[[Image:ACW Western Overview.png|thumb|400px|Western Theater Overview (1861–1865) ]] This article presents an overview of major military and naval operations in the Western Theater of the American Civil War.

Theater of operations

The Western Theater was an area defined by both geography and the sequence of campaigning. It originally represented the area east of the Mississippi River and west of the Appalachian Mountains. It excluded operations against the Gulf Coast and the Eastern Seaboard, but as the war progressed and William Tecumseh Sherman's Union armies moved southeast from Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1864 and 1865, the definition of the theater expanded to encompass their operations in Georgia and the Carolinas. For operations in the Southwest see Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War.

The West was by some measures the most important theater of the war. The Confederacy was forced to defend with limited resources an enormous land mass, which was subject to Union thrusts along multiple avenues of approach, including major rivers that led directly to the agricultural heartland of the South. Capture of the Mississippi River was one of the key tenets of Union General Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plan.

The Eastern Theater received considerably more attention than the Western, both at the time and in subsequent historical accounts. This is due to a number of factors, including the proximity of the opposing capitals, the concentration of newspapers in the major cities of the East, several unanticipated Confederate victories, and the fame of Eastern generals such as Robert E. Lee, George B. McClellan, and Stonewall Jackson. Because of this, the progress that Union forces made in defeating Confederate armies in the West and overtaking Confederate territory went nearly unnoticed.

Military historian J. F. C. Fuller has described the Union invasion as an immense turning movement, a left wheel that started in Kentucky, headed south down the Mississippi River, and then east through Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. With the exception of the Battle of Chickamauga and some daring raids by cavalry or guerrilla forces, the four years in the West marked a string of almost continuous defeats for the Confederates; or, at best, tactical draws that eventually turned out to be strategic reversals. And the arguably most successful Union generals of the war (Grant, Thomas, Sherman, and Sheridan) came from this theater, consistently outclassing most of their Confederate opponents (with the possible exception of cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest).

The campaign classification established by the United States National Park Service is more fine-grained than the one used in this article. Some minor NPS campaigns have been omitted and some have been combined into larger categories. Only a few of the 117 battles the NPS classifies for this theater are described. Boxed text in the right margin show the NPS campaigns associated with each section.

Principal commanders of the Western Theater

Early operations (June 1861 – January 1862)

The focus early in the war was on two critical states: Missouri and Kentucky. The loss of either would have been a crippling blow to the Union cause. Primarily because of the successes of Captain Nathaniel Lyon and his victory at Boonville in June, Missouri was held in the Union. The state of Kentucky, with a pro-Confederate governor and a pro-Union legislature, had declared neutrality between the opposing sides. This neutrality was first violated on September 3, when Confederate Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk occupied Columbus, considered key to controlling the Lower Mississippi, and two days later Union Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, displaying the personal initiative that would characterize his later career, seized Paducah. Henceforth, neither adversary respected the proclaimed neutrality of the state. This sequence of events is considered a victory for the Union because Kentucky never formally sided with the Confederacy, and if the Union had been prevented from maneuvering within Kentucky, its later successful campaigns in Tennessee would have been more difficult.

{| class="infobox" style="width:315px; border-spacing:2px; text-align:center; |- style="background:lightsteelblue;" ! Western Theater Campaigns designated by the National Park Service |}

On the Confederate side, General Albert Sidney Johnston commanded all forces from Arkansas to the Cumberland Gap. He was faced with the problem of defending a broad front with numerically inferior forces, but he had an excellent system of lateral communications, permitting him to move troops rapidly where they were needed, and he had two able subordinates, Polk and Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee. Johnston also gained political support from secessionists in central and western counties of Kentucky via a new Confederate capital at Bowling Green, set up by the Russellville Convention. The alternative government was recognized by the Confederate government, which admitted Kentucky into the Confederacy in December 1861. Using the rail system resources of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, Polk was able to quickly fortify and equip the Confederate base at Columbus.

The Union military command in the West, however, suffered from a lack of unified command, organized by November into three separate departments: the Department of Kansas, under Maj. Gen. David Hunter, the Department of Missouri, under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, and the Department of the Ohio, under Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell (who had replaced Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman). By January 1862, this disunity of command was apparent because no strategy for operations in the Western theater could be agreed upon. Buell, under political pressure to invade and hold pro-Union East Tennessee, moved slowly in the direction of Nashville, but achieved nothing more substantial toward his goal than a minor victory at Mill Springs under Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas. (Mill Springs was a significant victory in a strategic sense because it broke the end of the Confederate Western defensive line and opened the Cumberland Gap to East Tennessee, but it got Buell no closer to Nashville.) In Halleck's department, Grant demonstrated up the Tennessee River to divert attention from Buell's intended advance, which did not occur. On February 1, 1862, after repeated requests by Grant, Halleck authorized Grant to move against Fort Henry on the Tennessee.

Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi Rivers (February–June 1862)

Grant moved swiftly, starting his troops down the Tennessee River toward Fort Henry on river transports on February 2. His operations in the campaign were well coordinated with United States Navy Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote. The fort was poorly situated on a floodplain and virtually indefensible against gunboats, with many of its guns under water. Because of the previous neutrality of Kentucky, the Confederates could not build river defenses at a more strategic location inside the state, so they settled for a site just inside the border of Tennessee. Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman withdrew almost all of his garrison on February 5, moving them across country 11 miles (18 km) to the east to Fort Donelson. The Tennessee River was then open for future Union operations into the South.

Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River, was more defensible than Henry, and Navy assaults on the fort were ineffective. Grant's army marched cross-country in pursuit of Tilghman and attempted immediate assaults on the fort from the rear, but they were unsuccessful. On February 15, the Confederate forces under Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd attempted to escape and launched a surprise assault against the Union right flank (commanded by Brig. Gen. John A. McClernand), driving McClernand's division back but not creating the opening they needed to slip away. Grant recovered from this temporary reversal and assaulted the weakened Confederate right. Trapped in the fort and the town of Dover, Tennessee, Confederate Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner surrendered his command of 11,500 men and many needed guns and supplies to Grant's demand for "unconditional surrender". The combined victories at Henry and Donelson were the first significant Union victories in the war, and two major rivers became available for invasions into Tennessee.

Johnston's forward defense was broken. As Grant had anticipated, Polk's position at Columbus was untenable, and he withdrew soon after Donelson fell. Grant had also cut the Memphis and Ohio Railroad that previously had allowed Confederate forces to move laterally in support of each other. General P.G.T. Beauregard had arrived from the East to report to Johnston in February, and he commanded all Confederate forces between the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers, which effectively divided the unity of command so that Johnston controlled only a small force at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Beauregard planned to concentrate his forces in the vicinity of Corinth, Mississippi, and prepare for an offensive. Johnston moved his force to concentrate with Beauregard's by late March.

The preparations for the Union campaign did not proceed smoothly, and Halleck seemed more concerned with his standing in relation to General-in-Chief George B. McClellan than he did with understanding the Confederate Army was divided and could be defeated in detail. Further, he could not agree with his peer, Buell, now in Nashville, on a joint course of action. He sent Grant up the Tennessee River while Buell remained in Nashville. On March 11, President Lincoln appointed Halleck the commander of all forces from the Missouri River to Knoxville, Tennessee, thus achieving the needed unity of command, and Halleck ordered Buell to join Grant's forces at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.

On April 6, the combined Confederate forces under Beauregard and Johnston surprised Grant's unprepared Army of West Tennessee with a massive dawn assault at Pittsburg Landing in the Battle of Shiloh. In the first day of the battle, the Confederate onslaught drove Grant back against the Tennessee but could not defeat him. Johnston died that day; he was considered by Jefferson Davis to be the most effective general in the Confederacy at that time. On the second day, April 7, Grant received reinforcements from Buell and launched a counterattack that drove back the Confederates. Grant failed to pursue the retreating enemy and received enormous criticism for this and for the great loss of life—more casualties (almost 24,000) than all previous American battles combined.

Union control of the Mississippi River began to tighten. On April 7, while the Confederates were retreating from Shiloh, Union Maj. Gen. John Pope defeated Beauregard's isolated force at Island Number 10, opening the river almost as far south as Memphis. On May 18, Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans, the South's most significant seaport. Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler occupied the city with a strong military government that caused considerable resentment among the civilian population.

Although Beauregard had little concentrated strength available to oppose a southward movement by Halleck, the Union general showed insufficient drive to take advantage of the situation. He waited until he assembled a large army, combining the forces of Buell's Army of the Ohio, Grant's Army of West Tennessee, and Pope's Army of the Mississippi, to converge at Pittsburg Landing. He moved slowly in the direction of the critical rail junction at Corinth, taking four weeks to cover the twenty miles (32 km) from Shiloh, stopping nightly to entrench. The slowness of this movement has led this campaign to be nicknamed the Siege of Corinth. When he finally reached the fortified city, his opponent, Beauregard, decided not to make a costly defensive stand and withdrew without hostilities on May 29.

Grant did not command directly in the Corinth campaign. Halleck had reorganized his army, giving Grant the powerless position of second-in-command and shuffling divisions from the three armies into three "wings". When Halleck moved east to replace McClellan as general-in-chief, Grant resumed his field command. But before he left, Halleck squandered any opportunity to pursue and destroy Beauregard. He sent Buell to Chattanooga, Sherman to Memphis, one division to Arkansas, and Pope was ordered to hold a covering position south of Corinth.

Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Mississippi (June 1862–January 1863)

While Halleck accomplished little following Corinth, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg succeeded Beauregard (on June 27, for health reasons) in command of his 56,000 troops of the Army of Tennessee, in Tupelo, Mississippi, due south of Corinth. But he determined that an advance directly north from Tupelo was not practical. He left Maj. Gens. Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn to distract Grant and shifted 35,000 men by rail through Mobile, Alabama, to Chattanooga. Even though he did not leave Tupelo until July 21, he was able to reach Chattanooga before Buell could. Bragg's general plan was to invade Kentucky in a joint operation with Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, cut Buell's lines of communications, defeat him, and then turn back to defeat Grant.

Kirby Smith left Knoxville on August 14, forced the Union to evacuate Cumberland Gap, defeated a small Union force at the Battle of Richmond (Kentucky), and reached Lexington on August 30. Bragg departed Chattanooga just before Smith reached Lexington, while Buell moved north from Nashville to Bowling Green. But Bragg moved quickly and by September 14 had interposed his army on Buell's supply lines from Louisville. Bragg was reluctant to develop this situation because he was outnumbered by Buell; if he had been able to combine with Kirby Smith, he would have been numerically equal, but Smith's command was separate, and Smith believed that Bragg could capture Louisville without his assistance.

Buell, under pressure from the government to take aggressive action, was almost relieved of duty (only the personal reluctance of George H. Thomas to assume command from his superior at the start of a campaign prevented it). As he approached Perryville, Kentucky, he began to concentrate his army in the face of Confederate forces there. Bragg was not initially present with his army, having decided to attend the inauguration ceremony of a Confederate governor of Kentucky in Frankfort. On October 8, fighting began at Perryville over possession of water sources, and as the fighting escalated, Bragg's Army of Mississippi achieved some tactical success in an assault against a single corps of Buell's Army of the Ohio. That evening Bragg realized that he was facing Buell's entire army and ordered a retreat to Harrodsburg, where he was joined by Kirby Smith's Army of Kentucky on October 10. Despite having a strong combined force, Bragg made no attempt to regain the initiative. Buell was equally passive. Bragg retreated through the Cumberland Gap and returned to Murfreesboro by way of Chattanooga.

While Buell was facing Bragg's threat in Kentucky, Confederate operations in northern Mississippi were aimed at preventing Buell's reinforcement by Grant, who was preparing for his upcoming Vicksburg campaign. Halleck had departed for Washington, and Grant was left without interference as commander of the District of West Tennessee. On September 14, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price moved his Confederate Army of the West to Iuka, 20 miles (32 km) east of Corinth. He intended to link up with Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn's Army of the West and operate against Grant. But Grant sent forces under Maj. Gens. William S. Rosecrans and Edward Ord to attack Price and Van Dorn at Iuka. Rosecrans won a minor victory at the Battle of Iuka (September 19), but poor coordination of forces allowed Price to escape from the intended Union double envelopment.

Price and Van Dorn decided to attack the concentration of Union troops at Corinth and then advance into West or Middle Tennessee. In the second Battle of Corinth (October 3–4), they attacked the fortified Union troops but were repulsed with serious losses. Retreating to the northwest, they escaped pursuit by Rosecrans's exhausted army, but their objectives of threatening Middle Tennessee and supporting Bragg were foiled.

