"WITH HONOR LAY HIM IN HIS GRAVE"

LEE, Robert E. Robert E. Lee. In Memoriam. A Tribute of Respect Offered by the Citizens of Louisville. Louisville: John P. Morton, 1870. Slim quarto, original blind- and gilt-stamped brown cloth. $1250.

First edition of this collection of stirring tributes to Robert E. Lee, published the same year as his death, with steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of Lee and full-page woodcut-engraved view of his birthplace, a handsome copy in original gilt-stamped cloth.

This collection of eulogies celebrating the life of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was published just five years after the end of the Civil War and the same year as Lee's death. "Since this little quarto is from the house of John P. Morton Co., it is scarcely necessary to say that it is in the most exquisite and tasteful style of the art. All the speeches, especially those of Generals Breckinridge and Preston… form a beautiful tribute to the memory of 'The Great Virginian'… [Our readers] will concur with us in regarding it as one of the best, if not the very best, of all the exhibitions of the peculiar features of General Lee's greatness which have as yet appeared. It sets before us… the wonderful purity, the massive grandeur and the moral sublimity of a character which seems all but peculiar to the 'Old Dominion.' Lee was, in fact, like the 'Father of his Country,' only 'the great Virginian'" (contemporary review, Southern Review 9:685). While Robert E. Lee has come to be a controversial figure on both sides of the Mason-Dixon in the century and a half since the Civil War, this book accurately reflects the often worshipful sentiment directed toward him in the South during the early years after the war. With steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of Lee and wood-engraved view of his birthplace. Small owner initials.

Interior very fresh, lightest edge-wear, faint soiling to front board of bright gilt cloth. A desirable near-fine copy.