Mark Twain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
Biography
Youth
Samuel Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835 to Tennessee country merchant, John Marshall Clemens (August 11, 1798–March 24, 1847) and Jane Lampton Clemens (June 18, 1803–October 27, 1890).[6]
He was the sixth of seven children. Only two of his siblings survived childhood, his brother Orion (July 17, 1825–December 11, 1897 and sister Pamela (September 19, 1827–August 31, 1904). His sister Margaret (May 31, 1830–August 17, 1839) died when he was four years old, and his brother Benjamin (June 8, 1832–May 12, 1842) died three years later. Another brother, Pleasant (1828–1829), only lived three months before Samuel was born. In addition to his older siblings, Samuel had one younger brother, Henry (July 13, 1838–June 21, 1858).[7] When Samuel was four, his family moved to Hannibal,[8] a port town on the Mississippi River that would serve as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.[9] At that time, Missouri was a slave state in the union, and young Samuel became familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he later explored in his writing.
Samuel Clemens was color blind, a condition that fueled his witty banter in the social circles of the day.[citation needed] In March 1847, when Samuel was 11, his father died of pneumonia.[citation needed] The following year, he became a printer's apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother, Orion. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. At 22, Clemens returned to Missouri. On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, the steamboat pilot, "Bixby", inspired Clemens to pursue a career as a steamboat pilot, the third highest paying profession in America at the time, earning $250 per month ($155,000 today).[citation needed]
Because the steamboats at the time were constructed of very dry flammable wood, no lamps were allowed, making night travel a precarious endeavor. A steamboat pilot needed a vast knowledge of the ever-changing river to be able to stop at any of the hundreds of ports and wood-lots along the river banks. Clemens meticulously studied 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of the Mississippi for more than two years before he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859. While training for his pilot's license, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him on the Mississippi. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat he was working on exploded. Samuel was guilt-stricken over his brother's death and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. However, he continued to work on the river and served as a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed.
Travels and family
Missouri was a slave state and considered by many to be part of the South, but it did not join the Confederacy. When the war began, Clemens and his friends formed a Confederate militia (depicted in an 1885 short story, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed") and joined a battle where a man was killed. Clemens found he could not bear to kill a man and deserted. His friends joined the Confederate Army; Clemens joined his brother, Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the territorial governor of Nevada, and headed west.
Clemens and his brother traveled for more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. They visited the Mormon community in Salt Lake City. These experiences became the basis of the book Roughing It, and provided material for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Clemens' journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner.
After failing as a miner, Clemens worked at a Virginia City newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise. On February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous travel account "LETTER FROM CARSON - re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson's; music" with "Mark Twain".[10]
Clemens then traveled to San Francisco, California, where he continued as a journalist and began lecturing. He met other writers such as Bret Harte, Artemus Ward and Dan DeQuille. An assignment in Hawaii became the basis for his first lectures. In 1867, a local newspaper funded a steamboat trip to the Mediterranean region.
During his tour of Europe and the Middle East, he wrote a popular collection of travel letters which were compiled as The Innocents Abroad in 1869. He also met Charles Langdon and saw a picture of Langdon's sister Olivia. Clemens claimed to have fallen in love at first sight. They met in 1868, were engaged a year later, and married in February 1870 in Elmira, New York. Olivia gave birth to a son, Langdon, who died of diphtheria after 19 months.
In 1871, Clemens moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut. There Olivia gave birth to three daughters: Susy, Clara, and Jean. Clemens also became good friends with fellow author William Dean Howells.
Clemens made a second tour of Europe, described in the 1880 book, A Tramp Abroad. He returned to America in 1900, having paid off his debts to his old firm. The Clemens' marriage lasted 34 years until Olivia's death in 1904.
In 1906, Clemens began his autobiography in the North American Review. Oxford University issued him a Doctorate of Literature a year later.
Clemens outlived Jean and Susy. He passed through a period of deep depression, which began in 1896 when his favorite daughter Susy died of meningitis. Olivia's death in 1904 and Jean's death on December 24, 1909, deepened his gloom.[11]
Life-long recurring "real" dream
Throughout his life, Clemens occasionally had recurring, emotional and profoundly touching dreams which he wrote were real. He recounted these dreams in the short story My Platonic Sweetheart. The dreams were about a young woman in the dream plane of existence, whom he loved and who loved him in return. In all the dreams, regardless of Clemens' waking age, they both appeared to be about 15 years old. The dreams appeared to have a timeless continuity, that is, even though several waking years might have passed between meetings, in the dream world there seemed to have passed little time. Their physical appearance was different each time, the names they called each other were different, and in a couple of the dreams she died, but none of this seemed to be an impediment to their continuing loving relationship each time they met.
Life as a writer
Mark Twain’s first important work, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, was first published in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. The only reason it was published there was because his story arrived too late to be included in a book Artemus Ward was compiling featuring sketches of the wild American West.
After this small burst of popularity, Twain was commissioned by the Sacramento Union to write letters about his travel experiences for publication in the newspaper, his first of which was to accompany the steamer Ajax in its maiden voyage to Hawaii, referred to at the time as the Sandwich Islands. These humorous letters proved the genesis to his work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama isthmus. All the while Twain was writing letters meant for publishing back and forth, chronicling his experiences with his burlesque humor. On June 8, 1867, Twain set sail on the pleasure cruiser Quaker City for five months. This trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress .
“ This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition it would have about it the gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet not withstanding it is only a record of a picnic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea – other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need. ”
In 1872, Twain published a second piece of travel literature, Roughing It, as a semi-sequel to Innocents. Roughing It is a semi-autobiographical account of Twain's journey to Nevada and his subsequent life in the American West. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work would kept Roughing It's focus on American society but focused more on the events of the day. Entitled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, it was not a travel piece, as his previous two books had been, and it was his first attempt at writing a novel. The book is also notable because it is Twain's only collaboration; it was written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner.
Clemens' next two works drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi, a series of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875, featured Twain’s disillusionment with Romanticism. Old Times eventually became the starting point for Life on the Mississippi. Clemens' next major publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer which drew on his youth in Hannibal. The character of Tom Sawyer was modeled on Samuel as a child. The book also introduced Huckleberry Finn as a supporting character.
The Prince and the Pauper, despite a storyline that is omnipresent in film and literature today, was not as well received. Pauper was Twain’s first attempt at fiction, and blame for its shortcomings are usually put on Twain having not been experienced enough in English society and the fact that it was produced after such a massive hit. In between the writing of Pauper, Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which he consistently had problems completing[citation needed]) and started and completed another travel book, A Tramp Abroad. A Tramp Abroad follows Twain as he travels through central and southern Europe.
Twain’s next major published work, Huckleberry Finn, solidified him as a great American writer after the production of what some call the elusive great American novel. Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and proved to have a more serious tone than its predecessor. The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy’s belief in the right thing to do even though the majority of society believes that it was wrong. The book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States because Huck ignores the rules and mores of the age to follow what he thinks is just (the story takes place in the 1850s where slavery is present). Four hundred manuscript pages of Huckleberry Finn were written in the summer of 1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. Some accounts have Twain taking seven years off after his first burst of creativity, eventually finishing the book in 1883. Other accounts have Twain working on Finn in tandem with The Prince and the Pauper and other works in 1880 and other years. The last fifth of Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experiences—as critic Leo Marx puts it—a "failure of nerve." Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn: “If you read it, you must stop where the ****** Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.”
Near the end of Huckleberry Finn, Twain had written Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have heavily influenced the former book. The work recounts Twain’s memories and new experiences after a 22 year absence from the Mississippi. The book is of note because Twain introduces the real meaning of his pseudonym.
After his great work, Twain began turning to his business endeavors to keep them afloat and to stave off the increasing difficulties he had been having from his writing projects. Twain focused on the writing of President Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs for his fledgling publishing company, finding time in between to write The Private History of a Campaign That Failed for The Century Magazine.
Twain next focused on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which featured him making his first big pronouncement of disappointment with politics. The tone become cynical to the point of almost being a rant against the established political system of the day (which would have been in King Arthur’s time), and eventually devolved into madness for the main character. The book was started in December 1885, then shelved a few months later until the summer of 1887, and eventually finished in the spring of 1889.
Some say that this work marked the beginning of the end for Twain as he fell into financial trouble and eschewed his humor vein. Twain had begun to furiously write articles and commentary with diminishing returns to pay the bills and keep his business intentions afloat, but it was not enough because he filed for bankruptcy in 1894. His next large scale work, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (aka Those Extraordinary Twins), brought about Twain’s sense of irony, though it has been misconstrued. There were parallels between this work and Twain’s financial failings, notably his desire to escape his current constraints and become a different person.
Twain’s next venture was straight fiction called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and dedicated it to his wife. Twain had long said that this was the work he was most proud of despite the criticism he received for it. The book had been a dream of Twain’s for a very long time, and he eventually thought it to be the work to save his publishing company. His financial adviser, Henry Huttleston Rogers, squashed that idea and got Twain out of that business all together, but the book was published nonetheless.
Twain’s wife died in 1904, and after the appropriate time Twain was allowed to publish some works that his wife, a de facto editor and censor throughout his life, had looked down upon. Of these works, The Mysterious Stranger, which pits the presence of Satan, aka “No. 44,” in various situations where the moral sense of human kind. This particular work was not published in Twain’s life, so there were three versions found in his manuscripts made between 1897 and 1905: the Hannibal version, the Eseldorf version, and the Print Shop version. Confusion between the versions led to an extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently have the original versions as Twain wrote them become available.
Twain’s last work was his autobiography, which he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in non-sequential order. Some archivists and compilers had a problem with this and rearranged the biography into a more conventional form, thereby eliminating some of Twain’s humor and the flow of the book.
Financial matters
Clemens made a substantial amount of money through his writing, but he spent much of it in bad investments, mostly in new inventions. These included a bed clamp for infants, a new type of steam engine, the kaolatype (or collotype: a machine designed to engrave printing plates), and the Paige typesetting machine: a beautifully engineered mechanical marvel that amazed viewers when it worked, but was prone to breakdowns. Before it could be commercially perfected it was made obsolete by the Linotype. Finally, there was his publishing house, which enjoyed initial success selling the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant but went bust soon after, losing money on an ill-advised idea that the general public would be interested in a Life of the Pope.
Clemens' writings and lectures combined with the help of a new friend enabled him to recover financially.[12] In 1893, he began a 15-year-long friendship with financier Henry Huttleston Rogers, a principal of Standard Oil. Rogers first made Clemens file for bankruptcy. Then Rogers had Clemens transfer copyrights to his written works to his wife, Olivia, to prevent creditors from gaining possession of them. Finally Rogers took absolute charge of Twain's money until all the creditors were paid. Twain then embarked on an around-the-world lecture tour to pay off his creditors in full, despite the fact that he was no longer under any legal obligation to do so.[13]
A late life friendship: Henry H. Rogers
A late life friendship for each, Mark Twain and Henry Huttleston Rogers in 1908While Twain openly credited Henry Rogers with saving him from financial ruin, their close friendship in their later years was mutually beneficial. As he lost 3 out of 4 of his children, and his beloved wife, Olivia Langdon, before his death in 1910, the Rogers family increasingly became Twain's own surrogate family. He became a frequent guest at the Rogers' townhouse in New York City, their 48-room summer home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and aboard the Rogers steam yacht, the Kanawha.