As winter set in, the Union government replaced Buell with Rosecrans. After a period of resupplying and training his army in Nashville, Rosecrans moved against Bragg at Murfreesboro just after Christmas. In the Battle of Stones River, Bragg surprised Rosecrans with a powerful assault on December 31, pushing the Union forces back to a small perimeter against the Tennessee River. But on January 2, 1863, further attempts to assault Rosecrans were beaten back decisively and Bragg withdrew his army southeast to Tullahoma. In proportion to the size of the armies, the casualties at Stones River (about 12,000 on each side) made it the bloodiest battle of the war. At the end of the campaign, Bragg's threat against Kentucky been defeated, and he effectively yielded control of Middle Tennessee.

Vicksburg Campaigns (December 1862 – July 1863)

Abraham Lincoln believed that the river fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a key to winning the war. Vicksburg and Port Hudson were the last remaining strongholds that prevented full Union control of the Mississippi River. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a sharp bend in the river and called the "Gibraltar of the Mississippi", Vicksburg was nearly invulnerable to naval assault. Admiral David Farragut had found this directly in his failed operations of May 1862.

The overall plan to capture Vicksburg was for Ulysses S. Grant to move south from Memphis and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks to move north from Baton Rouge. Banks's advance was slow to develop and bogged down at Port Hudson, offering little assistance to Grant.

First campaign

Grant's first campaign was a two-pronged movement. William T. Sherman sailed down the Mississippi River with 32,000 men while Grant was to move in parallel through Mississippi by railroad with 40,000. Grant advanced 80 miles (130 km), but his supply lines were cut by Confederate cavalry under Earl Van Dorn at Holly Springs, forcing him to fall back. Sherman reached the Yazoo River just north of the city of Vicksburg, but without support from Grant's half of the mission, he was repulsed in bloody assaults against Chickasaw Bayou in late December.

Political considerations then intruded. Illinois politician and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand obtained permission from Lincoln to recruit an army in southern Illinois and command it on a river-born expedition aimed at Vicksburg. He was able to get Sherman's corps assigned to him, but it departed Memphis before McClernand could arrive. When Sherman returned from the Yazoo, McClernand asserted control. He inexplicably detoured from his primary objective by capturing Arkansas Post on the Arkansas River, but before he could resume his main advance, Grant had reasserted control, and McClernand became a corps commander in Grant's army. For the rest of the winter, Grant attempted five separate projects to reach the city by moving through or reengineering, rivers, canals, and bayous to the north of Vicksburg. All five were unsuccessful; Grant explained afterward that he had expected these setbacks and was simply attempting to keep his army busy and motivated, but many historians believe he really hoped that some would succeed and that they were too ambitious.

Second campaign

The second campaign, beginning in the spring of 1863, was successful and is considered Grant's greatest achievement of the war (and a classic campaign of military history). He knew that he could not attack through Mississippi from the northwest because of the vulnerability of his supply line; river-born approaches had failed repeatedly. So after movement became possible on dirt roads that were finally drying from the winter rains, Grant moved the bulk of his army down the western bank of the Mississippi. On April 16, U.S. Navy gunboats and troop transports managed at great risk to slip past the Vicksburg defensive guns and were able to ferry Grant's army across the river to land south of Vicksburg at Bruinsburg. Grant employed two strategic diversions to mask his intentions: a feint by Sherman north of Vicksburg and a daring cavalry raid through central Mississippi by Colonel Benjamin Grierson, known as Grierson's Raid. The former was inconclusive, but the latter was a success. Grierson was able to draw out significant Confederate forces, dispersing them around the state.

Grant faced two Confederate armies in his campaign: the Vicksburg garrison, commanded by Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton, and forces in Jackson, commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, the overall theater commander. Rather than simply heading directly north to the city, Grant chose to cut the line of communications (and reinforcement) between the two Confederate armies. His army headed swiftly northeast toward Jackson. Meanwhile, Grant brought with him a limited supply line. The conventional history of the campaign indicates that he cut loose from all of his supplies, perplexing Pemberton, who attempted to interdict his nonexistent lines at Raymond on May 12. In reality, Grant relied on the local economy to provide him only foodstuffs for men and animals, but there was a constant stream of wagons carrying ammunition, coffee, hardtack, salt, and other supplies for his army.

Sherman's corps captured Jackson on May 14. The entire army then turned west to confront Pemberton in front of Vicksburg. The decisive battle was at Champion Hill, the effective last stand for Pemberton before he withdrew into his entrenchments around the city. Grant's army assaulted the Confederate works twice at great cost at the start of the Siege of Vicksburg but then settled in for a lengthy siege.

The soldiers and civilians in Vicksburg suffered greatly from Union bombardment and impending starvation. They clung to hope that General Johnston would arrive with reinforcements, but Johnston was both cut off and too cautious. On July 4, Pemberton surrendered his army and the city to Grant. In conjunction with the defeat of Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg the previous day, Vicksburg is widely considered one of the turning points of the war. By July 8, after Banks captured Port Hudson, the entire Mississippi River was in Union hands, and the Confederacy was split in two.

Tullahoma, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga (June–December 1863)

After his victory at Stones River, Rosecrans occupied Murfreesboro for almost six months while Bragg rested in Tullahoma, establishing a long defensive line that was intended to block Union advances against the strategic city of Chattanooga in his rear. In April, Union cavalry under Col. Abel Streight moved against the railroad that supplied Bragg's army in Middle Tennessee, hoping it would cause them to withdraw to Georgia. Streight's brigade raided through Mississippi and Alabama, fighting against Nathan Bedford Forrest. Streight's Raid ended when his exhausted men surrendered near Rome, Georgia, on May 3. In June, Rosecrans finally advanced against Bragg in a brilliant, almost bloodless, campaign of maneuver, the Tullahoma Campaign, and drove Bragg from Middle Tennessee.

During this period, Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan and his 2,460 Confederate cavalrymen rode west from Sparta in middle Tennessee on June 11, intending to divert the attention of Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Ohio, which was moving toward Knoxville, from Southern forces in the state. At the start of the Tullahoma Campaign, Morgan moved northward. For 46 days as they rode over 1,000 miles (1,600 km), Morgan’s cavalrymen terrorized a region from Tennessee to northern Ohio, destroying bridges, railroads, and government stores before being captured; in November they made a daring escape from the Ohio Penitentiary, at Columbus, Ohio, and returned to the South.

After delaying for several weeks in Tullahoma, Rosecrans planned to flush Bragg out of Chattanooga by crossing the Tennessee River, heading south, and interdicting the Confederate supply lines from Georgia. He began operations on August 18 and used a two-week bombardment of Chattanooga as a diversion. The Confederate high command reinforced Bragg with a division from Mississippi and a corps (Longstreet's) from Virginia. Rosecrans pursued Bragg into the rugged mountains of northwestern Georgia, only to find that a trap had been set. Bragg started the Battle of Chickamauga (September 19–20, 1863) when he launched a three-division assault against the corps of George H. Thomas. A command misunderstanding allowed a major gap to appear in the Union line as reinforcements arrived, and Longstreet was able to drive his corps into that gap and send the Union Army into retreat. If not for the defensive stand by a portion of the line led by Thomas ("The Rock of Chickamauga"), the Union Army would have been completely routed. Rosecrans, devastated by his defeat, withdrew his army to Chattanooga, where Bragg besieged it, occupying the high ground dominating the city.

Back in Vicksburg, Grant was resting his army and planning for a campaign that would capture Mobile and push east. But when news of the dire straits of Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland reached Washington, Grant was ordered to rescue them. On October 17, he was given command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, controlling all of the armies in the Western Theater. He replaced Rosecrans with Thomas and traveled to Chattanooga, where he approved a plan to open a new supply line (the "Cracker Line"), allowing supplies and reinforcements to reach the city. Soon the troops were joined by 40,000 more, under Sherman and Joseph Hooker. While the Union army expanded, the Confederate army contracted; Bragg dispatched Longstreet's corps to Knoxville to hold off an advance by Burnside.

The Battles for Chattanooga began in earnest on November 24, 1863, as Hooker took Lookout Mountain, which is one of two dominant peaks over the city. The next day, Grant planned a double envelopment of Bragg's position on the other mountain, Missionary Ridge. Sherman was to attack from the north, Hooker from the south, and Thomas was to hold the center. But Sherman's attack bogged down in confusion, and Grant ordered Thomas to launch a minor attack as a diversion to relieve pressure on Sherman. Thomas's troops, caught up in enthusiasm and anxious to redeem themselves after their humiliation at Chickamauga, continued their initial attack by charging up the imposing ridge, breaking the Confederate line and causing them to retreat. Chattanooga was saved; along with the failure of Longstreet's Knoxville Campaign against Burnside, politically sensitive eastern Tennessee was free of Confederate control. An avenue of invasion pointed directly to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy. Bragg, whose personal friendship with Confederate President Jefferson Davis saved his command following his defeats at Perryville and Stones River, was finally relieved of duty and replaced by General Joseph E. Johnston.

Atlanta Campaign (May–September 1864)

In March 1864, Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and went east to assume command of all the Union armies. Sherman succeeded him in command of the Western Theater. Grant devised a strategy for simultaneous advances across the Confederacy. It was intended to destroy or fix Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia with three major thrusts (under Meade, Butler, and Sigel) launched in the direction of Richmond and in the Shenandoah Valley; capture Mobile with an army under Nathaniel Banks; and destroy Johnston's army while driving toward Atlanta. Most of the initiatives failed: Butler became bogged down in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign; Sigel was quickly defeated in the valley; Banks became occupied in the ill-fated Red River Campaign; Meade and Grant experienced many setbacks and much bloodshed in the Overland Campaign before finally settling down to a siege of Petersburg. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign was more successful.

At the start of the campaign, Sherman's Military Division of the Mississippi consisted of three armies: James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee (Sherman's old army under Grant), John M. Schofield's Army of the Ohio, and George H. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland. Opposing him, the Army of Tennessee was commanded by Joseph E. Johnston. Sherman outnumbered Johnston 98,000 to 50,000, but his ranks were depleted by many furloughed soldiers, and Johnston received 15,000 reinforcements from Alabama.

The campaign opened with several battles in May and June 1864 as Sherman pressed Johnston southeast through mountainous terrain. Sherman prudently avoided frontal assaults against most of Johnston's positions; instead he maneuvered in flanking marches around the defenses. When Sherman flanked the defensive lines (almost exclusively around Johnston's left flank), Johnston would retreat to another prepared position. The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain (June 27) was a notable exception, in which Sherman attempted a frontal assault and suffered significant losses. Both armies took advantage of the railroads as supply lines, with Johnston shortening his supply lines as he drew closer to Atlanta, and Sherman lengthening his own.

Just before the Battle of Peachtree Creek (July 20) in the outskirts of Atlanta, Jefferson Davis lost patience with Johnston's strategy and replaced him with the more aggressive Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood. This turned out to be a strategic error because Hood, after occupying strong defensive works around Atlanta for a few weeks, chose to fight Sherman on open ground, a fight that his smaller army could not win. Sherman eventually cut Hood's supply lines from the south. Knowing that he was trapped, Hood evacuated Atlanta on the night of September 1, burning military supplies and installations, causing a great conflagration in the city.

Coincident with Sherman's triumph in Atlanta, Admiral David Farragut won the decisive naval Battle of Mobile Bay on August 24. The city itself, long a desired target of Grant's, remained untouched until 1865, but the last seaport east of the Mississippi on the Gulf Coast was closed, further tightening the Union blockade. The capture of Atlanta and Mobile Bay together boosted Northern morale and made an enormous contribution to the re-election of Abraham Lincoln.

Franklin-Nashville Campaign (September–December 1864)

While Sherman rested his army in preparation for offensive operations to the east, Hood embarked on a campaign to defeat Sherman by interfering with his lines of communications from Chattanooga. He drove west through Alabama and turned north toward Tennessee, hoping that Sherman would follow him and do battle. This was partially effective because his movements, and raids by Nathan Bedford Forrest, were causing considerable consternation to Sherman. However, the Union general did not fully engage. He sent Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas to Nashville to coordinate a defense against Hood, while taking the remainder of his army in the direction of Savannah, Georgia.

Thomas's forces were divided. Half were with him in Nashville and the other half with John M. Schofield, moving in pursuit from Atlanta. Hood hoped to defeat Schofield before he could concentrate his forces with Thomas. He had the chance at the Battle of Spring Hill in Tennessee (November 29, 1864), but the Union troops were able to slip through the trap. At the Battle of Franklin the following day, Hood launched repeated massive frontal assaults against strong entrenchments and suffered severe casualties. It has been said that he mortally wounded his army at Franklin but killed it at the Battle of Nashville (December 15–16). There, facing the combined force of Schofield and Thomas, he dug in a few miles south of the city and waited. After a two-week preparation period in winter weather, during which he received great pressure from Grant and the Union government to attack, Thomas unleashed an overwhelming assault that sent Hood and his survivors in retreat to Franklin and then to Mississippi, never to recover as a fighting force.

