From 1835 To 1910, Haley’s Comet and Mark Twain

In 1835 Halley's Comet blazed across the night sky of America.  At this time the United States was fifty-nine years old, and the country was still widely unsettled.  The population numbered only 15 million and was scattered across 24 states.  A vast majority of the population lived on small farms or in small towns.  The country was overwhelmingly rural and--to many European visitors--altogether uncivilized and unimportant.  On November 30, 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri.

In 1910, 75 years later, Halley's Comet reappeared in the night skies of America.  By this time the United States had profoundly changed in nearly every imaginable way.  Its geographic size had more than doubled, and its population had jumped to 92 million.  The number of states had shot ahead to 46.  More important, the center of life had shifted from the farm to the city, and the country's horizons had shifted form the national to the international.  On April 21, 1910, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain, died in Stormfield, Connecticut.

           

During the 75 years between the comet's two appearances, the United States had experienced tremendous expansion and development.  It had become industrialized and, as a result, urbanized.  As part of its industrial rise, it had witnessed the invention and production of wondrous machines and gadgets, such as the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the sewing machine, the high speed printer, the typewriter, the electric light, the camera, the motion picture, and the automobile (to name just a few).  In 1910 machines could do in an hour what had taken men days or even weeks to do in 1835.  For many these were times of miracles.

Yet for many others these were times of crisis, discord, and despair.  Such great change and development had not come easily, and the country had experienced great turmoil and conflict as well as optimism and peace.  The rise of prosperity had been shadowed by several severe depressions, and the rise of factories had been followed by the difficult and violent rise of organized labor.  The building of railroads and corporations had been accompanied by corruption and scandal.  And the growth of cities had resulted in the problems of poverty, crime, and slums.

Moreover, three bloody wars had been fought during the 75 years, one of which--the Civil War--was the most brutal and destructive war ever fought by the United States.  More Americans died in this bitter and tragic dispute between the North and the South than in any other war in American history, and, beyond the number of those who died or who were maimed for life, the war had cost something equally as precious.  According to many in the nineteenth century, the Civil War marked the end of American innocence and youth, that after so much death and agony the country had turned hard, cynical, and selfish.

The life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens strangely reflected both the developments and the turbulence of his age.  He knew rural life in the South and industrial life in the North.  He went West to seek his fortune in the mining camps but returned East to find it in the cities.  Always pursuing the American Dream, he rose from rags to riches, only to fall heavily in debt, but then rose to wealth once more on nothing more than his own talent and determination.  In an age of technological breakthroughs, he was both a capitalist who invested in inventions and an inventor himself.  Fascinated by machines, he experimented with them throughout his life, and his obsession with one nearly destroyed him.

           

Clemens was a severe social critic interested in the reform movements of his day, but he was also a businessman who counted some of the wealthiest--and most corrupt--men in America as his personal friends.  He was a southern river boat captain who became famous as a western humorist.  He was a Confederate soldier who enlisted to defend his home but who then retired from the war as soon as the northern invaders approached.  Yet the war changed his life, forever breaking the ties that bound him to his home and setting him adrift in the currents of his age.  He became a wanderer, always unsettled, always moving from one region to another and from one get-rich scheme to another.  He became one of the best-loved men in his world, but he grew to hate the world.  He was one of the most successful men of his day but at the same time one of the most disappointed.