Twain’s most devastating piece of satire: “The United States of Lyncherdom.” "Let us import American missionaries from China, and send them into the lynching field."
As with much of Twain’s writing, the tone of “The United States of Lyncherdom” is facetious, but its substance dead serious. After reading the horrific account of a 1901 lynching in Missouri, Twain sat down at his typewriter and proposed a novel solution to America’s most ghastly form of mob justice: encouraging Christian missionaries to spread “civilization” to the American South.
Bliss wrote him back, as Twain explained to a friend, to say that if they publish that book, he wouldn’t have even half a friend left in the South.
Mark Twainwasextremely sensitive about risking all that he had earned, the fame and the popularity and the financial success, by entertaining his audience. So he was always worried that he could lose all of that very quickly if he said something that would offend rather than entertain that audience. What he said was, ‘I have told the truth too plainly in that piece. And that’s something no man can afford to do until I am dead.’”
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Twain’s most devastating piece of satire: “The United States of Lyncherdom.” "Let us import American missionaries from China, and send them into the lynching field."
As with much of Twain’s writing, the tone of “The United States of Lyncherdom” is facetious, but its substance dead serious. After reading the horrific account of a 1901 lynching in Missouri, Twain sat down at his typewriter and proposed a novel solution to America’s most ghastly form of mob justice: encouraging Christian missionaries to spread “civilization” to the American South.
Bliss wrote him back, as Twain explained to a friend, to say that if they publish that book, he wouldn’t have even half a friend left in the South.
Mark Twainwasextremely sensitive about risking all that he had earned, the fame and the popularity and the financial success, by entertaining his audience. So he was always worried that he could lose all of that very quickly if he said something that would offend rather than entertain that audience. What he said was, ‘I have told the truth too plainly in that piece. And that’s something no man can afford to do until I am dead.’”