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- Publisher
- University of Illinois Press
- Copyright
- Copyright © Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
- ISSN
- 1940-5103
Abstract
GAR Y SCHARNHORST Samuel Clemens on Capital Punishment: A Recovered Note “I believe in capital punishment,” Samuel Clemens announced in a letter to the editor of the New York Tribune in the spring of 1871. “I believe that when a murder has been done it should be answered for with blood. I have all my life been taught to feel in this way, & the fetters of education are strong.” To be sure, he concluded the letter tongue-in-cheek by urging anyone who disagreed with him to recruit a volunteer to take the place of a condemned killer; and to avoid confusing the public with his comic pseud - onym he concealed his identity by signing the letter “Samuel Langhorne.” The next year, his views on capital punishment had begun to shift. As Jarrod Roark observes, Clemens “wove his anti-gallows and anti-jury sentiment” throughout the travelogue Roughing It (1872), especially in the lynchings of the highwayman Jack Slade by vigilantes in chapter 11 and of the bully Bill Noakes by Captain Ned Blakely in chapter 50. Clemens indulged in a bit of gallows humor in chapter 69 of Following the Equator (1897), where he morbidly joked that when the arch-imperialist
Journal
American Literary Realism – University of Illinois Press
Published: Mar 31, 2022