

Washington, Dec. 2, 1867.

I HAVE resigned. The Government appears to go on much the same, but there
is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the Senate Committee
on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position. I could see the plainest
disposition on the part of the other members of the Government to debar me
from having any voice in the counsels of the nation, and so I could no longer
hold office and retain my self-respect. If I were to detail all the outrages that
were heaped upon me during the six days that I was connected with the Government
in an official capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me
clerk of that Committee on Conchology, and then allowed me no amanuensis to play
billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had met with that
courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my due. But I did not.
Whenever I observed that the head of a department was pursuing a wrong course,
I laid down everything and went and tried to set him right, as it was my duty to
do; and I never was thanked for it in a single instance. I went, with the best
intentions in the world, to the Secretary of the Navy, and said—

“Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but skirmishing around
there in Europe, having a sort of pic-nic. Now, that may be all very well, but it
does not exhibit itself to me in that light. If there is no fighting for him to do, let
him come home. There is no use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure
excursion. It is too expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for
the naval officers—pleasure excursions that are in reason—pleasure excursions that
are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi on a raft”—

You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I had committed
a crime of some kind. But I didn't mind. I said it was cheap, and full of

republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for a tranquil pleasure
excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.

Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I
was connected with the Government, he wanted to know in what capacity. I said
that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question, coming, as it did,
from a member of that same Government, I would inform him that I was clerk
of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there was a fine storm! He
finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and give my attention strictly to my
own business in future. My first impulse was to get him removed. However, that
would harm others beside himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.

I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at all until
he learned that I was connected with the Government. If I had not been on
important business, I suppose I could not have got in. I asked him for a light (he
was smoking at the time), and then I told him I had no fault to find with his
defending the parole stipulations of General Lee and his comrades in arms, but
that I could not approve of his method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I
said he fought too scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together—get
them together in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough
for both parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so
convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the
massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap
and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the
long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him
and wash him, it is bound to finish him sometime or other. It undermines his
constitution; it strikes at the foundation of his being. “Sir,” I said, “the time has
come when blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and a
spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!”

The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I said I
was. He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of the Senate
Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest for contempt of court,
and restrained of my liberty for the best part of the day.

I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get along

the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called on the Secretary
of the Treasury. He said—

“What will you have?”

The question threw me off my guard. I said, “Rum punch.”

He said, “If you have got any business here, sir, state it—and in as few words as
possible.”

I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so abruptly,
because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the circumstances I
would overlook the matter and come to the point. I now went into an earnest
expostulation with him upon the extravagant length of his report. I said it was
expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly constructed; there were no descriptive
passages in it, no poetry, no sentiment—no heroes, no plot, no pictures—not even
woodcuts. Nobody would read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin
his reputation by getting out a thing like that. If he ever hoped to succeed in
literature, he must throw more variety into his writings. He must beware of dry
detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac was derived from its poetry
and conundrums, and that a few conundrums distributed around through his
Treasury report would help the sale of it more than all the internal revenue he
could put into it. I said these things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary
of the Treasury fell into a violent passion. He even said I was an ass. He abused
me in the most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling
with his business, he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take my
hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office, and I did
go. It was just like a new author. They always think they know more than
anybody else when they are getting out their first book. Nobody can tell them
anything.

During the whole time that I was connected with the Government it seemed as
if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting myself into trouble.
And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what I conceived to be for the good
of my country. The sting of my wrongs may have driven me to unjust and harmful
conclusions, but it surely seemed to me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary
of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others of my confrères, had conspired

from the very beginning to drive me from the Administration. I never attended
but one Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the Government. That was
sufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seem disposed to
make way for me until I asked if the other members of the Cabinet had arrived.
He said they had, and I entered. They were all there; but nobody offered me a
seat. They stared at me as if I had been an intruder. The President said—

“Well, sir, who are you?”

I handed him my card, and he read—“The Hon. Mark Twain, Clerk of the
Senate Committee on Conchology.” Then he looked at me from head to foot, as
if he had never heard of me before. The Secretary of the Treasury said—

“This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and
conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac.”

