'Roughing It' and the Western roots of an American voice

Or, why it wasn't Bret Harte who ended up being taught in every classroom in the country

The Mississippi River steamer Nebraska arrived in St. Louis late in the evening on May 21, 1861, delivering 25-year-old Sam Clemens into a city riven by the onset of the Civil War. The Nebraska, which had left New Orleans a week earlier, had been among the last civilian vessels allowed north through the Union blockade at Memphis, and now Clemens, who had once thought he’d found a lifelong vocation as a steamboat pilot, had a series of pivotal decisions to make — starting with which side to take in the conflict over slavery that was rapidly engulfing the country. Like the state in which he was born, Clemens’ loyalties were muddled; for a few weeks in June, he joined some friends from his hometown in a ragtag secessionist militia, but soon deserted. In July, when his brother Orion, a loyal Lincoln Republican who’d nabbed a minor sinecure as secretary to the governor of the Nevada Territory, offered him a chance to escape to the West, Clemens leapt at it.

None of this history appears in Roughing It…

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