Sherman's March to the Sea (November–December 1864)

Sherman's Savannah Campaign is more popularly known as the March to the Sea. He and Grant believed that the Civil War would end only if the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken. Sherman therefore applied the principles of scorched earth, ordering his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and destroy civilian infrastructure along their path. This policy is one of the key tenets of a strategy of total war.

Sherman's army left Atlanta on November 15, 1864, and was conducted in two columns separated by about 60 miles (100 km), the right under Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard and the left under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum. Between these columns, the destruction was significant and spawned hatred for generations. At Savannah, Sherman encountered about 10,000 defending troops under Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee. Following lengthy artillery bombardments, Hardee abandoned the city and Sherman entered on December 22, 1864. He telegraphed to President Lincoln, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah ...."

Carolinas Campaign (February–March 1865)

After Sherman captured Savannah, he was ordered by Grant to embark his army on ships to reinforce the Union armies in Virginia, where Grant was bogged down in the Siege of Petersburg against Robert E. Lee. Sherman proposed an alternative strategy. He persuaded Grant that he should march north through the Carolinas instead, destroying everything of military value along the way, similar to his march to the sea through Georgia. He was particularly interested in targeting South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union, for the effect it would have on Southern morale.

Sherman's plan was to bypass the minor Confederate troop concentrations at Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, and reach Goldsboro, North Carolina, by March 15, 1865. As with his Georgia operations, he marched his armies in multiple directions simultaneously, confusing the scattered Confederate defenders as to his first true objective, which was the state capital Columbia. He faced the smaller and battered Army of Tennessee, again under the command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston.

On February 17, Columbia surrendered to Sherman. Fires began in the city, and most of the central city was destroyed. The burning of Columbia has engendered controversy ever since, with some claiming the fires were accidental, others a deliberate act of vengeance. On that same day, the Confederates evacuated Charleston. On February 18, Sherman's forces destroyed virtually anything of military value in Columbia. The last significant Confederate seaport, Wilmington, surrendered on February 22.

Johnston's last stand was at the Battle of Bentonville (March 19–21), where he unsuccessfully attempted to defeat a wing of Sherman's army (under Slocum) before it could reach Goldsboro. Sherman pursued Johnston toward Raleigh.

On April 18, three days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Johnston signed an armistice with Sherman at Bennett Place, a farmhouse near Durham Station. Sherman got himself into political trouble by offering terms of surrender to Johnston that encompassed political issues as well as military, without authorization from General Grant or the United States government. The confusion on this issue lasted until April 26, when Johnston agreed to purely military terms and formally surrendered his army and all Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. It was the second significant surrender that month; on April 9, Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House. It was the virtual end for the Confederacy, although some smaller forces held out, particularly in the Trans-Mississippi region, into the summer.

See also

Civil War Museum of the Western Theater

Notes

References

Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-684-84944-5.

Esposito, Vincent J. West Point Atlas of American Wars. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959. . The collection of maps (without explanatory text) is available online at the West Point website.

Fuller, Maj. Gen. J. F. C. The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Da Capo Press, 1929. ISBN 0-306-80450-6.

Hattaway, Herman, and Archer Jones. How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. ISBN 0-252-00918-5.

Kennedy, Frances H., ed. The Civil War Battlefield Guide. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. ISBN 0-395-74012-6.

Woodworth, Steven E. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990. ISBN 0-7006-0461-8.

National Park Service battle descriptions of the Western Theater

Further reading

Bush, Bryan S. The Civil War Battles of the Western Theatre. Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Co., 1998. ISBN 1-56311-434-8.

Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. 2 vols. Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–86. ISBN 0-914427-67-9.

Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman. 2nd ed. New York: Library of America, 1990. ISBN 0-940450-65-8. First published 1889 by D. Appleton & Co.

Welcher, Frank J. The Union Army, 1861–1865 Organization and Operations. Vol. 2, The Western Theater. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-253-36454-X.

Woodworth, Steven E. Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 0-375-41218-2.

External links

National Park Service Civil War at a Glance

Name	Sir Roger Moore
Caption	Roger Moore in 2010.
Birth name	Roger George Moore
Birth date	October 14, 1927
Birth place	Stockwell, London, England
Occupation	Actor/Producer
Years active	1945–present
Spouse	Doorn van Steyn(1946–1953)Dorothy Squires(1953–1968)Luisa Mattioli(1969–1996)Kristina Tholstrup (2002–present)

Sir Roger George Moore, KBE (born 14 October 1927) is an English actor and film producer, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.

Early life

Moore was born in Stockwell, London (sometimes referred to by Moore in interviews as Saint Ockwell). The only child of George Moore, a policeman, and Lillian "Lily" (née Pope), a housewife, he attended Battersea Grammar School, but was evacuated to Holsworthy, Devon during World War II and was then educated at Dr Challoner's Grammar School. He then attended the College of the Venerable Bede at the University of Durham but never graduated. At 18 years old, shortly after the end of the war, Moore was conscripted for National Service. He was commissioned as an officer and eventually became a Captain. Moore served in the Royal Army Service Corps, commanding a small depot in West Germany. He later transferred to the entertainment branch (under luminaries such as Spike Milligan), and immediately prior to his National Service, there was a brief stint at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), during which his fees were paid by film director Brian Desmond Hurst, who also used Moore as an extra in his film Trottie True. Moore was a classmate at RADA with his future Bond colleague Lois Maxwell, the original Miss Moneypenny. The young Moore first appeared in films during the mid to late-1940s, as an extra. Moore's film idol as a child was Stewart Granger. As a 17-year-old, Moore appeared as an extra in the film Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), finally meeting his idol on the set. Moore later worked with Granger in The Wild Geese.

Career

Early work (1946–1959)

In the early 1950s, Moore worked as a male model, appearing in print advertisements for knitwear (earning him the amusing nickname "The Big Knit"), and a wide range of other products such as toothpaste an element that many critics have used as typifying his lightweight credentials as an actor. His earliest known television appearance was on 27 May 1950, in Drawing Room Detective, a one-off programme. Presented by veteran BBC announcer Leslie Mitchell, it invited viewers at home to spot clues to a crime during a playlet, whose actors also included Alec Ross (first husband of Sheila Hancock) and Michael Ripper. Barring interviews, Moore has not worked for BBC television since.

He also worked as a comedian for several years.

Although Moore won a contract with MGM in the 1950s, the films which followed were not a success and, in his own words, "At MGM, RGM (Roger George Moore) was NBG [no bloody good]." His starring role in The Miracle, a version of the play Das Mirakel for Warner Bros., had been turned down by Dirk Bogarde.

Eventually, it was television in which Moore made his name. He was the eponymous hero in the serial Ivanhoe, a very loose adaptation of the romantic novel by Sir Walter Scott, and he also appeared in the series The Alaskans, as well as playing Beau Maverick, an English cousin of frontier gambler Bret Maverick (James Garner) in Maverick.

The Saint (1960–1969)

Worldwide fame arrived after Lew Grade cast Moore as Simon Templar in a new adaptation of The Saint, based on the novels by Leslie Charteris. Moore said in an interview, during 1963, that he wanted to buy the rights of Leslie Charteris's character and the trademarks, but didn't have enough money. He also joked that the role was supposed to have been meant for Sean Connery who was unavailable. The television series was made in the UK with an eye on the American market, and its success there (and in other countries) made Moore a household name - and in spring 1967 he eventually had reached the level of an international top star. It also established his suave, quipping style which he would carry forward to James Bond. Moore would also go on to direct several episodes of the later series, which moved into colour in 1967.

The Saint ran from 1961 for six series and 118 episodes, making it (in a tie with The Avengers) the longest-running series of its kind on British television. However, Moore grew increasingly tired of the role, and was keen to branch out. He made two films immediately after the series had ended: Crossplot, a lightweight 'spy caper' movie, and the more challenging The Man Who Haunted Himself (1971). Directed by Basil Dearden, it gave Moore the opportunity to demonstrate a wider versatility than the role of Simon Templar had allowed, although reviews at the time were lukewarm, and both did little business at the box office. Despite the initial reviews, The Man Who Haunted Himself is now considered a very underrated film, and the role is considered one of Moore's finest performances among his fans.

The Persuaders (1971–1972)

Television lured Moore back to star, alongside Tony Curtis, in what has become another cult series, The Persuaders! It featured the adventures of two millionaire playboys across Europe. It was for this series that Moore was paid the then unheard-of sum of £1 million for a single series, making him the highest paid television actor in the world. However, Lew Grade claimed in his autobiography Still Dancing, that Moore and Curtis "didn't hit it off all that well". Curtis refused to spend more time on set than was strictly necessary, while Moore was always willing to work overtime.

The series failed in America, where it had been pre-sold to ABC, but it was successful in Australia and in Europe. In Germany, where the series was aired under the name Die Zwei, it became a hit through a special funny dubbing that only barely used the original translations of the dialogs. And in Britain it was also popular, although on its premiere on the ITV network, it was beaten in the ratings by repeats of Monty Python's Flying Circus on BBC1. When Channel 4 repeated both The Avengers and The Persuaders! in 1995, it was generally agreed that the latter, which had not been seen for many years, had not aged as well as the former. It has not been seen on any of the five main UK terrestrial channels since.

Since then, The Persuaders! has enjoyed something of a renaissance both on television and DVD, with the 'rivals' Moore and Curtis reuniting to provide commentaries on the most recent issues. In France, where the series (entitled Amicalement Vôtre) had always been popular, the DVD releases accompanied a monthly magazine of the same name.

James Bond (1973–1985)

There are many apocryphal stories as to when Moore's name was first dropped as a possible candidate for the role of James Bond. Some sources, specifically Albert R. Broccoli from his autobiography When The Snow Melts, claim that Moore was considered for Dr. No, and that he was Ian Fleming's favorite for the role after apparently having seen Moore as Simon Templar in The Saint; however, the series did not begin broadcasting in the United Kingdom until 4 October 1962 one day before the premiere of Dr. No, although it's possible that the show began filming before or around the film.

Other sources, such as the commentary for the special edition DVDs, claim that Moore was passed over for Bond in favour of someone who was older. As Moore is older than Sean Connery, this is probably not true. Publicly, Moore was not linked to the role of 007 until 1967, when Harry Saltzman claimed he would make a good Bond, but also displayed misgivings owing to his popularity as Simon Templar. Nevertheless, Moore was finally cast as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973). There was considerable surprise when Moore was unveiled as the new Bond in late 1972, since at 45 he was already five years older than Connery had been during the filming of Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

Roger Moore's twelve years as James Bond earned him enough popularity (and credibility) among fans of detective fiction to earn many Bond fans' acceptance, despite the inevitable comparisons to Connery. Moore played Bond in Live and Let Die (1973); The Man with the Golden Gun (1974); The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); Moonraker (1979); For Your Eyes Only (1981); Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985).

To date, Moore is the longest-serving James Bond actor, having spent twelve years in the role (from his debut in 1973, to his retirement from the role in 1985), and made seven official films. (Connery also made seven, but his last Bond film, Never Say Never Again (1983), was not part of the "official" EON Productions series). He is also the oldest actor to play Bond: he was 45 when he started, and 58 when he announced his retirement on 3 December 1985. It was agreed by all involved that Moore was too old for the role by that point; he had actually tried to leave the role after For Your Eyes Only.

Moore's James Bond was light-hearted, more so than any other official actor to portray the character. Connery's style, even in its lighter moments, was that of a focused, determined agent. Moore often portrayed 007 as somewhat of a playboy, with tongue firmly in cheek, but also as a very capable and seasoned detective. The humour served Moore and his fans well through most of his Bond tenure.

In 2004, Moore was voted 'Best Bond' in an Academy Awards poll and won with a large 62% of votes whilst in late 2008, he also topped another poll on moviefans.com beating new Bond star Daniel Craig with 56% of votes.

During Moore's Bond period he starred in 13 other films, including the thriller Gold (1974) and even made a cameo as Chief Inspector Clouseau, posing as a famous movie star, in Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) (for which he was credited as "Turk Thrust II"). However, most of these films were not critically acclaimed. Moore was widely criticized by anti-apartheid campaigners for making three movies in South Africa under the Apartheid regime during the 1970s.