Twain was an admirer of the remarkable deaf and blind girl, Helen Keller. He first met her and Anne Sullivan at a party in the home of Laurence Hutton in New York City in the winter of 1894. Twain introduced them to Rogers, who with his wife, paid for a college education for Keller at Radcliffe College. It was Twain who is credited with labeling Sullivan, Helen's teacher, a "miracle worker." His choice of words later became inspiration for the title of William Gibson's play and film adaptation, The Miracle Worker.
Twain also introduced Rogers to journalist Ida M. Tarbell, who had grown up in the western Pennsylvania oil regions where Rogers had begun his career during the American Civil War. Beginning in 1902, she conducted detailed interviews with the Standard Oil magnate. Rogers, wily and normally-guarded in matters related to business and finance, may have been under the impression her work was to be complimentary. He was apparently uncustomarily forthcoming. However, Tarbell's interviews with Rogers formed the basis her negative exposé of the nefarious business practices of industrialist John D. Rockefeller and the massive Standard Oil organization. Her work, which became known at the time as muckraking (and is now known as investigative journalism), first ran as a series of articles, presented in installments in McClure's Magazine, which were later published together as a book, The History of the Standard Oil Company in 1904. Tarbell's exposé fueled negative public sentiment against the company and was a contributing factor in the U.S. government's antitrust legal actions against the Standard Oil Trust which eventually led to the breakup of the petroleum conglomerate in 1911.
While the two famous old men were widely regarded as drinking and poker buddies, they also exchanged letters when apart, and this was often since each traveled a great deal. Unlike Rogers' personal files, which have never become public, these interesting and insightful letters back and forth were published verbatim in an entire book, Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893-1909. In the written exchanges between the two men, there are pleasant examples of Rogers' sense of fun as well as Twain's well-known sense of humor. This provides a rare insight into private side of "Hell Hound Rogers", who had a well-known public reputation as a fearsome and ruthless robber baron.
On cruises aboard the Kanawha, they were joined at frequent intervals by Booker T. Washington, the famed former slave who had become a leading educator. From all outward appearances, Washington was apparently just another friend. However, known but to a very few, in fact, through him, "Hell Hound Rogers" was a secret philanthropist, aiding in educational efforts for African-Americans by deploying a new concept which came to be known as anonymous donor matching funds to contribute very large amounts of money in support of several teacher's colleges (now Hampton University and Tuskegee University) and literally dozens of small schools in the South over the same 15 year period of the Twain-Rogers friendship. (Dr. Washington only revealed this situation in June 1909 just weeks after Rogers' death as he made a pre-planned tour along the Virginian Railway, traveling in Rogers' private rail car "Dixie").
In April 1907, Twain and Rogers cruised together to Virginia aboard the Kanawha to the opening of the Jamestown Exposition, held at a site at Sewell's Point in a rural section of Norfolk County, Virginia. Twain's public popularity was such that large numbers of citizens paid to ride touring boats out to where the Kanawha was anchored in Hampton Roads in hopes of getting a glimpse of him. As the gathering of boats around the yacht became a safety hazard, he finally obliged by coming on deck and waving to the crowds. Because of poor weather conditions, the steam yacht was delayed for several days from leaving the Hampton Roads area and venturing into the Atlantic Ocean. Rogers and some of the others in his party (without Twain) returned to New York by rail. Because of his dislike of traveling by rail, Twain elected to return aboard the Kanawha, despite the delay. However, the news media reporters lost track of Twain's whereabouts; when he failed to return to New York City as scheduled, the New York Times speculated that he might have been "lost at sea."
Upon arriving safely in New York and learning of this, the humorist wrote a satirical article about the episode, including, in part,
"...I will make an exhaustive investigation of this report that I have been lost at sea. If there is any foundation for the report, I will at once apprise the anxious public."[1]
This bore similarities to an earlier event in 1897 when he made his famous (and usually misquoted) remark "The report of my death is an exaggeration" in an article, after a reporter was sent to investigate whether he had died (in fact it was his cousin who was seriously ill).
Later that year, Twain and Rogers' son, Henry Jr. (Harry), returned to the Jamestown Exposition aboard the Kanawha. The humorist helped host Robert Fulton Day on September 23, 1907, celebrating the centennial of Fulton's invention of the steamboat. Twain was filling in for ailing former U.S. President Grover Cleveland and introduced Rear Admiral Purnell Harrington. According to a report published in Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot newspaper, Twain was met with a full five minutes of cheering and standing ovation. Members of the audience waved their hats and umbrellas. Deeply touched, Twain said, "When you appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do feel it."
Two years later, the two old friends again returned to Norfolk, Virginia. On April 3, 1909, the business community of Norfolk held a lavish banquet to honor Henry Rogers and his newly completed Virginian Railway. Twain was the keynote speaker in one of his last public appearances. His speech was widely quoted in newspapers across the United States. On the same trip, while Rogers and associates went to inspect his new coal pier near the mouth of the Elizabeth River at Sewell's Point, Twain used the time to visit children in several local schools. However, Twain declined to accompany Rogers and the rest of his party the next day as they set out for a 450 mile (725 km) tour across southern Virginia and West Virginia along the route of the newly-completed bituminous coal conveying railroad. Twain chose instead to to return to New York via steamboat. [2]
On the morning of May 20, 1909, Rogers awoke at his New York City townhouse and told his wife he was feeling extremely poorly. His physician was called immediately, but before he could arrive, within the hour, the 69-year old was dead of a stroke. That same morning, Twain was already aboard a New Haven Railroad passenger train en route from Connecticut to visit his friend and the family. Arriving at Grand Central Station, he was met by his daughter with the terrible news. Stricken with grief, he uncustomarily avoided news reporters who had gathered, saying only "This is terrible...I cannot talk about it." Two days later, he served as an honorary pallbearer at the Rogers funeral in New York City. However, he declined to join the funeral party on the train ride for the interment at Fairhaven. He said "I cannot bear to travel with my friend and not converse."
