"Civil War books combine history with collecting"

Here's a nice article on collecting Civil War books by Ken Gloss, owner of the Brattle Book Shop in downtown Boston – America’s oldest and one of its largest antiquarian bookstores. The story was originally published here on Nov. 6, 2011.

It’s now 150 years since the start of the American Civil War, which ran from 1861 to 1865 and was one of the most interesting and tragic chapters in the history of our country. It has spawned thousands of different books, both in non-fiction and fiction. Collectors interested in Civil War books can find everything from histories of individual regiments to extensive historical accounts of all four years of the war. In Massachusetts, The Historical Sketch of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment, written by John W. Hansen in 1866, is an accurate and interesting depiction of soldiers from this area. Another popular edition is The History of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first African-American regiment.

These types of books are highly collectible because they contain encapsulated histories of the war and present a more personal picture of what happened to our ancestors. When these regimental histories were first released, they had limited distribution and print runs because the only people interested in local history were, of course, the local residents.

What makes these books, which can sell for a few hundred dollars, so intriguing are the details. They list every member of the regiment, allowing people to trace the lives of their great-great-grandparents. They also contain complete battle specifics, right down to the movements of all the soldiers. For history buffs and Civil War re-enactors, this kind of detail provides an accurate picture of what happened during the battles.

For a more general book on the Civil War, Kirkland’s 1866 edition of The Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the Rebellion is a good choice. Written right after the end of the war, it has a fresher perspective than books written 30 or 40 years later. This book sells in the $35 to $100 range – a lesser price than the regiment histories because there were more Kirklands published.

The most requested Civil War book I see is The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, written in 1886. There is a whole series of biographies and autobiographies written about Civil War generals, but the most famous one is Grant’s. This book is probably also the best written of all of the books about Grant.

He was a great writer with a great editor: Mark Twain. This book, available in a two-volume set, was reprinted several times and sells for about $250 for a good copy, more for a deluxe leather-bound edition. However, prices are moderating as those searching for info now go to the Internet which decreases the demand though new and serious collectors keep collecting.

A number of people who pick up this book see Grant’s signature on the inside flap and think they have a valuable find. What they don’t realize is that Grant’s signature was printed in every copy of the book. It would be really amazing, a miracle in fact, if someone did have a copy with Grant’s actual handwriting inside – he died a month before the book was released.

The presidents who followed Grant have that book to thank for their pension program. Grant was essentially impoverished by the time he was an old man and wrote the memoirs to provide income for his retirement. When people realized a former president had been reduced to selling his life story for income, a push was made to implement the presidential pension plan that exists today.

There are stories behind so many of the books of the Civil War. It is one of the most highly collected events in world history because it is one of the few wars that transpired right on American soil. The impact of brother fighting brother also made the stories of the war dramatic and emotional, resulting in good reading as well as collecting. Although interest in that period has always been strong, the release of Ken Burns’ Civil War sparked a renewal of attention for the war.

Books written about events in the North are much easier to find than books printed in the South. Simply, the North had more money and supplies than the South, which even ran out of paper at one point during the war. By 1865, newspapers in the South were being printed on old sheets of wallpaper, something that makes them very collectible today.

The newspaper accounts of the war, particularly those written by writers in the regions where the battles were happening, often contain the most accurate information. They allow the reader to see the history as it unfolded, with day-by-day accounts of the fighting. The Southern papers tended to be more impassioned and thus are more valuable, than the ones from Northern publishers.

There are as many different aspects of the war upon which to concentrate a collection, as there are books. Everything from the naval history to the social events has been written about and chronicled in numerous books. Just collecting the photographs of the war, which depicted the battles in detail and showed soldiers proudly wearing their uniforms, can provide an amazing amount of information about the war. No matter which area of the war a collector decides to concentrate on, there are sure to be hundreds of books, in a wide variety of price ranges, available. The craze for Civil War memorabilia is still strong and shows no signs of slowing any time soon.

Hood's Tennessee Campaign

Though now close to eighty-five years old, this work still retains its status as an early and still important work on Confederate general John Bell Hood's ill-fated September - December 1864 campaign into Tennessee. In addition to four maps, the book features seventy pages of notes. An earlier incarnation of the work was awarded the 1920 Robert M. Johnston Military History Prize by the American Historical Association. Coupled with the fact that this book-length version was published late in the career of Neale Publishers and you have the makings of a very collectible book today.

Written by author Thomas R. Hay (1888-1974) from primarily a Confederate perspective (which was the case for most Neale books), the work begins with the opening of the campaign and proceeds toward the battles of Spring Hill, Franklin, and finally, the near-annihilation of Hood's command at Nashville. Hay then concludes his book with a discussion of Hood's retreat from Tennessee and how such losses spelled the end of the "lost cause."

First editions were published in 1929 by Walter Neale and Co., bound in blue cloth with black lettering on the front and spine. As you can see by the pictured copy (for sale here), the book was also originally issued with a dust jacket, which if intact will add geometric value to any copy in solid condition. The work was also reprinted by Morningside in 1976 and can be acquired from Gate House Press today.

Google Books - What's Up?

Is it just me or is it all of a sudden more difficult to use Google Books for searching through old books? Used to be you would type in a title or keywords and and multiple pages of stuff would pop up. If something interesting was either a full or limited preview offering, you'd click the link and the actual page images would immediately appear in the browser window. Now my desktop screen is just blank and I have to make several more clicks to open either a text view, or a pdf or tell the system some other crap. What am I missing or doing wrong?

