The Facts Concerning The Recent Resignation
WASHINGTON, December, 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 picnic. 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 besides
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 alight (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
some time 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 wood-cuts. 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 confreres 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 any wise 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, clamshells, 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, via Egypt,
Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz,
14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile ............. $2,800
To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee
on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day ........... $36
Total .......................... $2,986
--[Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go
back when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I
can understand.]
Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-six
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 newspapers into a scrapbook--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 eighteen hundred 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 scrapbook 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 twenty-five hundred 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 two
thousand 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 two
thousand or three thousand 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.
-THE END-
[Samuel Clemens] Mark Twain's short story: The Facts Concerning The Recent Resignation
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