In and out with Halley's Comet
In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:[14]
“ I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I 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.' ”
Samuel Langhorne Clemens died of angina pectoris on April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut. Upon hearing of Twain's death, President Taft said:[15]
“ Mark Twain gave pleasure—real intellectual enjoyment—to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature. ”
Mark Twain is buried in his wife's family plot in Elmira, New York.
Legacy
A statue of Mark Twain at Mark Twain Elementary School in the Braeswood Place neighborhood of Houston, TexasClemens' birthplace is preserved in Florida, Missouri .The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri is one of the most popular museums because it provides the setting for much of the author's work. The home of a childhood friend is preserved as the "Thatcher House" and is said to be the inspiration for his fictional character Becky Thatcher. Clemens was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford, and the robes he wore to that ceremony and on many other occasions afterward (including one daughter's wedding) are on display in the museum. Visitors to Hannibal can also tour the Mark Twain Cave and ride a riverboat on the Mississippi River.
In 1874, Clemens built a family home in Hartford, Connecticut, where he and his wife raised their three daughters. That home is preserved and open to visitors as the Mark Twain House. Clemens lived in many homes in the United States and abroad.
Twain's legacy lives on today as his namesakes continue to multiply. Several schools are named after him, including one in Houston (Twain Elementary School), which has a statue of Twain sitting on a bench. In 1998, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts created the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, awarded annually. The Mark Twain Award is an award given annually to a book for children in grades four through eight by the Missouri Association of School Librarians. Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, sponsors the Mark Twain Young Authors' Workshop each summer in collaboration with the Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal. The program[3] is open to young authors in grades five through eight. The museum sponsors the Mark Twain Creative Teaching Award.[4]
Actor Hal Holbrook created a one man show called "Mark Twain Tonight". In 1967, CBS broadcast a performance of "Mark Twain Tonight" for which Holbrook won an Emmy Award. Holbrook has been performing "Mark Twain Tonight" regularly for 50 years, include three runs on Broadway, 1966, 1977, and 2005, the first of which won him a Tony Award. Additionally, like countless influential individuals, Mark Twain was awarded the honor of having an asteroid named after him.
Pen names
Clemens used different pen names before deciding on Mark Twain. He signed humorous and imaginative sketches "Josh" until 1863. Additionally, he used the pen name "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass" for a series of humorous letters.[citation needed] He maintained that his primary pen name, "Mark Twain", came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms (12 ft, approximately 3.7 m) or "safe water" was measured on the sounding line. The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain" ("twain" is an archaic term for two). "By the mark twain" meant "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two fathoms"
Clemens claimed that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Chapter 50 of Life on the Mississippi he wrote:[16]
Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN," and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; ... At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.
Career overview
Twain in the lab of Nikola Tesla, spring of 1894Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse but evolved into a grim, almost profane chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism.
Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language.
Twain was also fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory. Twain's book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court features a time traveler from the America of Twain's day, using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. Twain also patented an improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments.
Twain was opposed to vivisection of any kind, not on a scientific basis but rather an ethical one. He stated that no sentient being should be made to suffer for another without consent.[17]
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
From 1901 until his death in 1910, Twain was vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League.[18] The league opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States. Twain wrote Incident in the Philippines, posthumously published in 1924, in response to the Moro Crater Massacre, in which six hundred Moros were killed. Many but not all of Mark Twain's neglected and previously uncollected writings on anti-imperialism appeared for the first time in book form in 1992.
Mark Twain in his gown (scarlet with grey sleeves and facings) for his DLitt degree, awarded to him by Oxford University.From the time of its publication there have been occasional attempts to ban Huckleberry Finn from various libraries because Twain's use of local color is offensive to some people. Although Twain was against racism and imperialism far ahead of the public sentiment of his time, those who have only superficial familiarity with his work have sometimes condemned it as racist because it accurately depicts language in common use in the 19th-century United States. Expressions that were used casually and unselfconsciously then are often perceived today as racist; today, such racial epithets are far more visible and condemned. Twain himself would probably be amused by these attempts; in 1885, when a library in Concord, Massachusetts banned the book, he wrote to his publisher, "They have expelled Huck from their library as 'trash suitable only for the slums'; that will sell 25,000 copies for us for sure."
Many of Mark Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. When an anonymous slim volume was published in 1880 entitled 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors., Twain was among those rumored to be the author. The issue was not settled until 1906, when Twain acknowledged his literary paternity of this scatological masterpiece.
At least Twain saw 1601 published during his lifetime. During the Philippine-American War, Twain wrote an anti-war article entitled The War Prayer. Through this internal struggle, Twain expresses his opinions of the absurdity of slavery and the importance of following one's personal conscience before the laws of society. It was submitted to Harper's Bazaar for publication, but on March 22, 1905, the magazine rejected the story as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine." Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, Mark Twain could not publish The War Prayer elsewhere; it remained unpublished until 1923.