Post-James Bond career (1985–present)

His post-Bond acting career has been light. In the words of his friend Michael Caine, with whom he co-starred in the unsuccessful Bullseye! (1990), "Now he can't get a job." At the age of 74, Moore was given the chance to go against type with his portrayal of a flamboyant homosexual (with James Bond characteristics) in Boat Trip (2002).

The satirical British TV show Spitting Image once had a sketch in which their latex likeness of Moore, when asked to display emotions by an offscreen director, does nothing but raise an eyebrow. Moore himself has stated that he thought the sketch was funny, and took it in good humour. Indeed, he had always embraced the 'eyebrows' gag wholeheartedly, slyly claiming that he "only had three expressions as Bond: right eyebrow raised, left eyebrow raised and eyebrows crossed when grabbed by Jaws." Spitting Image continued the joke, featuring a Bond movie spoof, The Man with the Wooden Delivery, with Moore's puppet receiving orders from Margaret Thatcher to kill Mikhail Gorbachev, and many other comedy shows of that time ridiculed Moore's acting, Rory Bremner once claiming to have had a death threat from an irate fan of Moore's, following one such routine.

Moore confirmed he has completely retired from acting in an article for The Sunday Telegraph magazine in April 2009. In a commercial for London's 2012 Olympic bid, Moore once again suited up as James Bond. He appeared alongside Samantha Bond, who played Miss Moneypenny in the Bond films during the Pierce Brosnan era. He still appears regularly on chat shows, chiefly to promote the work of UNICEF.

In 2009 Moore appeared in an advert for the Post Office.

He also played the role of a secret agent in the Victoria Wood Christmas Special on BBC1 show over the festive period in 2009. Filming all his scenes in the London Eye, his mission was to eliminate another agent whose file photo looks just like Pierce Brosnan.

In May 2010 the MultiMediaFund was launched (which is aimed at institutional investors). The Advisory Board of the fund is chaired by Sir Roger Moore KBE.

Moore is also chairman of the Advisory Board of Red Carpet Film Fund.

Humanitarian work

Moore was shocked by the poverty he saw when filming Octopussy, his sixth film as James Bond in India in 1983. His friend Audrey Hepburn had impressed him with her work for UNICEF, and consequently he became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1991. He was the voice of 'Santa' in the UNICEF cartoon The Fly Who Loved Me.

Moore was involved in the production of a video for PETA that protests against the production and wholesale of foie gras. Moore narrates the video. His assistance in this situation, and being a strong spokesman against foie gras, has led to the department store Selfridges agreeing to remove foie gras from their shelves.

Personal life

Moore left his first wife, skater Doorn Van Steyn, for singer Dorothy Squires, who was several years his senior but was, at that time, considerably more famous than he was, and they lived together for a short time in Dafen, Llanelli, South Wales. In turn, while filming in Italy in 1961, he abandoned Squires (who sued him for attempted reinstatement of conjugal rights) for Italian actress Luisa Mattioli. He lived with Mattioli until their marriage in 1969, after Squires finally granted Moore a divorce. Moore has a daughter and two sons with Mattioli; his son Geoffrey Moore is also an actor and used to own a restaurant in London. Daughter Deborah Moore played Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein in two films based on the Sean Dillon novels of Jack Higgins, and later made a guest appearance as a flight attendant in Die Another Day. Again, he unexpectedly ended this marriage in 1993, later marrying former Côte d'Azur neighbour, the Danish-Swedish multi-millionaire Kristina 'Kiki' Tholstrup.

Moore lived in Royal Tunbridge Wells for a period after early success in The Saint, and then moved to Surrey before relocating to Hollywood. In the 1960s he lived at Stanmore within reach of the Elstree Studios and in the 1970s in Denham, close to Pinewood. During filming of The Spy Who Loved Me "villain" Curd Jürgens made the offer to Moore to spend some time at his home in Gstaad, Switzerland, which Moore enjoyed having taken up skiing. When he married Kiki Tholstrup, he set up a routine of spending winters in Crans-Montana, Valais (Switzerland) and summers at his apartment in Monaco. After 15 years in Gstaad, he now resides in the winter at his chalet in Crans-Montana, Valais.

Royal circles

Moore has a friendship with some of the Danish royals; Prince Joachim and his then-wife Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg invited him and his wife Kiki to attend the christening of their youngest son, Prince Felix.

On 24 May 2008 he and his wife attended the wedding of Prince Joachim and his French fiancée Marie Cavallier. He is also known to be a friend of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

Honours

In 1999, Moore was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) on 14 June 2003. The citation on the knighthood was for Moore's charity work,

Awards

For his charity work

2008: Dag Hammarskjöld Award (from the UN)

2005: UNICEF Snowflake Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award

2003: German Federal Service Cross: for his work battling child traffickers as special representative to UNICEF

2003: Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire

1999: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)

Lifetime achievements awards

2008: Commander of the National Order of Arts and Letters (France)

2007: Hollywood Walk of Fame

2004: TELEKAMERA ("Tele Tydzien" Lifetime Achievement Award, Poland)

2002: Monte Carlo TV Festival (Lifetime Achievement Award)

2001: Lifetime achievement award (Filmfestival, Jamaica)

1997: Palm Springs film festival, USA, Lifetime Achievement Award

1995: TELE GATTO (Italian TV; Lifetime Achievement Award)

1991: GOLDEN CAMERA (German TV; lifetime achievement award)

1990: BAMBI (Lifetime Achievement Award from the German magazine BUNTE)

For his acting

1981: OTTO (Most popular Film Star; from German Magazine BRAVO)

1980: SATURN Award (Most Popular International Performer)

1980: GOLDEN GLOBE: World Film Favorite-Male

1973: BAMBI (shared with Tony Curtis for "The Persuaders", from the German magazine BUNTE)

1973: BEST ACTOR IN TV, award from the French magazine TELE-7-JOURS, shared with Tony Curtis for "The Persuaders"

1967: ONDAS-AWARD (Spanish TV for "The Saint")

1967: OTTO (Most popular TV-star for "The Saint"; from German magazine BRAVO)

Publications

Moore wrote a book about the filming of Live and Let Die, based on his diaries. Roger Moore as James Bond: Roger Moore's Own Account of Filming Live and Let Die was published in London in 1973, by Pan Books. The book includes an acknowledgment to Sean Connery, with whom Moore has been friends for many years: "I would also like to thank Sean Connery – with whom it would not have been possible."

Moore's autobiography My Word is My Bond (ISBN 0061673889) was published by Collins in the US in November 2008. It was published in the UK by Michael O'Mara Books Ltd on 2 October 2008 (ISBN 9781843173182).

Filmography

Criticism

In The Good Film And Video Guide (published 1986), David Shipman wrote of A View to a Kill that Moore as James Bond was "not so much like a piece of plastic, as something embalmed but moving." A long-standing critic was John Brosnan - who in his 1972 book, James Bond In The Cinema, became the first writer to seriously consider the phenomenon of the Bond movies in themselves, as opposed to the books. Brosnan consistently urged Broccoli to replace Moore, writing in his review of Moonraker in Starburst magazine that he was "plastic...more James Bland than James Bond."

Reviewing the programme in The Stage, comedy writer Harry Venning wrote that, while he personally enjoyed The Saint and The Persuaders, and "although he (Moore) certainly holds a place in the nation's affection it would be hard to think of anything he has ever been best at.....his movie career has been largely undistinguished, and there is more chance of finding Glenn Miller's plane than anyone who thinks Moore was the definitive James Bond. I suspect we love him because of his limitations, rather than despite them."

References

External links

Sir Roger Moore official website - Fans can ask Sir Roger Moore a question each month on his website. Also contains articles on Roger's work with UNICEF as well as his entertainment career

MultiMediaFund, chaired by Sir Roger Moore KBE

Red Carpet Film Fund - Chaired by Sir Roger Moore KBE

Sir Roger Moore - A Fan Site (since 2002)

Cinema Retro attends surprise 80th birthday party for Sir Roger Moore

Sir Roger Moore receives lifetime achievement award at Pinewood Studios 'Spy Who Loved Me' Reunion event

Sir Roger Moore Inducted Into the Legendary Players Club, New York City

Review of My Word Is My Bond at Letters On Pages

Category:1927 births Category:Living people Category:Actors awarded British knighthoods Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:People from Stockwell Category:Royal Army Service Corps officers Category:English humanitarians Category:UNICEF people

Name	Mark Twain
Caption	Mark Twain, detail of photo by Mathew Brady, February 7, 1871
Birthname	Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Pseudonym	Mark Twain
Birthdate	November 30, 1835
Birthplace	Florida, Missouri, U.S.
Deathdate	April 21, 1910
Deathplace	Redding, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, lecturer
Nationality	American
Genre	Fiction, historical fiction, children's literature, non-fiction, travel literature, satire, essay, philosophical literature, social commentary, literary criticism
Signature	Mark Twain Signatures-2.svg
Notableworks	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Spouse
Children	Langdon, Susy, Clara, Jean

]]

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which proved to be very popular and brought him nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.

Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".

Early life

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, to a Tennessee country merchant, John Marshall Clemens (August 11, 1798 – March 24, 1847), and Jane Lampton Clemens (June 18, 1803 – October 27, 1890).

Twain was the sixth of seven children. Only three of his siblings survived childhood: his brother Orion (July 17, 1825 – December 11, 1897); Henry, who died in a riverboat explosion (July 13, 1838 – June 21, 1858); and Pamela (September 19, 1827 – August 31, 1904). His sister Margaret (May 31, 1830 – August 17, 1839) died when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin (June 8, 1832 – May 12, 1842) died three years later. Another brother, Pleasant (1828–1829), died at six months. Twain was born two weeks after the closest approach to Earth of Halley's Comet. On December 4, 1985, the United States Postal Service issued a stamped envelope for "Mark Twain and Halley's Comet."

When Twain was four, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Missouri was a slave state and young Twain became familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he would later explore in his writing.

Twain’s father was an attorney and a local judge. The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was organized in his office in 1846. The railroad connected the second and third largest cities in the state and was the westernmost United States railroad until the Transcontinental Railroad. It delivered mail to and from the Pony Express.

In March 1847, when Twain was 11, his father died of pneumonia. The next year, he became a printer's apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother Orion. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. He joined the union and educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school. At 22, Twain returned to Missouri.

On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby inspired Twain to be a steamboat pilot. As Twain observed in Life on the Mississippi, the pilot surpassed a steamboat's captain in prestige and authority; it was a rewarding occupation with wages set at $250 per month, roughly equivalent to $}} a year today. A steamboat pilot needed to know the ever-changing river to be able to stop at the hundreds of ports and wood-lots. Twain studied 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of the Mississippi for more than two years before he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859.

While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat on which he was working, the Pennsylvania, exploded. Twain had foreseen this death in a dream a month earlier, which inspired his interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research. Twain was guilt-stricken and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. He continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed.

Missouri was considered by many to be part of the South, and was represented in both the Confederate and Federal governments during the Civil War. Twain wrote a sketch, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed", which claimed he and his friends had been Confederate volunteers for two weeks before disbanding their company.

Travels

, which features hand-stenciled paneling, fireplaces from India, embossed wallpapers and an enormous hand-carved mantel that the Twains purchased in Scotland (HABS photo)]] Twain joined Orion, who in 1861 became secretary to James W. Nye, the governor of Nevada Territory, and headed west. Twain and his brother traveled more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City. The experiences inspired Roughing It and provided material for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner. Here he first used his pen name. On February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous travel account "Letter From Carson – re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson's; music" with "Mark Twain".

Twain moved to San Francisco, California in 1864, still as a journalist. He met writers such as Bret Harte, Artemus Ward, and Dan DeQuille. The young poet Ina Coolbrith may have romanced him.

His first success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published in a New York weekly, The Saturday Press, on November 18, 1865. It brought him national attention. A year later, he traveled to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) as a reporter for the Sacramento Union. His travelogues were popular and became the basis for his first lectures.

In 1867, a local newspaper funded a trip to the Mediterranean. During his tour of Europe and the Middle East, he wrote a popular collection of travel letters, which were later compiled as The Innocents Abroad in 1869. It was on this trip that he met his future brother-in-law.

Marriage and children

Charles Langdon showed a picture of his sister, Olivia, to Twain; Twain claimed to have fallen in love at first sight. The two met in 1868, were engaged a year later, and married in February 1870 in Elmira, New York. who became a longtime friend.

The couple lived in Buffalo, New York from 1869 to 1871. Twain owned a stake in the Buffalo Express newspaper, and worked as an editor and writer. Their son Langdon died of diphtheria at 19 months.

