24 September 1874 • Hartford, Conn. (MS: ViU, UCCL 01132)
The Secretary of t War:
Dear Sir:
It isn’t that I am thankless that I have not written before now to thank you for your most kind & very effectual efforts toward the appointment of my nephew to the Naval school; but the fact is I have been getting out a play, & that took all my time for a while; & now I am finishing & furnishing a house & fighting a detachment of carpenters for the privilege of occupying a spare corner in it; & the consequence is that at last my head is all gone & I am but a wreck of my former self. But still I want to thank you as heartily as I can—& as heartily, too as if I were in my right mind—though it really seems to be only a sort of lucid interval.
I shall have the boy put to school at once. I perfectly understand that the promise is not absolute, & that Mr. Robeson may not be able to compass the appointment; but we will at least hope for success, & prepare for it.
And so it is “Good for Keokuk!” It seems to be a good sort of gate to approach the government through, does the Gate City. 1explanatory note My Ⓐemendation brother has gone out there again to live, but he hasn’t any official designs, & I must try & not breed any in his head by telling him in what high respect the authorities hold the name of that town.2explanatory note
Thanking you again,
Truly y Yrs
Keokuk was known as the “Gate City” of Iowa because of “its position in the southeast corner . . . and its proximity to the great rivers of the State” (McCabe, 957). Clemens had considered Samuel Moffett eligible for appointment to the naval academy from Fredonia, New York, where he presently lived, and from St. Louis, where he had formerly lived (see 28 Aug 74click to open letter and 5 Sept 74, both to Belknapclick to open letter). The stratagem now agreed upon with Belknap and Secretary of the Navy George Robeson apparently called for his nomination from Keokuk, where the Moffetts had never lived.
Orion had previously lived in Keokuk for most of the period between June 1855 and May 1860. His only “official” appointment was as territorial secretary of Nevada from 1861 to 1866, although in 1868 Clemens tried unsuccessfully to get him a government clerkship ( L2 , 164 n. 13).
MS, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (ViU).
L6 , 243–244.
The MS, owned in 1930 by Daniel P. Woolley, vice-president of Standard Brands, was deposited at ViU by Clifton Waller Barrett on 15 May 1962.