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General Washington’s Negro Body Servant

Mark Twain

Galaxy/February, 1868

The stirring part of this celebrated colored man’s life properly began with his death–that is to say, the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died. He had been little heard of up to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals. His was a most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature. Therefore, I have carefully collated the materials for such a work, from authentic sources, and here present them to the public. I have rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character, with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools for the instruction of the youth of my country.

The name of the famous body-servant of General Washington was George. After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence, it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master to rest in his peaceful grave by the Potomac. Ten years afterward—in 1809—full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all who knew him. The Boston GAZETTE of that date thus refers to the event:

George, the favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington, died in Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease. He was present at the second installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with those noted events.

From this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of General Washington until May, 1825, at which time he died again. A Philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence:

At Macon, Ga., last week, a colored man named George, who was the favorite body-servant of General Washington, died at the advanced age of 95 years. Up to within a few hours of his dissolution he was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly recollect the second installation of Washington, his death and burial, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton, the griefs and hardships of Valley Forge, etc. Deceased was followed to the grave by the entire population of Macon.

On the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum of the orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again. The St. Louis REPUBLICAN of the 25th of that month spoke as follows:

ANOTHER RELIC OF THE REVOLUTION GONE.

George, once the favorite body-servant of General Washington, died yesterday at the house of Mr. John Leavenworth in this city, at the venerable age of 95 years. He was in the full possession of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly recollected the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, the sufferings of the patriot army at Valley Forge, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, the speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Delegates, and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest. Few white men die lamented as was this aged negro. The funeral was very largely attended.

During the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch appeared at intervals at Fourth-of-July celebrations in various parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with flattering success. But in the fall of 1855 he died again. The California papers thus speak of the event:

ANOTHER OLD HERO GONE

Died, at Dutch Flat, on the 7th of March, George (once the confidential body-servant of General Washington), at the great age of 95 years. His memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful storehouse of interesting reminiscences. He could distinctly recollect the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and Braddock’s defeat. George was greatly respected in Dutch Flat, and it is estimated that there were 10,000 people present at his funeral.

The last time the subject of this sketch died was in June, 1864; and until we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died permanently this time. The Michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event:

ANOTHER CHERISHED REMNANT OF THE REVOLUTION GONE

George, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of George Washington, died in Detroit last week, at the patriarchal age of 95 years. To the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations and death of Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, Braddock’s defeat, the throwing over of the tea in Boston harbor, and the landing of the Pilgrims. He died greatly respected, and was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of people.

The faithful old servant is gone! We shall never see him more until he turns up again. He has closed his long and splendid career of dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep who have earned their rest. He was in all respects a remarkable man. He held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history; and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew. If he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery of America.

The above resume of his biography I believe to be substantially correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. One fault I find in all the notices of his death I have quoted, and this ought to be correct. In them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of 95. This could not have been. He might have done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued it indefinitely. Allowing that when he first died, he died at the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864. But his age did not keep pace with his recollections. When he died the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the Pilgrims, which took place in 1620. He must have been about twenty years old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert that the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this life finally.

Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation.

P.S.–I see by the papers that this infamous old fraud has just died again, in Arkansas. This makes six times that he is known to have died, and always in a new place. The death of Washington’s body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; its charm is gone; the people are tired of it; let it cease. This well-meaning but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them. Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time, publish to the world that General Washington’s favorite colored body-servant has died again.

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The Melodeon as a Religious Motor

Mark Twain

Harpers/March, 1878

There is no doubt that the hand organ, badly played, is a means of grace, if its discipline be properly applied. But its influence is very different from that of the cabinet organ, as the full-grown melodeon is now called. This latter is strictly a means of evangelization. It is only manufactured for moral purposes; and if any secular person thinks he can buy one for his lager-beer saloon, let him try it. These organs are sold only to persons who can bring a certificate of good moral character and of church membership.

