Description
The first edition of Reminiscences Of Forts Sumter And Moultrie In 1860-’61 by Brevet Major-General Abner Doubleday.
Twelvemo, 184pp, 8pp ads. Blue cloth, title stamped in gilt on spine, illustration in gilt on cover. Solid text block, solid hinges. Faint sunning to the spine, a few blemishes to the front free endpaper, otherwise a fine example. (Dornbusch II, 1544)
This work is complete, with a frontispiece portrait of Fort Sumter and a map of Charleston. Uncommon in this condition.
From Nevins: “This charming story…is a memoir of merit because of the aura of its immediacy and intimacy.” (Nevins I, 27)
From Eicher: “….well written and immersed in first-hand recollections, the work describes the beginning of the war from the time Doubleday was stationed at Fort Moultrie to the fall of Fort Sumter, when the author left the fort with Major Robert Anderson and traveled north.” (Eicher, 32)
The author of this work, Abner Doubleday (1819-1893) graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1842. He served in the Mexican-American War and later as a Union general during the American Civil War. At the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, he briefly commanded the Union’s I Corps. He was promoted to the rank of major general but was later reassigned. Doubleday retired from the U.S. Army in 1873. He died on January 26, 1893, in Mendham, New Jersey. There is no evidence he invented baseball; the claim was made decades after his death.
