Someone asked off-list if "The Case of Rev. Dr. Ament, Missionary,"
was the letter Mark Twain published in the New York Tribune on
February 15, 1901. It isn't. I don't have a copy of the manuscript of "The
Case of Rev. Dr. Ament, Missionary," and quoted it only very briefly in
the introduction to "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" in Mark Twain's
Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American
War. That book was published in 1992 so my memory of the whole
manuscript is very sketchy at this point. The quote (or paraphrasing),
though, goes like this:

"In 'The Case of Rev. Dr. Ament, Missionary,' an unpublished article
written in February 1901, he stated that there was 'no difference'
between the missionary's assessment of fines thirteen times the value of
property damaged by the Boxers and McKinley's goal of Benevolent
Assimilation of the Philippines."

The citation listed the article as "The Case of Rev. Dr. Ament,
Missionary," manuscript, Mark Twain Papers. Since then, a microfilm
edition of Mark Twain's manuscripts has been published. See the
bottom of the page at:

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/MTP/publications.html

The letter to the New York Tribune was published in response to a letter
by Rev. Judson Smith of the American Board of Foreign Missions. The
two letters were published under the headline "Mark Twain Says Not I"
with a subheading of "Mark Twain's Answer" for his part. Twain says in
the letter that if necessary he will respond at length in the North
American Review. I think "The Case of Rev. Dr. Ament, Missionary,"
was the first version of that longer response intended for publication in
the North American Review. It referred to the "thirteen times" extra
indemnity so his response had to be revised or rewritten after Ament
said the indemnity was only "one-third" extra. "To My Missioanry Critics,"
published in the April North American Review, includes a long
discussion discounting the difference between the two amounts. Neither
the letter to the Tribune nor "To My Missionary Critics" contains a direct
statement connecting missionary activities in China and the conquest of
the Philippines like what he made in "The Case of Rev. Dr. Ament,
Missionary."

The New York Sun (the source of Twain's quotes about Ament) and
New York Tribune for this period are available online at the Library of
Congress's newspaper collection at:

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/

The New York Tribune seems to be available either as a partial run or is
not indexed properly, but "Mark Twain Says Not I" is available at:

http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/lccn/sn83030214/1901-02-15/ed-
1/seq-3

That and other newspaper collections are also useful for gauging the
influence of Twain's writings on the subject. In some of the newspaper
reports of the return from China of Minister Conger, Ament, and other
missionaries, their photos were accompanied by photos of Mark Twain,
or there would be accompanying headlines about Twain's criticism of the
missionaries. Those writings had "legs" and were kept before the public
throughout the year.

Jim Zwick
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