Description
Signed limited edition of The Seventieth Indiana Volunteer Infantry by Samuel Merrill, signed by President Benjamin Harrison. The first presidential signed limited edition book.
Octavo, [6], 372pp, [2]. Blue cloth, title in gilt on spine, title with star on front cover in gilt. Solid text block, with faint foxing to the frontispiece and title page. Conservative restoration to spine, cosmetic repairs to blue cloth. Top edge gilt, which differentiates this limited edition from the first edition, published the same year.
The trade edition of this book contains a facsimile signature from Benjamin Harrison below the frontispiece portrait, where this limited edition was left blank for President Harrison to personally sign. The limited edition also includes the signature of Samuel Merrill below his portrait, opposite page 138. Only 100 limited edition copies were held for the publisher and signed by President Harrison on the frontispiece portrait. (Nevins I, 130)
A scarce work.
Following the call by President Abraham Lincoln for new recruits to the Union Army, Colonel Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) got the approval of Indiana Governor Oliver Morton to raise a regiment. He recruited volunteers from northern Indiana to serve in the newly commissioned 70th Indiana. After Harrison’s service during the Civil War, he ran for governor of Indiana and then served in the United States Senate from 1881-1887. In 1888, he was nominated by the Republican Party for President of the United States, taking office in 1889. He was defeated for a second term in 1892 by Grover Cleveland.