In 1871, Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where starting in 1873, he arranged the building of a home (local admirers saved it from demolition in 1927 and eventually turned it into a museum focused on him). While living there, Olivia gave birth to three daughters: Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962) and Jean (1880–1909). The couple's marriage lasted 34 years, until Olivia's death in 1904.

During his seventeen years in Hartford (1874–1891), Twain wrote many of his best-known works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).

Twain made a second tour of Europe, described in the 1880 book A Tramp Abroad. His tour included a stay in Heidelberg from May 6 until July 23, 1878, and a visit to London.

Love of science and technology

, early 1894]] He was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory.

Twain patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments" (to replace suspenders) and a history trivia game. Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages only needed to be moistened before use.

His book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court features a time traveler from contemporary America, using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of storyline would later become a common feature of the science fiction sub-genre, Alternate history.

In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain at his home in Redding, Connecticut and filmed him. Part of the footage was used in The Prince and the Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film.

Financial troubles

Twain made a substantial amount of money through his writing, but he lost a great deal through investments, mostly in new inventions and technology, particularly the Paige typesetting machine. It was a beautifully engineered mechanical marvel that amazed viewers when it worked, but was prone to breakdowns. Twain spent $300,000 (equal to $}} today) on it between 1880 and 1894, but before it could be perfected, it was made obsolete by the Linotype. He lost not only the bulk of his book profits but also a substantial portion of his wife's inheritance. In 1893, he began a 15-year-long friendship with financier Henry Huttleston Rogers, a principal of Standard Oil. Rogers first made Twain file for bankruptcy. Then Rogers had Twain transfer the copyrights on his written works to his wife, Olivia, to prevent creditors from gaining possession of them. Finally, Rogers took absolute charge of Twain's money until all the creditors were paid.

Twain embarked on an around-the-world lecture tour in 1894 to pay off his creditors in full, although he was no longer under any legal obligation to do so. In mid-1900, he was the guest of newspaper proprietor Hugh Gilzean-Reid at Dollis Hill House. Twain wrote of Dollis Hill that he had "never seen any place that was so satisfactorily situated, with its noble trees and stretch of country, and everything that went to make life delightful, and all within a biscuit's throw of the metropolis of the world". He then returned to America in 1900, having earned enough to pay off his debts.

Speaking engagements

Twain was in demand as a featured speaker, and appeared before many men's clubs, including the Authors' Club, Beefsteak Club, Vagabonds, White Friars, and Monday Evening Club of Hartford. He was made an honorary member of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. In the late 1890s, he spoke to the Savage Club in London and was elected honorary member. When told that only three men had been so honored, including the Prince of Wales, he replied "Well, it must make the Prince feel mighty fine." In 1897, Twain spoke to the Concordia Press Club in Vienna as a special guest, following diplomat Charlemagne Tower. In German, to the great amusement of the assemblage, Twain delivered the speech "Die Schrecken der deutschen Sprache" ("The Horrors of the German Language").

Later life

degree, awarded to him by Oxford University.]] Twain passed through a period of deep depression, which began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of meningitis. Olivia's death in 1904 and Jean's on December 24, 1909, deepened his gloom. On May 20, 1909, his close friend Henry Rogers died suddenly.

In 1906, Twain began his autobiography in the North American Review. In April, Twain heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all she owned in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he volunteered a few autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. To further aid Coolbrith, George Wharton James visited Twain in New York and arranged for a new portrait session. Initially resistant, Twain admitted that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him.

Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls he viewed as surrogate granddaughters, the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club. The dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight."

Oxford University awarded Twain an honorary doctorate in letters (D.Litt.) in 1907.

In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:

His prediction was accurate – Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.

Upon hearing of Twain's death, President William Howard Taft said:

"Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature."

.]] Twain's funeral was at the "Old Brick" Presbyterian Church in New York. He is buried in his wife's family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. His grave is marked by a 12-foot (i.e., two fathoms, or "mark twain") monument, placed there by his surviving daughter, Clara. There is also a smaller headstone.

Writing

Overview

Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its frequent use of the word "nigger", which was in common usage in the pre-Civil War period in which the novel was set.

A complete bibliography of his works is nearly impossible to compile because of the vast number of pieces written by Twain (often in obscure newspapers) and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large portion of his speeches and lectures have been lost or were not written down; thus, the collection of Twain's works is an ongoing process. Researchers rediscovered published material by Twain as recently as 1995.

Early journalism and travelogues

. Historical marker and interior view available.]]Twain's first important work, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was first published in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. The only reason it was published there was that his story arrived too late to be included in a book Artemus Ward was compiling featuring sketches of the wild American West.

After this burst of popularity, Twain was commissioned by the Sacramento Union to write letters about his travel experiences for publication in the newspaper, his first of which was to ride the steamer Ajax in its maiden voyage to Hawaii, referred to at the time as the Sandwich Islands. These humorous letters proved the genesis to his work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama isthmus. All the while, Twain was writing letters meant for publishing back and forth, chronicling his experiences with his burlesque humor. On June 8, 1867, Twain set sail on the pleasure cruiser Quaker City for five months. This trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress.

In 1872, Twain published a second piece of travel literature, Roughing It, as a semi-sequel to Innocents. Roughing It is a semi-autobiographical account of Twain's journey to Nevada and his subsequent life in the American West. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work kept Roughing It's focus on American society but focused more on the events of the day. Entitled , it was not a travel piece, as his previous two books had been, and it was his first attempt at writing a novel. The book is also notable because it is Twain's only collaboration; it was written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner.

Twain's next two works drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi, a series of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875, featured Twain’s disillusionment with Romanticism. Old Times eventually became the starting point for Life on the Mississippi.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Twain's next major publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which drew on his youth in Hannibal. Tom Sawyer was modeled on Twain as a child, with traces of two schoolmates, John Briggs and Will Bowen. The book also introduced in a supporting role Huckleberry Finn, based on Twain's boyhood friend Tom Blankenship.

The Prince and the Pauper, despite a storyline that is omnipresent in film and literature today, was not as well received. Telling the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, the book acts as a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Pauper was Twain's first attempt at fiction, and blame for its shortcomings is usually put on Twain for having not been experienced enough in English society, and also on the fact that it was produced after a massive hit. In between the writing of Pauper, Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which he consistently had problems completing) and started and completed another travel book, A Tramp Abroad, which follows Twain as he traveled through central and southern Europe.

Twain's next major published work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, solidified him as a noteworthy American writer. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its predecessor. The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy's belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong. Four hundred manuscript pages of Huckleberry Finn were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. Some accounts have Twain taking seven years off after his first burst of creativity, eventually finishing the book in 1883. Other accounts have Twain working on Huckleberry Finn in tandem with The Prince and the Pauper and other works in 1880 and other years. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experienced, as critic Leo Marx puts it, a "failure of nerve". Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn:

If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.

Hemingway also wrote in the same essay:

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn, Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have heavily influenced the former book.

Twain next focused on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which featured him making his first big pronouncement of disappointment with politics. Written with the same "historical fiction" style of The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee showed the absurdities of political and social norms by setting them in the court of King Arthur. The book was started in December 1885, then shelved a few months later until the summer of 1887, and eventually finished in the spring of 1889.

Twain had begun to furiously write articles and commentary with diminishing returns to pay the bills and keep his business projects afloat, but it was not enough. He filed for bankruptcy in 1894.

His next large-scale work, Pudd'nhead Wilson, was written rapidly, as Twain was desperately trying to stave off the bankruptcy. From November 12 to December 14, 1893, Twain wrote 60,000 words for the novel.

Other authors to fall under Twain's attack during this time period (beginning around 1890 until his death) were George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In addition to providing a source for the "tooth and claw" style of literary criticism, Twain outlines in several letters and essays what he considers to be "quality writing". He places emphasis on concision, utility of word choice, and realism (he complains that Cooper's Deerslayer purports to be realistic but has several shortcomings). Ironically, several of his works were later criticized for lack of continuity (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and organization (Pudd'nhead Wilson).

Twain's wife died in 1904 while the couple were staying at the Villa di Quarto in Florence, and after an appropriate time Twain allowed himself to publish some works that his wife, a de facto editor and censor throughout his life, had looked down upon. Of these works, The Mysterious Stranger, depicting various visits of Satan to the Earth, is perhaps the best known. This particular work was not published in Twain's lifetime. There were three versions found in his manuscripts made between 1897 and 1905: the Hannibal, Eseldorf, and Print Shop versions. Confusion between the versions led to an extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently have the original versions as Twain wrote them become available.

Twain's last work was his autobiography, which he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in non-chronological order. Some archivists and compilers have rearranged the biography into more conventional forms, thereby eliminating some of Twain's humor and the flow of the book. The first volume of autobiography, over 736 pages, was published by the University of California in November 2010, 100 years after his death as Twain wished. It soon became an unexpected best selling book, making Twain one of very few authors publishing new best-selling volumes in all 3 of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Friendship with Henry H. Rogers

While Twain credited Henry H. Rogers, a Standard Oil executive, with saving him from financial ruin, their close friendship in their later years was mutually beneficial. When Twain lost three of his four children and his beloved wife, the Rogers family increasingly became a surrogate family for him. He became a frequent guest at their townhouse in New York City, their 48-room summer home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and aboard their steam yacht, the Kanawha.

in 1908]]

The two men introduced each other to their acquaintances. Twain was an admirer of the remarkable deafblind girl Helen Keller. He first met Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan at a party in the home of Laurence Hutton in New York City in the winter of 1894. Twain introduced them to Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for Keller's education at Radcliffe College. Twain is credited with labeling Sullivan, Keller's governess and companion, a "miracle worker". His choice of words later became inspiration for the title of William Gibson's play and film adaptation, The Miracle Worker. Twain also introduced Rogers to journalist Ida M. Tarbell, who interviewed the robber baron for a muckraking expose that led indirectly to the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust. On cruises aboard the Kanawha, Twain and Rogers were joined at frequent intervals by Booker T. Washington, the famed former slave who had become a leading educator.

While the two famous old men were widely regarded as drinking and poker buddies, they also exchanged letters when apart, and this was often since each traveled a great deal. Unlike Rogers' personal files, which have never become public, these insightful letters were published. The written exchanges between the two men demonstrate Twain's well-known sense of humor and, more surprisingly, Rogers' sense of fun, providing a rare insight into the private side of the robber baron.

In April 1907, Twain and Rogers cruised to the opening of the Jamestown Exposition in Virginia. Twain's public popularity was such that many fans took boats out to the Kanawha at anchor in hopes of getting a glimpse of him. As the gathering of boats around the yacht became a safety hazard, he finally obliged by coming on deck and waving to the crowds.

Because of poor weather conditions, the steam yacht was delayed for several days from venturing into the Atlantic Ocean. Rogers and some of the others in his party returned to New York by rail; Twain disliked train travel and so elected to wait and return on the Kanawha. However, reporters lost track of his whereabouts; when he failed to return to New York City as scheduled, The New York Times speculated that he might have been "lost at sea". Upon arriving safely in New York and learning of this, the humorist wrote a satirical article about the episode, offering to "...make an exhaustive investigation of this report that I have been lost at sea. If there is any foundation for the report, I will at once apprise the anxious public". This bore similarities to an earlier event in 1897 when he made his famous remark "The report of my death was an exaggeration", after a reporter was sent to investigate whether he had died. In fact, it was his cousin who was seriously ill.

Later that year, Twain and Rogers's son, Henry Jr., returned to the Jamestown Exposition aboard the Kanawha. The humorist helped host Robert Fulton Day on September 23, 1907, celebrating the centennial of Fulton's invention of the steamboat. Twain, filling in for ailing former U.S. President Grover Cleveland, introduced Rear Admiral Purnell Harrington. Twain was met with a five-minute standing ovation; members of the audience cheered and waved their hats and umbrellas. Deeply touched, Twain said, "When you appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do feel it".

In April 1909, the two old friends returned to Norfolk, Virginia for the banquet in honor of Rogers and his newly completed Virginian Railway. Twain was the keynote speaker in one of his last public appearances, and was widely quoted in newspapers across the country.

A month later, Twain was en route from Connecticut to visit his friend in New York City when Rogers died suddenly on May 20, 1909. Twain arrived at Grand Central Station to be met by his daughter with the news. Stricken with grief, he uncustomarily avoided news reporters who had gathered, saying only "This is terrible...I cannot talk about it". Two days later, he served as an honorary pallbearer at the funeral in New York City. However, he declined to join the funeral party on the train ride for the interment at Fairhaven. He said "I cannot bear to travel with my friend and not converse".

