Submitted by scott on

January 3 Friday – In Hartford, Sam telegraphed a response to Whitelaw Reid’s letter of Dec. 28, asking him to “write something, no matter what, over your own signature within the next week,”: “Will write the article today.” The untimely death of Horace Greeley had thrown the Tribune into chaos, and politics over ownership evolved into Reid buying controlling interest (with the help of Jay Gould). Reid announced he would make the newspaper what Greeley would have made it—“a frank and fearless paper.” Reid had also solicited articles from Charles Dudley Warner, Bret Harte, and probably others [MTL 5: 263].

Sam followed up the telegram with a short letter with opinion about the Sandwich Islands and ambitions in the U.S. to annex them as a result of the death of King Kamehameha V. Sam’s letter ran in the Tribune on Jan. 6 [264].

 

Entry Date
Links to Twain's Geography Entries
Elmira, Hartford and England: Day By Day
DBD: 1873
Editor Note
“SLC to Whitelaw Reid ..., 6 Jan 1873, Hartford, Conn. (UCCL 00853).” In Mark Twain Project Online. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. 2007. <http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=letters/UCCL00853.xml;styl e=letter;brand=mtp>, accessed 2022-12-30.

Day By Day Acknowledgment

Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.