The melodeon is  good for nothing to dance by, except among the Shakers and in those strictly church sociables held in the sociable end of the church. It is not used at all for the German, except in Boston, a place where very little reverence is left. There is something in its pathetic drone that takes the life out of the waltz and dismembers the polka redowa, In the soirees dansantes of the metropolis its voice is  almost never heard. There is an impression, current especially in the rural districts, that the melodeon is a hilarious, convivial instrument, calculated to make youth giddy and old age frivolous. This is not so, and the notion cannot he too promptly met. The melodeon was built on purpose to promote moral and religious tendencies in the minds of the young, and it is sold only for that use. Any other use of it is an infringement of the patent.

It is one of the wildest notions of this slanderous age (one that we presume was started in circulation by the piano judges at the Centennial) that the melodeon is a source of depravity to youth, and that if you shut a young person in a room where the melodeon is persistently played, he will become exhilarated and profane. Nothing is further from the truth. The melodeon never excites anything except devotional emotions; no other instrument so inspires them, not even the big organ or the harp. We do not go so far as to say that, let us make the melodeons of a people, and we do not care who makes their morals, but we do say that a people brought up on the melodeon will not care much for the accordion or any other sinful instrument like that.

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The Woes of a Holy Man

H.L. Mencken

Dothan Eagle/June 28, 1929

I

All the pother about Monsignor James Cannon, Jr.’s, unfortunate venture into an outhouse of Wall Street seems to be founded upon a misunderstanding of Methodist canon law. It will be admitted by everyone, I take it, that playing the board, even when a sworn ambassador of Christ is the performer, is not prohibited by the ordinary or civil law. A bishop obviously has the same civil rights as any other man, and any other man, under what remains of American freedom, is free to buy and sell stocks as he pleases. That privilege, as we all know, is one of the many thousands Americans have sought and enjoyed during the past few years, and included among them, I have no doubt, have been multitudes who now hold His Grace up to contumely, and hint broadly that he ought to be deconsecrated and unfrocked.

What lies under this demand, when simple dislike of the man is not responsible for it, is apparently a feeling that a bishop is bound by tighter bonds than other men—in other words that he must not only obey the ordinary law with great scrupulosity, but also the canon law of his church, which is assumed to be far more rigorous. The doctrine here is sound, but there is a false assumption in the application of it. That is the assumption that the canon law of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, prohibits trading in the market. It prohibits nothing of the sort. On the contrary, a fair examination of it indicates that it actually encourages such trading, provided only that the successful speculator devotes a reasonable part of his gains to the uses of the church. 

Nowhere in the Book of Discipline of the Southern Methodists, the official lawbook of the denomination, is there any prohibition, either direct or indirect, of gambling. The Northern Methodists, to be sure, are forbidden to indulge in “such games of chance as are frequently associated with gambling,” but that is as far as it goes—and Northern Methodists are by no means to be confused with their Confederate brethren. The two churches are quite distinct, and their Books of Discipline differ radically. Many prohibitions in the Northern book are conspicuously missing in the Southern book. One is the prohibition of “buying or selling slaves.” Another is the prohibition of tobacco. Yet another is the prohibition of frequenting “misleading” movie shows, whatever that may mean. And a fourth is the prohibition of gambling.

II

The Southern Methodist discipline, in fact, is very much less harsh and rigorous than that of the Northern Wesleyans, and even on the awful subject of wine-bibbing it shows a relatively mild and civilized spirit. The Northern Methodists, for example (General Rule, 30), are forbidden to resort to “drunkenness, buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them” save in cases of “extreme necessity,” whereas the Southern faithful are quite free to get drunk in cases of plain necessity, without any qualifications of extremity. Moreover, the Southern discipline lets it go at that, whereas the Northern discipline goes on to ban “all intoxicants,” whether spirituous or not, and adds “cigarettes and tobacco in all other forms” for good measure.

In the Northern church a candidate for holy orders, before he may be licensed to preach, must answer two questions satisfactorily, to wit: “Will you wholly abstain from the use of tobacco?” and “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in the work of the ministry?” In the Southern church the first question is omitted (Ministers and Church Officers, VI, 168). As a makeweight certain others are added, for example: “Are you going on to perfection?” “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” and “Are you groaning after it?” Bishop Cannon, when he was ordained, said yes to all of these questions, but he did not promise to avoid the use of tobacco, and so he is perfectly free to smoke it or chew it today (as many of his brethren of the cloth do), just as he is perfectly free to buy or sell slaves, to go to “misleading” movies, to keep a jug in his house against a possible necessity, and to play the bucket shops until he either goes broke or is rich enough to have himself made an archbishop.

