Newswise — Mark Twain, while not a diehard Confederate, opposed and satirized Lincoln and the North for much longer during the Civil War and postwar years than previously assumed, a Baylor University English professor has determined.
Dr. Joe Fulton, professor of English at Baylor University, has been named the winner of the 2010 Jules and Frances Landry Award for Best Book on Southern studies for The Reconstruction of Mark Twain.
The book, a blend of biography, history and literary criticism, is a startling reappraisal of Twain and his evolving political allegiances during and after the Civil War.
Fulton spent years traveling to sites where Twain lived, among them his boyhood home in Hannibal, Mo.; Virginia City, Nev.; and Elmira, N.Y., the author’s summer home where he wrote books.
“I've learned a great deal about how Sam Clemens became Mark Twain," Fulton said. "I've learned how a young man from a slave-holding family in a slave state joined the Confederate Militia after Federal troops ‘invaded’ Missouri. It's been fascinating to explore how Sam Clemens, a Confederate ‘bushwhacker,’ became Mark Twain, the writer who became a champion of racial justice in works like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Dr. Michael Parrish, the Linden G. Bowers Professor of American History at Baylor, said Fulton has taken "a fresh approach to a big subject: Mark Twain’s political convictions and personal actions during the Civil War era."
Parrish said Fulton learned that "only gradually and incompletely did Twain become ‘reconstructed.’ He recognized very clearly that slavery and racism represented a national—not simply southern—failure and tragedy.”
Twain remained skeptical of politicians, northerners, southerners, Republicans and Democrats.
Parrish said Fulton explored sources such as Twain’s anonymous newspaper articles that have been overlooked or misinterpreted by other Twain specialists.
The Landry Award is given yearly for the best book on Southern studies published by LSU Press.
Fulton's book will be released in fall 2010, the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death.
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