In later years, Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until 1962. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916, although there is some scholarly debate as to whether Twain actually wrote the most familiar version of this story. Twain was critical of organized religion and certain elements of the Christian religion through most of the end of his life, though he never renounced Presbyterianism[19]
Bibliography
The library of the Mark Twain House, which features hand-stenciled paneling, fireplaces from India, embossed wallpapers and an enormous hand carved mantel that the Twains purchased in Scotland (HABS photo)(1867) Advice for Little Girls (fiction)
(1867) The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (fiction)
(1868) General Washington's ***** Body-Servant (fiction)
(1868) My Late Senatorial Secretaryship (fiction)
(1869) The Innocents Abroad (non-fiction travel)
(1870-71) Memoranda (monthly column for The Galaxy magazine)
(1871) Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (fiction)
(1872) Roughing It (non-fiction)
(1873) The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (fiction, made into a play)
(1875) Sketches New and Old (fictional stories)
(1876) Old Times on the Mississippi (non-fiction)
(1876) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction)
(1876) A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage (fiction); (1945, private edition), (2001, Atlantic Monthly).[20]
(1877) A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (stories)
(1877) The Invalid's Story (Fiction)
(1878) Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches (fictional stories)
(1880) A Tramp Abroad (travel)
(1880) 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors (fiction)
(1882) The Prince and the Pauper (fiction)
(1883) Life on the Mississippi (non-fiction)
(1884) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (fiction)
(1889) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (fiction)
(1892) The American Claimant (fiction)
(1892) Merry Tales (fictional stories)
(1893) The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (fictional stories)
(1894) Tom Sawyer Abroad (fiction)
(1894) The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (fiction)
(1896) Tom Sawyer, Detective (fiction)
(1896) Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (fiction)
(1897) How to Tell a Story and other Essays (non-fictional essays)
(1897) Following the Equator (non-fiction travel)
(1900) The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (fiction)
(1900) A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth (essay)
(1901) The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated (satire)
(1901) Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany (political satire)
(1901) To the Person Sitting in Darkness (essay)
(1902) A Double Barrelled Detective Story (fiction)
(1904) A Dog's Tale (fiction)
(1904) Extracts from Adam's Diary (fiction)
(1905) King Leopold's Soliloquy (political satire)
(1905) The War Prayer (fiction)
(1906) The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (fiction)
(1906) What Is Man? (essay)
(1906) Eve's Diary (fiction)
(1907) Christian Science (non-fiction critique)
(1907) A Horse's Tale (fiction)
(1907) Is Shakespeare Dead? (non-fiction)
(1909) Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (fiction)
(1909) Letters from the Earth (fiction, published posthumously)
(1910) Queen Victoria's Jubilee (non-fiction)
(1912) My Platonic Sweetheart (dream journal, possibly non-fiction)
(1916) The Mysterious Stranger (fiction, possibly not by Twain, published posthumously)
(1924) Mark Twain's Autobiography (non-fiction, published posthumously)
(1935) Mark Twain's Notebook (published posthumously)
(1969) No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (fiction, published posthumously)
(1985) Concerning the Jews (published posthumously)
(1992) Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. Jim Zwick, ed. (Syracuse University Press) ISBN 0-8156-0268-5 (previously uncollected, published posthumously)
(1995) The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood (published posthumously)
Gold Rush:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush
[edit] Overview
California goldfields in the Sierra Nevada and northern CaliforniaThe Gold Rush started at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma,[1] on January 24, 1848. James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found pieces of shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter, along the American River.[2] Marshall quietly brought what he found to Sutter, and the two of them privately tested the findings. The tests showed Marshall's particles to be gold. Sutter was dismayed by this, and wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold.[3] However, rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies,[4] Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!"[5]
On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report that there was a gold rush in California; on December 5, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress.[6] Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the "forty-niners," invaded the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode." As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters invaded his land and stole his crops and cattle.[7]
San Francisco had been a tiny settlement before the rush began. When residents learned of the discovery, it at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses whose owners joined the Gold Rush,[8] but it then boomed as merchants and new people arrived. The population of San Francisco exploded from perhaps 1,000[9] in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents by 1850.[10] As with many boomtowns, the sudden influx of people strained the infrastructure of San Francisco and other towns near the goldfields. People lived in tents, wood shanties, or deck cabins removed from abandoned ships.[11]
In what has been referred to as the "first world-class gold rush,"[12] there was no easy way to get to California; forty-niners faced hardship and often death on the way to the gold fields. At first, most Argonauts, as they were also known, traveled by sea. From the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months,[13] and cover some 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km). An alternative route was to sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, to take canoes and mules for a week through the jungle, and then on the Pacific side, to wait for a ship sailing for San Francisco.[14] Eventually, most gold-seekers took the overland route across the continental United States, particularly along the California Trail.[15] Each of these routes had its own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid fever to cholera.[16]
San Francisco harbor in April 1850To meet the demands of the new arrivals, ships bearing goods from around the world—porcelain and silk from China, ale from Scotland—poured into San Francisco as well.[17] Upon reaching San Francisco, ship captains found that their crews deserted and went to the gold fields. The wharves and docks of San Francisco became a forest of masts, as hundreds of ships were abandoned. Enterprising San Franciscans then took over these abandoned ships and turned them into warehouses, stores, taverns, hotels, and one into a jail.[18] Many of these ships were later destroyed and used for landfill to create more buildable land in the boomtown.