To deny him these diversions upon canonical grounds is absurd. He must, of course, avoid those that are forbidden by the civil law, e.g., trading in slaves, but beyond that he is free to do as he pleases. Even a bishop is yet a man, and even a Methodist may amuse himself within the law. I see no evidence that Monsignor Cannon has ever stepped so much as an inch outside it.

III

Both branches of Methodism are extremely fond of (and hence respectful to) money, and their clergy are business men quite as much as they are priests. Open any Methodist paper at random, and the chances are at least five to one that you will light upon a call for more funds: such calls, many of them couched in peremptory terms, always greatly outnumber the treatises on the saving of souls. The two churches of the church support immense staffs of collectors, and they are hard at work all the time. For a Methodist to attend divine service without being besought to cough up for this or that great cause would be so surprising that it would probably strike him as almost miraculous. He is taught frankly that getting into Heaven costs money, and that his chances run with his liberality.

This attitude of mind naturally makes the well-heeled Babbitt a powerful personage in the church. He is in many parishes the de facto if not the de jure superior of the pastor, and can turn one pastor out and bring another in as he pleases. This is true, in particular, in the South, where the generality of the faithful are poor, and the prosperity of a given church depends upon the generosity of a few rich individuals. In the cotton-mill towns of the Carolinas two-thirds of the churches are supported by the mill magnates, and the clergy are as much their employees as the slaves in their mills. What this control amounted to was shown during the recent strike down there, when the local Methodist papers, otherwise ever eager to horn into “moral” causes, were magnificently about the exploitation and ill usage of the poor morons at the hands of their pious masters. There was plenty of space for denouncing the brutes hired by the mill-owners to put down the strike.

Thus Methodism is anything but Socialistic. On the contrary, it is all for the capitalistic system, and is perhaps the only church existing today which makes a belief in that system a cardinal article of faith. (Southern Book of Discipline, Sec. III, 30; Northern, Division I, 24.) Getting money, by its code, is not only not sinful; it is positively virtuous. The one thing that is forbidden is laying it up. It must be “systematically administered for the kingdom of God,” i.e., for the high uses and occasions of the rev. clergy. Well, Dr. Cannon is himself a clergyman.

IV

There is nothing in either Discipline, or in any other canonical text that I am aware of, which indicates that getting money by speculation is held to be less moral than getting it in any other way. If it were, then some of the most eminent Methodist laymen in the South would be lying under danger of excommunication. I avoid embarrassing the living by pointing to one now safe in Heaven: the late Asa G. Candler, inventor of Coca-Cola. The Hon. Mr. Candler, while he lived, was unquestionably the most eminent Methodist south of the Potomac. The church got millions out of him, and showed its appreciation by making his younger brother a bishop. Was his money all made by simple trading? Hardly. A good deal of it also came out of a speculative rise in the stocks he was interested in, and in the fruits of that rise many another Southern Methodist shared.

I can recall no objection to this being business. On the contrary, Dr. Candler was anointed so lavishly in all the Methodist papers that he ran goose-grease almost like the Hon. Buck Drake, of Durham, N. C., another consecrated man who was lucky in the market, and did not forget the pastors when the money rolled in. Buck made his basic millions out of cigarettes—a fact that explain the absence of a prohibition of them in the Southern Book of Discipline—but he increased his load enormously in Wall Street. When he died he left $60,000,000 to a Methodist “university” at Durham, set up to counteract Darwinian wickedness at the State University at Chapel Hill, and more millions to a fund for underpaid Methodist preachers. He is a saint in Heaven today, though while he lived was a gambler and a wine-bibber. To denounce him at any Methodist camp meeting in the South would be as gross an indecorum as to denounce St. Patrick at an oyster roast of the Knights of Columbus.

