Mark Twain’s article, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, was a scathing indictment of Colonialism. Although he did not mention Rev. William Scott Ament by name in the article, repercussions from it indicted him for atrocities committed in the name of Christianity and generated much of the controversy the article. From 13 September 1900, Ament, and an assistant, Reverend Elwood Gardner Tewksbury accompanied by the U.S. 6th Cavalry, searched the areas adjacent to Beijing for Boxers, collecting indemnities for Christians who had been killed by the Boxers, and ordered the burning of some homes, even executing suspected Boxers.
Clara Clemens, in her book “My Father Mark Twain” writes of this time:
“This was a year when Father’s sense of justice urged him to action. It inspired him to give public expression to his disapproval of the conduct of missionaries in China and the Belgium King in Africa. He wrote and published fiery articles on these two topics and drew thunder and lightning around him. Also a few rays of sunshine. Distinguished men in England as well as in America hailed every word in the articles as indisputably true and gloriously courageous. He was crowned by several with the title of an “American Voltaire.” Cutting, abusive letters and newspaper attacks flooded our home, though, and it was pathetic to see the effect they had on Mother. She was sure that they must cause her husband pain, however valiantly he mightly conceal it, and this was hard for her to endure. Before publishing the article called “The Person Sitting in Darkness” (which was about the missionaries) Father had secured the approbation of both my Mother and Mr. Howells, whose opinions alone could enable him to stand like the Statue of Liberty, unweakened by the waters of condemnation that washed up to his feet. He had given out his innermost convictions, and nothing could make him regret it. He was not afraid of a fight, though he never picked up the cudgels too hastily.”
Twain took his text from an article published in the New York Sun, December 24, 1900:
“The Rev Mr Ament of the American Board of Foreign Missions has returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting indemnities for damages done by Boxers. Everywhere he went he compelled the Chinese to pay. He says that all his native Christians are now provided for. He had 700 of them under his charge and 300 were killed. He has collected 300 taels for each of these murders, and has compelled full payment for all the property belonging to Christians that was destroyed. He also assessed fines amounting to thirteen times the amount of the indemnity. This money will be used for the propagation of the Gospel. After paying all the damages Mr. Ament has 7,000 taels left, which will be devoted to the support of 100 Chinese widows and their children.”
“Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who demand, in addition to money, head for head. They collect 600 taels for each murder of a Catholic. In the Wenchiu country 680 Catholics were killed and for this the European Catholics here demand 750,000 strings of cash and 680 heads.”
“In the course of a conversation Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of the missionaries toward the Chinese He said: “I deny emphatically that the missionaries are vindictive, that they generally looted or that that they have done anything since the siege that the circumstances did not demand I criticise the Americans. The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the Germans. If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take advantage of it.””
The claim of Ament collecting 13 times “the indemnity” was met with incredulity by some:
William Hart Ward for The Independent (NY) wrote:
“You yourself know well enough that neither the missionaries in China nor the boards in America would consent for an instant to receive thirteen times the damages, or any damages at all to be spent in anything more than replacing lost property. To represent that they would is an insult on our common sense. I like much that you say extremely, but as to that Ament matter I am afraid that your swallowing capacity indicates a gullible gullet.” [MTP].
Judson Smith for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (of which Ament was associated) wrote to Sam:
“I observe that in commenting on affairs in China you select the Rev. Mr. Ament, D.D., one of our missionaries at Peking, to give your point of view, and that you base all you have to say of him on a single press dispatch printed in the Evening Sun of December 24th, and that you assume the accuracy of this despatch as though it were Dr. Ament’s frank and full confession of deeds and motives. The arraignment is severe, the effect on Dr. Ament’s name and reputation must be very damaging. The prejudice thus awakened against the missionaries, mission work and the American Board is serious and likely to be of long consequence. …
“Owing to the cable blunder, the Sun’s despatch of December 22d was made to say that the Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, had collected fines from the Chinese in various places to the amount of thirteen times the damages collected by him for the murder of converts and the destruction of their property. The despatch should have read that the fines were one-third in excess of the indemnities, making the difference something over a million dollars in the amount said to have been collected”.
