37. One Confederate deserter was Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s career as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War, an event which led him to joining the militia in his native Missouri. He remained with the unit for two weeks before he deserted, fleeing to the west. He later wrote a fictional account of his brief period of military service, but he was considered a deserter, by himself and by others, for the rest of his life. Twain described his two week military career as a period in which he was, “hunted like a rat the whole time” and defended his desertion later in his life by describing the war and slavery as blots on the national character.