For all these reasons—and I could adduce many more—I incline to think that Monsignor Cannon is being badly used. God knows, I am not one of his partisans, but even a bishop deserves justice. To hint that his venture into high-pressure go-getting disqualifies him to bind and loose by the Wesleyan rite is as absurd as to argue that he would be disqualified if he were caught pulling the cat’s tail, lifting jam from the pantry, or telling a lie. Methodist bishops are not so easily busted. So long as they avoid necking, morphine and going to mass they are safe. Even murder is within their prerogative—that is, provided they merely applaud it, and do not undertake it personally.

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On Religious Liberty

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/July 6, 1931

The method of choosing grand juries in Baltimore, it appears, is as follows: When the time comes ’round each of the eleven judges of the Supreme Bench nominates two freemen of the town, along with one, two or three alternates, all of them men of discreet years, chosen for their notorious wisdom and rectitude. The names are canvassed by the whole bench, and if the two nominees of a given judge turn out to be eligible they are appointed forthwith. If not, resort is had to his alternates, or to the alternates of another judge. Thus twenty-two jurors are selected, leaving one more to make the legal twenty-three. This one more, in practice, is always a colored man of high tone, and finding him is delegated to that judge or those judges who happen to be Republicans. In this way the jury is completed.

Some time ago I received a note from one of the judges, a man who has known me for twenty-five years, saying that he was putting me down as one of his nominees. This proof of judicial confidence, I confess, flattered me, and I returned thanks at once. But at the same time my conscience, always delicate, induced me to suggest that I was probably ineligible. Here Is the substance of my letter:

Unless I misunderstand Article 36 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, a grand juror must believe in what is commonly called the moral order of the world. That is, he must believe that there exists an eternal moral law, ascertainable mainly by revelation, and that any person who violates it will be punished inevitably, either in this world or the next. Inasmuch as I have doubts about this moral law, do not believe that violations of it, if it exists, are punished inevitably on this earth, and remain, at the most, of an open mind about a future life, I think I probably fall outside the specification . . . . In fact, so long as the Declaration of Rights remains as it is I seem to be unable to take any hand in any legal process in Maryland, either as witness or as juror.

I requested that this letter be laid before the Supreme Bench. What notion was taken upon it, if any, I do not know, for the learned judges carry on their deliberations in camera, but I observed that when the list of grand jurors was published my name was not on it. Inasmuch as I am unaware of any other ground for my disqualification, I can only conclude that I was disqualified, as I had myself suggested, on a ground purely theological.

II

No doubt it will surprise many Marylanders to hear that a religious test still exists in the Free State, and, what is worse, that it is actually a part of the Declaration of Rights, the very charter of our freedom. Yet I see no way to view the following passage in Article 36 as anything else:

. . . nor shall any person, otherwise competent, be deemed incompetent as a witness or juror on account of his religious belief provided he believes in the existence of God, and that, under His dispensation, such person will be held morally accountable for his acts, and be rewarded or punished therefor, either in this world or the world to come.

Plainly enough, this provision sets up a double test. In the first place every witness or juror must believe in the existence of God, which bars out all atheists at once, and all agnostics with them. And in the second place, he must believe that divine justice takes precedence of divine grace and mercy, which bars out all Moslems, and great numbers of Christians. It Is not sufficient for him to believe that the wicked may be punished post mortem: he must believe unqualifiedly that they will be punished. If he finds himself unable to believe it, then he cannot sit on any jury in the State of Maryland, or give evidence in any court of law or equity.

That this view of Article 36 is sound is proved by all the pertinent Maryland decisions. In Clare vs. the Slate (39 Md., 164), Stewart J., speaking for the Court of Appeals, held that a man be put on trial for his life only on the indictment of boni et legales homines, good and lawful men, and in The State v. Mercer (101 Md. 535) Schmucker, J., also speaking for the court, held that no disbeliever in “the existence of God and His dispensation of rewards and punishments” could be such a good and lawful man. And in Arnd vs. Amling (53 Md., 192) the court held that no disbeliever could qualify as a witness.

