April 1870 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: CSt, UCCL 11712)
E pluribus Unum.
This sentiment has been attributed to others, but it originated with
Jane Eliza Lathrop Stanford (1828–1905), originally from Albany, New York, had been married since 1850 to Leland Stanford, governor of California from 1861 to 1863 and one of the builders (as well as president and director) of the Central Pacific Railroad ( NAW , 3:340–42). Clemens was not in Hartford in April 1870: his dateline is therefore a fiction, intended to seem appropriate once this “sentiment” was inserted in a gift copy of The Innocents Abroad. In customary fashion, he sent this page to the American Publishing Company in Hartford, to be forwarded with a book (compare 23 Apr 70 to Blissclick to open link).
References
- Department of Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 4: 1870–1871. Edited by Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1995
- Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer. 3 vols. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1971
MS, M122 American Authors Collection, Department of Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University (CSt).
L4 , 103–104.