Views

Although Twain remained neutral during the Civil War, his views became more radical as he grew older. He acknowledged that his views changed and developed over his life, referring to one of his favorite works:

Anti-Imperialist

In the New York Herald, October 15, 1900, he describes his transformation and political awakening, in the context of the Philippine-American War, from being "a red-hot imperialist":

Before 1899 Twain was an ardent imperialist. In the late 1860s and early 1870s he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands. In the mid 1890s he explained later, he was "a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming over the Pacific." He said the war with Spain in 1898 was "the worthiest" war ever fought. In 1899 he reversed course, and from 1901, soon after his return from Europe, until his death in 1910, Twain was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States and had "tens of thousands of members". He summed up his views of revolutions in the following statement:

Civil Rights

Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and emancipation, even going so far to say “Lincoln's Proclamation ... not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also.” He argued that non-whites did not receive justice in the United States, once saying “I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature....but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him.” He paid for at least one black person to attend Yale University Law School and for another black person to attend a southern university to become a minister.

Mark Twain was a staunch supporter of women's rights and an active campaigner for women's suffrage. His "Votes for Women" speech, in which he pressed for the granting of voting rights to women, is considered one of the most famous in history.

Helen Keller benefited from Twain's support, as she pursued her college education and publishing, despite her disabilities and financial limitations.

Twain's liberal views on race were not shown in his early sketches of Native Americans. Of them, Twain wrote in 1870:

As counterpoint, Twain's essay on "The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper" offers a much kinder view of Indians. In his later travelogue Following the Equator (1897), Twain observes that in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by "whites" in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey"; his conclusion is that "there are many humorous things in this world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages".

Labor

Twain wrote glowingly about unions in the riverboating industry in Life on the Mississippi, which was read in union halls decades later. He supported the labor movement, especially one of the most important unions, the Knights of Labor. In a speech to them, he said:

Vivisection

Twain was opposed to vivisection as the word was understood by him in 1899 (the meaning of this word has been subject to change over time). Twain's objection was not on a scientific basis but rather an ethical one. He specifically cited the pain caused to the animal as his basis of his opposition to the practice.

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

Religion

Although Twain was a Presbyterian, he was sometimes critical of organized religion and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. He wrote, for example, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so", and "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian". Nonetheless, as a mature adult he engaged in religious discussions and attended services, his theology developing as he wrestled with the deaths of loved ones and his own mortality. His own experiences and suffering of his family made him particularly critical of "faith healing", such as espoused by Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science. His more inflammatory work on religion require a nuanced understanding of his theological arguments and criticism. At other times he wrote or spoke in ways that contradicted a strict deist view, for example, plainly professing a belief in Providence. In some later writings in the 1890s, he was less optimistic about the goodness of God, observing that "if our Maker is all-powerful for good or evil, He is not in His right mind". At other times, he conjectured sardonically that perhaps God had created the world with all its tortures for some purpose of His own, but was otherwise indifferent to humanity, which was too petty and insignificant to deserve His attention anyway.

In 1901 Twain criticized the actions of missionary Dr. William Scott Ament (1851–1909) because Ament and other missionaries had collected indemnities from Chinese subjects in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising of 1900. Twain's response to hearing of Ament's methods was published in the North American Review in February 1901: To the Person Sitting in Darkness, and deals with examples of imperialism in China, South Africa, and with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. A subsequent article, "To My Missionary Critics" published in The North American Review in April 1901, unapologetically continues his attack, but with the focus shifted from Ament to his missionary superiors, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

After his death, Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until his daughter Clara reversed her position in 1962 in response to Soviet propaganda about the withholding. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916. Little Bessie, a story ridiculing Christianity, was first published in the 1972 collection Mark Twain's Fables of Man.

Despite these views, he raised money to build a Presbyterian Church in Nevada in 1864, although it has been argued that it was only by his association with his Presbyterian brother that he did that.

Twain created a reverent portrayal of Joan of Arc, a subject over which he had obsessed for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing. In 1900 and again in 1908, he stated, "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books, it is the best."

Those who knew Twain well late in life recount that he dwelt on the subject of the afterlife, his daughter Clara saying: "Sometimes he believed death ended everything, but most of the time he felt sure of a life beyond."

Mark Twain's frankest views on religion appeared in his final Autobiography which was published 100 years after his death, in November 2010. In it, he said,

Twain was a Freemason. He belonged to Polar Star Lodge No. 79 A.F.&A.M.;, based in St. Louis. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice on May 22, 1861, passed to the degree of Fellow Craft on June 12, and raised to the degree of Master Mason on July 10.

Legacy

in the Braeswood Place neighborhood of Houston, Texas]]

Public Library in Garden City, Kansas]]

Twain's legacy lives on today as his namesakes continue to multiply. Several schools are named after him, including Mark Twain Elementary School in Houston, Texas, which has a statue of Twain sitting on a bench, and Mark Twain Intermediate School in New York. There are several schools named Mark Twain Middle School in different states, as well as Samuel Clemens High School in Schertz, near San Antonio, Texas. There are also other structures, such as the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge.

Mark Twain Village is a United States Army installation located in the Südstadt district of Heidelberg, Germany. It is one of two American bases in the United States Army Garrison Heidelberg that house American soldiers and their families (the other being Patrick Henry Village).

Awards in his name proliferate. In 1998, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts created the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, awarded annually. The Mark Twain Award is an award given annually to a book for children in grades four through eight by the Missouri Association of School Librarians. Stetson University in DeLand, Florida sponsors the Mark Twain Young Authors' Workshop each summer in collaboration with the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal. The program is open to young authors in grades five through eight. The museum sponsors the Mark Twain Creative Teaching Award.

in Sydney, Australia]]

Buildings associated with Twain, including some of his many homes, have been preserved as museums. His birthplace is preserved in Florida, Missouri. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri preserves the setting for some of the author's best known work. The home of childhood friend Laura Hawkins, said to be the inspiration for his fictional character Becky Thatcher, is preserved as the "Thatcher House".In May 2007, a painstaking reconstruction of the home of Tom Blankenship, the inspiration for Huckleberry Finn, was opened to the public. The family home he had built in Hartford, Connecticut, where he and his wife raised their three daughters, is preserved and open to visitors as the Mark Twain House.

Actor Hal Holbrook created a one-man show called Mark Twain Tonight, which he has performed regularly for about years. The broadcast by CBS in 1967 won him an Emmy Award. Of the three runs on Broadway (1966, 1977, and 2005), the first won him a Tony Award.

Additionally, like many influential individuals, Twain was honored by having an asteroid, 2362 Mark Twain, named after him.

Often, Twain is depicted in pop culture as wearing a white suit. While there is evidence that suggests that, after Livy's death in 1904, Twain began wearing white suits on the lecture circuit, modern representations suggesting that he wore them throughout his life are unfounded. There is no evidence of him wearing a white suit before 1904; however, it did eventually become his trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (such as the time he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter). In 2011, the US Postal Service plans to release another stamp in his honor.

Pen names

Twain used different pen names before deciding on Mark Twain. He signed humorous and imaginative sketches Josh until 1863. Additionally, he used the pen name Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for a series of humorous letters.

He maintained that his primary pen name came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms, a depth indicating safe water for passage of boat, was measured on the sounding line. A fathom is a maritime unit of depth, equivalent to two yards (1.8 m); twain is an archaic term for "two". The riverboatman's cry was mark twain or, more fully, by the mark twain, meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is deep and it is safe to pass".

Twain claimed that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Life on the Mississippi, he wrote:

Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN", and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; ... At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands – a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

Twain's version of the story about his nom de plume has been questioned by biographer George Williams III, the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, and Purdue University's Paul Fatout. which claim that mark twain refers to a running bar tab that Twain would regularly incur while drinking at John Piper's saloon in Virginia City, Nevada.

Bibliography

See also

American realism

''Christian Science (essay)

Bernard DeVoto (historian)

List of premature obituaries

Mark Twain's Library of Humor (anthology)

Regionalism (literature)

Warsaw Signal (newspaper)

References

Further reading

Lucius Beebe. Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News. Stanford University Press, 1954 ISBN 112218798X

Louis J. Budd, ed. Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1891–1910 (Library of America, 1992) (ISBN 978-0-94045073-8)

Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan, and Geoffrey C. Ward, Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 (ISBN 0-3754-0561-5)

Gregg Camfield. The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 (ISBN 0-1951-0710-1)

Guy Cardwell, ed. Mark Twain, Mississippi Writings (Library of America, 1982) (ISBN 978-0-94045007-3)

Guy Cardwell, ed. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad & Roughing It (Library of America, 1984) ISBN 978-0-94045025-7

James M. Cox. Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor. Princeton University Press, 1966 (ISBN 0-8262-1428-2)

Everett Emerson. Mark Twain: A Literary Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000 (ISBN 0-8122-3516-9)

Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ed. A Historical Guide to Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 (ISBN 0-1951-3293-9)

Susan K. Harris, ed. Mark Twain, Historical Romances (Library of America, 1994) (ISBN 978-0-94045082-0)

Hamlin L. Hill, ed. Mark Twain, The Gilded Age and Later Novels (Library of America, 2002) ISBN 978-1-93108210-5

Jason Gary Horn. Mark Twain: A Descriptive Guide to Biographical Sources. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999 (ISBN 0-8108-3630-0)

William Dean Howells. My Mark Twain. Mineloa, New York: Dover Publications, 1997 (ISBN 0-486-29640-7)

Fred Kaplan. The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 2003 (ISBN 0-3854-7715-5)

Justin Kaplan. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966 (ISBN 0-6717-4807-6)

J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson, eds. The Mark Twain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1993 (ISBN 0-8240-7212-X)

Jerome Loving, Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens (University of California Press; 2010) 491 pages; Draws on newly discovered archival materials in a detailed biography

Bruce Michelson. Mark Twain on the Loose. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995 (ISBN 0-8702-3967-8)

K. Patrick Ober. Mark Twain and Medicine: "Any Mummery Will Cure". Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003 (ISBN 0-8262-1502-5)

Albert Bigelow Paine. Mark Twain, A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Harper & Bros., 1912. ISBN 1847029833

Ron Powers. Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. ISBN 0306810867

Ron Powers. Mark Twain: A Life. New York: Random House, 2005. (0-7432-4899-6)

R. Kent Rasmussen. Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Facts On File, 2007. Revised edition of Mark Twain A to Z ISBN 0816062250

R. Kent Rasmussen, ed. The Quotable Mark Twain: His Essential Aphorisms, Witticisms and Concise Opinions. Contemporary Books, 1997 ISBN 0809229870

Jerome Loving. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens University of California Press, 2010 ISBN 9780520252578

External links

;Works by Mark Twain

Mark Twain Classics - Twain's Speeches, Essays, Stories, and Quotes.

Mark Twain Project Online

* . More than 60 texts are freely available.

Mark Twain's letters ed. by Albert Bigelow Paine (2 vol 1917) vol 2 online

Mark Twain Library, University of California Press. This series re-prints texts from the Papers and Works for students and the general reader.

The Works of Mark Twain, University of California Press. This series prints authoritative critical editions of Mark Twain's published works.

Mark Twain Papers, University of California Press. This series publishes Mark Twain's private papers–his letters, notebooks, unpublished literary works, and autobiography.

Jumping Frogs: Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain, University of California Press. The Jumping Frogs series of books brings neglected Mark Twain treasures—stories, tall tales, novels, travelogues, plays, imaginative journalism, speeches, sketches, satires, burlesques, and much more—to readers.

A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It. From The Atlantic Monthly. Nov. 1874: 591–594. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Co., November 1874. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Co., November 1874.

;Academic studies

The Mark Twain Papers and Project of the Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley. Home to the largest archive of Mark Twain's papers and the editors of a critical edition of all of his writings.

Buffalo Library Mark Twain Room, which houses the manuscript of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

;Life

Full text of the biography Mark Twain by Archibald Henderson

*

Mark Twain's Mississippi at Northern Illinois University Libraries

Mark Twain: The Licensed Jester Essay from 1943 by George Orwell about Mark Twain

;Other

Literary Pilgrimages – Mark Twain sites

PBS Twain Interactive Scrapbook and San Francisco Chronicle article documenting that Clemens did not say "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco".