Mark Twain responds to Smith:
“If required by the circumstances, I will respond to Dr. Smith’s letter at some length in “The North American Review,” but at present I will limit myself to a few words. Whenever he can produce from Rev. Mr. Ament an assertion that “The Sun’s” character-blasting dispatch was not authorized by him; and whenever Dr. Smith can buttress Mr. Ament’s disclaimer with a confession from Mr. Chamberlain, the head of the Laffan news service in China, that that dispatch was a false invention and unauthorized, the case against Mr. Ament will fall at once to the ground. There has been time—51 days—to get these absolutely essential documents, by cable. Why not get them now? Does Dr. Smith believe that with loose and wandering arguments and irrelevant excursions all around outside of the real matter in hand he can pull Mr. Ament out of the unspeakable scrape he is in?”
February 20: Sam also wrote to Henry R. Chamberlain, head of Laffan’s news service in China.
“Laffan says that the cablegram published in the Sun December 24, in which Rev. Mr. Ament seemed to be frankly confessing crimes and infamies of an amazing sort, could not have gotten upon the wires without your sanction, nor without your knowledge that the thing was straight and the proofs at hand when needed.
I copied that dispatch in an article in the North American Review of the present month, wherein I was slandering the progress of the white man’s civilization in China—at least trying to slander it; I suppose it cant really be done. I commented upon Mr. Ament’s Confession, and promised him a monument. If I was expecting to call out the gratitude of the American Board, that expectation has not materialized. The board has uttered its disapproval, through its first secretary , Rev. Justin [sic Judson] Smith, D.D., in a letter mailed to me through the Associated Press. Dr. Smith studiously avoids the issue—which is, did Doctor Ament say the attributed words and to the attributed things, or didn’t he? He thinks I have committed an enormity in condemning a man upon a single newspaper dispatch. He wanted a thousand, perhaps. I waited 39 days for the Board to produce from Mr. Ament a repudiation of the facts of the dispatch, before I said anything….The Board would not have waited three days, I judged, if it could have furnished from Ament’s mouth a denial.
I shall probably not take up the matter again, if I am left unmolested. But if molested I should like to be in shape to say with positiveness one thing or the other—that Ament did and said those things, or didn’t. If he shall prove innocent I wish to frankly say so; and if guilty as frankly say that.”
Sam asked for a letter from Chamberlain with “ammunition of either kind,” and testimony, either way, from Sir Robert Hart, Dr. Morrison, Mr. Bonsell, Mr. Conger “and other men of position and credit” who were familiar with the case.
On March 10, following a letter from Judson Smith Twain wrote back continuing to press his case against the Rev. Ament. Only the detail of “thirteen times” indemnities from the Boxer rebellion was in error, Sam wrote, not the rest of Ament’s actions. Sam’s letter in part:
As the case stands now, Mr. Ament has twice confessed that he took money from A to pay B’s debts with. In your late Open Letter to me it is noticeable that you have the correct opinion of that kind of conduct.
I have letters from several clergymen. It is observable that they & you are quite satisfied with Mr. Ament’s fashion of despoiling the innocent to square the damages created by the guilty—& why? Because it is in accordance with Chinese law & custom! It seems incredible. For broad humor, the situation puts opera bouffe to shame. …
On March 12 Paul Dana of the N.Y. Sun wrote to Sam: “That dispatch correcting the first report on Ament was from Chamberlain. He had written “1/3”, and I am informed that expression is common and goes for one word. The Telegraph Co. between Pekin and Chefoo left out the dash and made it “13.” I think Chamberlain corrected it himself when he found the error” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote “important” on the env.
To be fair, American involvement in retributions against the Chinese was only a small part of what happened there. From the Wikipedia article on the Boxer Rebellion: The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, was an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, and anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known as the "Boxers" in English due to many of its members having practised Chinese martial arts, which at the time were referred to as "Chinese boxing". It was defeated by the Eight-Nation Alliance of foreign powers consisting of American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Russian troops.
During attacks on suspected Boxer areas from September 1900 to March 1901, European and American forces engaged in tactics which included public decapitations of Chinese with suspected Boxer sympathies, systematic looting, routine shooting of farm animals and crop destruction, destruction of religion buildings and public buildings, burning of religious texts, and widespread rape of Chinese women and girls.
Contemporary British and American observers levelled their greatest criticism at German, Russian, and Japanese troops for their ruthlessness and willingness to execute Chinese of all ages and backgrounds, sometimes burning villages and killing their entire populations. The German force arrived too late to take part in the fighting but undertook punitive expeditions to villages in the countryside. According to missionary Arthur Henderson Smith, in addition to burning and looting, Germans "cut off the heads of many Chinese within their jurisdiction, many of them for absolutely trivial offenses".