The Secretary of War said—“It is the same visionary that came to me yesterday
with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death, and massacre the
balance.”

The Secretary of the Navy said—“I recognize this youth as the person who has
been interfering with my business time and again during the week. He is distressed
about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion, as he terms
it. His proposition about some insane pleasure excursion on a raft is too absurd
to repeat.”

I said—“Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit upon every
act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition to debar me from all voice
in the counsels of the nation. No notice whatever was sent to me to-day. It was
only by the merest chance that I learned that there was going to be a Cabinet
meeting. But let these things pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet
meeting, or is it not?”

The President said it was.

“Then,” I said, “let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away
valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings with each other's official conduct.”

The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said, “Young
man, you are laboring under a mistake. The clerks of the Congressional committees
are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are the doorkeepers of the Capitol,

strange as it may seem. Therefore, much as we could desire your more than
human wisdom in our deliberations, we cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it. The
counsels of the nation must proceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full
well it may, be it balm to your sorrowing spirit, that by deed and voice you did
what in you lay to avert it. You have my blessing. Farewell.”

These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the
servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in the
capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative, when one of the
Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a passion and said—

“Where have you been all day?”

I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a Cabinet
meeting.

“To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at a
Cabinet meeting?”

I said I went there to consult—allowing for the sake of argument, that he was in
anywise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and ended by saying he
had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on bomb-shells, egg-shells,
clam-shells, and I don't know what all, connected with conchology, and nobody had
been able to find me.

This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel's back.
I said, “Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six dollars a day? If that
is the idea, let me recommend the Senate Committee on Conchology to hire somebody
else. I am the slave of no faction! Take back your degrading commission.
Give me liberty, or give me death!”

From that hour I was no longer connected with the Government. Snubbed by
the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman of a
committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast far from me
the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my bleeding country in
the hour of her peril.

But I had done the State some service, and I sent in my bill:—

     

The United States of America in account with the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, Dr.
To consultation with Secretary of War,	$50
To consultation with Secretary of Navy,	50

           

To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury,	50
Cabinet consultation,	No charge.
To mileage to and from Jerusalem,[1] viâ Egypt, Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz,	14,000
miles, at 20c. a mile,	2800
To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day,	36
Total,	$2986

Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of 36 dollars for clerkship
salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me to the last, drew his pen
through all the other items, and simply marked in the margin “Not allowed.” So,
the dread alternative is embraced at last. Repudiation has begun! The nation is
lost.

I am done with official life for the present. Let those clerks who are willing to
be imposed on remain. I know numbers of them, in the Departments, who are
never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting, whose advice is never asked
about war, or finance, or commerce, by the heads of the nation, any more than if
they were not connected with the Government, and who actually stay in their
offices day after day and work! They know their importance to the nation, and
they unconsciously show it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance
at the restaurant—but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts of
little scraps from the newspaper into a scrap-book—sometimes as many as eight or
ten scraps a day. He doesn't do it well, but he does it as well as he can. It is
very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect. Yet he only gets 1800 dollars a
year. With a brain like his, that young man could amass thousands and thousands
of dollars in some other pursuit, if he chose to do it. But no—his heart is with his
country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrap-book left. And I
know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such knowledge as they
possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country, and toil on and suffer for 2500
dollars a year. What they write has to be written over again by other clerks, sometimes;
but when a man has done his best for his country, should his country complain?
Then there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting, and
waiting, for a vacancy—waiting patiently for a chance to help their country out—

and while they are waiting, they only get barely, 2000 dollars a year for it. It is sad—
it is very, very sad. When a member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no
employment wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon
his country, and gives him a clerkship in a Department. And there that man has
to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nation that never thinks
of him, never sympathizes with him—and all for 2000 or 3000 dollars a year.
When I shall have completed my list of all the clerks in the several departments,
with my statement of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see
that there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half
enough pay.