The Fountain Pens used by Mark Twain

Images of First Appearances of Mark Twain Works

article and rare pictures of Mark Twain and photographer Napoleon Sarony

Google map with placemarks for places in America associated with Twain

Category:1835 births Category:1910 deaths Category:American agnostics Category:American humorists Category:American memoirists Category:American novelists Category:American satirists Category:American short story writers Category:American travel writers Category:Alternate history writers Category:American autobiographers Category:Writers from Connecticut Category:Writers from Missouri Category:Writers from Nevada Category:Literary collaborators Category:Holy Land travellers Category:People of the Philippine–American War Category:People of the California Gold Rush Category:People from Elmira, New York Category:People from Hannibal, Missouri Category:People from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People from Monroe County, Missouri Category:Lecturers Category:Critics of Christian Science

Name	Ken Salazar
Office	50th United States Secretary of the Interior
President	Barack Obama
Deputy	David Hayes
Term start	January 20, 2009
Predecessor	Dirk Kempthorne
Jr/sr2	United States Senator
State2	Colorado
Term start2	January 3, 2005
Term end2	January 20, 2009
Predecessor2	Ben Campbell
Successor2	Michael Bennet
Office3	36th Attorney General of Colorado
Governor3	Bill Owens
Term start3	January 12, 1999
Term end3	January 3, 2005
Predecessor3	Gale Norton
Successor3	John Suthers
Birth date	March 02, 1955
Birth place	Alamosa, Colorado, United States
Party	Democratic Party
Spouse	Hope Salazar
Residence	Denver
Alma mater	Colorado CollegeUniversity of Michigan
Profession	Lawyer
Signature	Ken Salazar Signature.svg
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Kenneth Lee "Ken" Salazar (; born March 2, 1955) is the United States Secretary of the Interior in the administration of President Barack Obama. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a United States Senator from Colorado from 2005 to 2009. He and Mel Martinez (R-Florida) were the first Hispanic U.S. Senators since 1977; they were joined by Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) in January 2006. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, he served as Attorney General of Colorado from 1999 to 2005.

On December 17, 2008, President-elect Obama announced he would nominate Salazar as U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The environmentalist movement's reaction to this nomination was mixed. Previously, Salazar supported the nomination of Gale Norton to Secretary of the Interior, President George W. Bush's first appointee who preceded Salazar as Colorado Attorney General. On January 20, 2009, Salazar was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate.

Early life and family

Ken Salazar was born in Alamosa, Colorado, the son of Emma M. and Henry (Enrique) S. Salazar. He grew up near Manassa, in the community of Los Rincones in the San Luis Valley area of south-central Colorado. Salazar attended St. Francis Seminary and Centauri High School in La Jara, graduating in 1973. He later attended Colorado College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1977, and received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. Later Salazar was awarded honorary degrees (Doctor of Laws) from Colorado College (1993) and the University of Denver (1999). After graduating, Salazar started private law practice.

State Cabinet member

In 1986, Salazar became chief legal counsel to then Governor Roy Romer; in 1990, Romer appointed him to his Cabinet as Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. In this position, he authored the Great Outdoors Colorado Amendment, which created a massive land conservation program of which he became chairman. Salazar also created the Youth in Natural Resources program to provide for environmental education in public schools. In his cabinet role, he established reforms that forced mining and petroleum operations to better protect the surrounding environment.

Colorado Attorney General

In 1994, Salazar returned to private practice. In 1998, he was elected state attorney general; he was reelected to this position in 2002. Police operations were streamlined under Salazar, and several new branches of law enforcement were created: the Gang Prosecution Unit, the Environmental Crimes Unit, and the General Fugitive Prosecutive Unit, which targeted murderers. He also worked to strengthen consumer protection and anti-fraud laws, as well as to protect children through new policy designed to crack down on sex offenders.

In August 2006, Ken Salazar supported fellow Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in his primary race against Ned Lamont in Connecticut. Lamont, running primarily as an anti-war candidate, won the primary. Salazar's continued support of Lieberman, who successfully ran as an independent against Lamont, has rankled the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party.

In 2006, Salazar voted to end protections that limit offshore oil drilling in Florida's Gulf Coast.

In 2007, Salazar was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote against a bill that would require the United States Army Corps of Engineers to consider global warming when planning water projects.

According to Project Vote Smart, Ken Salazar received a 25 percent vote rating for 2007 by the Humane Society of the United States, a zero percent vote rating for 2005-2006 by Fund for Animals, a 60 percent vote rating for 2007 by Defenders of Wildlife, and a zero percent vote rating on the Animal Welfare Institute Compassion Index. He also supported the Bush Administration's release of lands in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for emergency haying in Colorado's Yuma and Phillips Counties. Salazar has an 81 percent lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters, including a 100 percent rating for the year 2008.

Salazar resigned his Senate seat on January 20, 2009, upon his confirmation by the Senate to become Secretary of the Interior under President Barack Obama.

Electoral history

Secretary of the Interior

, commissioner of the National Parks of New York Harbor, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar make their way to the crown of the Statue of Liberty in May 2009.]] Salazar accepted Obama's offer to join his cabinet as the Secretary of the Interior. His appointment required a Saxbe fix by Congress. On January 7, 2009, Congress approved a bill, , and President George W. Bush signed it into law, providing such a fix by reducing the Secretary of Interior's salary to the level it was prior to the time Salazar took office in January 2009.

The Senate confirmed Salazar's nomination by voice vote on January 20, 2009, shortly after Obama was sworn in as President. As Secretary of the Interior, Salazar is in charge of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the United States Geological Survey, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other federal agencies overseen by the Interior Department.

Salazar is one of two Hispanics currently serving in Obama's Cabinet, along with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis of California. Salazar is the second Hispanic Interior Secretary after Manuel Lujan, Jr., who held the post from 1989 to 1993 under President George H. W. Bush.

Several prominent environmentalist groups are wary of Salazar, noting his strong ties with the coal and mining industries. Kieran Suckling, executive director of Center for Biological Diversity, which tracks endangered species and habitat issues states "He [Ken Salazar] is a right-of-center Democrat who often favors industry and big agriculture in battles over global warming, fuel efficiency and endangered species."

The nomination was praised, however, by Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters. Upon the nomination, Karpinski said, "Throughout his career, Senator Salazar has campaigned on a pledge of support for 'our land, our water, our people.' With a perfect 100% score on the 2008 LCV Scorecard, he has lived up to that pledge. As a westerner, Senator Salazar has hands on experience with land and water issues, and will restore the Department of the Interior's role as the steward of America's public resources. We look forward to working with him to protect the health of America's land, water, and people in the coming years."

Although Senate Republicans were expected to raise questions concerning Salazar's stances on oil shale development and drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, Salazar was one of several Obama Cabinet appointees confirmed in the Senate by voice vote on January 20, 2009, shortly after Obama's inauguration. Salazar became the 50th Secretary of the Interior succeeding Dirk Kempthorne, who praised Salazar's appointment.

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter appointed Denver Superintendent of Schools Michael Bennet to replace Salazar and to finish his term in the Senate, which expires in January 2011.

On January 23, 2009, Salazar stated that he is considering reopening the Statue of Liberty's crown to tourists. The crown has been closed to the public since the September 11, 2001 attacks. "I hope we can find a way," Salazar said in a statement. "It would proclaim to the world — both figuratively and literally — that the path to the light of liberty is open to all."

On March 6, 2009 Salazar agreed to move forward with the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to remove the Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf from the Endangered Species List in Montana and Idaho, but not Wyoming. Minimum recovery goal for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains is at least 30 breeding pairs and at least 300 wolves for at least three consecutive years, a goal that was attained in 2002 and has been exceeded every year since. (There are currently about 95 breeding pairs and 1,600 wolves in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.) Salazar, a former rancher has come under criticism of groups like the Defenders of Wildlife for this decision, and lack of protection of wolves.

On May 9, 2009, Salazar announced the upholding of a Bush-era policy that prevents the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions via the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a policy he pledged to reevaluate when he took office in January. The policy states that, despite the apparent negative impact global warming has on polar bears, an endangered species, greenhouse gasses cannot be regulated with the ESA. Salazar stated in a conference call announcing the decision that "The single greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic Sea ice due to climate change," but the Endangered Species Act "is not the appropriate tool for us to deal with what is a global issue." The decision was met with criticism from environmental groups and praise from energy groups including the American Petroleum Institute, some Democrats and many Republicans. Salazar contended in the same conference call that the ESA was never intended to be used for the regulation of climate change, while sidestepping questions of how this situation is different from that of the Clean Air Act, which is currently being used by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions.

With the announcement in early January 2010 that Governor Ritter will not seek reelection, Salazar is thought to be considering entering the 2010 gubernatorial contest in his home state. Representative John Salazar, the secretary's brother, told local media that he thought Salazar was likely to seek the governor's mansion. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper indicated that while he was considering a run himself, he would defer to Secretary Salazar if the former senator opts to enter the race. John Salazar is encouraging his brother to run for governor, according to The Pueblo Chieftain, and the White House has indicated that it would have no objection to Salazar resigning his administration post to pursue the governorship, according to The Denver Post, though it cited no named sources in its initial reporting. According to later reports, however, Salazar has decided not to run for governor in favor of continuing as Secretary of the Interior. He endorsed Hickenlooper's bid on January 7, 2010.

On 28 April 2010, Ken Salazar approved the Cape Wind offshore wind farm.

He has dealt with criticism after pushing to impose tougher leasing rules and cancel a series of planned drilling operations in Alaska and elsewhere. Salazar has dealt with criticism over his handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, both because of the way his agency handled the permitting process for underwater drilling, and also because of the way the aftermath of the spill has been handled by the government. While his previous legislative stances demonstrate modest environmental concerns, his track record with large-scale long term environmental concerns, including endangered species and global warming, is viewed by some as entirely lacking. Many consider it a disappointment that then President-elect Barack Obama's pledge to strengthen environmental policy and management has produced so little change.

References

External links

Biography at the United States Department of the Interior

Profile at SourceWatch

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Category:1955 births Category:American Roman Catholic politicians Category:Colorado Attorneys General Category:Colorado College alumni Category:Colorado Democrats Category:Colorado lawyers Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:Hispanic and Latino American people in the United States Congress Category:Living people Category:Obama Administration cabinet members Category:People from Alamosa County, Colorado Category:State cabinet secretaries of Colorado Category:University of Michigan Law School alumni Category:United States Secretaries of the Interior Category:United States Senators from Colorado

Caption	Roberts in December 2010
Birth name	Doris May Roberts
Birth date	November 04, 1930
Birth place	St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, Comedian
Years active	1952–present
Spouse	Michael Cannata (div. 1962)William Goyen (1963-1983)

Doris May Roberts (born November 4, 1930) Her father deserted the family when Roberts was a child, and her mother raised Doris in Ashkenazi Judaism with the help of her Russian Born- parents in The Bronx, New York. Her stepfather was Chester H. Roberts.

Television and film career

Roberts' acting career began in 1952 with a role on the TV series Studio One. She also appeared on such programs as The Naked City (1958–63), Way Out (1961), Ben Casey (1963), and The Defenders (1962–63). In 1961, she made her film debut in Something Wild (1961) starring Carroll Baker. In 1968, she appeared in A Lovely Way to Die and No Way to Treat a Lady. She also appeared in the 1970 cult film The Honeymoon Killers starring Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco. In 1971, Roberts appeared in three films, Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends, Alan Arkin's Little Murders, and Elaine May's A New Leaf.

In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Rue McClanahan confirmed that in 1972 she was approached by Norman Lear during the taping of an All In The Family episode to be a late replacement for Roberts, who was originally intended for the role of Vivian in Maude.

She acted in a Walter Matthau vehicle again in 1974's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three as the patient wife of the Mayor of New York City. In 1978, she appeared in a film about John F. Kennedy's assassination, Ruby and Oswald, in which she played Jack Ruby's sister. She also appeared very briefly in The Rose, as the mother of the title character (played by Bette Midler).

Since then, Roberts has usually been cast as a mother or mother-in-law. An example of this was when she played newsstand owner, Theresa Falco, mother of Donna Pescow on Angie. After Angie was cancelled, she appeared as Mildred Krebs on Remington Steele, which starred Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist. After that show's cancellation, she starred in the TV movie remake of If It's Tuesday, It Still Must Be Belgium (1987) and the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) with Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo. She also appeared on Alice, playing the mother of the title character (played by former Broadway co-star Linda Lavin), the wife of a man who secretly went to a sex surrogate on Barney Miller, as well as Danny Tanner's mother on Full House. She played Flo Flotsky on four episodes of Soap, and she was lonely Aunt Edna on the ABC sitcom Step by Step. She also showed up on an episode of Walker Texas Ranger.