Within a few years, there was an important but lesser-known surge of prospectors into far Northern California, specifically into present-day Siskiyou, Shasta and Trinity Counties.[19] Discovery of gold nuggets at the site of present-day Yreka in 1851 brought thousands of gold-seekers up the Siskiyou Trail[20] and throughout California's northern counties.[21] Settlements of the Gold Rush era, such as Portuguese Flat on the Sacramento River, sprang into existence and then faded. The Gold Rush town of Weaverville on the Trinity River today retains the oldest continuously-used Taoist temple in California, a legacy of Chinese miners who came. While there are not many Gold Rush era ghost towns still in existence, the well-preserved remains of the once-bustling town of Shasta is a California State Historic Park in Northern California.[22]
Gold was also discovered in Southern California but on a much smaller scale. The first discovery of gold, at Rancho San Francisco in the mountains north of present-day Los Angeles, had been in 1842, six years before Marshall's discovery, while California was still part of Mexico.[23] However, these first deposits, and later discoveries in Southern California mountains, attracted little notice and were of limited consequence economically.[23]
Native Americans strike back at miners.By 1850, most of the easily accessible gold had been collected, and attention turned to the task of extracting the gold from more difficult locations. Faced with gold that was increasingly difficult to retrieve, Americans began to drive out foreigners to get at the most accessible gold that remained. The new California State Legislature passed a foreign miners tax of twenty dollars per month, and American prospectors began organized attacks on foreign miners, particularly Latin Americans and Chinese.[24] In addition, the huge numbers of newcomers were driving Native Americans out of their traditional hunting, fishing and food gathering areas. To protect their homes and livelihood, Native Americans responded by attacking the miners. This provoked counter-attacks by miners on native villages. The Native Americans, out-gunned, were often slaughtered.[25] Those who escaped the massacres were many times unable to survive without access to their food-gathering areas, and they starved to death. Novelist and poet Joaquin Miller vividly captured one such attack in his semi-autobiographical work, Life Amongst the Modocs.[26]
[edit] Gold Rush
Panning for gold on the Mokelumne RiverThe first people to rush to the gold fields, beginning in the spring of 1848, were the residents of California themselves—primarily Americans and Europeans living in Northern California, along with Native Americans and some Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians).[27]
Word of the Gold Rush spread slowly at first. The earliest gold-seekers to arrive in California during 1848 were people who lived near California, or people who heard the news from ships on the fastest sailing routes from California. The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail.[28] Next came people from Hawaii, by ship, and several thousand Latin Americans, including people from Mexico, from Peru and from as far away as Chile,[29] both by ship and overland.[30] By the end of 1848, some 6,000 Argonauts had come to California.[30] Only a small number (probably fewer than 500) traveled overland from the United States that year.[30] Some of these "forty-eighters," as these very earliest gold-seekers were also sometimes called, were able to collect large amounts of easily accessible gold—in some cases, thousands of dollars worth each day.[31][32] Even ordinary prospectors averaged daily gold finds worth ten to fifteen times the daily wage of a laborer on the East Coast. A person could work for six months in the goldfields and find the equivalent of six years' wages back home.[33]
By the beginning of 1849, word of the Gold Rush had spread around the world, and an overwhelming number of gold-seekers and merchants began to arrive from virtually every continent. The largest group of "forty-niners" in 1849 were Americans, arriving by the tens of thousands overland across the continent and along various sailing routes.[34] (The name "forty-niner" was derived from the year 1849). Australians[35] and New Zealanders picked up the news from ships carrying Hawaiian newspapers, and thousands, infected with "gold fever," boarded ships for California.[36] Forty-niners came from Latin America, particularly from the Mexican mining districts near Sonora.[36] Gold-seekers and merchants from Asia, primarily from China,[37] began arriving in 1849, at first in modest numbers to "Gold Mountain," the name given to California in Chinese. The first immigrants from Europe, reeling from the effects of the Revolutions of 1848 and with a longer distance to travel, began arriving in late 1849, mostly from France,[38] with some Germans, Italians, and Britons.[34]
It is estimated that almost 90,000 people arrived in California in 1849—about half by land and half by sea.[39] Of these, perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 were Americans, and the rest were from other countries.[34] By 1855, it is estimated at least 300,000 gold-seekers, merchants, and other immigrants had arrived in California from around the world.[40] The largest group continued to be Americans, but there were tens of thousands each of Mexicans, Chinese, French, and Latin Americans,[41] together with many smaller groups of miners, such as Filipinos and Basques.[42] A modest number of miners of African ancestry (probably less than 4,000)[43] had come from the Southern States, the Caribbean and Brazil.[44]
[edit] Legal rights
When the Gold Rush began, California was a peculiarly lawless place. On the day when gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, California was still technically part of Mexico, under American military occupation as the result of the Mexican-American War. With the signing of the treaty ending the war on February 2, 1848, California became a possession of the United States, but it was not a formal "territory" and did not become a state until September 9, 1850. California existed in the unusual condition of a region under military control. There was no civil legislature, executive or judicial body for the entire region.[45] Local residents operated under a confusing and changing mixture of Mexican rules, American principles, and personal dictates.
