Mark Twain Revisited

An interesting look at Mark Twain, who – like Lincoln – came to his openmindedness about race the long way. Twain’s history as a wannabe bushwhacker is well documented, even by him in his famous short story, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. This book looks intriguing and has a grabber of a title!

When scholars sparred recently over one professor’s decision to ditch the “n-word” and replace it with “slave” in a revised edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one issue was never in question: that Twain spurned racism.

But what scholars have overlooked is the bone — or rather, bones — Twain had to pick with the Union, despite his speeches celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s call for racial justice, said Dr. Joe B. Fulton, an award-winning professor of English at Baylor University, in a new book published during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s beginning.
What Twain witnessed during and after the Civil War turned him into a skeptic of “truth, justice and the American way” for the rest of his life, says Fulton in his latest book, The Reconstruction of Mark Twain: How a Confederate Bushwhacker Became the Lincoln of Our Literature.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/mark-twain-staunch-confederate-once-upon-a-time-150-years-ago-baylor-professor-says

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