Everybody Loves Raymond

Roberts achieved her widest fame for her role as Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. She was reportedly one of 100 actresses considered for the role. For her work on the series, she was nominated for seven Emmy Awards (and won four times) for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

She had also won an Emmy for a guest role on St. Elsewhere as a homeless woman, and she was nominated once for her role on Remington Steele. She was also nominated for appearances on Perfect Strangers and a PBS special called The Sunset Gang. In 2003, she made a guest appearance as Gordo's grandmother in the Disney series, Lizzie McGuire. The same year, Roberts received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 2006, she starred in Our House where she portrayed a wealthy woman who took homeless people in her house, and in the Adam Sandler-produced comedy Grandma's Boy. In 2007, she made a guest appearance on . In 2008, Roberts appeared in the romantic comedy Play the Game alongside Andy Griffith, who plays a lonely, widowed grandfather re-entering the dating world after a 60-year hiatus. She appeared in the 2009 film Aliens in the Attic, which was filmed in Auckland, New Zealand.

On September 23, 2010, Roberts played Brick's teacher in the second season premiere episode of The Middle. (This appearance reunited her with Patricia Heaton, her co-star from Everybody Loves Raymond, who stars in The Middle.)

Stage career

Roberts' stage career began in the 1950s on Broadway. She has appeared in numerous Broadway shows including The Desk Set (with Shirley Booth), Neil Simon's The Last of the Red Hot Lovers (with James Coco and Linda Lavin) and Terrence McNally's Bad Habits. She starred in McNally's Unusual Acts of Devotion at the LaJolla Playhouse in June 2009.

Personal life

in November 2010]] Roberts' first husband was Michael Cannata; they divorced in 1962. Their son, Michael Cannata, Jr. (born 1957) is Roberts' manager, and is the father of her three grandchildren: Kelsey, Andrew, and Devon. Her second husband was writer William Goyen. She was married to Goyen from 1963 until his death from leukemia on August 30, 1983.

On September 4, 2002, she testified before a U.S. Congressional panel that age discrimination is prevalent in Hollywood, advocating that such discrimination be treated on par with biases against race and gender.

An avid cook, she wrote a book in 2005 titled Are You Hungry, Dear? Life, Laughs, and Lasagna, written with Danelle Morton and published by St. Martin's Press. She says of her book, "It's about sharing things I’ve learned that have changed my life." In May 2005, she received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of South Carolina.

An animal lover and advocate, she has worked with the group Puppies Behind Bars which works with inmates in training guide dogs and assistance dogs for the physically disabled and elderly, as well as dogs trained in explosives detection to be used by the ATF and other law enforcement agencies. She also is active with the Children with AIDS Foundation, of which she has served as the chairwoman. She currently lives in Los Angeles in a house once owned by the actor James Dean.

Emmy Awards

1983 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series — St. Elsewhere

2001 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — Everybody Loves Raymond

2002 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — Everybody Loves Raymond

2003 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — Everybody Loves Raymond

2005 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — Everybody Loves Raymond

Emmy Award nominations

1985 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series — Remington Steele

1989 — Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series — Perfect Strangers

1991 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Special — The Sunset Gang

1999 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — Everybody Loves Raymond

2000 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — Everybody Loves Raymond

2004 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — Everybody Loves Raymond

Filmography

Barefoot in the Park (1967)

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

The Honeymoon Killers (1970)

A New Leaf (1971)

Such Good Friends (1971)

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1975)

Hester Street (1975)

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976–1978)

It Happened One Christmas (1977)

(1979 TV)

Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979)

The Rose (1979)

The Diary of Anne Frank (1980)

Angie (1979–1980)

Ordinary Heroes (1986)

Love in the Present Tense (1986)

Number One with a Bullet (1987)

Simple Justice (1989)

National Lampoons Christmas Vacation (1989)

Blind Faith (1990)

A Mom for Christmas (1990)

Used People (1992)

The Grass Harp (1995)

All Over the Guy (2001)

(2003)

Grandma's Boy (2006)

Our House (2006 TV)

Keeping Up with the Steins (2006)

Play the Game (2009)

Aliens in the Attic (2009)

Mrs Miracle (2009)

Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle (2009)

References

External links

Category:1930 births Category:Actors from New York Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American people of Russian descent Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:Ashkenazi Jews Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Living people Category:Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from the Bronx

Name	Crystal Harris
Caption	Crystal Harris, 2009
Issue	December 2009
Birth place	Lake Havasu City, Arizona model and singer who was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for December 2009.
Name	Harris, Crystal
Fiance	Hugh Hefner
Date of birth	April 29, 1986
Place of birth	Lake Havasu City, Arizona

Category:1986 births Category:Living people Category:People from Mohave County, Arizona Category:American people of English descent Category:American expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:San Diego State University alumni Category:Playboy Playmates (2000–2009)

Name	Cindy Margolis
Gender	female
Birth name	Cynthia Dawn Margolis
Birth date	October 01, 1965
Birth place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Height
Weight
Measurements	34D-25-37
Eye color	Brown
Hair color	Blonde
Ethnicity	Jewish American
Homepage	http://www.cindymargolis.com/
Imdb	0546776
Spelling

Cynthia Dawn "Cindy" Margolis (born October 1, 1965) Her modeling career took off when agents started asking about the woman on the cards. She has modeled in advertising for companies such as Reebok, Vidal Sassoon, Coors, Frederick's of Hollywood, Hanes, and Sunkist. She was Miss Makita Power Tools 1986 and did appearances at woodworking trade shows.

Career

Among late night television viewers, she is best known as an infomercial co-presenter including work with Tony Robbins and Don Lapre. Margolis also appeared briefly as one of Barker's Beauties in 1995 on the game show The Price Is Right. She also appeared as a fembot in . She had a late night Saturday talk show in 2000 called The Cindy Margolis Show, which was filmed in Miami Beach, Florida.

Margolis emerged as a star in the early days of the Internet. She was named Yahoo! Internet Life magazine's "Queen of the Internet" from 1996-1999. She also found her way into the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records as a result of being the "most downloaded" person in 1999. At the age of 34, the peak of her popularity, Margolis was downloaded 70,000 times in a span of 24 hours.

Margolis' fame peaked from a series of appearances on The Howard Stern Radio Show and its television counterpart on the E! channel.

In November 2005, Margolis teamed up with the World Poker Tour to become the new hostess for Chipleaders. In an April 2006 interview with The Washington Post, Margolis discussed her nude photo session for the December 2006 issue of Playboy, saying that she had posed for Playboy many times in the past, but never completely nude. She cited her good looks at age 40 and wanting to be an inspiration to mothers and women her age as the reason she chose to finally pose nude. "It will be fun to go up against the 20-year-olds and show them that they don't have anything on me!" she told the AP. In an interview with EXTRA! magazine she said that Desperate Housewives had been an inspiration for her as it showed that mothers her age can also be fit and sexy. A portion of the proceeds from the issues sold will go to a charity for which Margolis is a spokeswoman, "Resolve". This charity aims to get fertility treatment better covered by insurance companies.

A portion of the sales of her issue went to her charity, the Cindy Margolis Get a Download of This Fertility Fund. The show premiered on January 30, 2010.

Personal life

Margolis is Jewish and was married to restaurateur Guy Starkman. Following in-vitro fertility treatment, she gave birth to son Nicholas Isaac in 2002. Their twin daughters Sabrina and Sierra were born in 2005 with the incubation of a surrogate mother. Margolis and her husband separated in 2008.

Margolis played as an amateur in the Pro Am Equalizer poker tournament against the fellow amateur Jeremy Sisto and pros Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman, Phil Laak, and Chris Ferguson.

Filmography

(1997) .... Fembot

Ally McBeal (1997) .... Herself

Chairman of the Board (1998) .... Tennis Instructor

The Cindy Margolis Show (2000) TV Series .... Host

Sol Goode (2001) .... Angie

MADtv (2001) .... McHooters restaurant hostess (cameo)

Dead Above Ground (2002) .... Kari McClure Mallory

Seducing Cindy (2010) .... Reality television show

References

External links

Exclusive Cindy Margolis Interview at TrulyHollywood.com

Cindy Margolis at MySpace

Category:1965 births Category:American film actors Category:American Internet personalities Category:American Jews Category:California State University, Northridge alumni Category:Game show models Category:Jewish actors Category:Living people Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California

Name	Carrie Ann Inaba
Caption	Inaba at the 2008 Kentucky Derby Festival
Birthdate	January 05, 1968
Birthplace	Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, television judge
Yearsactive	1986–present

Carrie Ann Inaba (born January 5, 1968) is an American dancer, choreographer, actress, television host, and singer. She has appeared as one of three judges on the ABC television series Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), a show that pairs celebrities with professional dancers as they train and then compete in front of a studio audience.

Early life

Inaba was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, graduating from Punahou School in 1986. She is of Hawaiian descent. She studied at Sophia University and University of California, Irvine before graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. degree in World Arts and Cultures.

Career

Inaba, who speaks Japanese, lived in Tokyo from 1986 to 1988 and was a popular singer. She released three singles, "Party Girl" (backed with "China Blue"), "Be Your Girl" (backed with "6½ Capezio"), and "Yume no Senaka" (backed with "Searching") and hosted weekly radio and television series.

After returning to America, Inaba appeared as one of the "Fly Girls", a group of backing dancers on the television series In Living Color from 1990 to 1992. She also performed with Canadian singer Norman Iceberg and dancers Viktor Manoel (David Bowie's "Glass Spider" tour) and Luca Tommassini at Prince's notorious Glam Slam. Inaba appeared as a dancer during Madonna's 1993 Girlie Show World Tour.

Inaba appeared in the film Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) as Fook Yu, alongside Diane Mizota who played her twin sister Fook Mi. The two women are not related, but when Mizota had been cast for her role, she was asked if she knew any actresses who resembled her and suggested Inaba. Inaba, who had appeared briefly in , was given the role and the two women were made up to appear as identical twins. Inaba and Mizota would later reprise their roles with Mike Myers in a commercial for Motorola.

Inaba has acted (usually as a dancer) in the movies Monster Mash: The Movie, Lord of Illusions, Showgirls, Boys and Girls, Flintstones II, Freak and American Virgin and the television series Jack & Jill and Nikki.

Inaba has choreographed several television series, including American Idol, American Juniors, All American Girl, He's a Lady, In Search of the Partridge Family (in which she also appeared on air), Married by America, The Sexiest Bachelor in America Pageant, The Swan, and Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?. She also choreographed the Miss America Pageant for five years.

Inaba is the founder and President of EnterMediArts, Inc., a video production company. She directs, writes, and edits films. Her work includes E! Behind The Scenes Miss America Special, 7th Festival of the Pacific Arts, A Portrait of IVI and Beyond the Dancing Image, along with the short feature film, Black Water. She also appeared in the first season of So You Think You Can Dance during the audition stages where she provided choreography for the "choreography round".

Other TV appearances include Inaba as guest and co-host on The View, the ABC talent competition , and the FOX special .

Also, Inaba guest stars as Tina, Hannah's choreographer, in the Hannah Montana episode, "Papa's Got A Brand New Friend". In the episode, Tina is seen teaching Hannah new dance moves. However, she is accidentally pushed out of the window when Hannah does the electric slide, and becomes incapacitated in a full-body cast. Hannah pleads her to keep her job, but Tina refuses, forcing Hannah to hire a new choreographer.

TV Guide Network announced that Carrie Ann has been signed on to anchor its live red carpet coverage, beginning with the 2009 Primetime Emmy Awards.

In October 2010, she was named host of a revival of the game show 1 vs. 100. The show airs on GSN.

USA Dance 2009 National DanceSport Championships

According to the January/February 2009 issue of American Dancer magazine, Inaba will be an honorary judge at the 2009 USA DANCE National DanceSport Championships in Baltimore, April 3–5 USA Dance, which is the national governing body for DanceSport in the United States, as recognized by the IDSF (International Dancesport Federation) and the US Olympic Committee, of which USA Dance is a member organization. Inaba will be assisting in the first stages of the review by USA Dance of competitive ballroom dancing "in the modern era" as they explore a new major initiative in the critique of DanceSport and its public appeal. Her input to USA DANCE will provide additional critique outside that of the traditional judging panel and will be focused on aspects of performance and personality that may escape normal judging standards. USA Dance, along with Inaba, will present the first-annual Star Quality no Award to 12 DanceSport championship level couples being judged in their divisions.

Personal life

Inaba dated Artem Chigvintsev, a dancer and former So You Think You Can Dance contestant, from 2006 to 2008.

References

External links

Official website of Carrie Ann Inaba

Carrie Ann Inaba interview

Carrie Ann Inaba Interview at PR.com

Category:1968 births Category:American female singers Category:American choreographers Category:American game show hosts Category:Living people Category:People from Honolulu, Hawaii Category:Punahou School alumni Category:Reality television judges Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni Category:American people of Chinese descent Category:American people of Japanese descent Category:American people of Irish descent