While the treaty ending the Mexican-American War obliged the United States to honor Mexican land grants,[46] almost all of the goldfields were outside those grants. Instead, the goldfields were primarily on "public land," meaning land formally owned by the United States government.[47] However, there were no legal rules yet in place, and no practical enforcement mechanisms.[48]
Gold miners excavate a river bed after the water has been diverted into a sluice alongside the river.The benefit to the forty-niners was that the gold was "free for the taking." In the goldfields, there was no private property, no licensing fees, and no taxes.[49] The forty-niners resorted to making up their own codes and setting up their own local enforcement. The miners essentially adopted Mexican mining law existing in California.[50] The rules provided that a "claim" could be "staked" by a prospector, but that claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked.[51] Miners worked at a claim only long enough to determine its potential. If a claim was deemed as low-value—as most were—miners would abandon the site in search for legendary bonanza sites. In the case where a claim was abandoned or not worked upon, other miners would "claim-jump" the land. "Claim-jumping" means that a miner began work on a previously claimed site.[51] Disputes were sometimes handled personally and violently, and were sometimes addressed by groups of prospectors acting as arbitrators.[47][51]
The rules of mining claims adopted by the forty-niners spread with each new mining rush throughout the western United States. The U.S. Congress finally legalized the practice in the "Chaffee laws" of 1866.[52]
[edit] Development of gold recovery techniques
Because the gold in the California gravel beds was so richly concentrated, the early forty-niners simply panned for gold in California's rivers and streams, a form of placer mining.[53] However, panning cannot be done on a large scale, and industrious miners and groups of miners graduated to placer mining "cradles" and "rockers" or "long-toms"[54] to process larger volumes of gravel.[55] In the most complex placer mining, groups of prospectors would divert the water from an entire river into a sluice alongside the river, and then dig for gold in the newly-exposed river bottom.[56] Modern estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey are that some 12 million ounces[57] (370 t) of gold were removed in the first five years of the Gold Rush (worth approximately US$7.2 billion at November 2006 prices).[58]
Gold miners excavate a gold-bearing bluff with jets of water at a placer mine in Dutch Flat, California sometime between 1857 and 1870.In the next stage, by 1853, the first hydraulic mining was used on ancient gold-bearing gravel beds that were on hillsides and bluffs in the gold fields.[59] In hydraulic mining (which was invented in California at this time), a high-pressure hose directs a powerful stream of water at gold-bearing gravel beds. The loosened gravel and gold then pass over sluices, with the gold settling to the bottom where it is collected. By the mid-1880s, it is estimated that 11 million ounces (340 t) of gold (worth approximately US$6.6 billion at November 2006 prices) had been recovered via "hydraulicking."[58]
A byproduct of this method of extraction was that large amounts of gravel and silt, in addition to heavy metals and other pollutants, went into streams and rivers.[60] Many areas still bear the scars of hydraulic mining since the resulting exposed earth and downstream gravel deposits are unable to support plant life.[61]
Quartz Stamp Mill in Grass Valley crushes the quartz before the gold is washed out.After the Gold Rush had concluded, gold recovery operations continued. The final stage to recover loose gold was to prospect for gold that had slowly washed down into the flat river bottoms and sandbars of California's Central Valley and other gold-bearing areas of California (such as Scott Valley in Siskiyou County). By the late 1890s, dredging technology (which was also invented in California) had become economical,[62] and it is estimated that more than 20 million ounces (620 t) were recovered by dredging (worth approximately US$12 billion at November 2006 prices).[58]
Both during the Gold Rush and in the decades that followed, gold-seekers also engaged in "hard-rock" mining, that is, extracting the gold directly from the rock that contained it (typically quartz), usually by digging and blasting to follow and remove veins of the gold-bearing quartz.[63] Once the gold-bearing rocks were brought to the surface, the rocks were crushed, and the gold was separated out (using moving water), or leached out, typically by using arsenic or mercury (another source of environmental contamination).[64] Eventually, hard-rock mining wound up being the single largest source of gold produced in the Gold Country.[58]
[edit] Profits
A man leans over a wooden sluice. Rocks line the outside of the wood boards that create the sluice.Although the conventional wisdom is that merchants made more money than miners during the Gold Rush, the reality is perhaps more complex. There were certainly merchants who profited handsomely. The wealthiest man in California during the early years of the Gold Rush was Samuel Brannan, the tireless self-promoter, shopkeeper and newspaper publisher.[65] Brannan alertly opened the first supply stores in Sacramento, Coloma, and other spots in the gold fields. Just as the Gold Rush began, he purchased all the prospecting supplies available in San Francisco and re-sold them at a substantial profit.[65] However, substantial money was made by gold-seekers as well. For example, within a few months, one small group of prospectors, working on the Feather River in 1848, retrieved a sum of gold worth more than $1.5 million by 2006 prices.[66]
On average, many early gold-seekers did perhaps make a modest profit, after all expenses were taken into account. Most, however, especially those arriving later, made little or wound up losing money.[67][68] Similarly, many unlucky merchants set up in settlements that disappeared, or were wiped out in one of the calamitous fires that swept the towns springing up.[69] Other businessmen, through good fortune and hard work, reaped great rewards in retail, shipping, entertainment, lodging,[70] or transportation.[71]
By 1855, the economic climate had changed dramatically. Gold could be retrieved profitably from the goldfields only by medium to large groups of workers, either in partnerships or as employees.[72] By the mid-1850s, it was the owners of these gold-mining companies who made the money. Similarly, the population of California had grown so large and so fast, and the economic base had started to diversify enough, that money could be made in a wide variety of conventional businesses.[73]
[edit] Path of the gold
