Yet to identify Twain merely as a prototypical American does little to illuminate the man or the country; Twain’s America, after all, spanned three-quarters of a century. During his lifetime the Whig Party was born and died, industrialism swept the north-eastern countryside, and the devotees of Manifest Destiny fought through the territories with the hopes of either populating the Californian coast with Winthrop’s shining cities, making heaps of cash, or both.
Why am I brilliant??
*reading furiously*