“A GENUINELY TRAGIC BOOK, BRAVE AND BITTER”: FIRST EDITION OF HOOD’S ADVANCE AND RETREAT, 1880

HOOD, John Bell. Advance and Retreat. Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate Armies. New Orleans: G.T. Beauregard, 1880. Octavo, original three-quarter brown morocco, raised bands, marbled boards. $1600.

First edition of this dramatic Confederate memoir, with two full-page engraved portraits and four maps, one folding, scarce in publisher’s original three-quarter morocco.

Hood's memoir focuses on his Confederate service, from his early involvement at Second Manassas and Sharpsburg to his surrender at Natchez, Mississippi. Though much admired as a divisional and corps commander, Hood's aggressive tendencies helped to seal the fate of the Confederacy at the Battle of Atlanta. Hood took over army command after Johnston's removal and decided to move his troops from their well-entrenched positions in and around Atlanta to attack Sherman's numerically superior forces. The resulting rout broke the last Southern stronghold and freed the way for Sherman's infamous march to the sea. Of Advance and Retreat, Freeman wrote in The South to Posterity, "This is a genuinely tragic book, brave and bitter, wistful and manly, touched with humor in the early chapters, grim in its recountal of the circumstances which defeated his final plan of operations." Tall Cotton 93. Eicher 240. Wright 1051. Howes H622. Bookplate.

Interior clean, light expert restoration to joints, inner hinges and extremities of publisher's three-quarter morocco. An extremely good copy.