The decisions are quite dear and exactly to the point. They meet it squarely and state the law unequivocably. They are binding upon every judge in Maryland, and have been cited lately, and with approbation, by Owens, J., in Baltimore and by one of the judges in the counties. If any man stands indicted in the State today by a grand jury which included one unbeliever, then his indictment Is null and void. If any man has been convicted by a petit jury which included one, then his conviction is without force or effect. And if there was one unbeliever among the material witnesses against him, then he is still as good as innocent.

III

It will be observed that the definition of an unbeliever set up by Article 36 is very sweeping. The two halves of the test are not joined by or but by and. It Is thus not sufficient to believe “in the existence of God”; it is also necessary to believe that he maintains a complete judicial system for the detection and punishment of sinners, and that any man who escapes it in this world is bound to be laid by the heels In the next. In brief, believing in Hell is quite as essential as believing in God. The precise nature of Hell, of course, is not defined, but there is the thing itself as plain as day. Take it away, and the whole test falls to pieces.

The late Mr. Chief Justice Taft, if he had ever come into Maryland to testify in a lawsuit, might have been challenged and disqualified, for he was a Unitarian, and thus did not believe in Hell; in fact, his disbelief was used against him, especially in the Bible Belt, in the campaigns of 1908 and 1912. Nor is the disqualification of President Hoover at all certain, for he is a Quaker, and if the Quakers believe in Hell then they have surely managed to keep the fact a secret. I refrain, in delicacy, from pointing to any of our own great officers of state. The oath of office prescribed by Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution Includes no religious test, and so they are probably safe in their jobs despite a contradiction (and apparently unconstitutional) provision in the code of 1924. But suppose some of them that I could name were summoned to court as witnesses?

What would happen to most of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins is plain enough: they would be disqualified at once. I know a large number of these learned men, some of them with considerable intimacy, but I can recall none save Dr. Howard A. Kelly who has ever expressed any active and eager belief in Hell. Many of them, it may be, believe in God, but, as I have just shown, belief in God is not enough; it is also necessary to believe that God invariably rewards virtue and as invariably punishes sin. If it be admitted for an instant that any conceivable sinner may escape, then the test becomes mere vanity and nonsense, signifying nothing.

IV

Mr. B.H. Hartogensis, a learned member of the Baltimore bar, has been carrying on a campaign against religious tests, in Maryland and elsewhere, for many years, but his chief attention, naturally enough, has been directed to those which work a hardship on his own people, the Jews. Article 36, so far as I can make out, does not disqualify Jews—that is, if they be orthodox—for they unquestionably believe in the same God that Christians believe in, and they do not categorically deny the existence of Hell. But, it certainly works a dreadful slaughter of many other persons, including not a few of the highest eminence in these parts.

What is to be done about it I don’t know. At several times in the past skeptical legislators from the city have made efforts at Annapolis to submit Article 36 to the voters of the Stale for repeal, but always their resolutions have been killed by the pious county members. There is some question, indeed, whether a referendum would suffice to repeal the article, for it is not in the Constitution proper, but in the Declaration of Rights, and it may be that the Declaration of Rights cannot be molested save by a constitutional convention. We were to have one, but it was shelved at the last session. And even if it had been held, Article 36 might have survived.

In Alabama a somewhat similar test was lately got rid of by judicial interpretation. First the judges of the Court of Appeals decided that the dying declaration of an unbeliever could not be accepted in evidence, and then they granted a rehearing and decided exactly the other way (Haura Wright vs. the State). Perhaps, if a case under Article 36 were taken to our own Court of Appeals it might be induced to repudiate Its judgment in The State vs. Mercer. But that seems unlikely, for The State vs. Mercer was heard as recently as 1905, and Maryland Judges seldom change their minds so quickly. The only way out, I suppose, is to keep on agitating, as Mr. Hartogensis has been agitating for years. When complete religious freedom is established in Maryland at last he will deserve an equestrian statue 100 feet high.

Meanwhile, it should be pleasant for many Baltimoreans to discover that they can escape jury service without expense of becoming an honorary member of the Fifth Regiment or the nuisance of committing a felony or studying for the bar. Let those who are so inclined simply say that they do not believe in Hell, and the Judge on the bench will have to excuse them. If they ever get to Hell they will undoubtedly regret their denial sorely, but while they remain on this earth it will ease and gratify them no end.

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