Deluxe Boxed Set of "Diary from Dixie"

Collectors will be interested to learn that a beautifully illustrated, slipcased, two-volume edition of Mary Chesnut’s famous “diary” has just been released by Pelican Publishing. More on that diary in a moment, for in this case, the real treasure is the second volume, which consists of images from Mary Chesnut’s long-lost personal photograph albums. As I have yet to acquire a copy of this set, I’ll quote from Amazon, which states in part how these images were “Thought to be lost or stolen since the 1930s, the albums were only just rediscovered in 2007. An astonishing historical treasure, the photographs are annotated with information about each person depicted and edited by Chesnut's family. Photographs range from many of Jefferson Davis and other famous military leaders and statesmen to those within Chesnut's social circle: Gen. Wade Hampton III and his family including the Preston girls- and their suitors Gen. John Bell Hood and battlefield surgeon, Maj. John T. Darby; literary figures, such as writer Alexander Dumas; and many more individuals, including young soldiers of the elite Charleston Light Dragoons, Elizabeth Allston Pringle - the 'woman rice planter' of South Carolina, and Baltimore spy Hetty Cary.” In addition to the photographs, the reader learns the history of these images, why there were thought lost over the years and even stolen, and then the story of their partial recovery.

As for that famous “diary,” so oft-quoted in the Ken Burns’ Civil War mini-series, scholars and readers now know that her “diary” was really an 1880’s creation based on her notes and journals from the 1860’s, with Chesnut often deleting material not flattering to herself. Whether one has the 1905 first edition, the 1914 second edition, or the 1949 edition of Diary from Dixie, “memoir” would perhaps be a better description of the original work than diary. Vann Woodward’s heavily annotated and Pulitzer-Prize winning Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, published in 1981, brought to light the many changes between the diarist’s original journals and the initial published work. It is now clearly the essential version. Three years later, Woodward published The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries which published for the first time Chesnut’s extant and unedited Civil War journals. These two volumes paint the complete picture for the scholar, rendering that original 1905 work little more than a conversation piece of value only to the ardent bibliophile.

Nevertheless, if you're one of those seeking the 1905 first edition as published in New York by D. Appleton and Company, be prepared for a possibly lengthy search. As you can see here, only one copy in fair condition is currently to be found for sale on ABE, though two first British editions are also available. The 1914 second edition is pictured and is offered for sale here.

The World's Most Expensive Book?

Not what you might think... check it out here.

Time for a Celebratory Cigar

I'm thrilled to announce that the final draft of my new work has been completed. As I've mentioned before, its working title is "Old Slow Town:" A Social, Political and Military History of Detroit during the Civil War. I turned the manuscript in to Detroit's very own Wayne State University Press earlier this week which means the peer review process now begins. If all goes as hoped, we should be looking at a Spring 2013 pub. date.

This was quite a challenging book as the various social and political issues heavily present in Civil War-era Detroit, i.e. draft resistance, race relations and labor unrest, all required a significant amount of analysis and study. Such home front issues were simply not pertinent in my past works. Plus, it was quite interesting to learn how concerns over street violence coupled with the fear of Confederate raids from Canada affected the local military authorities.

By the way, the caption to this August, 1863 Harpers Weekly draft cartoon is "Don't you see the point?" Indeed.

The Army of the Pacific, 1860-1866

I'm a total novice when it comes to Civil War operations in the far west and as part of my recent interest I came across The Army of the Pacific: Its Operations in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, plains region, Mexico, etc. 1860-1866 by Aurora Hunt (1881-1965) and published by the venerable Arthur H. Clark Co. in 1951. Readers may recall that I first wrote of this fine press when I posted on The Organization and Administration of the Union Army back in January 2011.

According to one online writer, “the name ‘Army of the Pacific’ described both Union volunteer units recruited to stay in the Pacific coast states and territories, guarding them from natives and supposed Confederate incursions, and the mix of Regular and volunteer Union units known as the ‘California Column’ sent off to deal with Confederate regulars and irregulars in Arizona and New Mexico. Although they did fight the westernmost land battle in the Civil War (at Pichacho Pass in Arizona) against a few Confederate scouts, by the time they got to New Mexico the Confederates under General Sibley had been turned back at Glorieta Pass and retreated all the way to Texas, and the Californians were put on garrison duty, had occasional Indian encounters, and engaged in minor persecution of Mormons. The ones left behind didn’t have much excitement either, with a few miscellaneous skirmishes against various tribes and now and then the arrest of some real or imaginary Confederate agents.”

The Arthur H. Clark Company published this book as the first volume in their distinguished Frontier Military series. As for the author, her study was based largely on primary sources, including information obtained directly from the soldiers' descendants and rare territorial newspapers. Though the book may at one time have been considered the standard work, it now appears to be a bit dated though still quite useful. Other criticisms (Nevins) include that at 400+ pages, it was far longer than it needed to be. Nevertheless, as it was published by the Arthur Clark Company, it has maintained a high level of desirability among first edition collectors.

Like all Clark books, the work was published in dark blue cloth covers with gold gilt lettering on the spine and top edges of the sheets. The paper was a heavy, cream-colored stock with deckled edges, just what you would expect from a fine press. This one also featured 17 sepia plates and a fold-out map. I do not believe there was a dust jacket per se with this book though one bookseller reported to me that the book came in a plain white jacket with a hole cut in the front for the book’s front panel lettering to show through. As you can see here, fine first editions are not that common, with most of those available being ex-library. One bookseller reports that 1023 copies were printed.

In more recent years, the book was reissued by Stackpole and is readily available.