Samuel Clemens

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He is extensively quoted.

Samuel Clemens in Southern Victory
Samuel Clemens was a newspaper editor in San Francisco, California. He published his own periodical, The San Francisco Morning Call.

Clemens was a Missouri native. Although Missouri was a slave state and considered by many to be part of the South, it declined to join the Confederate States and remained loyal to the United States. When the war began, Clemens and his friends formed a Confederate militia, but he saw no military action and the militia disbanded after two weeks. (During the Second Mexican War, which Clemens scathingly criticized, this experience would cast doubt on Clemens' loyalty). His friends joined the Confederate Army; Clemens headed west.

Clemens eventually migrated to San Francisco, where he became editor-in-chief of his own newspaper. He married, and had two children. Clemens opposed the Second Mexican War from start to finish. He was critical of President James G. Blaine and San Francisco Mayor Adolph Sutro.

One of his major journalistic achivements was to effectively deploy the paper's reporters in different parts of San Francisco during the British raid on the US mint in the city, obtaining for the paper a comprehensive report of all aspects of that fateful day in San Francisco's history. While intending to reamain an observer and not get involved, Clemens very narrowly avoided being killed by a nervous British soldier in the street outside his editorial offices.

Being a full-time newspaper editor, Clemens had little time, energy or inclination to write anything but editorials, and hardly anything which he wrote was read in later times, except by historians researching his period.

Clemens and his wife had two children, Ophelia (who later became a journalist herself) and Orion. Clemens died "shortly before the Great War".