May 17 Tuesday – In Virginia City, Sam wrote to his mother, Jane Clemens, and sister Pamela about raising money for relief of sick and wounded Union soldiers, called the “sanitary fund.” The Enterprise and the Union bid against each other to raise funds. Sam related Reuel Colt Gridley’s efforts at hauling a flour sack from town to town for the people to bid on as a means of raising funds. This letter was published (and it appears written for publication) in an unidentified St. Louis newspaper [MTL 1: 281-287].
Sam’s article “Grand Austin Sanitary Flour-Sack Progress through Storey and Lyon Counties” ran in the Enterprise on or about this date (reprinted, Evening Bulletin May. 19) [Camfield bibliog.]. Sam’s “joke” appeared in the Enterprise. In an editorial Sam wrote while “not sober” he claimed that the money raised at the Sanitary Fancy Dress Ball in Carson City was to be sent “to aid a Miscegenation Society somewhere in the East.”