Once the gold was recovered, there were many paths the gold itself took. First, much of the gold was used locally to purchase food, supplies and lodging for the miners. These transactions often took place using the recently recovered gold, carefully weighed out.[74] These merchants and vendors, in turn, used the gold to purchase supplies from ship captains or packers bringing goods to California.[75] The gold then left California aboard ships or mules to go to the makers of the goods from around the world. A second path was the Argonauts themselves who, having personally acquired a sufficient amount, sent the gold home, or returned home taking with them their hard-earned "diggings." For example, one estimate is that some US$80 million worth of California gold was sent to France by French prospectors and merchants.[76] As the Gold Rush progressed, local banks and gold dealers issued "banknotes" or "drafts"—locally accepted paper currency—in exchange for gold,[77] and private mints created private gold coins.[78] With the building of the San Francisco Mint in 1854, gold bullion was turned into official United States gold coins for circulation.[79] The gold was also sent by California banks to U.S. national banks in exchange for national paper currency to be used in the booming California economy.[80]
[edit] Effects
[edit] Immediate effects
The arrival of hundreds of thousands of new people within a few years, compared to a population of some 15,000 Europeans and Californios beforehand,[81] had many dramatic effects.[82]
First, the human and environmental costs of the Gold Rush were substantial. Native Americans became the victims of disease, starvation and genocidal attacks;[83] the Native American population, estimated at 150,000 in 1845, was less than 30,000 by 1870.[84] Explicitly racist attacks and laws sought to drive out Chinese and Latin American immigrants.[85] The toll on the American immigrants could be severe as well: one in twelve forty-niners perished, as the death and crime rates during the Gold Rush were extraordinarily high, and the resulting vigilantism also took its toll.[86] In addition, the environment suffered as gravel, silt and toxic chemicals from prospecting operations killed fish and destroyed habitats.[60][61].Hydraulic mining caused severe damages to hillsides, streams, virus and watersheds.[87] Large-scale agriculture (California's second "Gold Rush"[88]) began during this time.[89] Roads, schools, churches,[90] and civic organizations quickly came into existence.[91] The vast majority of the immigrants were Americans. Pressure grew for better communications and political connections to the rest of the United States, leading to statehood for California on September 9, 1850, in the Compromise of 1850 as the 31st state of the United States.Women in California frontier came out of their home-duties and started to run their own business [87] Steamships, including those owned by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, began regular service from San Francisco to Panama, where passengers, goods and mail would take the train across the Isthmus and board steamships headed to the East Coast. One ill-fated journey, that of the S.S. Central America, ended in disaster as the ship sank in a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857, with an estimated three tons of California gold aboard.[92][93]
Within a few years after the end of the Gold Rush, in 1863, the groundbreaking ceremony for the western leg of the First Transcontinental Railroad was held in Sacramento. The line's completion, some six years later, financed in part with Gold Rush money,[94] united California with the central and eastern United States. Travel that had taken weeks or even months could now be accomplished in days.[95]
The Gold Rush stimulated economies around the world as well. Farmers in Chile, Australia, and Hawaii found a huge new market for their food; British manufactured goods were in high demand; clothing and even pre-fabricated houses arrived from China.[96] The return of large amounts of California gold to pay for these goods raised prices and stimulated investment and the creation of jobs around the world.[97]. Australian prospector, Edward Hargraves, noting similarities between the geography of California and his home, returned to Australia to discover gold and spark the Australian gold rushes.[98]
[edit] Long-term effects
California's name became indelibly connected with the Gold Rush, and as a result, was connected with what became known as the "California Dream." California was perceived as a place of new beginnings, where great wealth could reward hard work and good luck. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread to the rest of the United States and became part of the new "American Dream."
Miners operate a hydraulic sluice in San Francisquito Canyon, Los Angeles County. The placer mine machine consists of adobe columns, pulleys, ropes, and wood boxes. Donkeys are loaded with ore bags.“ "The old American Dream . . . was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard . . . of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream . . . became a prominent part of the American psyche only after [Sutter's Mill]."[99] ”
Generations of immigrants have been attracted by the California Dream. California farmers,[100] oil drillers,[101] movie makers,[102] airplane builders,[103] and "dot-com" entrepreneurs have each had their boom times in the decades after the Gold Rush.[104]
Seal of CaliforniaIncluded among the modern legacies of the California Gold Rush are the California state motto, "Eureka" ("I have found it"), Gold Rush images on the California State Seal, and the state nickname, "The Golden State," as well as place names, such as Placer County, Rough and Ready, Placerville (formerly named "Dry Diggings" and then "Hangtown" during rush time), Whiskeytown, Drytown, Angels Camp, Happy Camp, and Sawyer's Bar. The San Francisco 49ers National Football League team, and the similarly named athletic teams of California State University, Long Beach, are named for the prospectors of the California Gold Rush. The literary history of the Gold Rush is reflected in the works of Mark Twain (The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County), Bret Harte (A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready), Joaquin Miller (Life Amongst the Modocs), and many others.
Today, California State Route 49 travels through the Sierra Nevada foothills, connecting many Gold Rush era towns such as Placerville, Auburn, Grass Valley, Coloma, Jackson, and Sonora.[105] This state highway also passes very near Columbia State Historic Park, a protected area encompassing the historic business district of the town of Columbia; the park has preserved many Gold Rush-era buildings, which are presently occupied by tourist-oriented businesses.
[edit] Geology
Main article: Gold in California
Scientists believe that global forces operating over hundreds of millions of years resulted in the large concentration of gold in California. Only gold that is concentrated can be economically recovered. Some 400 million years ago, California lay at the bottom of a large sea; underwater volcanoes deposited lava and minerals (including gold) onto the sea floor. Beginning about 200 million years ago, tectonic pressure forced the sea floor beneath the American continental mass.[106] As it sank, or subducted, below today's California, the sea floor melted into very large molten masses (magma). This hot magma forced its way upward under what is now California, cooling as it rose,[107] and as it solidified, veins of gold formed within fields of quartz.[107][108] These minerals and rocks came to the surface of the Sierra Nevada,[109] and eroded. The exposed gold was carried downstream by water and gathered in quiet gravel beds along the sides of old rivers and streams.[110] The forty-niners first focused their efforts on these deposits of gold, which had been gathered in the gravel beds by hundreds of millions of years of geologic action.[111]